Addiction

This weekend the Globe and Mail featured a stunning front page and centre-piece featuring the lives of 100 of the 5,000 Canadians who died of Opioid-related overdoses in 2020. 100 solemn reminders that this crisis is not limited to cities or the homeless or under-educated but includes people just like you and me. It includes people who live in neighborhoods like your own, that have jobs like your own, that have spent as much time in school as you or I. It is heart-breaking to learn that people seeking treatment for their addiction can’t find a bed or a place in programs with severe shortages


Since 2016 about 20,000 Canadians have been killed by Opioids. That’s roughly the same number lost to Covid19. We don’t know if we will catch Covid but we take measures to reduce the chances. The fact is, we don’t know if we will be confronted by Opioids. We don’t know that an accident won’t put us on the search for more powerful painkillers. We don’t know if a sudden change in our lives will lead to mental health issues and a search to dull the anguish. We don’t know. We can’t all say “That will never happen to me.”, because it does happen every day in Canada.


New Democrats believe that there is much more we can do to save lives and support those struggling with opioids. In government, we will declare a public health emergency and commit to working with all levels of government, experts and Canadians to end the criminalization and stigma of drug addiction, so that people struggling with addiction can get the help they need without fear of arrest, while getting tough on the real criminals - those who traffic in and profit from illegal drugs. We’ll work with the provinces to support overdose prevention sites and expand access to treatment on demand for people struggling with addiction. We will also launch an investigation into the role drug companies may have played in fueling the opioid crisis, and seek meaningful financial compensation from them for the public costs of this crisis.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lets end the surgery backlog

Image
  The number of hospital beds in Ontario remained unchanged for the last 20 years (through Liberal and Conservative governments) but Ontario’s population grew by 3 million. Now Ford plans to cut the extra beds put in place for the Pandemic despite Ontario Hospital Association recommendations to keep them. A million Ontario residents are waiting for surgery but Ford is only addressing the delays that exceed medical guidelines! So if you are waiting for surgery the government isn’t going to do a thing about it until your situation becomes critical. Here are the OHA Recommendations for budget 2022. For the 2022-23 fiscal year, annual year-over-year base operating pressure:  3.5% ($735 million)  Dedicated funding to reduce the massive backlog of procedures and services.  Continued reimbursement for COVID-related expenses and lost revenues   2022/23 to be a “learning year” to determine which of the COVID-related expenses and lost revenues plus inflationary cost...
Read more

Tax Avoidance

Image
65 years ago Canadian corporations collectively paid about the same amount of tax as private Canadians. Today private citizens collectively pay 3 times as much as Canadian corporations. “In an average year, the 102 biggest companies in Canada pay $10.5 billion less than they would if they paid tax at the official corporate tax rate.” - Toronto Star. But when Revenue Canada tries to recoup 4.4 billion due to offshore tax evasion they can expect to get, maybe half. - National Post Groups like Taxfairness have plenty of straight forward ideas to turn this around. Like a financial activities tax: “Canada’s biggest banks and insurance companies remained profitable through the financial crisis and topped the list of large corporations making higher profits than usual during the pandemic. A Financial Activities Tax could also help cool the over-heating asset market, including housing. Such a tax, as proposed by the IMF, would generate at least $7 billion annually.” The problem is not uniqu...
Read more

UNDRIP

This weekend the Globe and Mail reported that several provincial governments want more time to examine the legislation that would apply the principles of UNDRIP (the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples). With this bill in place UNDRIP principles would interpret existing laws while helping to shape any future law making. The legislation is built on NDP MP Romeo Sagansh’s private members bill that passed third reading then died when the 2019 election was called. The list of detractors, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta etc. reads like a list of Conservative Provincial governments in Canada. They want more time for discussions with their “ industry stakeholders and Indigenous communities.” Notice how they put “industry stakeholders” before “Indigenous Peoples”? Of course PC governments want more time to figure out how to prevent a bill that might endanger their unfettered access to natural resources on treaty lands. Their “industry partners” might actually have to pay mineral a...
Read more