Ontario Premier Doug Ford is asking Ottawa to pause approval of safe-supply programs in the province.
Mr. Ford made the comments in a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on May 17.
“I’m now asking that you also extend the requirement for provincial support to ‘safe supply’ sites, which are approved solely and unilaterally by Health Canada,” the premier wrote.
Last September, as Oregon faced an ever-increasing rate of fatal drug overdoses, a new study concluded the state’s first-in-the-U.S. decriminalization policy was not to blame.
The study found that based on similar overdose rates in other states before and after the first year of decriminalization, overdose deaths in Oregon would have risen at essentially the same rate with or without the policy.
Provinces and territories should not stop pushing for drug decriminalization despite the federal government’s rejection of Toronto’s request, one expert says.
Guy Felicella, a harm reduction and recovery expert in British Columbia, says all regions in Canada need to persevere with treating substance addictions as a health issue.
“I think everybody should be making those requests still, regardless of what the federal government is going to do… because the current model of criminalizing people doesn’t work,” Felicella told Global News on Saturday.
Ontario’s Minister of Health, Sylvia Jones, is warning Toronto’s medical officer of health to drop her request for a B.C.-style exemption from federal laws to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of hard drugs in the city, saying if she fails to rescind its application, the province will be forced to act.
In a terse letter sent on Friday to Toronto Medical Officer of Health Eileen de Villa, Ms. Jones also says that after a review of supervised drug consumption sites, prompted by a fatal shooting outside one such facility in Toronto’s Leslieville area, she plans to bring in unspecified “enhanced accountability measures” for these sites “to ensure that the safety and wellbeing of the public is protected.”
Progressives love it when junkies litter the sidewalk.
About a year ago, Gillian Kolla, a prominent harm-reduction activist, and a few of her colleagues realized a small band of journalists were suddenly trampling on their turf. They felt particularly threatened by a journalist affiliated with this newspaper, Adam Zivo, and some pesky questions he was starting to ask about the way in which government-supplied opioids were being prescribed to drug users with very few controls in place.
The push is on to get Canada back to common sense when it comes to the worsening drug culture in our cities.
On May 7, the federal Liberal government approved the B.C. NDP government’s request to recriminalize the possession of hard drugs.
And in recent weeks, federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and Ontario Premier Doug Ford have both denounced how the City of Toronto wants to one-up B.C. and decriminalize hard drugs not just for adults but minors as well.
Canada is granting B.C.‘s request to once again ban the public use of illicit drugs, Mental Health and Addictions Minister Ya’ara Saks said on Parliament Hill on Tuesday.
B.C. currently has a three-year Criminal Code exemption for possession of drugs like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines as well as public use.
A request by Canada’s biggest city to move forward on drug decriminalization is in limbo, facing significant provincial opposition and renewed political debate prompted by a partial rollback of B.C.’s existing policy.
Toronto put forward a request to the federal government in 2022, and provided additional information in 2023, Dr. Eileen de Villa, the city’s medical officer of health, said in an interview on Rosemary Barton Live that aired Sunday.
“Fundamentally, what that’s about is recognizing that addiction is, at its core, a health issue not a criminal issue,” she told CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton.
Toronto may be seeking federal permission to decriminalize illegal drugs, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hinted the city may need broader support from the Ontario government, which currently rejects the proposal.
Ottawa needs to work with “all partners, including provinces” on any decriminalization proposals, Mr. Trudeau told reporters during a May 3 press conference in Hamilton, Ont.
It was over a year ago, last March, when Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health Eileen de Villa went rogue and submitted an expanded application to the federal government to see Canada’s largest city exempt kids and teens from the criminalization of hard drug possession.
British Columbia has taken a step back in its drug decriminalization pilot, the latest twist in its decades-long push for more and more permissive approaches to drugs.
The B.C. government’s guiding idea has been that destigmatizing drug use is the key to helping addicts, but it has long faced pushback on this approach due to public safety concerns.
History is repeating itself in a way, with current events mirroring the province’s experience throughout the 1990s and 2000s. But the situation has intensified—it’s not just about needle exchanges or designated injection sites anymore. Now, it’s about rampant drug use in all sorts of public places, hospitals included.
OTTAWA—Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says Torontonians will be left to a life of misery and despair if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doesn’t reject the city’s application to decriminalize illicit drugs for personal use.
In a letter released Wednesday to Trudeau, Poilievre argues that the federal government’s decision to allow the decriminalization of certain drugs in B.C. has caused chaos throughout the province and can’t be allowed to be repeated.
I’ve just discovered a whole bunch of online posts and institutional releases insisting that it’s unlikely someone will die from second-hand fentanyl smoke and that such smoke isn’t really that big of a deal.
It’s incredible, really. First, that there are enough people being exposed to fentanyl smoke as they go about their lives that they’re now seeking information on it. Second, that those who want an increasingly lax approach to drug culture are trying to tell people that this is no biggie.
OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre lambasted the federal Liberals on Monday for not having yet approved British Columbia’s request to scale back its decriminalization policy for illicit drugs — a request made official on Friday.
The debate became heated in the House of Commons after Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Ya’ara Saks said that she had met with her B.C. counterpart and that she and Health Canada officials were reviewing the province’s exemption request.
British Columbia has abruptly reversed course on its landmark experiment decriminalizing the possession of certain illicit drugs, citing mounting public frustration and “disorder” in the Canadian province.
Premier David Eby said on Friday that he had asked the federal government to reintroduce a ban on public drug use, formally ending the country’s first large attempt to gauge the effects of decriminalization.
“Keeping people safe is our highest priority. While we are caring and compassionate for those struggling with addiction, we do not accept street disorder that makes communities feel unsafe,” Eby said.
