True Patriot Love - Decriminalization in Vancouver - Delivering What Canadians Were Promised？

00:00:00.000 Hi, and thanks for joining us. This is True Patriot Love, TPL Media. I'm Mike. Please don't

00:00:09.440 hesitate to visit us at TPL Media or download our fancy schmancy app. You can find it on the App

00:00:15.340 Store and also at the Google Play Store. And you'll want to get that because every day we come

00:00:20.280 out with new content, podcasts that are focused on Canadian discussion, like we're going to have

00:00:25.080 today, in fact. And to do that, I came up with a topic that's been sort of on my mind, and I think

00:00:31.120 many Canadians mind, certainly in the West Coast, and asked our very own Jeremy Grimaldi to chime in

00:00:37.000 on it with me. Jeremy, thanks so much for joining us today. Yeah, it's great to be here. If you don't

00:00:41.720 know Jeremy, he is often referred to as one of Canada's last remaining real journalists, and he

00:00:48.120 focuses on crime among many things, but always with an eye on what's happening here in Canada

00:00:54.220 from a crime perspective. Thanks, man. I appreciate this. So today, let me read this

00:00:58.260 to you, if I may. This might get us going. A conversation started that I wrote down this

00:01:02.120 morning. Pardon my grammar. Decriminalization may reduce stigma and arrests, but if overdoses

00:01:10.100 and deaths caused by overdose remain high, public disorder rises and treatment access lags, then

00:01:16.640 the policy isn't delivering what Canadians were promised when we started these safe injection

00:01:21.740 sites and decriminalization of drugs, certainly in Vancouver. And what was my opening thought

00:01:28.400 on this, Jeremy?

00:01:33.060 That was your opening thought? Yeah, I'm really of two minds, and I dare say that it's one of

00:01:44.160 those issues that it's a real knuckle puck. I don't know how you'd go about dealing with

00:01:53.080 it. This has been tried. I think at this point, it may be time to try something else. But I think

00:02:03.820 when this sort of tactic won out, we weren't in COVID, and COVID's changed the game. And I really

00:02:14.740 think that since COVID, the game's changed, and I think it needs to be looked at again. And again,

00:02:21.760 I'm not in favor of one side or the other. What I do know is that drugs have changed as well.

00:02:31.140 Fentanyl has entered into the system, the stream, if you will. And again, it's changed the game. COVID

00:02:39.320 changed the game. And I don't know if it's working. I don't believe it is working. You know, you want

00:02:47.520 to be fair to everyone, especially because I think we can all agree that abusers, users of drugs are in

00:02:59.280 pain, they're, they're hurt in some way. And, and they're trying to relieve their pain. So to

00:03:06.320 criminalize it, it seems wrong. Having said that, you look at some of the some of the cities in the

00:03:14.860 United States, and what's happened since they've gone to the progressive side of things. It's it's

00:03:23.720 seems to have spiraled out of control a little bit. And I don't want that to happen in Canada.

00:03:28.260 So I just feel like a different tactic needs to be instituted.

00:03:33.800 Well, the one tactic that has been tried for sure is in Vancouver, safe injection sites and

00:03:39.840 decriminalization has become a part of the problem or part of the solution that they thought for this

00:03:44.880 problem. But having said that, you know, 40,000 overdoses, 80% of those showed fentanyl in the

00:03:53.680 mix. So you're right, the drugs have changed. And in a short time since COVID, with real verace,

00:04:00.940 you know, a voracious attack on society, fentanyl has shown up even more than we, I guess,

00:04:09.440 ever anticipated or certainly ever wanted. But the problem that I have with this is, if BC still

00:04:15.840 records some of the highest overdose death rates in Canada, is this really working? I mean, is that

00:04:22.500 system working? And so like you, that's one approach to it, that we will work with the people that are

00:04:29.080 suffering. And I would agree with you, I think that, you know, drug use is is endemic of mental

00:04:35.020 health issues, struggle and pain. So we don't want people going through more struggle and more pain.

