Juno News - November 18, 2025Carney’s budget NARROWLY PASSES + B.C. calls drug stigma “colonialist”
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Summary
The BC Human Rights Commissioner says treating illegal drug users like criminals is not only racist, it s a violation of their human rights. She says even mentioning the opioid crisis discriminates against users of potentially lethal drugs. Tristan Hopper writes about it in the National Post.
Transcript
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Welcome to Straight Up with Mark Petroni. I am your host. Appreciate you tuning in, my friends.
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Well, the B.C. Human Rights Commissioner says treating illegal drug users like criminals is
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not only racist, it's a violation of their human rights. Kasari Govender says even mentioning the
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opioid crisis discriminates against users of potentially lethal drugs. Tristan Hopper writes
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about it in the pages of the National Post. Headline, B.C. Human Rights Chief Declares
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It's Colonialist to Stigmatize Drug Use. So according to the commissioner, talking about
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the overdose crisis implies that doing drugs like meth or fentanyl is inherently unsafe.
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Well, it was certainly unsafe for the 16,000 people who overdosed in British Columbia since 2016.
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She says the real cause is the toxic chemical additives to those drugs.
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She wants more policies that allow drug users to shoot up without stigma.
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She wants more safe supply of drugs, including the distribution of free recreational opioids
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to drug users. Anyway, Tristan will be joining us shortly with that.
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The Liberals narrowly averted a critical defeat in the House of Commons on their budget yesterday.
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Prime Minister Mark Carney says the budget is all about protecting Canada's way of life.
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Very pleased that we passed the budget vote. There are more votes, of course, to come through
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the budget process, but important step for our country, protecting our communities, protecting
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Now, two conservatives did not take part in the vote, nor did certain members of the NDP
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who chose to abstain. In term NDP leader, Don Davies, explains why.
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Why is it the NDP's responsibility to avoid an election? Isn't that the Liberals' responsibility?
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Yes, it is. In fact, it's all parliamentarians' job.
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Then why abstain? Why allow them the chance to not go to an election by abstain? Why make that choice?
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I'm sorry, I'm not understanding your question.
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You're saying it's the Liberals' job, but yet you're helping the Liberals avoid an election
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Look, there's 343 people in the House of Commons. I've said from the beginning that it's
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Mark Carney's responsibility as the Prime Minister of a minority government to craft a budget
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that can earn majority support. But at the same time, we're in a unique situation right
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now, six months after the last election, where Canadians don't want an election right
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Now, Conservative Party leader Pierre Paglia posted this reaction to the budget's passing.
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Mark Carney's budget will drive up the cost of living on every Canadian, on food, on homes,
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and on everything else Canadians buy. Conservatives demanded an affordable budget for an affordable
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life. On behalf of the Canadians, the Liberals have priced out of food, homes, and life.
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Conservatives voted no tonight on this costly credit card budget that gambles away Canada's
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future. Paulie have described the budget passing as a good day for Carney and his Brookfield buddies.
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While the singing of Canada's national anthem was not welcome at an event in Toronto where
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the Palestinian flag was raised at City Hall, police stopped a pro-Canada demonstrator who
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attempted to play a recording of the national anthem. Let's listen.
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Canada officially recognized the state of Palestine on September 21st, along with countries
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I'm now joined by Tristan Hopper in Victoria, British Columbia. He's the one who wrote that
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column and you can read about it in the pages of the National Post. Welcome, Tristan.
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Well, the BC Human Rights Commissioner says, well, treating illegal drug users like criminals
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is not only racist, it's a violation of their human rights. Have I got that right?
