Orders of the Day

Hon. R. Kahlon: In this chamber, I call third reading of Bill 27, Money Judgment Enforcement Act.

Third Reading of Bills

BILL 27 — MONEY JUDGMENT
ENFORCEMENT ACT

Bill 27, Money Judgment Enforcement Act, read a third time and passed.

[11:00 a.m.]

Hon. R. Kahlon: In this chamber, I call continued second reading debate on Bill 34, Restricting Public Consumption of Illegal Substances Act.

In Douglas Fir Committee Room, I call continued debate on Bill 31, Emergency and Disaster Management Act.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 34 — RESTRICTING PUBLIC
CONSUMPTION OF
ILLEGAL SUBSTANCES ACT

(continued)

Deputy Speaker: We’re on Bill 34, Restricting Public Consumption of Illegal Substances Act. The member for Prince George–Mackenzie had the floor — yes, that beautiful part of the province.

M. Morris: Well, thanks very much, Speaker, for that.

As I was alluding to yesterday, there’ve been a number of comments made from various speakers — I’ve heard it outside as well — with respect to arresting our way out of the situation we have right now. That’s definitely not the case. That has never been the case for police services anywhere in British Columbia, trying to arrest their way out. Their hands are literally tied with the soft-on-crime approach that this government and this Premier have taken with respect to the catch-and-release program that we have.

The persons that are severely addicted…. They might commit the odd crime. They might be committing theft in order to help support their habit. They might be doing other things to try and help support their habit. That’s understood by the police forces right across British Columbia here.

I think, in the experience I’ve had and the things I’ve seen on the street-level enforcement, that police officers probably do more to help a lot of the folks that are suffering from the severe addictions that we see than just about any other agency that we see out here.

Government’s approach on ensuring that people…. They might not be able to consume drugs, under this particular amendment, in some public places here, but it’s nebulous legislation. It’s a nebulous amendment as to what the police powers are in this to try and move individuals along from some of these locations here. It’s not working.

When we look at the fact that we’ve only added about 240 new, additional treatment beds across the province in the last seven years, those are very poor numbers. Treatment is something that is missing. The availability of somebody, when they feel that they’re ready for addictions treatment…. There’s a lengthy recovery period ahead of them to try and get out of the cycle of addictions that they’ve been in for a number of years. The opportunities just aren’t there.

To keep providing people with opiates — they call it a safe supply; no such thing as a safe supply, in my estimation; I think that’s a misused term here — to keep providing people with safe injection sites and areas to use drugs — all we are doing is continually allowing people to stay in an advanced state of intoxication and perpetuating that addiction.

I think the government has been going in the wrong direction here for a number of months now, a number of years, in this province by not providing the necessary recovery and treatment centres that we need.

This amendment in Bill 36 that we see here is too little, too late. It perpetuates this government going in the wrong direction still. There’s nothing to address the crime that’s associated with the drug use on the streets — the trafficking, the traffickers that are taking advantage of street-level, addicted individuals to push their narcotics out there — and not allowing the police to seize those small amounts.

[11:05 a.m.]

I go back…. When this was discussed, all kinds of figures were put out there as to how much quantity of drugs should be left with the individual who might be addicted and would need that for his own personal supply. I heard figures anywhere from the 2½ grams that we see today up to ten grams and more. And ten grams of fentanyl is enough to kill a lot of people, at the end of the day.

Instead of allowing these kinds of things to happen…. I have to throw it out there. How many grams have the police seized in no-case seizures? There are no charges involved in any of these prior to this decrim coming into place. How many grams have they seized that were fentanyl-laced, that would kill an individual because there was too much fentanyl in that particular dose that was seized? How many lives have the police ultimately saved, over the number of years, by making those small, no-case seizures in all of our communities?

Those numbers aren’t out there. They’re just not there, but it’s something that needs to be considered. The number of people that are passing away as a result of opiate overdoses hasn’t changed any. In fact, it’s getting worse all the time. The consequences of overdose after overdose after overdose are showing up with increased mental health issues on our streets in a far greater number than we used to see back in my day when I was policing.