00:04:41.840 However, we also don't want to aid them in going further down that horrible rabbit hole of drug

00:04:48.720 abuse. So now you mentioned beforehand, Alberta had a really forceful hand in this. 1.00

00:04:56.720 Yeah, and I, I mean, this is there's been a backlash against this, this, this way of dealing with

00:05:02.980 things. And I get it. No one wants to force things on people. Because another old sort of adage or

00:05:13.080 thought process is that people can't get help until they're ready to get help. So forcing them into drug

00:05:20.520 rehab, seems like you're seems like you're kind of setting them up to fail in many ways. And, and

00:05:30.100 these are things that you have to consider when you when you have an approach having said all that,

00:05:37.720 trying something new, especially in in in this, this part of our, the way we administer help to

00:05:47.600 these people. You know, you can't sort of ignore that, because I feel like the problem is spiraled out

00:05:55.900 of control. And everyone's afraid to talk about it, because, because it involves a strategy that

00:06:04.580 we've attempted that we all seem to sort of agree on. But seems like it's failed. So, so you're,

00:06:12.480 you're sort of caught in limbo here. You don't want to say that we did kind of choose this we,

00:06:18.280 there was many ways that decriminalization and in British Columbia could have been voted down,

00:06:24.740 it could have been reversed. But, you know, Canadians, we got behind what we thought would

00:06:29.480 be a solution for people in society that we should be caring for.

00:06:35.040 Yeah. And, and, and, you know, you look at what happened. I don't know if you know the case of

00:06:40.400 Portugal, they decriminalized drugs, and, and it, it worked for a long time. But even there,

00:06:49.280 things have changed since COVID. And, and since, since new drugs have hit the streets, manmade drugs,

00:06:55.840 which aren't, aren't the same as the way drugs used to be. And in a lot of ways, they've become

00:07:04.220 more addictive, they become, they become more addictive, but they've also become a lot more

00:07:11.140 painful to the, to those who use the drugs, and those who suffer from the crime as a result of those

00:07:17.100 drugs. It's funny that you say this, because one of the things that is, it also becomes endemic of

00:07:23.640 having decriminalized is that it makes the position of somebody on the streets of an easier transition.

00:07:33.960 So now we have people gravitating to the streets, you know, fentanyl causing these problems where you

00:07:41.240 see people just hunched over in and unable to react to anything, we have people overdoing. Calgary was

00:07:50.000 the example, actually, that came to my mind when I was thinking about this. You know, I thought,

00:07:54.700 well, Vancouver tried it this way. And Calgary did it a completely different way. And I had a chance to

00:08:00.780 speak to the police a few weeks ago out in Calgary when I was there. And I actually approached them on

00:08:06.060 the street, Jeremy, and my conversation was, wow, I was here in October. Here I am back, you know,

00:08:14.400 in the new year, just weeks later, essentially. And there was such a difference to what was visible

00:08:21.720 on the street, and what drug use and, you know, apparent crime would be possible, seemed to have

00:08:29.820 dissipated or disappeared entirely after they did a mass arrest to get people off the streets and get

00:08:35.520 them into treatment.

00:08:37.960 Yeah. And again, this is this is some of the stuff that a lot of people have are two minds about,

00:08:44.220 right? Anytime you go into a park, and there's homeless encampments, and drug users and people

00:08:52.100 with mental health problems, you may feel a certain way that something needs to be done. Now, watching your

00:08:59.820 local six o'clock news, when the police move into to disturb, disrupt, remove the encampments,

00:09:09.460 you may have a different feeling when watching images of police doing doing these things.

00:09:15.320 And I think this is what this is, this is what we're what as Canadians were feeling torn about,

00:09:23.060 forcing people heavy handedness towards people who are vulnerable, people who have been left behind

00:09:29.640 by society, people who can't go anywhere to get help. So we've we've sort of removed all the the the

00:09:37.440 systems for them to get help. We've left them stranded. And now we're criminalizing them for

00:09:44.100 doing what any human would do is to find shelter in in public places. So you really it's a real

00:09:53.100 quandary. And I don't know what to do about it. But I feel like a different tact should be should be,

00:10:00.660 you know, given a chance because we're at sort of a, I would say we're at a crisis, but but no one wants

00:10:08.140 to say that because of a whole slew of things that we've already spoken about. Next to my house is a

00:10:15.260 retirement community. And it's a it's run by the region. And I have some really amazing neighbors

00:10:22.380 there. Many of them are in their 70s and 80s, trying to stay active. And they're just wonderful

00:10:27.720 people. Sometimes they make comments on what I should be doing with my yard. But that's, that's

00:10:32.940 fine. If you told me that the region was going to move these people out and put a safe injection site 0.99

00:10:38.120 next to my house, I would literally have a nervous breakdown, Jeremy, I'm being honest with you,

00:10:42.060 because the result of this in other cities is destruction of the parks, the drug use and

00:10:50.560 drug abuse and drug sale. And in some cases, violent interactions happen in places where those parks,

00:10:58.320 schools, and you know, your average, everyday neighborhood, suddenly, it's turned upside down.

