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Pierre Poilievre can’t quit the ‘Alberta model’ of drug treatment
For months now, conservative pundits and politicians have heralded the so-called “Alberta model” as the best way to address Canada’s ongoing opioid crisis and its devastating impact on families and communities across the country. Safe supply, they argued, had simply made the problem worse; Alberta’s decision to prioritize recovery over harm reduction was a better way forward. And leading that charge, of course, was Pierre Poilievre, who went out of his way to insist the growing volume of overdose deaths and drug-related crime was mostly of Justin Trudeau’s making, and that he would solve it in due course.
Well, about that. A few days ago, the government of Alberta released data showing its much-ballyhooed model wasn’t working very well. The province recorded a record-high 179 drug overdose deaths in April, a total 46 per cent higher than the year before. British Columbia, by comparison, saw a 17 per cent year-over-year increase in drug poisoning deaths. Both figures speak to the fact that the drugs circulating on our streets right now are unlike anything we’ve ever encountered before in Canada. They’re dangerous, often deadly and defy almost every attempt to control their flow and manage their impact.
One thing that should be abundantly clear by now, though, is you can’t solve this crisis with ideology. That’s certainly the lesson that Ben Perrin, a longtime conservative political insider and former adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has learned over the last few years. “I thought supervised consumption sites enabled drug use, and that giving people who were addicted a safe supply of free drugs was an insane policy,” said Perrin, who’s now a University of British Columbia law professor specializing in criminal justice and international law. “I deeply regret that I let my political ideology take the place of evidence.”
He’s not the only conservative willing to follow the evidence here. “Regardless of which party has been in government, Alberta hasn’t made a very good poster boy for Canadian drug-policy successes,” Postmedia pundit Chris Selley wrote recently. “Not for the first time, I implore those convinced by the ‘harm reduction increases harm’ narrative to think about it just a bit longer.”
Fat chance of that happening, though. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith doubled down on her approach, telling CTV’s Vassy Kapelos in a recent interview that “we’re not doing safe supply in Alberta.” Poilievre was even less willing to give any ground, repeatedly tweeting about B.C.’s ongoing challenges with addictions and homelessness and boosting op-eds that criticize the merits of safe supply and continue to tout Alberta’s abstinence-based approach. “Only treatment will bring our loved ones home drug-free.”
If only that were true. As Perrin has noted, the issues at play here are far too complex to be resolved by a single solution or strategy. “Today it’s fentanyl, tomorrow it will be something else. Unless we change our approach to how we deal with substances in society, we are going to continue to put people's safety at risk and have lives be lost.” Giving users access to non-poisonous drugs is one sure-fire way to prevent overdose and keep them alive, just as treatment is a key part of helping them return to their families, their communities and their former lives. But there’s clearly no silver bullet here, and anyone professing to have one should be treated with tremendous skepticism.
What’s needed, more than anything, is a sense of humility and a spirit of co-operation among our leaders. They need to be guided by the data, wherever it might take them, not just their own ideological convictions. They need to be willing to admit when they’re wrong and when someone else is right. And they would do well to spend less time focusing on British Columbia and Alberta, where overdose fatalities are consistently among the highest in the country, and spend more looking at why the numbers have traditionally been much lower in Quebec. What are they doing differently, and what can we learn from their experience?
Canadians, for their part, should pay especially close attention to this issue. In Poilievre, they have someone who’s applying to lead their country and whose job interview will continue to unfold over the coming months and years. Can he start treating this issue and the people it impacts most directly with the empathy and intelligence they deserve? Or will he continue weaponizing their misery for his own political purposes?
The answer to those questions will speak volumes about Poilievre’s character and competency, and they should weigh on the judgments of many Canadians when it comes time to cast a federal ballot again. We live in an age where politicians too often get away with offering simplistic solutions to complicated problems, and where social media algorithms actively punish things like nuance and deliberation in favour of contributions that inflame or provoke. But to make progress on an issue as thorny as addictions and mental health, we need leaders who are willing and able to rise above those temptations — not fall prey to them.
The Costs of Climate Change Keep Rising
To some Canadians — including, it seems, the Parliamentary Budget Officer — climate policy is all cost with no benefit. But as we’ve already seen this spring, and may well again this summer, climate change imposes its own costs on Canada — ones that don’t come with a rebate.
As a piece in the New York Times pointed out earlier this week, the impact of wildfires, flooding and other climate-driven natural disasters is already hitting the pocketbooks of Canadians, whether they realize it or not. That’s happening through rising insurance premiums, which are the result of large insurance companies passing on the cost of their ever-expanding list of insurable incidents. It’s also impacting entire sectors of the economy, from tourism to lumber mills and even — ironically — the oil and gas industry. All told, it could mean a negative 0.3 to 0.6 per cent hit to Canada’s GDP in the third quarter of this year, one we can scarcely afford right now.
Like most things climate-related, this is only going to get worse going forward. The cost may not be as obvious or transparent as the carbon tax, and it’s far more difficult for consumers to connect the dots between natural disasters and their own financial well-being. But make no mistake: those dots exist, and they disprove the notion — still widely held in Conservative circles — that climate change could actually be good for Canada. “Warming could allow for longer farming seasons and make more places attractive to live in as winters grow less harsh,” the Times’s Lydia DePillis wrote. “But it is becoming clear that increasing volatility — ice storms followed by fires followed by intense rains and now hurricanes on the Atlantic coast, uncommon so far north — wipes out any potential gains.”
