OUR LIVES ARE NOT PAWNS: DRUG USERS IN SURREY DECRY FEDERAL CANDIDATES PLANS TO CLOSE LIFESAVING SERVICES
SURREY, BC – To whom it may concern, we are dying.
The Surrey Union of Drug Users is appalled by the slander of lifesaving health care services for people who use drugs by federal politicians following Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leader Pierre Poilivere’s April 6th, 2025 speech at an event in New Westminster, BC - our backyard. The closure of provincially regulated overdose prevention sites (OPS) and a crackdown on federally-supported supervised consumption sites (SCS), as Poilievre has proposed, will leave us and our friends to die.
We do not expect the CPC to care about our lives, but we demand that our humanity and worthiness of evidence-based health care be centered as harm reduction is discussed by federal politicians.
Poilievre’s comments, and those of CPC candidates who have time and time again decided to align themselves with creeping far right populism in Canada, signal a fundamental and deliberate ignorance to the reality of public health evidence which proves the efficacy of overdose prevention sites. In British Columbia, more than 10,000 deaths have been prevented by supervised drug consumption and overdose response infrastructure. When these sites close, deaths are likely to follow. Despite being the second largest municipality in British Columbia, Surrey is home to just a single SCS and an OPS with capacity for two people with inadequate hours. When the expansion of services is needed most, why are harm reduction services being cut back?
We urge the voting public to consider that if governments are willing to eliminate health care services for people who use drugs - based on our status as an “immoral” class - who will be next?
Poilievre and his Conservative candidates are not and have never been serious about the truth, developing scientific evidence-based drug policy, and ending the toxic drug crisis that has killed tens of thousands of people across Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada, people who use drugs, academic experts, and clinician scientists have already concluded that OPS and SCS services are not up for debate. Poilievre’s insistence on re-litigating the fundamentals of harm reduction and clumsily stoking the fires of culture war is the agonal flailing of a collapsing campaign attempting to divide us.
Last year, we supported Moms Stop the Harm’s unanswered letter to BC NDP Attorney General Niki Sharma to demand a forensic audit into private and unregulated treatment sites, where countless harms have been documented. Poilievre has proposed a $1-billion transfer of tax dollars to this same private treatment industry, which would represent one the biggest transfers of tax dollars into privatized healthcare in the history of federal government spending. Similarly, Poilievre’s recent announcement to amend federal law to allow judges to sentence “forced treatment” showcases how he wants to use drug policy to funnel public funds into this unregulated industry.
As the CPC insists that people who use drugs are political pawns to be traded and sacrificed, Liberal leader Mark Carney has signalled his willingness to play ball with Poilievre. In his promise to undertake a review of overdose prevention services, Carney too ignores an enormous collection of scientific evidence in favour of political theatre. Instead, the federal Liberal Party has decided to abandon harm reduction and people who use drugs as part of its rightward turn – something that we saw almost cost the BC NDP the provincial election against a disorganized, upstart BC Conservative party steeped in denialism.
While we appreciate the federal New Democratic Party's support of harm reduction and Provincial Minister of Health Josie Osborne’s public defence of overdose prevention sites in our province, it is not lost on us that this defence is a matter of political expediency.
While Osborne claims to care about reducing the harms of the toxic drug crisis,to protect her government’s reputation, drug users are about to be incarcerated in BC with her party leading an expansion of so-called “secure care.” Her government has already closed and interfered to stop future overdose prevention sites, defunded peer harm reduction training programs, ordered an end to online supply distribution, rolled back decriminalization, cut patients off of prescribed safer supply, and ordered Vancouver Coastal Health to defund the hugely successful Drug User Liberation Front (DULF) while it was actively saving lives, before DULF’s compassion club was raided and founders arrested by police.
If the BC NDP was serious about standing with drug users to stop this crisis, we would be permitted back at the table with them instead of fighting Osborne’s government in court to prevent the criminalization of unhoused people who use drugs, among other battles.
If candidates for federal office in proximity to Surrey would like to break from their party-enforced positions and find out the facts about overdose prevention sites, harm reduction, and drug use, they can learn them damn quick from us. The SUDU Board of Directors will extend an invite to all candidates for federal office in and around Surrey to meet with us before April 28th. If these same candidates continue to ignore what people who use drugs want and demand for their own safety, their actions will cause material harm.
While candidates for Prime Minister attempt to stoke moral panic around one of the only health services that is available to people who use drugs, we are keeping ourselves alive. We attend meetings, check in on our friends, manage airways, administer naloxone, treat wounds, and meet with policymakers to design better, safer health care services. Accordingly and regardless of federal policy change, we will continue to run SUDUs unsanctioned, pop-up OPS where it is needed in our community for however long it is needed.
Surrey’s candidates for federal office are welcome to join us in-person or through their actions in seriously resisting the toxic drug crisis. If they do not, they are adding their names to the collective death certificate of over 16,000 people.
Media Contacts:
SUDU Board of Directors
Email: sudu@sudu.ca
Anmol Swaich, MSc
Executive Director
Surrey Union of Drug Users
Aaron Bailey, MSc
Community Organizer, Research & Policy Committee
Surrey Union of Drug Users
aaron.robert.bailey@gmail.com