I think that’s associated with the dangerous drugs that we see on the street with fentanyl. I think it’s associated with the increased use of drugs like crystal meth, which are known to cause psychosis in a number of people — paranoia. There are a number of things associated with that, and I’ve seen that in individuals that I’m personally familiar with.

Where has the help been for those individuals? Where has the help been to try and get those individuals off of the addictive narcotics that they’re on so that they can be properly assessed in a mental health situation and provided the therapy and the recovery processes that they need to recover from their mental health issues, outside of the addictive issues as well?

There’s nothing that I see on the table for that. This is something that this particular government has completely overlooked in bringing this legislation in, in allowing drug use in open places in our communities, in allowing safe supply, in allowing safe injection sites. Everything that they’ve done has been leading to increased use of the opiates.

The term “safe supply” is…. I think it’s probably leading individuals to look at safe supply as: “That must mean that it’s okay, that it’s safe to use.” In fact, I’ve seen that, and I’ve heard that from individuals before.

There is nothing that this government has done to educate the public on the harms associated with opiate use and the overdoses, with the use of crystal meth, with the use of all of the different drugs out there. The dangers that it provides to youth that are just starting and venturing into experimenting with these types of drugs and calling them recreational drugs. Well, they’re not recreational drugs. They’re drugs that are going to harm you physically and mentally, down the road, if you become addicted to them, at the end of the day.

I don’t see any programs that this government has initiated that are going to help educate children and youth in school, and the public, as to the harms associated with these kinds of drugs. All we hear about is: “We have to get more safe supply locations out there. We have to include more safe injection sites.”

I was talking to an individual in our community not too long ago who was involved in providing that. I said: “What happens to the individuals when they come in? They shoot up whatever they’re going to shoot up within your safe injection site, and you monitor them. But when they go away, what happens to them?”

There are no records kept. It’s a free environment. We’re not going to record anything. We’re not going to track anything. So we don’t know exactly how effective these programs have been. We don’t know how many people might have been saved, at the end of the day, as a result of that.

[11:10 a.m.]

Yet these organizations that provide this service are still asking for more government money in order to keep perpetuating this supply and these locations where they can take their drugs in a safe manner, I suppose, if you want to call it safe. I don’t think it is safe. It just perpetuates the whole problem that we see.

This has been a social experiment that has been going on for decades along the west coast of North America. It’s failed utterly in many locations south of the border. It’s been an utter failure in British Columbia, when we see the number of people that are dying every day and every month in British Columbia.

Like I mentioned yesterday, briefly, when I look at the number of brain injuries associated to overdoses that the B.C. Centre for Disease Control compiled — some of their statistics — it’s tens of thousands of individuals every year that suffer from acquired brain injury associated to drug overdoses and opiate overdoses.

You multiply that by the years that this has been going on unchecked, the years that this has been going on without the availability of a recovery centre for addictions and recovery centres for those suffering from psychosis and the mental health issues associated to that. I think it’s negligence on behalf of government not to have looked at that years ago and put facilities in place and brought the experts and the health care workers in place to provide that level of service for them.

This legislation is lame-duck legislation. It doesn’t provide the police with anything. It doesn’t provide the public with any assurances of safety. It doesn’t assure them that their children are going to be safe in public washrooms and other locations scattered throughout our many communities in British Columbia where we see this open use of drugs and opiates everywhere we look.

I think this legislation is not pointing us in the right direction, and a lot of work needs to be done in order to rectify the disaster that we’ve seen taking place here over the past number of years, where we see people dying all the time, and nothing appears to be done about it other than telling the police that we can’t arrest our way out, which, like I said, we haven’t been doing.

The police do not arrest drug addicts. They arrest criminals. They arrest people that they see committing an offence or have reasonable probable grounds to believe they have committed a criminal offence, and not just a minor offence. These are serious offences that we see where individuals may be picking up a weapon, may be jeopardizing the health and safety of people walking within a community. It’s a balance act that they have to look at.

