Juno News - June 17, 2026


Conservatives push to legalize some psychedelics

Topics
psilocybin legalization bill
Mentioned
Thomas Hartle Corey Tucker Mark Carney Justin Trudeau Nixon
Will Carney make a deal in Europe？ Jamil Jivani launches Task Force to End Liberal Racism

Episode Stats


Length

14 minutes

Words per minute

154.93

Word count

2,199

Sentence count

71


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Corey Tucker introduces a bill that would allow doctors to prescribe psychedelics like psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms, to their patients in Canada. We talk to Tory MP Corey Tucker about his bill and why he thinks it s a good idea.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Well, conservatives say it's time to legalize some psychedelics and are introducing a bill
00:00:10.920 aimed at making that happen.
00:00:13.020 MP Corey Tucker has introduced a new piece of legislation to legalize prescribing psychedelics
00:00:20.360 like psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms.
00:00:24.800 Our guest today is Corey Tucker, MP for Saskatoon University.
00:00:28.260 Welcome, sir.
00:00:29.780 Thanks for having me on the show, Mark.
00:00:31.560 Talk about this private members bill, obviously, because you're not in government.
00:00:36.580 Why did you decide to come forward with this?
00:00:40.540 Well, I had a constituent of mine.
00:00:42.200 His name was Thomas Hartle.
00:00:43.380 We named the bill out after him, Thomas's bill.
00:00:46.340 And Thomas was diagnosed with stage four cancer and given months to live.
00:00:51.280 And like anyone else that gets that diagnosis, your mind goes everywhere.
00:00:55.820 And for him, his oncologists and doctors couldn't treat his cancer because his mind was everywhere.
00:01:02.640 This is him telling me this.
00:01:04.580 And so they prescribed psilocybin with counseling and they accessed it legally.
00:01:10.020 You can currently prescribe it in Canada, but you have to get the bureaucrats at Health Canada first to approve it.
00:01:16.280 And it's roughly a three page document that you can wait upwards of a year to see if you qualify.
00:01:22.340 So Tom's qualified and it helped his anxiety.
00:01:25.820 it calmed him to the point that he could start his cancer treatments not just start cancer
00:01:30.740 treatments he was winning he at the three-year mark so three years after taking a couple
00:01:38.820 counseling sessions a year it was able to calm his anxiety so that he could face cancer and
00:01:46.120 his government though cut him off and that's when he saw it came to see me and I kind of had a
00:01:51.820 cursory understanding of mushrooms when I was younger but didn't think that much of them as
00:01:56.100 medicine but after meeting Thomas I started meeting other patients and I started actively
00:02:01.460 seeking out physicians and researchers and looking at what this medicine potential could be
00:02:08.160 and Thomas since getting the bureaucrats cutting him off he started going down to the Caribbean
00:02:16.880 a couple times a year for his counseling sessions and it was helping but it was not
00:02:23.160 why do why do we have to leave our country to access the medicine that your physician
00:02:27.220 believes that you should be taking so that is what the bill is about is thomas um and he and
00:02:34.280 correcting what is wrong out there and we've been you know in the past 1950s saskatchewan was leading
00:02:40.460 the edge in psychedelics actually the the word psychedelics was coined in wayburn saskatchewan
00:02:45.640 which at the time had the largest mental hospital in all of the British Commonwealth was in
00:02:52.280 Weyburn, Saskatchewan. And that's where psychedelics got coined in a lot of the early
00:02:56.520 research. Nixon's war on drugs came in and conservatives are against hard drugs. We're
00:03:03.000 against drugs that are addictive and that could kill you. But this medicine was grouped into.
00:03:09.080 so through the science out there the psilocybin is non-toxic your body cannot digest enough
00:03:17.000 of it to kill you and it's non-addictive so you're not going to get addicted to some some of the
00:03:24.920 side effects that pharmaceutical drugs have so this bill would allow physicians if passed
00:03:31.640 allow physicians to prescribe psilocybin and it also requires Health Canada to review
00:03:41.400 a molecule that is made of psilocybin and render a decision within 180 days. So what that allows
00:03:49.640 is different proponents, be it natural or synthetic, could apply through the priority review.
00:03:56.040 Health Canada would still have to make a decision on the safety and the profile of the molecule.
00:04:01.960 If approved, then physicians could be able to prescribe this to their patients.
