Ottawa, ON – After nine years, the NDP-Liberal Government’s radical hard drug liberalization has spread death and disorder across Canada. Since Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister, 47,000 Canadians have died of drug overdoses, representing a 200 percent increase since 2016. We have lost more Canadians through drug overdoses than we did in World War Two.
For this reason, Common Sense Conservatives have put forward a motion in the House of Commons, calling on Trudeau to protect our people from dangerous drugs. This includes reversing the Liberals’ catch-and-release Bill C-5, which eliminated mandatory jail time for certain violent offenders. On top of this, the Conservative motion will reinstate longer jail sentences for drug kingpins, ban the importation of fentanyl precursors and stop the Trudeau government from buying dangerous opioids which are diverted to teenagers and other vulnerable Canadians.
The motion will also call on Justin Trudeau to secure our ports against fentanyl by buying high-powered scanners and putting more boots on the ground at our ports to stop fentanyl and its ingredients from coming into our country.
In the 12 months up to September 2024, US border agents seized about 11,600 pounds of drugs entering the United States from Canada. Seizures of fentanyl doses more than tripled between 2023 and 2024, rising from 239,000 doses to 839,000. A year ago, CSIS told Trudeau that they had identified more than 350 organized crime groups actively involved in the domestic illegal fentanyl market. And just last month, the RCMP uncovered a “super lab” operating in rural British Columbia that was capable of producing 95 million lethal doses of fentanyl.
And what has Trudeau done? Absolutely nothing, other than trying to legalize and liberalize these same drugs. And now, President-Elect Trump is threatening tariffs over fentanyl that would devastate our economy. This crisis must be fixed, not just to save our economy, but to save Canadian lives, with over 80 percent of accidental opioid deaths involving fentanyl.
Enough is enough. The NDP-Liberal Government must end their dangerous hard drugs experiments, secure our border, and bring home our loved ones’ drug free.