The police also have no place to take an individual. If they arrest somebody, all they have available to them is a cell block to put those individuals in, and that doesn’t work. The police know that more than anybody else knows that. So all they can do is come by and try and mitigate the situation that the individual is involved in and ask them to move along. Most times they do; sometimes they don’t.

Other than that, there’s not a lot that the police can do, because there are no facilities. There’s no infrastructure in place, and there’s no ability for them to start pointing these people in the right direction.

This is poor legislation. The amendment doesn’t go near far enough to help the communities and the municipalities deal with these situations they see in their communities, and I think government could have done a lot better in this whole situation here. So I’ll leave it at that, and I look forward to whoever else is speaking.

A. Olsen: I rise to speak to Bill 34, the Restricting Public Consumption of Illegal Substances Act.

I just want to frame my comments using a motion that was tabled by the Government House Leader: “That, consistent with the Report of the Select Standing Committee on Health intituled Closing Gaps, Reducing Barriers, this House affirm its support for a spectrum of addictions care, such as life-saving harm reduction measures — including safe consumption sites, decriminalization and safer supply — and for a rapid, unprecedented expansion of drug treatment and recovery spaces.”

[11:15 a.m.]

That is the intention of this government. Unfortunately, that’s not what we’ve seen be delivered. So here we are debating this bill, Bill 34, the Restricting Public Consumption of Illegal Substances Act.

I just want to read, also, a couple of comments that were made by my colleague yesterday in a news release we put out, because I think it frames the context with which we approach this. “If we want to achieve a true sense of public safety, we cannot adopt an out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach. British Columbia is capable of implementing evidence-based solutions and must do so immediately.”

It makes supporting this bill very difficult when the necessary and evidence-based services are not in place. Safe consumption sites are not in place. Funding for communities to help their residents with living and support — inadequate. A lack of support for regulated treatment centres.

I’m sad that this government, my B.C. NDP colleagues, have fallen into the trap that has been set by some extremist fearmongers, these new politics, these new conservative politics. The health and well-being of our friends and relatives, our neighbours, our children, our nieces and nephews, our grandchildren are being used as leverage for politicians for the pursuit of their own power.

The most vulnerable people in our society, those stricken with a terrible affliction, a health crisis, are being preyed upon by the privileged for their own selfish gains. It’s disturbing. It’s sickening.

Nobody wants to see what we’re seeing in our society. Open drug use is absolutely a problem, but it’s not the problem. It’s a symptom of the problem, and we cannot arrest our way out of this problem. The goal of the decriminalization pilot is to ensure that the treatment plan for a health crisis is not delivered by the criminal justice system. Turning sick people into criminals makes no sense. It’s a waste of everyone’s time and money, yet that is what we’ve been doing.

This is not a soft-on-crime approach. Unfortunately, what we’ve been seeing is a soft-on-health-care approach. Decriminalization alone does not work. It needs to be done in concert with the ramping up of regulated free treatment services. It needs to be supported with safe consumption sites in every city, town and village, supported with treatment services.

It needs to be done alongside the provision of a safe place for people to live, places for people to sleep without the threat of being assaulted. Programs that offer a supportive community to help people through their most challenging moments. Our local government colleagues have found solutions like The Village project in Duncan, a project that needs a reliable provincial partner.

Instead of delivering a compassionate and comprehensive response, this B.C. NDP government decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs and then, frankly, took a rhetorical victory lap. What they did was expose the most vulnerable people to a political movement that appears to have no issue with attacking them.

Now we see…. Have we lost our humanity and our dignity? Now, this B.C. NDP government, whose intentions were good, have failed to deliver the comprehensive programming that’s necessary. I’ve spoken about the negative impact of stigma of people who use, abuse and suffer from drug addiction. It was a pathway, as I’ve been very public about, that I narrowly escaped.

As a result of this B.C. NDP government’s inability to deliver the coordinated plan they’ve been promising, it appears from the outside that there are a few key members in cabinet that are not on board with this compassionate response. The result is that with this bill, we’re taking major steps backward in the destigmatization of people who use, abuse and are addicted to illicit substances.

The result is this bill has the potential of making this situation worse. While this government celebrated the decriminalization pilot, they were telling British Columbians about the record investments they were making in mental health and addictions services and supports.

