The ‘Safe Hospitals Act’ would end the federal health minister’s power to grant exemptions under the Controlled Drug and Substances Act
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OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said his party will soon table a bill which 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 that his party would soon be presenting 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.
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The bill, which will be presented by Conservative MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay in the next few weeks, would also create an aggravating factor if a criminal brings a weapon in a hospital.
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Poilievre also pledged to pass Conservative MP Todd Doherty’s Bill C-321, which would create an aggravating factor for assault committed against health care workers or first responders. That bill was passed in the House of Commons and is currently 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 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 following weeks of public outcry.
Amid the public outcry were allegations that patients were 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 — even 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.
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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 its party 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.
Poilievre expanded upon B.C. United’s allegations by asking the public to imagine a person fighting for their life in the hospital after a car crash, and someone in the bed next to them lights up a crack pipe and sees that same person has a “large machete” in their bag.
“Now this might sound like something out of a horror film, not from the real world. But, unfortunately, after nine years of Trudeau and the NDP, the real world is a horror film,” he said about that imagined scenario.
Poilievre, asked by a reporter about possible pushback from B.C. or any other provinces 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.
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“Do British Columbians believe that someone should be allowed to smoke crack, meth and bring with 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?”
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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 also 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.
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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.
National Post
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