In December 2022, Conservative Party of Canada Leader Pierre Poilievre wrote in a National Post op-ed, “People struggling with addiction belong in treatment, not prison.” Last week, he unashamedly called for many of those same people to be imprisoned for life.
It was a stunning culmination of Poilievre’s opposition to drug decriminalization and harm reduction policies, including supervised consumption sites (which Poilievre referred to as “drug dens”) and prescribed alternative drug programs.
Otherwise, according to Vancouver criminal defence lawyer Kyla Lee, Poilievre’s proposal will bog down the courts far more than just the simple addition of more cases.
“The more you increase mandatory minimum sentences and the higher they are, the more you motivate an accused person to pursue every possible angle and argument in their defence. The result of that is that you take a trial that could ordinarily be completed in a day or two and turn it into a multi-week marathon, all over a personal-use amount of fentanyl,” Lee said.