Dave Sawyer, the principal economist at the Canadian Climate Institute, estimated in a report last year that climate-related costs would hit $25 billion by 2025, which would effectively reduce Canada’s economic growth by half. By mid-century, meanwhile, 500,000 jobs would be lost and the country’s already sluggish productivity growth further impaired. And make no mistake: the worse the world does at reducing emissions, the more economic pain Canadians will feel.
In other words, holding out hope (as some seem to) that the world simply won’t take climate change seriously isn’t a real strategy. “The losses in the global high-emissions scenario will be substantially higher than in the low-emissions scenario across all indicators, particularly after mid-century, driving home the imperative to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions in order to reduce costs,” the CCI report concludes.
Conservatives are welcome to continue focusing solely on the costs associated with Canada’s climate policies and keep ignoring the existence of rebates and other compensatory measures. But Canadians are also welcome to continue writing them off as a viable political option so long as they refuse to acknowledge the growing costs associated with climate change — and the price of doing nothing about it.
The New Norwailing
It was more than a decade ago that Mitchell Anderson, a journalist with The Tyee, inadvertently helped coin the phrase “Norwailing” with his 10-part series on what Canada could learn from the Nordic oil giant and its billion-dollar sovereign wealth fund. No, he didn’t actually use it himself, and his work stands up pretty darn well today. But some critics — including, yes, yours truly — thought the comparison between the country of Norway and the province of Alberta was a bit overdone and glossed over some key differences between the two places (not least the small matter of one being a subnational level of government).
Now, though, the Norwailing is coming from the political right. With the Norwegian government proceeding with a series of new oil projects worth a combined US$18 billion, Canada’s Conservative politicians are suddenly big fans of the country and its policies. Sure, they’re dead silent about the country’s 25 per cent sales tax and 78 per cent (yes, 78 per cent) marginal tax rate on oil and gas production, but they’re happy to make noise about the news that Norway is advancing on projects that will fall under those policies.
As I pointed out on Twitter, Norway’s history of economic and environmental stewardship has probably earned it the right to develop its resources, especially given their near-term necessity in helping wean Europe off Russia’s supplies. If there is such a thing as “ethical oil,” it almost certainly comes from Norway. Take the Johan Svendrup project, its massive new offshore field that produces oil with associated emissions that are 80 to 90 per cent lower than the global average (one that Canada still struggles to meet). Better still, 82 per cent of its revenues go to Norwegian citizens through both taxes and direct ownership interests.
One of my more persistent reply guys said I was being insufficiently loyal to my “local producers,” as though the oil companies in Alberta are producing artisanal jams and jellies at the local farmer’s market. He also suggested that because Norway’s production is all offshore, it actually poses a greater environmental risk than Canada’s high-carbon barrels. Small problem there: there hasn’t been a single spill of note by Norway’s oil industry in more than 40 years.
This is the problem with any Norwailing that gets done by Conservatives: it inevitably comes into contact with the realities of Norway’s oil and gas industry and the comparatively poor light it shines on Canada’s. As I’ve been saying for years now, you don’t get to talk about being the most ethical or environmentally friendly oil producer in the world — hello, Pamela Wallin — without having that claim tested against the facts. And when they come up wanting, well, you’ve just managed to spike the football in your own face.
Good News of the Week
Because there’s more than enough of the bad stuff to go around, I thought it would be helpful to highlight a more uplifting story each week in this newsletter. And there are few things more encouraging right now than the progress that’s happening with battery technology and electric vehicles.
There’s Toyota’s recent announcement that its scientists have made major progress on a solid-state battery, one that could “allow an electric vehicle to have a range of 1,200 km and charging time of 10 minutes or less.” Toyota has long been a laggard on the electric vehicle front, but few companies have the ability to change the game faster than the Japanese automaking giant.
Also on the charging front, Volvo is the latest major player to sign on to Tesla’s North American Charging Standard, one that was previously endorsed by Ford and General Motors. Electrify America, a network with more than 850 charging stations and 4,000 individual chargers in the United States and Canada, officially joined the party a few days later.
So, why did Tesla decide to open up its charging standard to potential competitors last fall? “Our mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy,” said Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla’s senior director of charging infrastructure, in a statement announcing the GM deal last year. “Giving every EV owner access to ubiquitous and reliable charging is a cornerstone of that mission.”
Amen to that. Elon Musk might be in the process of destroying Twitter, but his company’s impact on the ever-accelerating adoption of electric vehicles is impossible to ignore.
The Wrap
I’ve already said my piece about the whole Meta/Google fiasco, but I think it’s worth noting that the same people who were begging Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland to surrender to Donald Trump during the NAFTA renegotiations are the same ones suggesting Canada should fold in the face of pressure from the two tech giants. I’m going to reserve judgment on their strategy until I see what the final outcome is here — one that could very well end up looking different than it does right now.
One thing, though, should be abundantly obvious: its resolution won’t be the end of the media’s challenges in Canada. As I said in my column, we have the most difficult media market (at least, in English Canada) in the developed world. We’re going to need a bunch of different creative solutions if we want to ensure its continued existence, and the government should be careful that it isn’t just propping up the old business models at the cost of newer ones emerging in their place. What we should want isn’t some warmed-over version of our current media landscape but a revitalized and refreshed one that meets the actual needs of Canadians in as many ways and places as possible.
If you’re not being rate-limited over at Twitter you can find me there at @maxfawcett, and I always appreciate letters — well, the non-abusive ones — sent to [email protected].