Linda Duncan

[Opioid Crisis in Canada, December 10th, 2018]

Mr. Chair, I want to turn this discussion tonight in a slightly different direction. I will not call it a debate. Regretfully, it began as a debate, and it started to become hostile. I do not think that was the original intent of the evening. A number of members put forward very heartfelt, well-founded, evidence-based additional solutions. There is a lot of frustration. Those on this side of the House are getting frustrating that the government does not appear to be open, whatsoever, to any new ideas or any new investments.

I became involved in caring about this issue because of one of my constituents, a dear friend, Petra Schulz. I talked to Petra Schultz last evening, in preparing to come to this debate. I told her I probably would not have much chance to speak, but I wanted to share some of her experience. Many members have probably become familiar with Petra, because she has been covered very widely in the national media.

Petra lost her youngest child, Danny, at the age of 25 to an accidental fentanyl dose in 2014. It is important to recognize that Danny, like many of those with opioid addictions, had attended treatment. Many, or at least some, of addicted often revert to opioids again, because it is an addiction, as much as they do not want to.

It is also very important to understand that Petra is one of hundreds of mothers across this country who have come together to call on the government to take deeper action. The kinds of action they are calling for are exactly the recommendations that have been made tonight in this debate. Where do those recommendations for action come from? They come from the health and legal experts in our country.

These mothers are not just coming up with these ideas off the top of their head. They work very hard. They do not want any more children lost in this country. Petra, along with the other mothers, have participated in everything they can. They go out and talk at schools. They meet with government and so forth.

They have come forward, through www.momsstoptheharm.com/ to ask for specific actions. They have asked for the government to take a public health approach to drugs based on evidence and human rights. Harm reduction is a key component of a comprehensive response to drugs to prevent drug-related harm and death. They have called for the decriminalization of the possession of drugs for personal use as an essential to a public health approach.

Petra says that it is fundamental to remove the stigma. That is what removing the stigma means. Many do not seek the treatment because they are drug users, and our society does not look fondly on drug users.

I mentioned that these moms have taken action together. They all wrote to the Prime Minister and to the federal Minister of Health, and not a single one of those mothers has received a response. Not a single one of those mothers who has lost a child to addiction to opioids has received a response to their letter to the Prime Minister or to the Minister of Health. I would recommend tonight that doing so might be a start, if the government really cares about the trauma of suffering, of losing someone to opioid addiction.

I could quote, if I had more time, which I do not, Leslie McBain, who also lost her son. She is one of the co-founders of this organization. She is calling, in desperation, on the government to decriminalize the drug. As she says, “jail has never cured addiction. For every dollar spent in harm reduction, $7 is saved in medical care, enforcement and the criminal justice system.”

On behalf of all of these mothers who have lost their children to this addiction because they could not receive the support they deserved, I beg the government to consider acting expeditiously on the recommendations that have been made this evening by all members on all sides of this place.

We cannot wait any longer: 10,000 Canadians have been lost to opioid addictions, to fentanyl which kills, to carfentanil which kills. We took action on SARS.

The federal government has the spending power. It transfers money for mental health. Surely to heavens, if we accept that opioid addiction is a mental health problem, why can it not transfer additional funds? We are not telling the government to set up these centres. We are simply saying provinces, municipalities, towns and first nations are begging the federal government to step in and give more assistance.

[Opioid Crisis in Canada, December 10th, 2018]

Madam Chair, I am rising on a point of privilege. I am deeply troubled that my colleague across the way would suggest that I think this is a laughing matter. No one heard one laugh from me on this serious matter.

[Opioid Crisis in Canada, December 10th, 2018]

Madam Chair, I appreciate the concerns that my colleague from Alberta is raising but he seems to be missing the point. That person who is waiting for a treatment bed, even if there are a lot more treatment beds, is still using. Would we not prefer that the person had a safe drug and a safe needle wherever he or she is using the drug?

I would also remind members about “Moms Stop the Harm”. Hundreds of mothers across this country are calling for decriminalization because the majority of their children have gone through treatment and guess what? It is like alcoholism. A person is an alcoholic for life. With opioids, people may go through treatment but they always revert. Therefore, people need access to a safe drug that they can take in a safe place.

I wonder if the member could speak to that.