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Basically, yeah. So you go through this report. So the context of the report is that on a few
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levels, BC is starting to dial back the extremes of how far it leaned into harm reduction. There's
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three prominent examples of that. So BC debuted decriminalization in 2022. So this was any personal
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use amounts, anything below, I think, 2.5 grams of meth, heroin, all the illicit drugs. It was
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effectively legalized. And that was dialed back. And now you have the NDP Premier of BC saying,
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openly, this was a mistake. So he's been saying what a lot of normal people have been saying ever
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since the beginning. He said, well, it was supposed to destigmatize drug use. But what it actually did
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is it normalized drug use everywhere all at once? You'll probably remember there was that
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BC Supreme Court decision as soon after decriminalization came in. And there was an
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initial pullback from the BC NDP government. People were saying, hey, we can't play in
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playgrounds anymore because it's full of people shooting up and smoking crack. And because you
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decriminalize drugs, we can't actually send police in to arrest them. So there's just crack smoke
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everywhere. We can't use the playground. So the BC NDP government said, okay, we're going to change it a
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bit. Drugs are still decriminalized, but you can't smoke meth or shoot up in playgrounds specifically.
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You have to, you know, police can now ask you very politely and there's no, there's still no
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sanction, but they can ask you to do it at the other end of the playground. And there was a BC
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Supreme Court decision, which said, actually, no, that's a violation of their section seven rights
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security, the person, et cetera. So, you know, we had a court decision saying that, anyway, that's beside
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the point. So they dialed back on decriminalization. We dialed back safer supply. This was
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another BC experiment where we thought, well, we can steer addicts away from the black market if we
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just distribute free recreational opioids. So, okay, if we just give you a daily ration of hydromorphine,
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which is a very powerful opioid, you won't do fentanyl. And, you know, that might be, you know,
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cut with something and that could kill you. The idea is that it wasn't the drugs that was the problem.
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It was all the weird additives in the drugs. So if we just have them doing the government drugs,
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but this is something the National Post, I think has covered, my paper has covered better than almost
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anyone else, is diversion. So again, plenty of people could have told you this before you embarked
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on the program. Addicts are just going to take the hydromorphine, flip it for cash in the black
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market, and then use it to buy fentanyl because, you know, the high is not as good. Any addict,
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you could have asked them and you would have learned that they did this. So we had massive diversion.
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So just huge drug rings of, you know, an addict goes in, gets their ration, immediately sells it
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for harder drugs. And we just had this flood of hydromorphine at rock bottom prices hitting
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the black market. And something my colleague at the National Post, Adam Zeevo, has covered
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is you have a bunch of high schoolers suddenly with, you know, basically free hydromorphine all over
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the place, which has not been good for our overall drug addiction rate. So that was back in February.
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And we've also had BC Premier David Eby talking about, we need to start involuntarily putting
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people into treatment. If you are just a risk to yourself, you cannot get clean. There needs to be
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involuntary options, such as taking a page out of the treatment-based program out of Alberta. So
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those three things, that's the context. As this is happening, BC Human Rights Commissioner just puts
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together a 22-page statement saying, all of this is wrong, saying what has been in BC literature
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underlying all of this. So there's no new thoughts, there's no new concepts in this report.
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Because obviously, you know, there's, when you're legalizing people smoking meth in playgrounds,
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you know, there's, there's some kind of insane ideology underlying that. But it's weird to see
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it now in this context, where plenty of very progressive people in BC have come around to the
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idea of, you know, maybe it would be nice if our downtowns weren't exclusively filled with drug use
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all the time. Maybe there is a role. Because we all know someone, we, I mean, we all know someone who
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has had their life consumed by addiction, and we all usually know someone, well, they were an alcoholic,
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we were on pills, they came out of the oil patch, you know, addicted to something. We know it's
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possible for people to get clean. It doesn't need to be palliative care. And that's what it is. I mean,
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at the extremes of BC harm reduction is, okay, you're on drugs, we'll make the drug doing as safe
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as possible, which puts you in a low barrier hotel, we'll make sure clinicians watch you as you shoot up.
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But that is your life. You're just sort of kept alive as a drug addict forever in perpetuity.
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But anyway, yeah, yeah, the BC Human Rights Commissioner says all the lines that have
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fueled all of this. I mean, this was this was what would have been said when in the earliest days
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of insight, this is what was said when you were having a safer supply passed. And it's weird to
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see all these arguments now, knowing what we know, knowing that we've leaned harder into harm
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reduction than any other jurisdiction on the planet Earth. And all we've seen is overdose rates
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rise. And the BC Human Rights Commissioner learned absolutely nothing. The last five years have not
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happened to her. And we just get a report saying, Oh, this is all colonialist racist, the you know,
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she doesn't, she says, we shouldn't even use the term overdose. It's, it's a toxic drug crisis,
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because it's safe to do drugs. It's just all the additives that all the criminals are putting in.