00:04:08.920 Okay. Obviously, there's a stigma attached to it. People see it as just the way to get high,
00:04:15.480 to hallucinate or whatever. And so there's that. I mean, from a public vantage point,
00:04:22.760 you know there are people who only think of it in those terms and maybe are not aware of some
00:04:29.640 of the research that has gone on around psilocybin and the use of it for instance there's been some
00:04:35.160 work done with dementia patients and if you know anything about dementia you know that patients
00:04:41.480 are often very agitated and so this has a calming effect on them and from what i understand the
00:04:47.960 research has been very encouraging in terms of reversing memory loss have you heard that
00:04:55.160 yes um different indications have more science done on for psilocybin so the ones you spoke are
00:05:02.120 fairly early on for the indication for psilocybin the best science out there is for
00:05:10.200 treatment resistant depression so if a physician has had no success with traditional pharmaceutical
00:05:15.800 antidepressants the studies have shown that psilocybin might be the solution and on the
00:05:22.200 addiction side of things there is additional information or additional science that shows
00:05:28.840 for alcoholism and smoking sensation that psilocybin is an effective medicine to add
00:05:36.600 and this is just adds to the body of science out there that shows that it's a safe and effective
00:05:42.920 tool and the most compelling story i think i have is other than thomas is some of our veterans um
00:05:49.800 they come back from ptsd from the tour and they have ptsd or other addiction issues and that is a
00:05:58.360 very compelling reason why we should move forward with thomas's bill and it's not just canadian
00:06:04.600 veterans that have had success american veterans had success as well and to the point where the
00:06:11.960 The American government has paid for three large phase three trials to be done on three different molecules, specifically for the veterans, because our current success rate with PTSD is not where it should be.
00:06:26.420 And it's a little bit different mindset to a medicine.
00:06:30.160 This is this is not once a day. This is not once a week.
00:06:33.360 this is some veterans believe that after their first session is all they needed to be able to
00:06:40.480 tear down the walls that we put up in our minds to keep us from the trauma that causes us problems
00:06:47.440 and that's how they describe it to me and this is how the physicians that i've talked to believe
00:06:52.080 that this is an effective treatment for ptsd mental health and addiction that's great to hear
00:06:57.440 because of first the suicide rate as you know amongst combat veterans is extremely high and
00:07:03.840 anything that we could save lives you know when once they come home having gone through
00:07:11.200 traumatic part of what they do fighting for this country i think would be extremely positive have
00:07:18.720 you ever tried mushrooms yourself or have you had ingested psilocybin when i was young i was
00:07:26.000 overseas and i did experiment with psilocybin and at the time i didn't think much of it but i do
00:07:32.080 do remember commenting that it it seemed different as in there was more purpose to our our um
00:07:39.680 conversations and i i didn't think that much of it i i and many people don't like if you
00:07:45.440 believe it's a drug and it's dangerous um why would you think that much of it but until you
00:07:51.520 find out that you can't die from it and it's you can't be addicted to it it is very potent and there
00:07:58.000 is some patients that should not be if you're schizophrenic or bipolar there is some limitations
00:08:04.480 and that's another reason why thomas's bill is important to pass is that right now it's not that
00:08:11.120 we are not allowing physicians to prescribe it we are but we need the bureaucrats to sign off on it
00:08:17.600 now if you don't want to go down that path unfortunately there's organized crime in in
00:08:21.600 canada and you can go down any major city in canada and find different storefront dispensaries
00:08:28.160 that will sell you and you can self-medicate and we're against that um what this would do
00:08:33.680 is lessen the demand for uh from people that they could um fill the full benefit of psilocybin in a
00:08:41.440 clinic while with medical professionals, because it's not, it's, it's, it's the seventh setting
00:08:47.560 when, when you have this medicine, but it's also the counseling before, while you have nothing in
00:08:54.080 your, in your system during, and then afterwards that you have the, the, the breakthroughs that
00:08:59.700 we're seeing in some of the studies. Was it hallucinatory? I mean, I'm getting