00:11:04.640 I have to take that position, because there are people in Canada that just experienced that they're

00:11:11.740 experiencing it in Toronto. You know, where drug dealers are even being spotted inside the

00:11:17.800 facilities, I understand, allegedly, our lawyers asked me to say that. But, you know,

00:11:25.340 there is this obvious problem that comes with this kind of treatment that is meant to be caring and

00:11:30.960 loving and embracing. And you're right, I think this is the quandary that Canadians have, I certainly do. 0.99

00:11:37.140 I feel it in my bones that there must be a hybrid of this. And I wonder, really, when I spoke to the

00:11:43.920 police in Calgary, and by the way, hats off to them. Because what the police force did was they put a

00:11:49.040 group together that has a social worker, it has a medical attendant, and experienced police, nobody

00:11:56.700 under the age of 40 in this group. So you have a kinder, gentler, more understanding, more experienced

00:12:03.000 officer of the law, alongside medical and social work. And that's how this is now handled on the streets

00:12:13.220 of Calgary. I promise you that it was a notable difference. And so I don't know if it was really

00:12:20.740 as heavy handed as we feel that it was. And I'd love to get more comment on that. But what I did

00:12:25.700 notice was a difference on the streets. I mean, it was highly noticeable, man.

00:12:30.680 Yeah, I and part of my feeling towards taking a different approach is it is rooted in the fact that

00:12:38.840 the problem, if left alone, again, I don't know statistics, I know that if left alone, the problem is just

00:12:48.060 going to get worse. So I, you know, if you if you leave it alone, it's destructive to the person, the

00:12:57.460 individual, it's destructive to the community, it's destructive to society. And most important, it's

00:13:04.040 spiritually destructive to us as human beings, to allow people in pain to wander the streets in the 0.61

00:13:10.920 freezing cold. And I just, you know, we're all humans. And especially since COVID, I think we all

00:13:18.100 understand that things are tenuous. Our mental health is tenuous, our ability to pay the rent to pay

00:13:25.740 our mortgages to stay home and housed. It's all tenuous, and it's getting more tenuous. So so no one wants

00:13:33.560 to have a heavy hand. But I don't think it's the situation's untenable.

00:13:40.040 Yeah, I agree with you. It just feels now that we need to do something. And so somewhere along the way,

00:13:44.600 and the reason I bring this, this conversation for you and I to chat about is because inevitably,

00:13:50.700 drugs are crime, how they get into the country, how we distribute them. We just had Sam Cooper on,

00:13:57.040 as you know, talking about how fentanyl has, you know, seeped into every part of Canadian life,

00:14:05.380 whether it's financially, through the drug trade, through people on the street or people in their

00:14:11.080 homes becoming addicted to these drugs. It is a crime that is really feeding the lowest common

00:14:19.240 denominator in society, somebody who is hurt, challenged by their living situation. BC overdosed

00:14:27.320 deaths right among the highest in the G7. That's a stat that got me as well. You know, on the global

00:14:34.200 scene, we should be doing something. And I think, and maybe you can talk to this, this is this has

00:14:39.080 happened in many preventative things that we try in this country and other countries, too. And I think

00:14:43.840 Portugal is in the middle of this, we did this thing where we created a law before the system was

00:14:50.320 ready to be put into place. The treatment options, the, you know, the way to approach the neighborhoods,

00:14:57.560 the way to set these up, the way to decriminalize, all of that seemed to happen out of order a little

00:15:05.420 bit. And that's left people on the streets, like in Vancouver, you know, the most overdoses in the G7.

00:15:13.840 Yeah, and you, you, you know, I don't know about you, but if you're ever on social media, and I guess

00:15:22.800 it's, it's sort of become the thing to maybe ignore the problem. Let's just sort of see them, recognize

00:15:30.960 them, but don't do anything about it. Right. And then you go on social media, and sometimes you'll have a

00:15:37.200 a user or an influencer or whatever walk down Vancouver Skid Row East End. And you see this sort

00:15:46.720 of pain and suffering there. And you're just taken aback thinking, this is the solution we've come up

00:15:52.800 with. This is what our plan is, just to allow people to live like this. It's even, it's far worse in LA

00:16:01.760 and in Seattle and Oregon. And so you kind of just wonder, you know, we did come, I think we came to a

00:16:11.600 sort of collective idea that, that we should allow people the ability to, to ingest drugs safely and

00:16:22.320 securely. But I don't know if anyone signed up for the implication. And the implication, before COVID was

00:16:30.600 one thing, I think maybe that was more manageable. But since COVID, it's, it's become, in my opinion,

00:16:37.280 unmanageable. And yeah, I feel like something should be done.