[11:20 a.m.]

It turns out they made better sound bites than actually improving the response to this public health emergency, which has been ongoing, in which more than 11,000 or 12,000 British Columbians have perished.

As my colleague pointed out, there is one thing that our Crown governments are good at: segregating undesirable classes of people, dispossessing them of the place they belong and stigmatizing them for political purposes. My Indigenous relatives are more likely to be impoverished, more likely to be homeless, more likely to be incarcerated, more likely to die from illicit drug poisoning and more likely to be impacted by the changes in this bill.

Rather than ramping up access to housing and other social services to support people through their health crisis, this government has succumbed to the political pressure, and they’re doing just what Crown governments and politicians have been doing since the beginning of this country and this province, pushing marginalized people further into the darkness.

Do those who oppose the initiative of decriminalization feel this bill is going to solve the problem? This bill relieves the pressure building on politicians from doing their job, and it pushes the pressure back into the discretionary hands of police and bylaw officers.

The minister suggests that our front-line public safety people will encourage people to go and use a safe consumption site. As my colleague clearly outlined yesterday, it appears that the Minister of Public Safety has not made it out of the Lower Mainland recently, because he should know that what he offers as a solution is not a solution for most of the communities in British Columbia. For most of the geographic area of British Columbia, what he is offering is not a solution.

He should be informed that his colleague the Minister of Health has not provided the safe consumption sites in a vast majority of those cities, towns and villages. I think this government needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask themselves whether further marginalizing the most vulnerable people in our society is something they can celebrate.

The people who we are talking about have literally nowhere else to go. The members of this B.C. NDP government need to ask themselves if, when they signed up with that political party, they believed they would be doing anything other than delivering the social services that people need and the social services that they’ve been claiming are going to be delivered with the record spending that’s going to be happening that communities, communities in my riding, have no access to.

There’s seemingly no way to get a hold of the money that is being spent. We have tried multiple times through multiple iterations of the Mental Health and Addictions Ministry to get access to the front-line community services that my communities need, communities like Saltspring Island, in a complete bureaucratic vacuum.

Yet I hear on a daily basis in here, or on a regular basis in here: “Now, don’t worry. We’re spending more money than we’ve ever spent before.” Money that apparently is going somewhere, but we can’t tell where it is because the volunteer community support people, the people with lived experiences who are there to support folks are not getting the funding they need to do their good work.

Pushing this issue back into the darkness will not solve it, but it may give some in our society who cannot afford to see it, cannot bear to see it, some comfort. However, this bill has the potential to cost people their lives, further add pressure on front-line public safety and paramedic first responders.

[11:25 a.m.]

This B.C. NDP government’s response has been incoherent and fragmented, and it is costing them the success of the projects they have celebrated, like the decriminalization pilot. By walking it back and bringing in this bill, they are feeding a dangerous political narrative in the process. Until this government delivers on that promise, they’re increasing insecurity for the most vulnerable people in our society.

This bill doesn’t help fix the situation. It makes it worse.

T. Shypitka: Thank you to the member previous. Thanks to anyone who speaks to Bill 34, Restricting Public Consumption of Illegal Substances Act.

There’s so much to be said about this. I’ve got absolutely no notes. This is going to be cold and off the cuff. I’m in this uncomfortable position because I believe our province is in an uncomfortable position right now. This bill really drills into the public safety of vulnerable people, whether it’s those that are drug-dependent or those that are exposed to those folks that are drug-dependent.

Listening to the previous speaker…. He speaks about vulnerable people. Of course, that’s what we’re dealing with here with Bill 34.

I’d also like to explain that there are other vulnerable people in our society, young children, predominantly, from what I see, from what we’ve experienced with the experimental process of decriminalization.

I’ll bring it back to last January. Last January I wrote a letter to the editor. I don’t know if I’ve got it here somewhere. It was a short 300-word letter to the editor that basically called out what this policy is now becoming well known as, and that is an experiment.

The NDP sanctioned or went after Health Canada to have an exemption to decriminalize here in the province of British Columbia, the only province, I might add, in Canada that has this current exemption.

