QUESTION PERIOD — Health
Decriminalization of Drugs
May 23, 2024
Senator Gold, I want to follow up on Senator Miville-Dechêne’s question from yesterday and mine from a few weeks ago regarding the increase in opioid use in our hometown of Montreal.
Over nine years of Justin Trudeau’s leadership, 42,000 Canadians have died from drug overdoses. Canada has experienced a 166% increase in deaths since the Liberals formed government.
In British Columbia, where Justin Trudeau carried out his reckless legalization experiment, there has been a nearly 400% increase in drug overdose deaths. In the first year alone, 2,500 Canadians died from overdoses.
Senator Gold, it’s very clear that the Trudeau experiment of legalizing hard drugs has been a catastrophe. Why, then, won’t your government rule out the legalization of hard drugs in other Canadian cities, including in our hometown of Montreal?
The Government of Canada considers responses from the provinces, which have responsibility over the health and treatment of its citizens and residents who fall victim to drug use and who are stricken in their health and well-being, not only by the use of drugs but by the use of unsafe drugs in unsafe places under unsafe circumstances.
In that regard, I think it is a responsible thing for the Canadian government and, I would hope, any government to listen carefully to provincial counterparts when they make requests, as the government did with British Columbia, and to listen carefully when the provinces say that changes need to be made. The government will continue to be attentive and mindful of its provincial partners.
Senator Gold, I hear no leadership in that answer.
Of all hydromorphone seizures, 50% were diverted from taxpayer-funded hard drugs that Trudeau dishes out. This means that your government, using our money, is directly responsible for these drugs ending up in the hands of organized crime and being sold in schoolyards across the country, with discarded needles being left behind for little kids to pick up.
Why can’t you admit that this Trudeau experiment has failed and must stop?
The position of this government remains that it is necessary to be responsive to the health needs and requests of the provinces in areas like this. The Government of Canada is carefully evaluating those requests and working with the provinces that are responsible, largely if not exclusively, for the health of their citizens.
