Pierre Poilievre: Addiction policy is broken. We must fix it

Recently, I posted a video on Canada’s addiction crisis that provoked a strong reaction from all sides.

My message was that everything feels broken, and the government’s approach to addiction policy is top among them. Over the past decade, addiction has become a crisis in Canada. Whether it be the rapid increase in opioid-related deaths, the massive spike in meth use driving rural crime or the overuse of alcohol, which continues to utilize more health care resources than all other narcotics combined, Canadians are suffering.

I recorded my video in British Columbia and had an opportunity to walk through Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. I was shocked and saddened by what I saw. British Columbia’s addiction crisis has seen drug overdose deaths rise from 529 in 2015 to 2,267 in 2021 — a 328 per cent increase. The first 10 months of 2022 have had 1,827 deaths, and B.C. is tragically on track to match the record numbers of overdose deaths of 2021.

The sad reality is this story is not limited to Vancouver. Tent cities, open drug use and public safety concerns are now prevalent across Canada. We can no longer live this way. Canadians deserve much better.

Public safety must be at the centre of this conversation, right alongside a focus on treating addiction and supporting Canadians in their pursuit of recovery.

We need tougher sentencing for repeat violent offenders. In B.C. alone, about 200 frequent offenders were collectively involved in 11,600 confrontations with police within the span of a year, showing that a small minority of frequent offenders are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime. We need to end this revolving-door, “catch-and-release” approach and keep truly dangerous criminals off our streets.

But this doesn’t mean treating people struggling with addiction like criminals. Contrary to what my critics have implied, I have never advocated for this. I am an advocate for compassionate solutions that help people struggling with addiction take back control of their lives.

Repeating the 1980s War on Drugs is not the answer. People struggling with addiction belong in treatment, not prison. Prison should be for violent habitual re-offenders and kingpins who profit off these deadly and life-destroying substances.

But we need to be honest about what we’re dealing with. Addiction is, as Alcoholics Anonymous put it, a “cunning, baffling and powerful illness” that takes away the individual’s ability to choose. The behaviours that come along with addiction are harmful to individuals, their families and their communities.

For nearly a century, recovery has been recognized as the best solution to addiction. Sadly, as the current addiction crisis has grown, recovery has been absent from our response. Successive governments across the country have moved away from making sure that Canadians suffering with addiction can access treatment and are instead pursuing policies that merely prolong addictions.

Governments across Canada should do everything possible to build and support effective systems of addiction care. We require compassionate intervention that is built around treatment and recovery programs that break addictions altogether.

People with addiction are not bad people. They are sick people who deserve our care and respect. It is time for us to start supporting people in their pursuit of recovery and make clear this is the goal of Canada’s drug and substance-abuse strategy.

On this, critics also mischaracterized my position. The problem with the safe-supply approach has been that it has lacked a path to full recovery. We must protect the lives of users, but also provide them with a path to a drug-free life. We must meet people where they are, but also help them get where they need to go.

There are medications that can be used to help save the lives of people who have overdosed and medications that help people deal with the severe withdrawal effects experienced when people begin recovery. Conservatives support access to evidence-based medications, such as methadone, suboxone and sublocade.

These medications should not be confused with safe supply. These treatments allow people to survive and escape addiction, rather than being permanently trapped by it. As prime minister, I would also create a national nasal naloxone distribution program to make it easier for Canadians to reverse an overdose.

We need to be compassionate, but firm, with individuals who are suffering from addiction. People with addiction are our brothers and sisters, our fathers and mothers and our children. I believe people struggling with addiction across Canada should have every opportunity to pursue their recovery from it.

Promising practices are emerging in Alberta. The province has eliminated user fees for publicly provided residential treatment and funded an additional 8,000 treatment and recovery spaces. It is constructing state-of-the-art addiction treatment facilities that will provide individualized care.

The province invested in medical detox. It is pioneering a “treatment on demand” model for opioid addiction through its innovative Virtual Opioid Dependency Program. It allows police to initiate treatment anywhere, with anyone who desires it. And it expanded its drug treatment court system to allow offenders to go into treatment instead of to jail.

Alberta is also transforming correctional centre living units into treatment programs staffed by therapists and has begun the process of creating recovery programs on all 26 of its post-secondary campuses.

The results so far are promising, with overdose deaths down around 45 per cent from their peak. Provincial numbers shows that drug deaths remained relatively low for the last three months for which data is available, which is not long enough to declare victory, but certainly appears to be moving in the right direction. The federal government should take notice.

Simply stated, it should be easier to get treatment and pursue recovery from addiction than it is to get drugs to feed an addiction. These are concrete steps that will not only save lives, but also give people back control of their lives.

With a fair, firm and compassionate approach, we can keep our communities safe while treating addiction as a health-care issue. As Canadians, we should never allow anyone to tell us that we have to choose between the two.

Things are broken. This plan will start Canada down the road to fixing them.

National Post

Pierre Poilievre is the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

1. Chris Selley: Poilievre's anti-drug pitch is a failure of imagination

2. Raymond J. de Souza: Poilievre shouldn't forget the pharmaceutical companies that started the opioid crisis