'Whole world looking in disbelief' at BC's drug crisis, Pierre Poilievre says

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has said “the whole world is looking in disbelief on the wacko liberalization of drugs” in British Columbia.

He was referring to an article published in The Daily Telegraph, a right-leaning British newspaper.

That piece, titled “How decriminalisation made Vancouver the fentanyl capital of the world,” features bleak photographs of drug users suffering on East Hastings Street.

The article has been both praised and criticized in the province, with some arguing it cherry-picks statistics and others claiming it shows the failure of decriminalization.

Speaking in Montreal today, Poilievre said: “Just this week, the London Telegraph, a famous international publication, called Vancouver the world’s capital of fentanyl overdoses.

“The whole world is looking in disbelief on the wacko liberalization of drugs that is destroying lives under Justin Trudeau after nine years.”

Poilievre has previously called for an end to what he calls the “dangerous experiment” of drug decriminalization.

BC was granted a three-year exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act on Jan. 31, 2023, permitting adults to carry up to 2.5 grams of cocaine, opioids, methamphetamine and other drugs.

Under massive pressure both provincially and nationally, Premier David Eby later sought, and obtained, an amendment to the exemption to allow police to arrest people caught using drugs in public.

Poilievre also showed his pugnacious side during the press conference in Montreal today, expressing frustration with a reporter who used the term “safe injection sites.”

“They’re not safe injection sites,” he said, adding: “You just repeat the language that is fed to you by the government.”

He went on: “You call them ‘safe.’ How can they be safe? Do you think it’s safe when a bullet comes flying out of one of these sites to kill a mother in Toronto? Do you think that’s safe? Do you think it’s safe to have people using crack and heroin and cocaine next to a playground?”

Such sites, he said, are “drug dens” that have “made everything worse.”

Poilievre’s comments come a day after BC Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry released a controversial report that recommended supplying drug users with alternatives to fentanyl without a prescription.

Both the BC Conservatives and BC United said Dr. Henry should lose her job as a consequence of the report.