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And there's no role for law enforcement. So I mean, I just wrote about it because it is sort of
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indicative. We're all having experiences lately, where there's a Supreme Court decision, like,
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I'm sorry, putting a pedophile in prison is cruel, unusual punishment. What are you even talking about?
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And it is sort of illustrative of at very high and elite echelons and very well paid echelons.
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The BC Human Rights Commissioner gets 350,000 per year. She's one of the most
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highly paid bureaucrats in the BC system. You can just release a 22 page report,
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very disconnected from any kind of modern reality. And there's no one in the office
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Yeah, I mean, Kassari Govender makes Premier Evie look like a moderate.
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Yeah, he's I mean, we pay our premiers pretty well, I think as a BC premier, Alberta is that they've
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always been the most high paid premier, it's kind of a prestigious thing, but the two hundred twenty
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one thousand, not bad. And yeah, you're looking at 350,000 for the BC Human Rights Commissioner,
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which is different for the BC Human Rights Tribunal. That's the one where, you know,
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you take someone to a quasi judicial thing. So they are separate agencies. So the Human Rights
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Commissioner is just, you know, will intervene on some cases. But this is essentially what the
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office does. And it's eight million dollars a year to release position statements like this saying,
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you know, stigmatizing drug use. Have you considered that that's actually colonialist and racist?
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My favorite part of your column, as you referenced the report, was the fact that even
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the mere act of talking about it really is discriminatory. Let's go read your part of this.
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According to the commissioner, the discussing the overdose crisis implies that doing drugs such
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as meth or fentanyl is inherently safe. Well, it certainly turned out to be unsafe for the 16,000
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people or so who overdosed in British Columbia since 2016. Yeah. And the argument and then, I mean,
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still official government terms. I mean, it is referred to in coroner's reports as the toxic drug
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crisis, which I mean, the root of that is the idea that you can do these drugs safely. And that is said
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directly in the BC Human Rights Commissioner's report. I mean, they're being as safe as possible.
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If we just had systems and supports, they could just do drugs recreationally, and this would be
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totally fine. And people don't believe me when I say that when I say, oh, no, the people in charge
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of the drug, they do have the foundational ideology is that you can do hard drugs, and it's totally fine.
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And it's a lifestyle choice. I mean, that sounds crazy. I still think there's a lot of British
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Colombians who haven't accepted that that is the idea at the core of all of this.
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But yeah, it's brought up in this report. And the idea is it's the toxic drug crisis,
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because they're only dying of overdoses, because they're otherwise safe drug consumption.
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Because they had to buy their drugs from the black market, they weren't getting the pure stuff.
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So it's, I guess, if you were to make a similar argument doing prohibition, it's like, well,
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the alcohol is totally fine for you under any context. Alcoholism doesn't even exist.
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It's just that we have some booze that is tainted with, you know, antifreeze. And if we can just get
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everybody drinking the pure alcohol, alcohol is 100% fine, and there's no problems with it.
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But she wants the government to adopt policies to push it more towards decriminalizing, right?
