Shields berates PM’s ‘wacko drug policies’

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Vauxhall Advance

By Cal Braid
Vauxhall Advance
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

In his May 2024 newsletter, Bow River MP Martin Shields echoed the language that got Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre kicked out of question period in late April, though Shields refrained from outright name-calling. 

Poilievre called Justin Trudeau a “wacko prime minister,” and after he was offered three opportunities by House Speaker Greg Fergus to withdraw his statement – and refusing to do so without substituting another adjective in its place – he was thrown out of the House for the remainder of the day’s proceedings.

Shields headlined his newsletter with bluster, saying, ‘Trudeau’s Wacko Drug Policies are Killing Canadians.’

“Have you seen many downtown streets of any major city in Canada these days? Maybe not even in a major city, but medium cities, towns, or even some rural areas,” he wrote. “Some areas in Canada are more akin to a war zone than a Canadian city.”

He decried the legalization of hard drugs in BC and “so-called ‘safe supply’ across the country,” insisting that the safe supply is not safe at all and has a devastating effect on communities and individuals suffering from drug addiction. He said there is no such thing as a safe supply of hard drugs like meth, crack, heroin, or fentanyl.

“Families are losing loved ones because taxpayer funded drugs are being diverted from prescriptions and flooding the streets,” he said, quoting stats out of B.C. that indicate six people are dying each day from overdoses. He said 2,500 people died that way in B.C. last year.

He turned it into a bit of a political maneuver, drawing a direct link to Trudeau, during whose time in office 42,000 Canadians have died from drug overdoses.

“The results of this experiment to legalize hard drugs have been death and destruction, chaos and carnage in Canadian hospitals, parks and public transportation,” Shields said.

He accused Trudeau of continuing to put taxpayer money into giving Canadians free hard drugs rather than treatment.

“This is wacko,” he said. “There’s no other way to put it. But the Speaker of the House kicked out Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre for pointing this out.”

He said that “common sense Conservatives will ban hard drugs, stop taxpayer-funded drugs and put that money into detox & recovery.”

There is no Band-Aid for the current drug epidemic, but any offer of common sense solutions can’t be ignored.