Canadians are dying by the thousands, it seems, and our Federal government does not seem to be motivated to prevent these needless deaths.
The image below comes from the CBC’s web site reporting a Canadian Press release of 13 April, 2023:
“B.C. was the first jurisdiction in Canada to declare a public health emergency over increasing overdoses on April 14, 2016. Overdose deaths had reached 474 in 2015, a 30 per cent increase from the year before, and the government said more people were dying every month.
Last year, the toxic drug supply claimed nearly 2,300 lives in B.C”.
The numbers are staggering and one supposes that if these numbers reflected an outbreak of some sinister virus, Health Canada would go nuts and the press would be screaming for government intervention.
But, notice the date at which the increase of overdoses is recorded to have started to rise. 2016. One year after the current Liberal Government rode into power on the marijuana band wagon!
Now I am not suggesting a direct correlation here but one has to wonder that the response of a leftist Prime Minister consumed with pursuing the marijuana agenda can not take seriously the effects of hard drugs on the population at large. That is a debate for another time.
It seems ironic that when so many die from such harmful drugs, no sudden alarm seems to emanate from the Federal government in the form of a response to this flood of grief. There is even push back for the use of safe injection sites. The pass-the-buck Liberals always seem to play the “well, that is a provincial health matter”.
If opioids are a provincial health matter, wasn’t marijuana?
Yet, not to make light of the seriousness of the three to four hundred deaths from firearms incidents, during predominantly illegal acts, that have been reported and the full weight of the government’s response is forthcoming against the legal firearms owners’ of Canada, not the perpetrators, as the Prime Minister states, in the name of “public safety”.
So, here we are, eight years into the woke Trudeau “smoke ‘em if you got ‘em” Liberal regime and no reduction in the catastrophic drug death rate in Canada, nor any improved crack down on the illegal importation of toxic substances, but by God, should there be any more firearm deaths in this country, watch out!
Canada needs immediate action on two fronts here.
First, stem the flow of illegal drugs into the country and prosecute vigorously those involved (no “catch and release”) to the full extent of the law.
Second, provide the necessary medical rehabilitative intervention for those who are dependent on pharmaceutical substances.
Would that not constitute “public safety”?