Check It Out: How did we get here?
By Joan Janzen
Two kids biking in an unfamiliar neighbourhood said, “We could be lost and not even know it.” Canadians could also be lost and misled and not even know it.
In the documentary ‘The Deadliest Scandal in Canadian History,’ Aaron Gunn explained the journey which led to more than 50,000 opioid deaths in Canada over the past ten years. The number accounts for more casualties than during the Second World War, while violent crime has gone up 50% in Canada since 2015. He asked one simple question: “How did we get here?”
When first responders became overwhelmed with the drug crisis, Ottawa came under pressure. Faced with a crisis, NDP and Liberals responded by decriminalizing the possession of 2.5 grams of illicit drugs for personal use, which were not confiscated.
The plan was to reduce the stigma of using these substances and to normalize drug use in public. The Surrey MLA said the police were powerless because it wasn’t illegal to use drugs in public places.
Sam Sullivan, former mayor of Vancouver, said with the help of government grants, addicts were put in one place and isolated from the rest of the population. “This created a nightmare,” he observed. Soon every small town had a downtown east side. “It was a failure of government policy.” Although BC has 14 percent of Canada’s population, it had 32% of Canada’s total amount of overdoses.
The four pillars of addiction treatment are prevention, harm reduction, treatment and law enforcement. However the government’s solution was based solely on harm reduction. A Globe and Mail Heading read: “As physicians, the ‘safe supply’ of opioids is one of the best tools we have to tackle Canada’s drug-poisoning crisis.”
This led to kiosks of drug paraphanelia providing crack pipes and videos of how to use them. In the documentary, a BC woman from the Fraser region observed: “How far have we fallen as a country - from one that would hide cigarettes behind a curtain to one that would give you a crack pipe in a vending machine?”
Dr. Michael Lester, a Toronto addictions physician, described safe supply as handing out Dilaudid, a very powerful opioid. Addicts were given 25 eight-milligram tablets per day. For perspective, he said a cancer patient is given 3 milligrams a day for pain, while addicts were given hundreds of milligrams a day. Dilaudid isn’t as powerful as fentanyl, but it’s highly addictive, and you can overdose from it, as well as transition to using something stronger.
Dr. Keith Humphreys, professor at Stanford University, said there’s been a change in the way people think about harm reduction. Drug use is considered a right, no different than any other lifestyle choice.
Aaron Gunn talked about safe supply to David, an outreach worker and former addict. “They’re not stopping, they’re just trading their safe supply for fentanyl. If anything they’re using more fentanyl because now they have the means to buy it,” he explained. “The government has literally flooded our streets with drugs so much so that the price has collapsed making it even more attainable to drug users.”
When the Mayor of Port Coquitlam started communicating to the province that this was a problem he received backlash from the media.
And the government responded by Investing a lot more in safe supply.
When results of this devastating experiment began to be revealed, the media denied it, the government covered it up and issued a gag order on RCMP.
In a series of drug busts, RCMP found prescription pills including dillies (Dilaudid) in big seizures in Prince George and Campbell River. However the government still wouldn’t admit it was a problem.
Meanwhile, police in London, Ontario, finally admitted the pills were being used as currency for fentanyl. London had safe supply since 2016; by 2023 RCMP seized 30,000 pills … the equivalent of 10,000 overdoses.
Dr.Jenny Melamed, who has watched the industry for 20 years, said some of the former policymakers now own heroin fentanyl companies.
Calla Barnett, a community activist in Ottawa said, “It looks like business owners have set up not-for-profit corporations in order to receive federal monies to fund their businesses, and that business is handing out addictive opioids.”
Aaron interviewed Greg Sword whose 14-year-old daughter died of an overdose. When she first overdosed at the age of 13, he turned to the BC Government for help. A psychiatrist wouldn’t allow him in the room when she was examined, and promptly reported there was nothing wrong with her. Months later she went to East Vancouver, picked up free dillies at a pharmacy and fatally overdosed. “How do you deal with the biggest drug dealer when it’s your own government?” Greg asked.
The Vancouver Sun reported, after facing mounting pressure, on Feb 19, 2025, the BC NDP government finally admitted that a “substantial amount” of government-prescribed safe supply was being diverted, and that the diverted drugs were being trafficked provincially, nationally and internationally by organized crime. They announced an immediate end to their experimental “unwitnessed safe supply” program. Sixty pharmacies are now under investigation for offering illegal kickbacks to addicts with safe supply prescriptions.
It’s a step in the right direction but of little consolation to the families of the 50,000 Canadians who died from drug overdoses since 2015. Meanwhile, Ontario’s safe supply program continues to this day. In fact a Feb. 27 headline in London, Ontario read: “Look to safe supply research, not disinformation campaigns, London doctor pleads with Ottawa”.
Aaron Gunn interviewed a London resident who made the following observation: “London police officers, employed with taxpayer money, are removing opioids from the streets that have been provided by the Canadian government. And if that’s not madness, I don’t know what is.” After reviewing this condensed summary of Aaron Gunn’s documentary, you may be beginning to see how Canadians can be lost and misled.