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Yes, yes. So as as the government is saying, okay, we keep doing this, because I mean, I would ask people
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just to, I mean, we've had more shipments of fentanyl, I guess that's one outside force that
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has defined this. But 10 years ago, you know, wasn't too long ago, when we had much lower rates of
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overdose. I'm the numbers escape me, but it's exponentially higher now than it was 10 years ago,
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when we were already calling it a crisis. The amount of harm reduction we had, then was much lower
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than now. I mean, now it's normalized that everyone from security guards to hospital
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tenants to pharmacies have naloxone kits on that that didn't exist 10 years ago. You had a handful
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of safe injection sites. Now any midsize community anywhere in the country has multiple safe consumption
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sites. You have low barrier shelters. You have the safer supply system. And as I often remind people,
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this is very unique to us. Although harm reduction was pioneered as a European idea,
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the amount that we've sort of leaned into it, this doesn't exist in any sort of a European or
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American context. I mean, we're at the leading edge of doing this. And each one of these reforms that
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we implement, it's just meaning more and more people are dying of drug overdoses. So if you're just
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looking, and you know, if someone was here, they would scream at me and say it's more complicated,
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more nuanced, but you know, lots of harm reduction has correlated pretty closely with overdose
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rates remaining high. So it's been 10 years of trying harm reduction. Everything we do seems to
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make things worse. And she's saying, again, this is not particularly unique to her. This has been the
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case within many pro-harm reduction circles, including many public health bodies. It was
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only a couple of years ago that you had the provincial health officer, Bonnie Henry,
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doing her review of safe supply. And this was one of the first government reports to acknowledge that
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diversion was happening. They denied it before then. They'd said it was misinformation. And then
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police started coming out and saying, we keep doing drug busts that are mostly safer supply,
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a diverted safer supply. So it became too hard to ignore. And then you had the provincial health
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officer, Bonnie Henry saying, the only reason this is happening is because the drugs aren't strong
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enough. So you had a review of safer supply and Bonnie Henry herself, provincial health officer,
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our top doctor essentially saying, okay, well, instead of hydromorphone, we need to start giving
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out fentanyl and smokable fentanyl. And we need to start putting it in rural areas where it may not be,
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you know, you can get, you can get your drugs in the big city. We need to start sending just trucks
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of smokable fentanyl into first nations communities. Uh, that's the only way to sort of
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stop the overdose crisis. So again, the, uh, BC human rights commissioner is not, um, I guess out
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of line. Uh, I mean, there's, there's plenty of sort of people making more than $200,000 in the BC
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government that sort of share these sentiments, but I guess, um, her rapport is unique in that it's,
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uh, there's almost no consideration that drugs are inherently bad, or there is a role for law
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enforcement in some context, which I think, um, even a lot of very progressive lefty, uh, British
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Colombians are starting to come around to, um, you know, they remember that you used to be able to
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ride public buses and there wasn't a guy tweaking out on meth.
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Yeah. I mean, it, it almost makes you think there's a correlation between the amount of money
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these people are making and just how out of touch they are with reality. I mean, they advocate the,
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the distribution of free recreational opioids, you know, to drug users, you know, better access to
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quote unquote, safe supply. I mean, how is this playing with the regular folks? You know,
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one thing I will, um, that, that sort of strikes me about these types of reports is you'll see,
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well, the whole, you know, why are people taking drugs? And they'll say, well, it's the history of
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colonialism and racism and stuff. So you'll see often references to, uh, you know, indigenous people
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are hardest hit by this and it's because of colonialism and it's because of all this is causing
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this. You actually ask indigenous communities who are hardest hit by the overdose crisis. I mean,
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however, it's hitting the general population and it's, we're one of the highest places in the world
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for people dying of drug overdoses. It's exponentially higher in first nations
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communities. Um, what you are seeing in a lot of reserves is, um, you know, you drive into the
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reserve and there's a big sign saying drug dealers are not welcome. Um, community is exploring
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banishment. Um, you know, there was, there was an incident, uh, I'm forgetting if it was a few months
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ago or a year ago, uh, where there was sort of a notorious drug dealer on Haida Gwaii and he was
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actually exiled from the community. And as he was on the mainland, people were meeting him,
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you know, people were sort of messaging each other on Facebook, you know, this notorious drug dealer,
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make sure he can't stop for gas. Just, just keep hustling them out. So he never comes back. Um, so
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you have the hardest hit communities by this or advocating the old fashioned drugs are bad. We
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should stop people from selling drugs in our communities. We should disincentivize the
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normalize eight. We should go back to stigmatizing drug use. Um, and there's just no acknowledgement
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whatsoever from the BC human rights commissioner. I, I, I, I, I can't imagine if you went to just
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sort of go to your hardest hit indigenous drug community, get all the elders together and, you
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know, try and explain to them that your solution is, uh, actually we need more drugs supplied by the
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governments, you know, with fewer safeguards. I don't think it would go over well. I don't think
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so either. Now there are national implications to what's going on in British Columbia, right? As you
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mentioned, BC has kind of, kind of led the way with the decriminalizing stuff. Yes. And, you know,
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Ontario is looking on, you know, Quebec is looking at what's, what's going on. So maybe talk a little
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bit about that, you know, what's the likelihood that a report like this will have ramifications
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outside of BC? Uh, I, I don't know probably in, uh, again, there's nothing in it that's
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particularly unique. I mean, she's just sort of recycling ideas that have been at the fringes,
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uh, but you know, the mainstream fringes, I mean, I call them fringe, uh, but they are very much at
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the mainstream. I mean, you can read these ideas, uh, in reports guiding, you know, federal and BC
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drug policy for, for years. Um, it is, I mean, this is sort of my beat at the national post
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is I'll cover sort of, you know, how inst institutions that have been captured by ideology.
