Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge MP Marc Dalton rose in the house on Tuesday to criticize the Liberal government and its NDP supporters for its decriminalization of hard drugs in B.C.
“After nine years, this Liberal-NDP Prime Minister is not worth the crime, chaos, drugs, and disorder,” said Dalton during question period. “Across British Columbia, there’s people strung out on drugs, often comatose or dying. The legalization of fentanyl, meth, and crack has led to a tragic wave of death. The Liberals and NDP are panicking as their poll numbers drop. The public is fed up. Deadly hard drugs will still be able to be used with today’s announcement.”
After 9 years the @liberal_party /@NDP government isn't worth the cost. The crime, corruption, drugs and disorder on our streets have lead to deadly consequences. It looks like none of this will end anytime soon. pic.twitter.com/1JRfE3GVcZ
— Marc Dalton, M.P. (@MarcDalton) May 7, 2024
“When will the Prime Minister stop tinkering and completely end his wacko drug experiment?”
The federal government approved a request from B.C. to ban public use of illicit drugs, reversing a policy of the past 14 months.
READ ALSO: B.C.’s request to ban public drug use approved by Ottawa
B.C.’s Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Jennifer Whiteside said British Columbians can expect to see fewer people use drugs in public after Ottawa granted B.C.’s ask to make illicit drug use illegal in all public spaces including parks, hospitals, and on transit.
“We are certainly…anticipating that we will see, as British Columbians had asked for, a reduction in the people experiencing and seeing and witnessing and being proximate to public drug use,” Whiteside said.
Other Conservative MPs also blasted the government over decriminalization. The government position was stated by Ya’ara Saks, the federal Minister of Mental Health and Addictions.
“Mr. Speaker, let me be clear. Today, we said yes to B.C.’s request for an amendment to its pilot project, the pilot program that B.C. asked the federal government to work with it with compassion, conviction, science, and health expertise,” said Saks.
“B.C. knows perfectly well, as do the advocates and families that are part of this project, that we need to have a public health and public safety approach to this to save lives.”
The original terms of the pilot project prohibited police from arresting, charging, or seizing adults in possession of up to 2.5 grams of heroin, cocaine, crack, crystal meth, MDMA, or fentanyl. The three-year program started on Jan. 31, 2023, following B.C.’s initial request in November 2021. Advocates had been lobbying to decriminalize personal possession of drugs in efforts to reduce stigma and those using alone in the face of the toxic drug crisis.
The recent changes do not re-criminalize possession in private residences, overdose prevention sites, drug-checking locations or other places where individuals are legally sheltering. But they give police power to enforce public drug use restrictions, including the power to arrest.
– With files from Wolf Depner, Black Press
READ ALSO: B.C. decriminalization change could mean more drug deaths: advocates