Justin Trudeau tells UBC students he wants supervised injection sites across Canada

Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau has reaffirmed his support for an expansion of supervised injection services across Canada. At the same event, the would-be prime minister also restated his belief that hard drugs should not be decriminalized.

Trudeau was speaking in Vancouver at the University of British Columbia on March 4.

A few members of accredited media outlets were in attendance but not permitted to ask questions. That didn’t prevent Trudeau from getting pressed by reporters still enrolled at UBC (who did a better job with their follow-up questions than most professional journalists I’ve seen at any press conference in Vancouver in quite a while).

Much has been made about Trudeau’s promise to decriminalize marijuana if he’s elected to lead the country. And so Sam Fenn, a reporter with the Cited, asked for Trudeau’s position on the decriminalization of harder drugs.

Fenn briefly argued there is evidence the prohibition of narcotics like heroin does more harm than good and suggested Canada could decriminalize those sorts of drugs like countries such as Portugal have.

“What do you have to say about the prohibition of heroin, crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine?” Fenn asked.

“I disagree with loosening any of the prohibition on harder drugs,” Trudeau said. “I think that there is much that we can and should be doing around harm reduction. Insite is a great model of that, and I certainly want to see more safe injection sites opened around the country. And I am firm on the fact marijuana needs to be controlled and regulated and that prohibition isn’t working. But I’m not in favour of loosening restrictions on harder drugs.”

Fenn quickly followed up: “Why?”

Trudeau’s response: “Let’s get harm reduction right first. Let’s make sure that we are doing everything that we can. I don’t think that, despite some of the examples around the world, I don’t think it’s the right solution for Canada now or ever.”

Fenn again pressed him for more of an answer: “Some of the experts at, say for instance, the [B.C.] Center for Excellence [in HIV/AIDS], would say harm reduction is the end of prohibition of those drugs.”

Trudeau: “Then I’ll allow them, academics, to play with definitions. I believe in harm reduction, but I don’t believe in decriminalizing harder drugs.”

That’s more than I’ve been able to get out of Health Minister Rona Ambrose in two years.

Scroll to Top

During the Canada Post strike announced September 25, 2025, the following measures will be undertaken to minimize service disruption to BC-CfE clients and providers.

  • The BC-CfE Laboratory has transitioned to private courier for delivery of outgoing reports and documents. Results required urgently can be faxed upon request. (Lab Contact Information: Phone 604-806-8775; FAX 604-806-9463)
  • The BC-CfE Drug Treatment Program (DTP) will fax outgoing forms and documents to the provider’s office. (DTP Contact Information: Phone 604-806-8515; FAX 604-806-9044)
  • St. Paul’s Hospital Ambulatory Pharmacy has transitioned to private courier for delivery of medications. We recommend requesting medication at least 2 weeks in advance in case of delivery delays, particularly to rural/remote parts of BC. (Contact Information: Phone 1-800-547-3622; FAX 604-806-8675)

During the Canada Post strike, we recommend that documents be faxed or couriered to our sites, versus utilization of regular mail service

The BC-CfE Laboratory is streamlining reporting processes for certain tests in order to simplify distribution and record-keeping, and to ensure completeness of results. Beginning September 2, 2025, results for the ‘Resistance Analysis of HIV-1 Protease and Reverse Transcriptase’ (Protease-RT) and ‘HIV-1 Integrase Resistance Genotype’ tests will be combined into a single ‘HIV-1 Resistance Genotype Report’.
For more details and example reports, please click on the button below