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So, you know, the Canadian armed forces puts up a report saying that Canadian society is
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systemically racist and any unequal outcome is, you know, but I'd say in, in, in drug policy,
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it still surprises me when I will be reading a high level reports, you know, signed on by any number
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of doctors with immense power over how public health, and you will see these ideas, uh, that,
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that seem crazy to the normal person, the, the idea that, um, uh, getting off drugs, getting
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clean from drugs is not a realistic or even desirable outcome. Um, uh, but in terms of implications,
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I, I don't know because BC did lead the way, uh, it wasn't too long ago that BC was the only
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place in Canada that had safe consumption sites and they pioneered a model. The inside people put
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out a bunch of extremely dodgy data, um, claiming that, oh, you know, safe injection sites makes
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make neighborhoods safer. It reduces drug overdoses. And I've written extensively about the data that
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they released showing that it's incredibly dodgy data sucks. Um, but I mean, the reason you live in
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the community, be it in Ontario, Nova Scotia, Quebec, um, in which you are walking distance,
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uh, to a safe consumption site or a low barrier shelter or whatever, any of these sort of temples
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of harm reduction. And if you're listening to this, you almost certainly do is because of models that
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were pioneered by BC. Um, but on, if BC is becoming skeptical of the effectiveness of these models,
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um, I think maybe we're past the era, uh, where people look to BC as a model of what to do. Um,
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however, um, I guess what we can learn from this report is if you can have people in high echelons
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of power making $350,000 a year, who can be so disconnected from reality, maybe your own province
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also has people that disconnected from reality. And if there's no pushback, maybe they will pursue these
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ideas. And speaking of pushback, will there be any from, from David Eby from, from the premier or how
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does he treat this? Because, you know, a lot of people, I think in his, maybe you want to say far
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left base, probably think that this is the best thing possible for BC and anyone else.