00:16:43.600 This is a really interesting quote. And I read this, I think, in the Star the other day.

00:16:49.200 This isn't harm reduction, it's harm displacement. You can't decriminalize addiction

00:16:53.760 and underfund recovery. That is the truth. You can't normalize use and rational treatment.

00:17:00.400 That's also very true, I think. Yeah. And, and, you know, I don't know if it's naive or,

00:17:09.440 or silly of me to, to, to speak as a father and as a parent, but this goes against any rule,

00:17:17.520 you know, as a father or a parent, you can't allow your, your children, not, not that these people are

00:17:24.480 are our children, but there, there are, there are countrymen or, and women, but you can't allow 0.99

00:17:30.560 individuals to keep harming themselves over and over and, and, and, and especially people in pain

00:17:37.600 and, and expect the situation to get worse, to get better. I mean,

00:17:42.400 Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Common sense says it's going to get worse and it does. So to do it is inhumane.

00:17:49.920 The, it's so funny you say that the last line in this quote is compassion without

00:17:54.320 system isn't compassion. It's abandonment. And that's kind of what it feels like to me. We,

00:18:01.600 we set up these people to be abandoned. Um, and the harder, you know, the harder route is not

00:18:09.680 necessarily fun, like you point out, but I think something needs to be done here. I don't know that

00:18:14.480 this is working and I hope it doesn't spread across the country as a policy or a model because

00:18:19.920 the model has put Vancouver into a dumpster fire. Yeah. And it's, and, and the, the, the saddest

00:18:28.000 part or the worst part is that it's not, it's not polite society doesn't discuss this problem

00:18:35.920 because you sound, um, like an uneducated, uh, not a bigot, but someone, someone who just,

00:18:43.760 who, who sits up on his high horse, because, you know, if, if you're someone who has housing

00:18:49.600 and say, Oh, I don't want them in my park, I don't want them, uh, walking around and screaming and, and,

00:18:56.000 and, and, and threatening people as they walk down the street, you, you, you look, you look heartless.

00:19:01.840 So the problem doesn't get discussed and in turn doesn't get dealt with.

00:19:06.720 I hope that we come up with a solution here. Um, and by the way, I would recommend you use

00:19:10.640 the comments. If there's something you've seen around the world or a suggestion that you have,

00:19:15.680 I promise you we'll revisit this because this is a model that is trying to be replicated.

00:19:20.560 It is trying to reproduce itself. And before it does, I really think we need to have some discussion.

00:19:25.680 For example, maybe there's some countries in this world that really are dealing with this

00:19:30.480 and they're getting opioid addiction off the streets and under control and getting people back to living.

00:19:36.240 Maybe we need to create the right think tank to do that as a nation and, uh, stop experimenting.

00:19:42.880 Jeremy, I can't believe that I dragged you into a conversation about this, but I think it's important.

00:19:47.120 Uh, and, and you know, it's interesting, but I, I picked the people that I speak to about these

00:19:51.440 things internally and you seem like a really good fit for this because I know that you have that

00:19:56.640 compassion within you. It reads on you and also that you see the ramifications every day doing what you do.

00:20:04.160 So I really appreciate this.

00:20:05.920 Yeah, it's, it's great to be here and it's great to talk about something that's under discussed.

00:20:11.360 All right. Well, listen, we'll, uh, encourage you to reach out. Jeremy, where can people find out

00:20:15.280 more about what you're writing and what you're following?

00:20:16.960 Um, you can find, you can find out about me, uh, through, uh, Metroland tour star. Um, so you can,

00:20:24.720 you can Google my name and, uh, you'll find all my stories. There's also a, um, an email notification

00:20:30.800 when one of my stories comes up, if you're interested.

00:20:33.120 Oh, that's a good way to do it. All right. Well, thank you so much. Uh, speaking of which,

00:20:37.600 don't hesitate to support what we're doing here. You can go to tplmedia.ca, subscribe there,

00:20:43.120 and maybe even sign up and help keep the wheels on the cart here. Thanks. We'll see you next time.

True Patriot Love - March 01, 2026

Decriminalization in Vancouver - Delivering What Canadians Were Promised？

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