Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier.
Today is my son's 22nd birthday and, oddly enough, my mother's 91st birthday. I say happy birthday to Zac and Zetta.
This is obviously a very contentious topic, and I certainly do not mean to be inflammatory in my remarks, because I do understand the nature of this illness and that it is a health care issue. However, we need to think of three different things: decriminalization, safe supply and banning precursor chemicals.
We studied the opioid epidemic in HESA, where the member for Yukon referred to the Liberal government's policy of delivering drugs to vulnerable Canadians as an “experiment”, and that is the study that we continue to undertake at the Standing Committee on Health. According to the Collins English Dictionary, one definition of “experiment” is “a scientific test which is done in order to discover what happens to something in particular conditions.” The natural conclusion is that, when something is shown to work in certain conditions, one should expand on it. The obvious converse point is related to the fact that, if it has a potentially harmful outcome, then one should bring it to an end. That is how experiments work. In the health committee, we very clearly heard the deputy chief from Vancouver telling us that the police officers believed that the decriminalization experiment needed to be curtailed, and then people actually began to stand up and take notice.
One of the difficulties we know of is that decriminalization has led to a lack of safety in downtowns across this country. I remember, perhaps a month ago, when I visited Sydney, Nova Scotia, that people were afraid to go into their downtowns. Of course, that goes all the way to Sidney, British Columbia, as well. Residents are scared. The police do not have the opportunity to attempt to make the areas around soccer fields, playgrounds, businesses or sidewalks safe for residents to use. I think that is certainly something to consider.
Brad West, the mayor of Port Coquitlam, was quoted during an interview with the BBC on March 29. The article is entitled “Success or failure? Canada's drug decriminalization test faces scrutiny”. The article goes on to say:
It is a debate felt not just in the bigger cities like Vancouver, but in places like Port Coquitlam, a suburb of 60,000 people east of Vancouver rich in walking trails, public parks and single-family homes.
There, it was an altercation during a child's birthday party that was “the last straw” for Mayor Brad West.
Mr. West told the BBC he had heard from a family who had spotted a person using drugs near the party, held in a local park. Confronted, the person refused to leave, he said.
“That to me is unacceptable,” he said, adding that police had the right to intervene in that situation.
Therefore, we know that this is a very difficult topic.
Greg Shea, adjunct professor of management and senior fellow at the Wharton School's Center for Leadership and Change Management, wrote an article dated September 5, 2023, entitled “Is Portugal’s Drug Decriminalization a Failure or Success? The Answer Isn’t So Simple.” The article goes on to say:
evidence of a fragmenting, even breaking, system abounds: Demoralized police no longer cite addicts to get them into treatment and at least some NGOs view the effort as less about treatment and more about framing lifetime drug use as a right.
The number of Portuguese adults who reported prior use of illicit adult drugs rose from 7.8% in 2001 to 12.8% in 2022 — still below European averages but a significant rise nonetheless. Overdose rates now stand at a 12-year high and have doubled in Lisbon since 2019. Crime, often seen as at least loosely related to illegal drug addiction, rose 14% just from 2021 to 2022. Sewage samples of cocaine and ketamine rank among the highest in Europe [strangely enough] (with weekend spikes) and drug encampments have appeared along with a European rarity: private security forces.
The decriminalization experiment is not working. Fortunately, I believe, for Canadians in British Columbia, that government has asked the NDP-Liberal government to reverse it, and that change appears to be coming.
On safe supply, where did this all begin? It began with Purdue Pharma, as we hear in the vernacular, supercharging the sales of OxyContin. That, of course, is evidenced by the family that owned Purdue Pharma being sued successfully for $6 billion to help pay for that crisis. We know that street prices of hydromorphone have plummeted all over Canada.
Around Ottawa, it has often been reported that the original street price for an eight-milligram hydromorphone pill was around $20; now it is around two dollars. In the last couple of days, we heard clearly in health committee from Dr. Sharon Koivu, an addiction medicine expert from London. She told us that safe supply has caused horrific suffering in her community. She also went on to talk about the plummeting price of hydromorphone. She believed that safe supply was diverting patients away from opioid agonist treatment, which we know has significant scientific evidence. We know that this therapy needs to be undertaken in this country as part of the suite of services to treat this terrible epidemic.
The former minister of addictions said in June last year, “It is hugely important, I think, to understand that the people using Dilaudid or hydromorphone have been known to be able to share it with their family and friends, which is a safe supply.” That is nonsensical, I am afraid to say. The sharing of prescription drugs is illegal.
We also know there has been significant diversion of Dilaudid or hydromorphone from so-called safe supply programs. For instance, in Prince George, police seized more than 10,000 pills, including hydromorphone, diverted from safe supply. In Campbell River, 3,500 government-issued hydromorphone pills were seized by the local RCMP, all of which were diverted from so-called safe supply; the pills had been in the possession of a “well-organized drug trafficking operation”.
We know that these things are happening. We have also heard, again from Prince George, that organized crime groups are actively involved in the redistribution of safe supply and prescription drugs. In Prince George, we have seen people taking prescribed medications, some of which are dedicated as safe supply prescription drugs, and selling them to organized crime groups in exchange for more potent illicit drugs.
The deputy chief of the Vancouver Police Department told HESA that half of the hydromorphone seizures in B.C. were diverted from safe supply. When we look at all these facts, we can clearly understand that safe supply is not working toward its intended consequence.
We know that substance use disorder is a very difficult problem; people who suffer with substance use disorder want the most potent medication or drug out there. It is difficult for an average Canadian to understand that, if I were an addict and someone over here had a near-death experience with a particular substance, then I would want that. I would be willing to do almost anything to get that same experience. It is very difficult to understand.
We know that precursor chemicals are the raw materials that are used to manufacture fentanyl and the like, and they are usually imported from abroad, often from the PRC. That is creating a significant problem. These precursors are difficult to seize, but banning them is something that we need to be mindful of.
In October 2023, the U.S. DEA added 28 substances to its special surveillance list. Sadly, in Canada, only four of those 28 substances are on our banned list.
This is a very difficult topic, but to paraphrase the great John F. Kennedy, we do not do things here because they are easy; we do them because they are hard. This is hard.
Clearly, some of the ideas put forward by the NDP-Liberal government are not working. On the Conservative side of the House, we have some excellent ideas. These include opioid agonist therapy, bringing people back to safer communities, bringing those who suffer with substance use disorder into treatment programs and, as the parliamentary secretary alluded to, bringing them home in a drug-free state.
On this side of the House, we do not believe that anybody was born hoping they would be addicted to substances. That is not what we want to see for the citizens of Canada in the future.