00:09:04.780 images of timothy leary and discussions around altering mind and conscious expanding stuff i
00:09:13.420 you did you experience that at all no it's more like an alternate um consciences that um if it
00:09:21.940 was a while ago so i can't describe in great detail but of the patients that have told me
00:09:27.740 how it helped them is that it allows you we as humans put up different imaginary blockers in
00:09:34.380 our brain and why we do something, why we are addicted to, be it coffee or alcohol or
00:09:42.560 what have you, you don't allow yourself to ask those questions or answer those questions
00:09:48.340 properly or truthfully, but there seems to be a connection when you're counseled on psilocybin
00:09:54.560 that those barriers come down and you can truthfully answer yourself, why are you drinking
00:09:59.800 a 26 of whiskey every night and when the patients i believe this is what the science is showing and
00:10:06.120 some of the anecdotal conversations is that you are able to find those answers if you're willing
00:10:12.120 to ask yourself and um you and i might be able to do that right now but someone that is suffering
00:10:17.480 from mental health or addictions they're in a different mental state and this has been helpful
00:10:22.120 You know, I would say a guy like, I'm sorry, finish your thought there.
00:10:29.040 I thought you were done.
00:10:31.360 I wanted to ask you, a guy like Justin Trudeau might be, might have been a bit more supportive of this,
00:10:38.660 considering his past use of various substances and the fact that he was pushing marijuana and so forth and legalizing that.
00:10:46.940 But I don't know what you'd expect from Mark Carney.
00:10:52.340 I mean, of course, the private members bill, and generally these don't pass.
00:10:57.160 But do you have any sense of support from the liberals?
00:11:02.460 I think it's a misnomer about Justin Trudeau, though.
00:11:05.100 Like, you've got to remember, this is the man that ushered in the last 10 years of explosion of addictions.
00:11:10.440 We see it in the streets, the overdoses, the enabling of drug use to the point or to your neighboring province of B.C. decriminalized every hard drug under the sun.
00:11:24.360 But there was one medicine that they did, one substance in B.C.
00:11:28.580 It was psilocybin.
00:11:30.120 I do not understand that.
00:11:31.860 I think there's an element of this has potential to be a very disruptive medicine in the industry of pharmaceuticals.
00:11:40.840 I don't think big pharma is going to be excited about the prospect of losing patients that have a once a day antidepressant.
00:11:50.380 I think there's many people that would be happy with the status quo.
00:11:54.320 And I'm not happy with the status quo.
00:11:56.380 I don't think Canadians should not accept what we see in the streets.
00:11:59.980 We shouldn't accept that our tax dollars are paying for what they claim is a safe supply of drugs such as fentanyl and heroin and meth in the past that are truly toxic and truly addictive.
00:12:17.720 But there is hope because I've met people that were addicted to fentanyl that believe it was the counseling on psilocybin that have kept them clean from those hard addictions.
00:12:29.400 and it was once again it was a little bit of stigma in our life and perception is reality i
00:12:34.760 get it but we got it wrong with psilocybin um there's no reason why um that physicians
00:12:42.040 shouldn't be able to prescribe this to their patients if they feel that they would benefit
00:12:46.920 and i'm not a doctor neither other are the bureaucrats in health canada which are blocking
00:12:52.920 this from physicians being able to prescribe it and this bill changes that a lot of people
00:12:58.280 find out more about this any recommendations uh maybe they they could talk to your physician
00:13:06.360 most importantly don't don't uh don't take medical advice from me but do talk to your physician uh
00:13:12.520 do check out thomas thomas bill.ca uh there is a petition on there there's also a a place where
00:13:21.000 i want to hear from you your stories canada there's a there's i've met dozens if not
00:13:26.200 over a hundred now of patients where they believe psilocybin changed their lives. And if that has
00:13:32.580 happened to you, please go to thomasbill.ca, sign the petition, sign up for our newsletter.
00:13:41.020 And if you have a story about psilocybin, I want to hear from you.
00:13:46.020 All right. Corey Tucker, thank you so much for coming on the show.
00:13:49.640 Thank you, Mark. We'll see you next time.
00:13:50.900 Corey is MP for Saskatoon University.
00:13:56.160 And if you enjoyed this show,
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