There were requirements that came along with this deal — and I’ll speak to those requirements — from the government of Canada. These included expanding the capacity of accessible treatment. That was number one. The second one was greater engagement with key stakeholders and Indigenous partners. Those first two…. I have not yet seen any movement on that at all.

The third was an increase in public education and communications. Now, that one is an issue where I kind of have to chuckle a little bit. Outside our community, in Cranbrook…. I believe this was throughout the province. There were billboards, which were outside our community, that made a reference to accessibility to what government calls a clean and safe drug supply, which I’ll go into a little bit later. It, I believe, is an oxymoron that was used by this government and still continues to this day.

The billboard said: “Got dope?” It was a reference to the old marketing campaign from the dairy association, which had: “Got milk?” That is a reference to…. Drink healthy. Be healthy. The dairy association approves of a healthy society. “Got milk?” was a great campaign. What the government did was…. They took that healthy campaign, and they twisted it into “Got dope?”

It has been stricken down since then. The government has taken that down. The impression it leaves, with the hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people that drive by that billboard every day…. Once again, referring back to our vulnerable population, which is children, that see this…. They get mixed messages on this type of thing.

[11:30 a.m.]

The questions are asked. Are drugs clean and safe? Are they legal? Those mixed messages, to a 12- or a 13- or a 14-year-old, who is just coming into their own and who is going through life’s changes and experimenting and things…. If they see “Got dope?” billboards and they hear decriminalization…. If they see “clean and safe” attached to drugs, without worldly experiences, they seem…. I’ve got kids of my own. I only say this because I’ve heard it firsthand. “Dad, are drugs clean and safe? Is heroin clean and safe? Is it legal to do that now? I see billboards all over the place. I see people using it everywhere.”

This is what I’m talking about as being vulnerable. I think these children are children. Once they are exposed to addiction…. I can talk from both sides. My brother died of what this government would call a clean and safe drug supply. He didn’t overdose, but the damage was done after years of drug dependency. He died of what’s called a pulmonary edema, essentially had a seizure. His heart was like Swiss cheese. It wasn’t pumping oxygenated blood, and of course, it resulted in a seizure. That was from what the government now calls clean and safe drugs. That to me is an oxymoron.

I stood in this House two years ago and said this exact same thing, and I challenged the words “clean and safe.” In some regard, I was ostracized from media and other people saying: “How can you be so insensitive? We’re trying to reduce the toxic drug supply in the province that’s coming in from outside.” I agree. You can call it less toxic. You can call it anything but clean and safe in my opinion. So I have a real problem with that.

This experiment…. I use that word “experiment” of decriminalization, because it hasn’t been tried anywhere else in Canada before, and it did come with guardrails or requirements in place needed to make it a successful program.

I’ll keep going with the requirements. The one I just talked about, increase in public education communications — I have to give that a big fail. Ensuring the readiness and capacity of the health and social systems — well, that’s clearly a fail. The next one would be: increase training and support for law enforcement. I’m not even sure what that actually means, other than an RCMP officer handing a pamphlet to where the next treatment bed could be, which we don’t have. I’ll go into that a little later.

We lost six rehab beds in Cranbrook. We’ve got none. Our closest rehabilitation is in Castlegar. It’s three hours away.

So increase training and support for law enforcement. I’m not even really sure if I’ve seen that. I’m not even sure what that even means.

The last one was the development of monitoring, applied research and evaluation models to measure the success of the program. Okay. I’d love to see that research and evaluation on how this program has been a success. Obviously, it’s not a success if we’re here in this Legislature right now, amending this bill that was put forward not that long ago.

On all the metrics that the government had to adhere to, to get the exemption in the first place from Health Canada, has been a complete failure, and the proof is in the pudding, because we’re standing here and debating this bill right now in trying to amend where folks can use drugs.

Now, I agree with what government is trying to do. Destigmatize — absolutely. Use harm reduction as a tool of recovery — 100 percent. But without those other pillars in place, without the pillars of prevention, treatment, enforcement….

