Poilievre vows to sue drug makers over opioid crisis to fund addiction treatment

Poilievre made the pledge during a stop in Metro Vancouver, a region of the country he has routinely criticized for its embrace of safe supply sites and decriminalization.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Tuesday that if he became prime minister, he would sue pharmaceutical companies as a way to fund drug treatment — but he wouldn’t say what he would do about sites where users can consume drugs under supervision.

Poilievre made the pledge during a stop in Metro Vancouver, a region of the country he has routinely criticized for its approach to the opioid crisis. He recently called Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood “hell on earth.”

The Tory leader has said that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the NDP-led provincial government are both contributing to the problem in British Columbia by offering a safe supply of drugs to some users and decriminalizing small amounts of certain illicit substances.

He has panned such measures as being part of a “failed experiment.”

During a video on the topic of harm reduction filmed in front of a tent encampment in Vancouver last November, Poilievre posed a question that would become the centrepiece of his Conservative message: “Do you ever feel like everything’s broken in Canada?”

Poilievre has pledged to end the provision of a safer supply of drugs and disallow decriminalization. The positions earned swift condemnation from political opponents and drug policy experts, who say the measures are needed to mitigate a toxic drug supply that has led to thousands of preventable overdoses and deaths.

Poilievre reiterated his position on Tuesday.

“I don’t believe in flooding our communities with more and more taxpayer-funded drugs,” he said.