Canadian Politics Today

Conservative governments in Canada are failing so miserably at managing the addiction epidemic that I'm surprised they would bring it up at all. Their position on safe consumption sites is cruel and unreasonable and leading to countless deaths and community destruction.

ignore the Shady attempt to deflect towards street-drugs/fentanyl while completely missing the actual Poilievre position and target - safe injection sites and safe supply!

Poilievre's most selective, most self-serving location choice for his much criticized video... Vancouver - only because it allows him to avoid identifying that the same situation/circumstances exist in Conservative led provinces. That is to say, for example, Alberta has 5 'safe consumption sites'... for the same reason B.C. and other Canadian jurisdictions do; because they save lives.

NP-Chris Selley - Poilievre's anti-drug pitch is a failure of imagination - Drug treatment is bloody hard to make stick — and impossible with cadavers

Poilievre’s position: “There is no safe supply of these drugs. They are deadly, they are lethal, and they are relentlessly addictive.”

Treatment is Poilievre’s preferred approach. Treatment is pretty much everyone’s preferred approach. But it has been proven entirely ineffective with cadavers.
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Methadone and buprenorphine are drugs that help addicts quit by reducing cravings and withdrawal symptoms; they don’t help those who aren’t ready to quit get high safely. At this point in our evolving understanding of addiction, it’s simply a failure of curiosity not to understand the difference — and not to understand how difficult it is to get addicts into therapy, and to make it stick. It’s unforgivably simplistic to say “let’s focus on treatment over safe supply.” You do both, for God’s sake. Both. Hundreds of lives are waiting to be saved. There are more than enough barriers in the way of that without Poilievre erecting more, especially on false pretences.

G&M-Gary Mason - Pierre Poilievre couldn’t be more wrong on drug policy

With a tent city in Vancouver as his backdrop, Mr. Poilievre said offering addicts access to a safe supply of illicit drugs was a “failed experiment” brought in by “woke Liberal and NDP governments.” He said if he became prime minister, he would end this policy (although he didn’t say how) and instead put federal dollars toward recovery and treatment.
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I want to say here that Mr. Poilievre doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But his harping on about the perils of giving people “taxpayer-funded” drugs is a trope guaranteed to get his conservatively inclined base fired up and might even persuade the odd centrist or two to question the policy as well. They ignore the fact that “safe supply” isn’t really a radical departure from conventional addiction treatments with drugs such as methadone or Suboxone.