LILLEY: Carney, like Trudeau, downplays fentanyl crisis

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Mark Carney told an audience of supporters in British Columbia that fentanyl isn’t a crisis in our country.

The Liberal leadership contender, and likely next prime minister of Canada, was giving a speech in Kelowna the other day when he turned to the issue of dealing with Donald Trump.

Since late November, Trump has been demanding that Canada do something about the fentanyl crisis, claiming the drug is flowing south from Canada into the United States.

“Look, fentanyl is an absolute crisis in the United States. It’s a challenge here, but it’s a crisis there,” Carney said.

While he went on to say that it is appropriate for Canada to do what we can to help the Americans deal with fentanyl going across the border, the problem is that he downplayed the fentanyl issue in this country.

Has he not looked at the stats?

In B.C. alone, 2,253 people died from opioid overdoses in 2024, almost all of it attributable to fentanyl. That number is down from the record high of 2,578 who died of opioid overdoses in 2023, but it’s up dramatically from the 370 opioid deaths in 2014 – before fentanyl took hold.

A recent federal report noted that between January 2016 and June 2024 there were a total of 49,105 overdose deaths due to opioids. That’s close to an average of 16 people per day dying from a preventable drug overdose every day for eight years.

That is a crisis.

“More Canadians have died of opioid overdoses in the last nine years than died fighting for Canada in the Second World War,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said recently. “They’re real people, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, friends, and thousands more are still suffering.”

More people dying as a result of drug overdoses than due to the Second World War is a shocking statistic. Yet Canadian officials haven’t taken this matter seriously. They’ve either ignored it or made the matter worse by handing out opioid pills that have flooded the market and made more addicts for the even more addictive and deadly fentanyl.

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Alberta Premiere Danielle Smith has taken the addictions issue seriously, taking her province in a new direction that focuses on treatment. Recently, Ontario Premier Doug Ford also started to make moves in that direction, closing down drug injection sites near schools and child care centres, and opening more treatment beds.

Fentanyl is a major issue in this country and we need to treat it as such for our own country and our own citizens, not just because Donald Trump said fentanyl is coming across the border.

The dramatic increase in gun crime since 2016 is driven by fentanyl. The increase in people wandering our cities and our communities like zombies, that is due to fentanyl.

This is a crisis, it’s just that few took notice until Donald Trump told us to clean up our border. And when he did, our elected officials said it wasn’t a problem.

“While less than 1% of the fentanyl intercepted at the U.S. border comes from Canada, any amount of fentanyl is too much,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said when appointing his fentanyl czar earlier this week.

Downplaying the problem at home, or with the Americans, is part of why we haven’t found solutions. As one business leader told me in Washington this week, fentanyl was raised in every meeting with U.S. officials as they made the rounds trying to talk tariffs.

The Americans are taking this issue seriously even if our leadership is not.

One Canadian leader has been paying attention and trying to raise the alarm though – Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

Over the last several years, Poilievre has raised questions about the opioid crisis, the government’s decision to hand out free opioid pills, and more.

He recently announced that if elected prime minister, a Poilievre government would pass legislation to require life sentences “for anyone caught, trafficking, producing, or exporting over 40 milligrams of fentanyl.”

As he pointed out, that small amount is enough to kill 20 people.

All the Trudeau Liberals have done is reduce sentences for drug and weapons trafficking in the name of equity. Given that Mark Carney doesn’t see this issue as the crisis that it is, we are unlikely to see changes if he becomes prime minister.

Canada needs a real leader who gets the problem and will seek real solutions.

blilley@postmedia.com