Tories vow to block hospital drug scourge

OTTAWA • Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said his party will soon table a bill he says will prevent British Columbia’s drug decriminalization “insanity” in hospitals across the province from spreading elsewhere in Canada.

Speaking in Vancouver, Poilievre said his party would soon present the Safe Hospitals Act, which he says would end the federal health minister’s power to grant exemptions under the Controlled Drug and Substances Act if it means that it would allow people to use hard drugs such as fentanyl and methamphetamine in hospitals.

The bill, which will be presented by Conservative MP Kerry-lynne Findlay in the next few weeks, would also toughen the punishment if a criminal brings a weapon into a hospital.

Poilievre also pledged to pass Conservative MP Todd Doherty’s Bill C-321, which would create an aggravating factor in sentencing for assaults committed against health-care workers or first responders.

That bill was passed in the House of Commons and is in the Senate.

“Enough is enough,” Poilievre told reporters on Tuesday morning.

“Common Sense Conservatives will not allow this devastation from this experiment to play out in other Canadian communities. Canadians deserve a government that will keep hard drugs out of hospitals and will protect staff and patients.”

Last week, the federal government granted B.C.’S request to reverse course and make public drug use illegal again in public spaces amid its decriminalization pilot project. B.C.’S NDP government made the request to effectively scale back its pilot launched in 2023 following weeks of public outcry.

Patients were allegedly openly using drugs in hospitals across the province, putting the health of nurses, hospital staff and other patients at risk.

The B.C. United party — the province’s centre-right official opposition — obtained a leaked memo showing that nurses in the Northern Health Region had been told during the past year not to confiscate patients’ belongings, such as drugs or weapons.

B.C. United said there were reports of meth being smoked in a unit just hours after the birth of a newborn baby and that it heard from a nurse returning to work after maternity leave had to stop breastfeeding because of exposure to illicit drugs.

B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix told Global News in April that weapons and smoking in hospitals are not allowed, which does not mean that these rules are never violated.

In response to Poilievre’s characterization of B.C.’S drug decriminalization as “reckless and radical,” Premier David Eby says the province “has an obligation” to people struggling with addiction to give them every chance to get into treatment.

Eby says arresting people instead of providing support is not the right approach.

“It will not save lives,” he says. “It will not make our communities safer.”

Poilievre, asked by a reporter about possible pushback from B.C. or any other province to his party’s bill given that health is a provincial jurisdiction, said he leaves it up to voters to decide who they want in government.

“Do British Columbians believe that someone should be allowed to smoke crack, meth and bring machetes into hospitals right next to patients who are trying to recover from cancer or a heart attack?” he asked.

“Or do they believe in my common sense approach that would ban the drugs, stop giving out tax-funded opioids and instead invest in treatment and recovery to bring our loved ones home drug-free?”

Poilievre has also been speculating about the federal government approving Toronto’s two-year-old application to decriminalize small amounts of hard drugs, but the city’s request has been in limbo with the feds insisting that there is no active application at the moment.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hinted that his government would not move forward without the province’s approval, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford is staunchly against it.

Montreal passed a motion in 2021 calling on the federal government to decriminalize certain drugs, but has not yet taken steps to make that happen. The federal government confirmed that the city has not submitted an application to Health Canada.

Nonetheless, in the unlikely event Toronto or Montreal follow B.C.’S steps to decriminalize hard drugs, Poilievre said “at least” their hospitals will be “protected” by his party’s bill.

“The Safe Hospitals Act will stop some of the insanity that Trudeau and the NDP have unleashed in our communities,” he said.