[Opioid Crisis in Canada, December 10th, 2018]

Mr. Chair, the minister mentioned that she has put in place some measures at the borders. I have worked in the area of training border guards and I know how many federal pieces of legislation they are responsible for checking. Could the minister tell us how many additional resources have been put to train and assist our border officials, particularly on the west coast or anywhere where shipments may be coming in from China, to inspect very carefully for fentanyl and carfentanil to make sure that we are catching every single shipment of these drugs coming into our country?

[Petitions, December 7th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition signed by 2,657 Canadians regarding more sustainable fishing practices in British Columbia.

[Federal Sustainable Development Act, December 6th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I wish I could be so positive about the success of the application of sustainable development legislation. In 2015, 2016 and 2017, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development gave an absolute abject failing grade to all the agencies that were reviewed. A lot of her recommendations for greater accountability were rejected by the government. The other place made an attempt to change the bill.

One of the main amendments the commissioner had called for was specific reference in the Sustainable Development Act of the cabinet directive on sustainable development. The reason for that is that this directive would require every department and agency to do an assessment of policy program spending that is submitted to cabinet. One subset of this is the provision the government is refusing to accept from the other place, which was also recommended by our committee.

Bill C-57 is in fact not based on the review by the committee on which I used to sit. It is based on what the minister decided she would do to keep a reduced function of the bill in holding the government accountable for delivering on the sustainable development 2030 goals that our country signed on to.

Could the member speak to why the Liberals are not accepting these broader provisions to hold the government, the departments and agencies accountable for spending and assessing what the impact might be on the broad sustainable development goals?

[The Environment, December 3rd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, in Paris, the Liberals committed to greenhouse gas reductions that would hold the temperature increase to 1.5°C. Back home, they have stuck to Stephen Harper's targets. In Marrakesh, they called for respect for the rights of indigenous peoples. Back home, they approved major energy projects impacting those rights. In Bonn, at the 11th hour, they committed to a just transition for fossil fuel sector workers, and yet a year later there is nothing budgeted to support Alberta's initiative.

This week, at COP24 in Poland, will the government simply make more promises it has no intention of keeping?

[Committees of the House, November 29th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I have had the honour of visiting Skeena—Bulkley Valley, and I know what strong indigenous communities there are there.

I want to share two powerful experiences I have had with indigenous communities. This past summer, I had the honour of travelling with my colleague, who represents northern Saskatchewan, to a very indigenous community, both Métis and Cree I believe. In that gathering and in between, it was not English that was being spoken. I could hear my colleague speaking her language, Dene. It was a beautiful moment, because we are most powerful when we speak our language.

I also want to share that when I went to a gathering of the Dene people in Fort Providence, a small community in Northwest Territories, I lost count of how many interpreters were there. Indigenous communities are used to having interpretation, even among themselves.

I wonder if my colleague can speak further to the absurdity of the suggestion that there would be difficulty in finding interpreters of these beautiful indigenous languages that Canada is grateful to have.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2, November 29th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, if ever I heard filler in a speech, that was it. I congratulate the member for Yukon.

Omnibus budget bills were brought forward by the former Harper government and now this. There are a number of issues. It is not just whether the matters may relate to finance or the budget. The Liberals promised in their election campaign three years ago that they would not repeat the omnibus budget bills that Mr. Harper brought forward. Yes, a carbon tax bill may be a financial matter, but it was a massive legislative undertaking that merited review unto itself instead of being thrown into the middle of other financial matters that folks in the finance committee might have wanted to discuss. Rationalizing that this is what omnibus bills are just does not address the problem we have with the sitting government.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2, November 29th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his attempts to amend this bill. The government has repeatedly said that we are all in this together, yet when it comes to tabling bills, it rejects every sensible amendment.

Last night, there was an emergency debate in the House on the energy situation particularly being suffered in the province of Alberta. Almost a year ago exactly, in Bonn, Germany, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change committed that she would finally invest some dollars and have a strategy on an energy transition strategy for workers. Here we are about to go to the next COP on climate and nothing has been invested by the Liberal government.

Could the member speak to what the government could have done to invest in helping our workers, including our oil field workers like those of Iron & Earth, who are proud to be oil field workers but would also like to be trained as well so they can move into the energy efficiency and renewable energy sectors. Why has the federal government put nothing in this budget?