Half the Ontario Liberal caucus voted with Ford to pass Bill 223. People will die.

How do you admit that something saves lives, and then oppose it anyway?

This is a sharps box, for safely disposing dirty needles. Doug Ford’s Conservatives and Bonnie Crombie’s Liberals want to close the safe consumption sites that keep these dirty needles out of schoolyards and playgrounds. | Copyright © Simon Law, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

There have been real consequences as a result of Bonnie Crombie’s right-wing coup d’etat of the Ontario Liberal Party. Massive slash-and-burn campaigns against corporate taxes and the social security net. An increase in the use of reactionary, bigoted dogwhistles like “identity politics”. But one of the worst backslides?

On December 2^nd, more than half of the Ontario Liberal caucus at Queen’s Park voted with the Ford government to pass Bill 223 and close safe consumption sites, a policy guaranteed to kill innocent people suffering from addiction.

Of the nine Liberal MPPs in Ontario, five are recorded in Hansard as providing support on the Second Reading vote on December 2^nd. The Third Reading vote was not individually recorded in Hansard, as the Ford government used majority control to have Bill 223 skip committee, and then immediately pass Third Reading that same day.

The five Liberal MPPs, who voted for Doug Ford’s anti-health and anti-science Bill 223, are:

• Stephen Blais, MPP for Orléans;

• John Fraser, MPP for Ottawa South;

• Andrea Hazell, MPP for Scarborough—Guildwood;

• Ted Hsu, MPP for Kingston and the Islands;

• and Karen McCrimmon, MPP for Kanata—Carleton.

The remaining Liberal MPPs did not have the courage to vote against Doug Ford’s bill; feckless and craven, all they could do was cower and abstain. Stephanie Bowman, Mary-Margaret McMahon, Lucille Collard, and especially Dr. Adil Shamji, who has personal experience in Toronto’s emergency rooms and knows the perils of the opioid crisis firsthand?

It doesn’t matter that I have been friendly with some of these MPPs, or that many of them employ my friends as their staff. All of them, both those who collaborated directly with Ford, and those who abstained rather than stand on principle, have failed at their job.

They have failed at the most basic, the most important duty that any leader has: the obligation to do what is right, and not just what is easy.

There is no debate about safe consumption sites; they save lives and keep people from dying. Any attempt to overcomplicate that narrative with nebulous “concerns” will never match in significance to the reality that closing safe consumption sites in Ontario means that people will die.

This should seem obvious to any compassionate, empathetic person. But in his mea culpa, posted to his own website, MPP Ted Hsu disagreed.

There has been concern expressed about Schedule 4 [of Bill 223] which puts limits on supervised consumption sites.

I and the Liberal caucus are in favour of supervised consumption sites because they save lives. Full stop.

Alright, Ted. You and the Liberal caucus fully admit that these safe consumption sites save lives. So why did you vote against saving lives?

Bill 223 still allows a government to permit supervised consumption sites to move. They should be helping existing sites move instead of just closing them. If people aren’t kept alive, they cannot receive treatment.

But the Ford government has said that’s not their intention; they have explicitly said they won’t approve new sites and want to close old ones.

Bill 223, which you voted for, removes the power of any city to request approval from the federal government for a new site, unless the province allows it, which they have said they will not.

Why is a Liberal MPP saying we should assume the best of the Conservatives, when the Conservatives have plainly stated they intend the worst?

When it’s clear to people that their personal safety is not at stake, they will be more supportive about helping those struggling with mental health and addictions.

I believe that the overwhelming majority of people in Kingston and the Islands are compassionate and want to be part of the solution – myself included – but there has to be a balance struck.

A balance between what, Ted? You’ve admitted that these sites, objectively, save lives. Yet you use subjective claims, bordering on nebulous, that the presence of an SCS makes people feel “unsafe” because of random, isolated incidents.

What kind of grotesque, aberrant logic has our caucus subscribed to, where the subjective “comfort” of a wealthy suburban homeowner comes before the objective right that human beings have to stay alive?

I don’t give a fuck if safe consumption sites make people uncomfortable! They keep innocent people from dying, and that’s the most important thing!

Every NIMBY that has ever voted for Ted should frankly be thankful about the presence of safe consumption sites in their community. After all, these sites actually make schools and playgrounds safer, by keeping drugs physically distant from our vulnerable children.

The entire point of an SCS is that people consume the substances indoors, where medical professionals can keep them alive. The drugs and the people doing the drugs are given privacy, segmented away from the open public. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement that keeps our kids safe, and keeps vulnerable adults from dying.

There is no universe in which the closure of an existing SCS will stop people from doing drugs. All it means is that instead of doing those drugs indoors, people will instead do them outdoors, which I’m sure NIMBYs will be thrilled by.

Instead of disposing their used needles into a sharps container inside the SCS, they will throw their dirty needles on the playground near the monkey bars on the jungle gym.

Do NIMBYs really believe that closing these sites, and returning to the failed status quo of the last forty years, will stop people from doing drugs? That the safe consumption sites are somehow the cause of people being addicted, rather than a place to keep those people alive?

The War on Drugs has been a complete and utter failure, but these people have the arrogance to think that they’re the exception, that criminally punishment will somehow help those with mental illness rather than make their lives even worse!

We don’t need to be polite to people who oppose harm reduction when we debate them. Our side cares about keeping innocent people alive, and their side cares about enforcing Puritanism until you enter your literal grave.

I made a commitment this year that I was going to be vocally critical of my own party when I know they’ve done something that is wrong, and that has come at a personal cost to my career as an organizer.

And yet, the idea of being silent as we adopt policies that will hurt people, is even more painful to me than the idea of remaining unemployed in my chosen field. So here I am, putting my own political faction on blast once more.

By voting for Bill 223, or choosing to abstain, every Liberal MPP in Ontario has made a choice that will cost innocent people their lives. If it makes people mad for me to say that, I don’t care.

Ontario Liberal MPPs need to stop siding with Doug Ford’s Conservatives to undermine the Federal government.

Because it’s not just pathetic; it is now a matter of life and death.