What B.C. gets wrong about addiction and Alberta gets right

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This is just an excerpt from The Ezra Levant Show. To see new, ad-free episodes, which air Monday - Friday @ 8 p.m. ET | 6 p.m. MT, become a subscriber to RebelNews+. This episode originally aired on May 30, 2023.

On last night’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, guest host Sheila Gunn Reid spoke about the contrast between the policies surrounding addiction and recovery in Alberta and British Columbia. 

We've even changed how we talk about the opioid crisis and treatment here in Alberta. We don't really use terms like safe supply because it's not true. There's no safe supply of injectable or smokable poison for which to slowly kill yourself. We don't use words like harm reduction to describe government-funded drug dens with state-issued fatal toxins handed to you by some government employee. In fact, we don't really use the word harm reduction at all anymore. I like the word that Alberta's public safety minister uses. Instead, he calls it palliative care. You know, I've never heard of the government enabling the slow agonizing suicide of the victim of drug use as palliative care. But I think it's accurate. It really is. There's no way out of drug addiction except for getting clean or dying. That's it. And the government and those around you can help you do one or the other. In Alberta, we've chosen life not just for the addict by opening up thousands of drug treatment beds, but we've also chosen life and hope and freedom from addiction for the families of the addicts who suffer alongside the addicted in a thousand different and small ways.

She went on to talk about how the NDP’s attack ads on the UCP falsely claimed that Danielle Smith wanted to make Canadians pay for health care, while the NDP was charging $40 a day for treatment beds for those trying to get clean.

The NDP was charging people with nothing the most desperate amongst us and their families, $40 a day for life-saving treatment while flat out lying about the intentions of the UCP for our health care system. But not only is what the UCP doing with drug treatment, the moral thing to do by recognizing the dignity and potential of the individual and alleviating the suffering of the addict and their families. It's the effective thing to do if you actually care about what the left says. They do overdose deaths. The left says we have to give addicts a quote safe supply of drugs. Otherwise, they're going to get dirty drugs and then die. So we'd rather keep them alive and suffering on our drugs than have them die on their own.

Sheila presented the data that shows the NDP’s strategy doesn’t work.

All indications are that Alberta is getting it right from 2021 to 2022 overdose deaths in the province dropped by 17% in the same period. British Columbia saw a 1.4% reduction in January 2023. In the latest month for which data is available in Alberta, overdose deaths dropped to 111 from 172 in the same period last year. In April this year, BC counted 206 overdose deaths, a 17% increase over April 2022. Should Alberta continue on its recovery-focused path, we should expect to see overdose deaths drop drastically while many more people with addiction find their path to a better life in recovery. Friends, it's my hope that other jurisdictions in North America plagued by this apocalyptic pandemic of death, crime and human misery caused by opioids follow the Alberta example.