NDP says Liberal criminal drug exemption does little to attack growing crisis – APTN News
Jun 02, 2022
Liberal caucus voted against NDP private members bill to expand exemption.
The NDP says the Trudeau government’s decision to exempt possession of small amounts of hard drugs from criminal conviction in one Canadian province doesn’t go nearly far enough and it’s Indigenous people who are paying the price.
“The stats are pretty clear,” Gord Johns, who represents the riding of Courtenay—Alberni. “In my home province of British Columbia, it’s five times more likely to die (of drug overdoses) if you’re Black or Indigenous. In some cities it’s eight-fold. I just did a 12-city tour to stop the harm, to talk about my bill. And I was in Saskatoon where in Saskatchewan they went from 169 deaths in 2019 to 464 deaths last year.
“More than double in two years and more than 50 per cent of the deaths were Indigenous people.”
