By Canadian Press

Erin O’Toole says he backs safe injection sites, but recovery is key to opioid crisis

Aug 22, 2021 | 11:44 AM

VANCOUVER — Federal Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole announced Sunday he will approach Canada’s opioid epidemic as an “urgent health crisis” rather than a criminal scourge, and that he would continue to allow safe injection sites.

At an addiction treatment centre in the Vancouver suburb of New Westminster, B.C., O’Toole said he would invest $325 million over the next three years to create 1,000 residential drug treatment beds and build 50 recovery centres across the country.

“We feel with respect to opioids, people with addiction should not be the focus of the criminal justice system,” O’Toole told reporters Sunday.

“People that are dealing, and that are preying on people with addiction, should be the focus. We’d like to see more compassion, more treatment options.”

However, he stopped short of saying he’d push for the decriminalization of opioids or other drugs.

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“I would like to see compassion at the center of our justice system for people with addiction,” O’Toole said when pressed on the issue.

Law enforcement should focus on traffickers, O’Toole said, adding he plans to enhance treatment and prevention services in First Nations communities and partner with the provinces to provide free Naloxone kits which reverse overdoses.

Garth Mullins, a representative of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), says the approach marks an improvement from former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper’s tough-on-crime stance, but that a focus on recovery and abstinence is “misplaced” as it misidentifies the crux of the crisis.

Health Canada is currently working with Vancouver on the city’s request for exemption from criminal provisions on simple possession of small quantities of drugs.

Vancouver has been the epicentre of an opioid crisis that saw British Columbia record 1,176 illicit drug overdose deaths in 2020 — the highest ever in a single year — and more than 7,000 deaths since a public health emergency was declared in April 2016.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 22, 2021.

The Canadian Press