If we lean too heavily on the one leg of harm reduction, as I feel we’re doing, we’re going to fall. It’s like a four-legged stool. You need all four legs in place to be able to sit upright and to support yourself. If you cut three of those legs around, it’s only so long you can balance yourself on that leg before you come crashing down.

[11:35 a.m.]

I think government is seeing that, and I think that’s why we have this bill in front of us right now, to right the wrong. This government was very adamant to fast-tracking decriminalization in 2020. Now here we are, three years later, back-pedalling and trying to say: “Whoops. I guess we didn’t really think this one out very good.”

I know we’ve all heard the stories of children finding methamphetamines and crack cocaine in schoolyards. We’ve all heard the stories of people stumbling upon unused needles at beaches and playgrounds. I mean, what risk…. We talk about vulnerable people.

Please, I don’t want this to sound like I’m discrediting people with addictions as not being vulnerable. Of course they are. I’ve announced I’ve had family members that fall into that category, so I’m alive to that. But where is the thought for our vulnerable children? Where does that come into play? I guess we’re seeing that now. I guess we’re seeing how government is back-pedalling and going: “Oh, I guess we forgot that innocent children could be impacted by all of this.”

I don’t want to just make complaints. There are solutions, and the B.C. United did make some recommendations. They do have a platform. They did come out with a Better Is Possible plan several months ago.

We are still experiencing record numbers of opioid deaths in this province every single month. We are losing close to seven people a day. Still no progress, no end in sight to one of the key campaign promises by the NDP: to tackle drug addiction.

They set up a ministry. They seem to be doing all the right things, but there are just zero results from it. We’re not seeing any progress, and somebody has to be accountable to this. I believe it’s government.

Government can point fingers and say: “Oh, it’s because of previous governments,” and “Oh, look. It’s because of a COVID pandemic, and this is rampant across the country.”

I don’t know if that means that they don’t want to be responsible for this crisis or not. Government has a responsibility to take care of public safety. They are clearly not doing that. Once again, it’s proof, because we’re debating this bill right now. They understand that they have put the public at risk. There’s no other way of saying it.

They know the public is at risk, because of this bill, and it’s because of their own experimental drug policy that they brought in without thinking it through or without putting the proper guardrails or requirements in place, in the first place. They need to be held accountable to that.

So 11,000 people in British Columbia have lost their lives since 2016 — 11,000. I just want that to resonate. They are your fathers and your sisters and your brothers and everybody that you know. I know that there’s not one person in this Legislature or in the gallery or in Hansard or anywhere that hasn’t been touched by this crisis one way or the other. Everybody has. And they continue to rise.

One of the first foundations of the Better Is Possible plan is affordable, accessible treatment now. Like I said, in my community, we’ve lost treatment. We’ve lost treatment in a time when we have the biggest crisis on our hands.

“Eliminate user fees at publicly funded addiction treatment beds and provide direct government funding for private beds through surge capacity agreements to ensure no one faces financial barriers to treatment.” That’s one of the foundational promises that we’re making.

“Build a minimum of five regional recovery communities for addiction treatment where residents can stay up to a year with individualized, holistic, long-term residential treatment, including Indigenous-specific care.” That’s another promise.

Another one. “Create a virtual opioid dependency program to ensure immediate access to life-saving medications like Suboxone or methadone for those who don’t have a doctor and can’t get into a walk-in clinic.”

[11:40 a.m.]

This is that treatment now. This is a form of harm reduction. We’re not opposed to harm reduction, but it needs to be measured, and it needs to be in place for those that need it immediately.

Another promise: “Building on the model of the single-parent employment initiative, support those struggling with addiction with residential treatment, counselling and job training for one year.” This is giving the hand up, not the handout. This is getting people a better place to live.

Another promise: “Designate living units inside correctional centres as treatment centres, staffed with therapists alongside corrections officers. This will allow inmates to participate in addiction treatment while their sentence is served and improve the chances of re-integration into society following their sentence.”

