Ottawa |The Conservative leader Peirre Polivere slammed the Liberals for not having yet approved B.C.'s request to scale back its drug decriminalization policy. He said his treatment-centric approach to tackle the opioid crisis would face significant challenges if he was prime minister. B.C. host Richard Zussman in Ottawa on Thursday when asked about staffing additional treatment facilities and finding space, and that’s why we need to get rid of all of the money that we’re wasting on NDP, Liberal activists, on corrupt pharmaceutical companies that are profiting off of this death and misery and put all of those resources into treatment and recovery. B.C.’s three-year drug decriminalization pilot project was thrust into the national spotlight last week when Premier David Eby requested the Criminal Code exemption be modified to allow police to intervene in illicit public drug use once again. Poilievre made this the focus of question period in the House of Commons, repeatedly asking when the change will be made. The opposition leader was ejected from the House of Commons for the day for refusing to withdraw and apologizing for saying it is a wacko policy from a wacko prime minister. Under the House standing orders, members of Parliament can’t make comments that personally disparage another member. In response, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused Poilievre of having ties to the far-right, including not distancing himself from an endorsement from Alex Jones, who lost a multi-billion dollar defamation suit for saying the Sandy Hook Elementary mass shooting did not happen. Poilievre says the B.C. pilot is being driven by radical activists, bureaucrats and pharmacists he accuses of making a fortune off the addiction crisis. So, we need to cut off those radicals and fire the people, the NDP, Liberal activists in the public health bureaucracy, who have helped cause this mayhem and enabled Trudeau and Eby to bring in a policy that has killed 2,500 people in one year alone, Poilievre said. In 2023, 2,546 British Columbians died of overdoses associated with the unregulated drug market. Fentanyl was detected in nearly 85 per cent of these deaths, with other opioids present in the bodies of 20% of the people who died. B.C. Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry recommended the province expand its prescribed safer supply program back at the beginning of February. Of the estimated 115,000 British Columbians struggling with opioid use disorder, only 4,331 have accessed the prescribed safer supply program according to Henry’s Feb. 1, 2024, report. Prior to her retirement, B.C.’s former chief coroner Lisa LaPointe said in December that expanding access to safer supply is the fastest way to reduce deaths during the crisis. Vancouver Police Deputy Chief Fiona Wilson recently testified at a parliamentary committee that police leaders in B.C. supported decriminalization but said it occurred before more extensive restrictions on public consumption could be adopted.