Candidates answer The Wren’s questions on the toxic drug crisis

A photo with the Elections Canada voting sign that leads to the voting area. Candidates answer questions on the toxic drug crisis. — The elections will be Monday, April 28. **Photo by Shalu Mehta/ The Discourse.**

To ensure Kamloops has a voice in the federal election conversation, The Wren surveyed readers to identify their top questions and concerns for candidates in the lead-up to the April 28 election.

The Wren took the most-asked questions on the survey and reached out to all of the candidates. The toxic drug crisis was often included as a top issue by survey respondents.

The Wren requested responses from all candidates for the Kamloops-Thompson-Nicola and Kamloops-Shuswap-Central Rockies ridings. As of April 22, candidates Jenna Lindley for the Green Party of Canada, Frank Caputo and Mel Arnold for the Conservative Party of Canada did not respond. We will update the story if responses are provided. To request that additional information be included, send us an email.

These responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How will your party help our community with the opioid/drug overdose crisis?

Candidates for Kamloops-Thompson-Nicola riding

Iain Currie, LPC: What the liberal government is proposing, let’s go through a few of the platforms. One of the big ones is the liberal housing initiative. The plan is to create a government agency called Build Canada Homes to get the federal government back into the business of building homes. The idea is based on a successful program; after the Second World War there was a housing crisis due to returning servicemen and people returning from the war. The Canadian government built many homes, with a simple floor plan and a small footprint. They’re the sort of homes that are still around today, even though they were built in as little as 36 hours as opposed to 36 weeks or months.

Build Canada Homes will provide $10 billion in low-cost financing and also capital to affordable home builders. Six billion will go towards rapidly building deeply affordable housing and to support new housing for students and seniors but also to immediately develop homelessness reduction targets for every province and territory to inform housing first initiatives.

That doesn’t directly account to addressing specifically the question about the opioid crisis but the idea is housing first to improve access to treatment, end encampment communities and do that on a community-by-community basis. Housing is a big part and housing-first initiative is a big part of the plan.

In terms of continuing investments in mental health resources, continuing to work with the provinces who are on the front lines. For example, the work that the federal ministry of health has done with the province of British Columbia with respect to safe supply and decriminalization.

That’s an ongoing project and there’s, I believe, yearly if not more frequent reporting to sort of glean how that’s going. That’s the sort of work that the federal government would propose to continue under a Mark Carney government. Health, of course, is primarily a provincial jurisdiction, but maintaining the levels of health transfers to the provinces including the planned increases of transfers coming up, and continuing to work with the provinces to explore all the possible options including the one that’s being championed by the province of B.C.

Fact-checking claims about recovery: Harm reduction

Miguel Godau, NDP: Ending the toxic drug crisis means treating it like the emergency that it is – not delaying action or stoking fear and division.

Too many of our neighbours in Kamloops and region have lost loved ones because of the toxic drug crisis in Canada.

These deaths are preventable – but because of Canada’s history of criminalizing people who use drugs, inadequate or non-existent health care, the toxic drug supply continues to cost lives.

We know that we must treat the toxic drug crisis like the emergency that it is. This means treating it as a health matter, listening to the experts and providing a safe supply of substances while also making sure that when people ask for help, we’re ready to provide it to them.

Ending this crisis also means making investments in education and prevention, harm reduction, treatment and on-demand recovery services.

Chris Enns, PPC: The People’s Party will address the root of the opioid, fentanyl and drug overdose crisis. That means targeting production and trafficking specifically. We will secure our borders, with specific attention paid to ports. We do not have enough personnel or scanners to adequately screen containers. Most fentanyl or the ingredients used to make it are coming in by sea.

We must also revitalise and direct our police to target drug producers and traffickers. Our laws must also be updated. We require longer jail sentences and the ability to deport criminals involved in production and trafficking, specifically non-citizens and those who gained their citizenship after the age of 18. These activities are destroying our society and we need to address them with seriousness.

Navigating recovery programs and services can come with challenges. Reporter Sunny Stranks illustrates what she heard in this graphic.

A resource guide for accessing Kamloops recovery programs and services

Candidates for Kamloops-Shuswap-Central Rockies riding

Ken Robertson, LPC: A Mark Carney-led government will provide urgent and immediate support to address the overdose crisis by adding $500 million to the Emergency Treatment Fund to support municipalities, Indigenous Peoples and community health care organizations to confront the toxic drug and overdose crisis and connect more people to treatment and vital services, faster.

We will also train 1,000 new Canadian Border Services Agency officers to crack down on drugs coming into Canada. This is in addition to adding new border scanners, drones and K-9 teams, to target suspicious shipments at our land borders, ports and railyards. We will put those profiting from fentanyl behind bars by prosecuting more complex drug trafficking and organized crime offences.

Phaedra Idzan, NDP: Too many families in Kamloops and across Canada have lost loved ones to the toxic drug crisis.

We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect different results. The NDP is committed to treating this as the public health emergency it is. That means providing access to a safer supply, investing in prevention, harm reduction and on-demand treatment options, including in rural and remote communities.

We will never give in to fear-based approaches that stigmatize people. This is about saving lives, supporting families, and getting people the care they need when they ask for help, not punishing them for struggling with addiction.

Owen Madden, GPC: We will make mental health services fully insured under the Canada Health Act ensuring public coverage of therapy and counselling through general provincial health transfers. We would expand funding for supervised consumption sites and harm reduction services.

John Michael Henry, PPC: The People’s Party of Canada rejects the failed “safe supply” and “harm reduction” policies that have turned our communities into open-air drug markets and done nothing to reduce overdose deaths.

We believe in a compassionate but tough approach that focuses on treatment, recovery and personal responsibility, not enabling addiction. We will end taxpayer-funded drug distribution programs that flood our streets with narcotics, redirect funding toward detox programs, addiction recovery centers and mental health support, empower communities and families to take back control of their neighbourhoods by enforcing the law and shutting down dangerous injection sites and support real rehabilitation through community-based programs, faith-based organizations and non-profit initiatives that focus on restoring dignity and hope, not normalizing dependency.

The PPC believes every life has value, and we will fight to replace government-sponsored decay with real pathways to healing and freedom.

Editor’s Note: While members of the public may carry personal opinions about these policies, experts remind The Wren that harm reduction comes from a longstanding body of evidence and research. For more information on recovery, including an explainer about harm reductions such as safe supply visit The Wren’s Roadmap to Recovery series.