This is in rebuttal — or in addition, I guess — to the Green member’s comments that we shouldn’t be criminalizing and we shouldn’t be putting those with addictions into jail, as much as we need the treatment. This helps both. If you are charged with an offence, you will go into a facility that provides that treatment. I think there are some national, federal bills that are going to be brought forward that will actually give involuntary care for those with addictions, so that they must take treatment. I don’t know how that’s going to work out, but we’ll be watching.

Another pillar of our Better Is Possible plan is compassionate care for complex mental health needs. This is: “Triple the beds at the Red Fish Healing Centre at Riverview and build additional regional centres using that model in the North, Thompson-Okanagan, Kootenays and Vancouver Island to ensure that those requiring highly specialized mental health support can receive it closer to home.”

This is important because support isn’t just the facility you go into. It’s the support that you have close to home that can assist in that long term care that addiction is required to have. It’s important to regionalize it so that it isn’t 1,000 kilometres away and over six or seven mountain passes, where the family can never visit you when you need them the most.

“Bring forward legislation allowing the limited use of involuntary treatment to keep our most vulnerable youth and adults at risk of harm to themselves or others safe at modernized, compassionate facilities with 24-7 psychiatric and medical supports.”

Now, involuntary treatment is always a last resort. It’s when that person will be doing harm to themselves or to others that this has to be considered and this has to be implemented, not just for the safety of the most vulnerable, the ones with addictions, but also of their family members and all those ones that surround them.

I can tell you. just from personal experience, that it’s a pretty ugly thing when a person is going through rehab and is drying out. They will do almost anything to get the drugs they need. They will lie to you; they will steal from you; they can harm you. When push comes to shove and every other option is exhausted, involuntary care is an option, and I support it.

We endorse the plan proposed by Dr. Julian Somers of Simon Fraser University in July 2021, providing an effective roadmap to address street homelessness with a focus on evidence-based services, partnerships with Indigenous organizations and a highly effective model of person-centred services.

Another pillar: awareness and prevention. Once again, drilling into those four foundational elements of recovery.

We’ve got an introduction.

Hon. L. Beare: I want to thank the member for pausing his remarks for a moment so that I have the opportunity, on behalf of my….

Deputy Speaker: Is the member seeking leave?

Hon. L. Beare: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Deputy Speaker: Please proceed.

Introductions by Members

Hon. L. Beare: I have the honour right now to introduce a class from John Howitt Elementary School. This is on behalf of my colleague the member for Mid-Island–Pacific Rim. They are accompanied by their teacher, Diana Bouchard.

We have 25 grade 4s and 5s in the room with us, and I just want to say a big welcome.

Thank you, everyone.

[11:45 a.m.]

Debate Continued

T. Shypitka: Welcome to the class that’s here today and taking in all there is about legislation here in B.C.

Of course, we’re speaking to legislation right now that does impact people in that classroom right now and trying to protect those children from exposure to the ugly side of society that is actually…. It’s a reality. I’ve lived it. It’s real, and it’s there.

We have to address both sides of the equation. We have to take care of those that are most vulnerable with mental health and addiction issues. We also, at the same time, have to make sure we’re not putting at risk the public safety of our children and making sure that they have safe places to go. They can go to a school yard, go to a playground, go to a spray park, all those really fun things — going down the water slides. Who doesn’t like that?

It has to be in a safe place. I don’t think anybody in this House argues that. We want to make sure that our future generations, our future leaders that are sitting up there have a safe pathway to education and being safe and secure.

Keep working hard, you guys up there. Listen to your teacher now.

Anyway, awareness and prevention is another one of those things of the four pillars of recovery. Prevention, I said. Treatment, enforcement, harm reduction — all important parts.

B.C. United has put forward the Better Is Possible platform. One of those things under awareness and prevention is: “Create programs to support families struggling with addiction, recovery system navigation, general questions and supports for impacted family members. These programs will provide therapy and ongoing support as they work to help their loved ones recover.”

Now, this is part of the destigmatizing of what we need to see in this province. When we have supports that are created for family members and friends to gather around and to talk it out and to have that secure support network in place, instead of…. What we’re seeing now is that those with addictions sadly die of overdose alone in the basement of their home somewhere because of the stigmatization that is associated with it.

