Poilievre introduces motion to end safe drug supply policies, direct funding to treatment programs

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre introduced a motion to the House of Commons Thursday calling on the Liberal government to halt all programs providing non-toxic drugs to those suffering with addictions and redirect funding to treatment services.

"Crime and chaos, drugs and disorder rage in our streets. Nowhere is this worse than in the opioid overdose crisis that has expanded so dramatically in the last several years," Poilievre told the House of Commons on Thursday morning. 

The Conservative leader said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, backed by "tax-funded" activists, big pharma and others, is wrong to argue that providing addicted persons "powerful heroin-like drugs that are uncontaminated" will steer them away from street drugs. 

"We're told that giving out and decriminalizing hard drugs would reduce drug overdoses," Poilievre told the House. "These so-called experts are typically pie in the sky theorists with no experience getting people off drugs or they're members of the misery industry; those paid activists and public health bureaucrats whose jobs depend on the crisis continuing."

The Conservative leader said that government-funded drugs were being sold by the addicted and the proceeds are being used to buy fentanyl laced opioids that lead to overdose deaths. 

Poilievre's motion says that between 2016 and 2022 almost 35,000 people died from complications related to opioid overdoses in Canada, a number backed up by the federal government.

He called on members of the House to vote in favour of asking the Liberal government "to immediately reverse its deadly policies and redirect all funds from taxpayer-funded, hard drug programs to addiction, treatment and recovery programs."

Poilievre told the House that because these deaths had taken place since Trudeau came to office, the prime minister could not dismiss them as an inherited problem, but had to accept this was a problem of his own making. 

According to the federal government's Health Infobase, where the 35,000 number can be found, the toxic supply of contaminated street drugs is "a major driver" of the opioid crisis.

"A total of 5,360 apparent opioid overdose deaths occurred from January to September of 2022. This is approximately 20 deaths per day. It is a 173 per cent increase from 2016, the first full calendar year [Trudeau] was in office," Poilievre said.

Health Infobase reports that of the 5,360 deaths, 81 per cent involved the street drug fentanyl, a substance not present in government-supplied drugs given to people with addictions. 

Health Infobase also says that 78 per cent of the opioid overdose deaths from January to September last year came from a non-pharmaceutical supply; something the safer supply strategy is trying to eliminate. 

Those numbers reflect similar conclusions in April from the BC Coroners Service, which said that there have been 11,807 overdose deaths in British Columbia between April 2016 and the first three months of 2023.

"Unregulated drug toxicity continues to be the leading cause of unnatural death in British Columbia, accounting for more deaths than homicides, suicides, motor vehicle incidents, drownings and fire-related deaths combined," The B.C. Coroners Service said in April.