Pierre Poilievre on Friday called on Justin Trudeau’s government to close Maison Benoît Labre, a supervised inhalation site that opened its doors last November in the Saint-Henri district of Montreal and which poses cohabitation issues with the nearby elementary school.
While in Montreal, the Conservative leader indicated that if his party were to come to power, it would not only put an end to the activities of the Maison Benoît Labre, but also to supervised injection sites located near schools elsewhere in the country by withdrawing their funding. He considers it unacceptable to force students at the Victor-Rousselot school to have to regularly rub shoulders with hard drug users and to witness indecent acts near the Maison Benoît Labre.
“Montrealers don’t [se sentent] safer on their once safe streets because homelessness, crime, chaos, drug addiction have become commonplace,” he said, criticizing the Liberal government and Mayor Valérie Plante for limiting themselves to saying that Montrealers should learn to live with these issues. “It’s ridiculous,” he said.
According to him, these types of services only increase the use of hard drugs. Asked what solutions he would put in place to ensure services to help drug users, Pierre Poilievre replied that he would redirect federal funding to treatment services so that drug users can free themselves from their addiction. “We are going to ban hard drugs. We are going to stop giving taxpayers’ money to fund drugs and we are going to invest in treatment to allow people to break their addiction,” he said.
Last May, the mayor of the Sud-Ouest borough, Benoit Dorais, stated that the city and the borough were closely monitoring the situation with the SPVM and the mobile mediation and social intervention team (ÉMMIS). He then specified that the development of the land adjacent to the Maison Benoît Labre would calm the situation. “We understand that it’s not easy to live with, but there have never been so many people around supporting the resource,” he said. “I understand that sometimes, it’s insecure.”
This is not the first time that Pierre Poilievre has spoken out on the Maison Benoît Labre case. In June, he wrote to federal Health Minister Mark Holland asking him to refuse or revoke the exemption granted by the government to the supervised inhalation site.