Poilievre slams 'radical' Liberal policies, vows to defund 'drug dens' and restore hope through recovery model
The Conservative leader said his party’s recovery funding model will reward sobriety success, not buzzwords, in stark contrast to Liberal-NDP drug enabling 'harm reduction' policies that have correlated with higher deaths.
During his campaign stop in New Westminster, B.C. on Sunday, Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre slammed the Liberals’ radical “harm reduction” policies and unrolled the Tories' plans to “make recovery a reality” instead.
With dozens of locals who have been directly impacted by Canada’s opioid crisis standing on a stage behind him, Poilievre discussed how his party would fund new treatment opportunities for 50,000 Canadians should they form government. The figure is to combat the reported 50,000 Canadians who have lost their lives to opioids since 2015, under the Liberal-NDP government.
“It’s not that the Liberals have failed to take action, they have taken a lot of action. They caused this crisis,” stated Poilievre. “They decriminalized crack, heroin, cocaine, illicit fentanyl in partnership with the NDP government. They provided millions of dollars in tax-funded opioids which spread on our streets, were resold to children and the proceeds used to buy more deadly fentanyl,” he added.
In addition to the recovery pledge to save at least 50,000 more lives in honour of those who succumbed during what he calls “the lost Liberal decade,” the Conservative leader says his party will unroll a unique, lifesaving funding model that incentivizes getting individuals off of drugs, instead of enabling them to use more easily.
“Organizations are going to be paid a set fee for the number of months they keep addicts drug-free and they will be paid more for harder cases,” he committed.
According to Poilievre, gone will be the days where organizations can simply fill out an application that “has all the right buzz words” and then be handed over a cheque. “The funding will be paid to organizations that successfully get people off drugs,” he said.
Poilievre says under his leadership, the country will also adopt recovery and treatment policies that have been successfully rolled out under Premier Danielle Smith's Alberta government and correlated with a 40% decrease in overdoses in 2023.
The success is a stark contrast to B.C. Premier David Eby’s NDP government, which has subjected its citizens to the most radical “safer supply” experiment in the country and saw an astonishing 2,511 fatal overdoses during that same year.
To help with funding toward his common-sense approach to the crisis, Poilievre promised that Conservatives will “end federal funding for opioids, defund the drug dens, sue the opioid manufacturers and consulting companies who created this crisis, we will eliminate back-office bureaucracy, and we will fund, directly, those people who need help.”
“Those organizations and interest groups who have been contributing to and complicit in the distribution of high-powered opioids and the harm production programs will be cut off and they will be totally ineligible for any funding whatsoever.”
Despite the Liberals and NDP championing their so-called “harm reduction approach,” which included allowing “safe injection sites” to go up near schools and businesses, a Lancet commission study found that “there is no evidence that accessing a site lowers an individual’s risk of fatal overdose over time or that sites lower community overdose rates.”
A JAMA Health study released last month, which examined British Columbia’s safer supply policy and decriminalization of drug possession, found a surge in opioid-related hospitalizations since such experimental policies were rolled out.
Drea Humphrey
B.C. Bureau Chief
Based in British Columbia, Drea Humphrey reports on Western Canada for Rebel News. Drea’s reporting is not afraid to challenge political correctness, or ask the tough questions that mainstream media tends to avoid.
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