How ultra-progressivism juiced Canada’s fentanyl crisis.

Canada’s progressive left pushed their hard drug policies as the way. But a decade later, Canada’s streets tell a different, much deadlier story.

One of Canada's ugliest and worst-kept secrets - a massive crisis involving the production and deaths from the potent street drug fentanyl - has been thrust into the international spotlight.

Last month, the American government used the fentanyl crisis as one rationale for threatening to impose massive unjustified tariffs on Canada. This threat comes on the heels of a startling expose published by The Telegraph about fentanyl's impact on Vancouver —one of the world's wealthiest cities. Nearly two dozen graphic photos and disturbing stories brought the reality of Vancouver today to the global scene: a massive battlefield of human suffering, lives and communities destroyed in what is Canada's ground zero for its national fentanyl crisis.

As a result, many in the global community are asking how Canada, a G7 country, could have allowed such an incredibly destructive problem to explode within its borders.

The answer? A decade of ultra-progressive policies that have juiced an already deadly problem.

This history of failure must be chronicled and understood to move forward and end the crisis.

A crucial starting point for understanding the root of Canada’s fentanyl crisis can be found in Kelowna, British Columbia, last week, where Liberal leadership frontrunner Mark Carney held a fundraising event. Despite Kelowna being hard-hit by fentanyl, Carney referred to the crisis as a "challenge," downplaying the scale of the disaster. The tone and context of his comment seemed to place fentanyl as a simple problem to be classified in the same category of public policy issues as an unfilled pothole. Carney’s flippancy mirrored the Liberal government's talking point was that American border agents seize more fentanyl at the Mexico-U.S. border than at the Canadian one.

These statements culminate a decade of progressive downplaying of the magnitude of the problem posed by fentanyl. The drug, a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin, is so powerful that tiny doses can put users into zombie-like paralysis and can kill an adult within two minutes. It was practically non-existent on Canadian streets before 2012, and it dramatically surged across the country in late 2015. Since then, over 49,000 Canadians have died from opioid toxicity—more than Canada's combat losses in World War II. And that figure doesn’t capture the drug’s wider impact: families torn apart, an overstrained healthcare system, and rising crime.

So, why have Canada’s progressive leaders downplayed the problem?

That answer lies in the timing of the start of the crisis.

Fentanyl production and use dramatically spiked in Canada in late 2015, at precisely the same time that the Canadian political landscape also substantially shifted. Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won a majority government in 2015 on a farther-left progressive platform. And in 2017, an ultra-left version of the New Democratic Party led by the late John Horgan formed government at the subnational level in the province of British Columbia, a region being hard hit by the drug.

Prior to 2015, right-of-centre governments favoured a crackdown on criminal activity related to the emerging problem of fentanyl coupled with enhanced recovery programs for addicts. But Trudeau's incoming government, as well as Horgan’s in British Columbia, all had long-held beliefs that so-called harm reduction, taxpayer funded hard drugs, and effective legalization of hard drug possession were superior public policy alternatives on hard drug crime to those of their predecessors on the political right. The theory behind progressive so-called harm reduction and taxpayer funded hard drugs is that if the government provided hard drug users with spaces to inject hard drugs, provided addicts with taxpayer funded pure forms of hard drugs, and effectively legalized the possession of hard drugs, deaths would decline. So, between 2015 and 2023, these governments went on to usher in a dramatic shift away from government policy that focused on criminalizing hard drug production and trafficking.

At the federal level, the Liberal government expanded access to hard drug injection sites, ended mandatory minimum penalties for major hard drug offences, and softened bail criteria for all crimes, including those related to production and trafficking of hard drugs. Recently promoted Liberal cabinet Minister Nathaniel Erskine-Smith even went as far as to table a bill which aimed to fully legalize all hard street drugs across the country.

Then in 2021, British Columbia's NDP government formally applied for a Section 56(1) exemption under Canada's Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, requesting permission to effectively legalize possession of hard drugs - including fentanyl. In early 2022, Trudeau's federal Liberal government approved the request and allowed for a three-year pilot program. The program was expansive - the government even went as far as to set guidelines that would have allowed recreational fentanyl to be legally provided to children.

The results were deadly.

It was in 2015 when the inbox of my constituency office started filling up with concerns about fentanyl as an emerging public health emergency in my community. In southern Alberta, that year had seen a sharp rise in hospitalizations and overdoses due to the drug. Concerns didn't just come from public health officials - families in the community who had lost a loved one to the drug reached out too. So did first responders, social services professionals, and correctional services officers who now had new worries to deal with: the death and crime that accompanied the spread of fentanyl in our community, shattered families, and a deep fear of dying due to accidental exposure while on the job. Fast forward a decade later to today. As recently as December 2024, in my constituency in suburban Calgary, Calgary police made a startling discovery - enough fentanyl to kill every person in Calgary and southern Alberta.

The same story that was happening in my riding was repeating itself across the country. In the decade since the Liberals took federal office in late 2015, fentanyl addiction and deaths skyrocketed across the country, as did the establishment of illegal mega production labs. Federal Liberal softening of bail requirements and minimum sentencing emboldened criminals to continue drug production. Today, according to government reports, unlawful production of fentanyl in Canada now far exceeds domestic street supply needs, allowing for the deadly drug to be exported out of the country to places like the United States. Money laundering in Canada related to fentanyl production is now a big problem, too. Recent reports have gone as far as to suggest that Canada's allied countries have stopped sharing critical intelligence due to the government's inability and unwillingness to stop organized crime from profiting off of the drug's production and distribution.

