NightOwl

For months, columnists at outlets like The Globe and Mail and The National Post have been normalizing government policies that strip people of their autonomy and force them into treatment---all under the guise of compassion.

Some of these opinion pieces come from individuals with ties to private clinics---which stand to profit from forced abstinence policies---who fail to disclose their obvious conflicts of interest.

Despite decades of evidence showing that involuntary treatment increases harm and fails to support long-term abstinence, several provincial legislatures are proposing to forcibly "treat" people for drug use.

Research has shown that people in long-term treatment do best when they enter voluntarily and that there is no sound evidence to support coercion.

So why is the public hearing a chorus of calls to expand this failed approach?

With the increasing visibility of poverty across Canada and a toxic drug crisis that shows no signs of ending, several provincial legislatures are resorting to policies like forced treatment to deflect attention away from their own failures that created these crises in the first place.

The idea of a basic personal income in Canada gained traction after the pandemic when the government provided an emergency income benefit to millions of Canadians who lost their jobs because of COVID-19 restrictions.

NDP MP Leah Gazan introduced a private member's bill in 2021 to create a national framework for a universal basic income but the bill never made it beyond first reading.

A similar bill introduced in the Senate by Sen. Kim Pate was in the midst of being studied by a committee when Parliament was prorogued last month.

In 2021, the parliamentary budget officer published an analysis suggesting it would cost $85 billion to provide $17,000 to low-income Canadian families and would cut poverty rates in half.