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Eby sort of, uh, he's interesting on these files because his background is as a, he was a street
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level activist lawyer, um, for, for groups like the Pivot Legal Society, you know, who were very
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instrumental in, you know, the, the quote unquote lawfare that enabled, uh, whole communities to
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sort of be roped off as drug doing areas. Um, so in his younger life, he was very much at the front
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lines of ideas like this. Um, so it's, it's, uh, it's strange to see how David Eby reacts to these
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because, uh, on the one hand, um, he's looking at systems that he personally helped implement
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as a younger man. Uh, but he also has sort of a visceral, um, appreciation of how extreme and how
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crazy those groups can get. Uh, so we will see sort of a, this isn't the most PC term, but we'll see
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sort of a schizophrenic view of David Eby. Well, he, and on the one hand, he will do things like
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repeat the nostrums that, you know, we have to reduce stigma, et cetera. Um, but at the same time,
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he will sort of come out with, with ideas that are very controversial within the far left of his
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party, uh, like, um, involuntary care and treatment. Um, uh, he, he, he was pushing that, uh, I think
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when he was first running for BC leader, he sort of came out and said, you know, if we can't just have
00:23:45.320
people, uh, you know, doing drugs with, I mean, you have to take, if someone is like within two weeks
00:23:51.320
of just overdosing, they're completely, they, we have to put them in an institution and forcibly
00:23:55.800
get them clean. He was bringing this up for quite a while, but, uh, he also dialed that back, uh, when
00:24:02.440
his party started yelling at him. Um, so it's sort of hard to nail him down on this because you'll see
00:24:07.880
one interview with David Eby and you're like, oh, that sounds pretty reasonable. That sounds like
00:24:10.840
something I would say. And then you'll see an official state from statement from the premier's
00:24:14.200
office saying we have to decriminalize people who use drugs, harm reduction is the way forward,
00:24:17.480
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, so perhaps that is a representation of BC as a whole, but, um,
00:24:26.200
right now, uh, when I see David Eby speaking of drug policy, um, lately, it's usually to say,
00:24:34.440
perhaps we've gone too far and we should dial back and we should arrest drug dealers more than we have
00:24:40.440
been doing. Now, this has been an issue on the federal scene. Uh, it played out, uh, there was
00:24:47.160
discussions around it during the campaign. For instance, uh, Carney said something about,
00:24:53.560
well, we don't really have a crisis in terms of opiate, uh, overdosing. And then all you have
00:25:00.360
skewered him saying we've had 50,000 people die probably. What is it now? 60,000? I don't know.
00:25:06.360
It must be up. Uh, federally, I think it's 53,000 since, uh, one, one problem is we just, our,
00:25:11.960
our data sucks on this. Um, so this is one thing that comes up in the BC human rights commissioners
00:25:16.200
report. She she'll claim, and this is technically legalistically true. She'll say, well, there's no
00:25:21.080
evidence to show that, you know, having tons of government supplied opioids is increasing
00:25:27.160
overdose deaths. The reason we don't have evidence is because they're not looking for it. The only
00:25:31.000
metric they're using to determine whether it's having deleterious effects on public health is
00:25:36.680
it wasn't showing up in a lot of autopsies of overdose victims. That was the only metric they
00:25:41.640
were checking. Now a normal person would say, well, if you're trying to see if, uh, you know,
00:25:46.600
high schoolers are getting more addicted. I mean, there's a bunch of different things you could
00:25:50.600
possibly check. There are surveys, uh, there are toxicology tests, you know, someone shows up in
00:25:54.840
the hospital. If you're just looking at whether it's in the corpses of people who have died, um,
00:26:00.280
that may not be the best representation of the overall harm this might be doing. But, um,
00:26:05.160
I forget where you're going with that. Um, yeah. So anyway, it is, yeah. 50 to 60,000. Uh,
00:26:10.280
I mean, our life expectancy has plateaued, uh, in this country. That's the first time that's happened
00:26:16.280
basically ever, uh, where we just life expectancy is going up every single year with a few extra
00:26:21.080
months of life made has contributed, but it's primarily the overdose crisis. You're taking
00:26:25.560
people at the prime of their life and killing them. Um, so yes, our, and in terms of countries,
00:26:31.880
I think the only country whose rate is worse than us is Scotland. Um, so if you take the UK as a whole,
00:26:37.880
it's, it's lower, but I mean, we are one of the places where it's most likely that you will die
00:26:43.080
of a drug overdose. Incredible. Well, I, if the government doesn't have that data,
00:26:48.360
it probably doesn't want that data. You know, it's probably, you know, reluctant to, to collect data
00:26:54.760
that will be a condemnation of their policies. So, yeah, we do have, uh, but, but again, you,
00:27:00.520
you see things like, I mean, they're called toxic drug deaths. Um, so we, we can't even acknowledge
00:27:05.960
that you can die, uh, of a drug overdose. So yeah, the toxic drug deaths are the sort
00:27:09.880
of 50,000 to 60,000 range over, I think 2016, since 2016. Tristan, thank you so much for coming
00:27:17.320
on the show. Congratulations on your terrific work at the national post. Thank you. Tristan Hopper.
00:27:23.320
And that is it for this edition of straight up. Appreciate you tuning in my friends. Let's do it