My son — God love him. He’s a red seal electrician. Works up north. Does all the great things. He’s got a wife, and I’ve got two grandkids from him. Awesome. Love it. But he has seen firsthand how some people that get into some of these higher-paying jobs, that are isolated from family members, that are away from home, do fall into drug addiction.

This is not a situation or an issue in British Columbia that is in the back alleys of Hastings Street. This is all over. This is every demographic you can imagine. And those — predominantly males — that work in some of these high industrial jobs find themselves with addiction issues. Thankfully, my son is not one of them, but he has got friends that are. We have to make sure that awareness and prevention are part of the plan. That family support is critical.

“Establish detailed data systems to track provincewide performance measures and targets and clearly benchmark the number of publicly funded mental health and addiction treatment beds available to British Columbians. This will measure performance outcomes and ensure standardization of care.”

B.C. United is committed as a result-driven party…. Reasonable, responsible, result-driven. That is what B.C. United stands for. This Better Is Possible plan highlights an accountability, I guess you would call it, to the problems that we have here in B.C. with addictions.

We’ve got time for some more. I’ll hand the floor over to my colleague, I believe, from Peace River North, unless somebody from the NDP side…. I’m surprised we haven’t seen many from the NDP side speak to this, because this is critically important. It’s about public safety.

[11:50 a.m.]

I’ve noticed the B.C. Conservatives aren’t making any comments either. I wonder why. This is super important stuff. It addresses not only the mental addiction issues in British Columbia, but also those vulnerable people that we see in the gallery here today that we want to keep safe.

With that, I’ll take my place and welcome the next speaker.

M. Bernier: Maybe I’ll start, as well, by welcoming the students that are here today.

As part of the democratic process of debating bills and as we’re talking about Bill 34…. Bill 34, which we have in front of us, just so those watching know, is the Restricting Public Consumption of Illegal Substances Act.

It’s a tough discussion. It’s a very, very difficult discussion for us to be having right now. There are a lot of emotions at play. This is one of those topics that, frankly, touches all of us. My colleague from Kootenay East was talking about his personal situations, talking about how it touches his family and those of everybody in the House. I think it touches everybody that’s in here right now.

When we look at what’s happening in our society…. We’ll bring it home to British Columbia specifically right now. I apologize to the students who are in here, because this is tough. But when government is saying that drugs are safe, that is the wrong message to be sending to our kids, to our youth. There is no such thing as safe drugs.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

I remember when I was in school that we used to be proud, as a government, to be putting out information and commercials that drugs are bad. I remember those commercials on TV — “This is your brain on drugs,” as you crack an egg into a frying pan. That was the message we used to send to our youth. I remember that very, very well, growing up as a child.

Now, I also want to be fair and clear that nobody in this House, no political party is trying to endanger our youth or endanger people in society. I say that with due respect to my colleagues that have put this bill forward.

I don’t have much time, and I’ll be concluding my remarks after lunch, but I think it’s important that this topic really be addressed. I’m glad there are some youth in here today, and I hope there are people watching this. We, collectively in this Legislature, need to make sure that we are sending the right message to the people in the province of British Columbia. The students won’t be here, I’m sure, but after lunch I want to talk about how important this is, about making sure we have supports.

There are people who struggle. I’ll say mental health and addictions, but I think it’s important that we remember that they can be two different things. There are people out there that struggle with mental health challenges, and we have to have supports for them. There are people out there that struggle with addictions issues, and we need to have supports for them. There are some people that struggle with both. We need to make sure that the supports are there for the people that are on our streets, in our communities or in our homes and that are struggling.

This bill that we’re debating right now and discussing…. We’re not debating the fact that there are people that are struggling, the fact that we’ve heard that 11,000 people since 2016 have, sadly, died in our province from an overdose. Nobody is taking away from that. We just want to ensure that the right message is there and the supports are there, which I will get into after the break.

With that, I reserve my place, noting the hour, and move adjournment of the debate.

M. Bernier moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Committee of the Whole (Section A), having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Hon. L. Beare moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 1:30 p.m. today.

The House adjourned at 11:54 a.m.