Perhaps the most devastating proof of a decade of Liberal/progressive hard drug policy failure was a recent expose that proved that the British Columbia government knew that government-provided hard drugs like fentanyl were being diverted into the general public, likely with the help of organized crime, and even more likely, creating more addicts.

All of these facts point to one conclusion: fentanyl production and distribution had outpaced any government efforts to contain it, and tens of thousands of people were dying because of it. And yet, the federal Liberals and the British Columbia NDP still defend their policies and allow them to continue.

That’s not to say that alarm bells weren’t being raised throughout this evidence of the crisis becoming abundantly clear to the public - in fact, the opposite was true. Since 2015, Canadian journalists and opposition legislators have raised critical questions about the government's hard drug policies. Was the government-provided supply of fentanyl being diverted into the general population, further exacerbating the crisis as opposed to stemming it? Was the increased emphasis on government hard drug injection sites vis-a-vis recovery programming causing more harm than good? Were the Liberal's weakened bail and sentencing laws emboldening fentanyl producers and dealers? Why wasn't doing more to prevent the importation of the component parts of fentanyl manufacturing? What was the government doing to prevent money laundering and organized crime from profiting off fentanyl production in Canada?

But instead of addressing these questions as public health and criminal statistics clearly showed a massive surge in fentanyl addiction, crime and death, as opposed to changing course, the Liberals and their fellow travelers in provincial governments and activist circles chose to lean into their policies and gaslit anyone asking questions, labelling all such discourse as uncompassionate "misinformation." This coupling of woke cancel-culture, censorship, and failing progressive hard drug policy proliferated the problem of fentanyl. Even in recent months, with so much evidence of the failure of their policies in plain sight, advocates for ultra-progressive drug policies like taxpayer funded hard drugs still attack criticisms of policies that have long since been proven as ineffective at best and, more likely, pour accelerant on the problem.

The reasons Canada's progressive left remains committed to this policy course are twofold.

The first reason is less nefarious than the second. Progressive hard drug policy activists who still advocate for clearly failed policies often hang their hats on so-called harm-reduction data that came out of small countries like Switzerland in the early 2000s, which focused on providing taxpayer funded hard drugs and government hard drug injection sites for hard drugs like heroin. The problem is that fentanyl - orders of magnitude more powerful and lethal than hard drugs in wide circulation 20 years ago - blew the doors off these models. Today, little, if any, longitudinal data exists to prove that the progressive hard drug policies of decades gone by can mitigate the impact of fentanyl on a community. In fact, the streets of Canadian cities prove the exact opposite is true. However, progressive activists remain unwilling to consider that their policies have failed or adapt their ideological adherence to clearly apparent facts.

The second, more revolting reason for rigid progressive adherence to taxpayer funded hard drugs and so-called harm-reduction policy is politics. Progressive hard drug policies have been long-standing political wedge issues for the political left in Canada, making it difficult for politicians who have sold these policies to climb down from them. So instead of reversing course as people die in Canadian streets from fentanyl overdose, progressive activists and politicians have taken to downplaying the problem that the drug poses to Canadian health and safety.

This is why Mark Carney's comments that Canada wasn't experiencing a fentanyl "crisis" or the Liberal's assertion that the United States shouldn't be worried about fentanyl production on the other side of its northern border are so important to note. These positions callously ignore the tens of thousands of Canadians who have already lost their lives to the drug in the last decade, and also ignore the fact that it only takes a minimal amount of fentanyl to kill someone (2mg). In that, even the amount seized by American border officials last year (19.5kg) would, in theory, be enough to kill approximately 9.75 million people - more than the entire population of the Greater Toronto Area. Lack of acknowledgement of these facts does not instill confidence that the federal Liberals are serious about solving the fentanyl crisis, and likely serves to embolden the activities of the criminals who profit from it.

So what should happen now?

Last week, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre announced a sweeping set of policies to crack down on criminals who produce and distribute fentanyl and to prevent its production within Canadian borders. This announcement included a promise to impose mandatory life sentences on anyone involved in the trafficking, production and distribution of over 40 mg of fentanyl and builds on previous commitments to increase support for recovery-based treatment models. Poilievre's announcement had echoes of other jurisdictions that are tackling their fentanyl problems with a mix of enforcement and rehabilitation, not by enabling addiction under policies like providing addicts with taxpayer funded hard drugs.

This significant, common sense change in tone will undoubtedly come as a breath of fresh air to the millions of Canadians impacted by this crisis. No part of Canada remains untouched by the impact of fentanyl, so every politician and drug policy activist in Canada should have a moment of clarity about what is at stake.

Progressive politicians who continue to advocate for policies that have so clearly failed Canadians when it comes to fentanyl would be wise to take note, as well as to stop downplaying the crisis the country is in. A serious, results-driven approach to the fentanyl epidemic is needed.

Otherwise, the death toll will keep rising, and the only thing Canadian ultra-progressive political hard drug policy will be remembered for is killing tens of thousands of Canadians and successfully legalizing government negligence.