In January 2025, CDPC made a submission to the Ontario government’s request for public comment on Bill 242, the Safer Municipalities Act, 2024 – Restricting Public Consumption of…
Getting to Tomorrow: 7 Actions to End the Unregulated Drug Crisis
(Le français suite) Download Final Report (EN) In fall 2020, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition launched a three-year cross-Canada project to engage with those most impacted by current drug…
Joint Factum Submission of CDPC, AIDQ, and HRNA for Supreme Court of Canada Appeal on Good Samaritan Law
Download the English Submission. Download the French Submission. Paul Wilson stayed at the scene of an overdose. He and another person performed CPR, called 911 and waited…
Submission to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women: Review of Canada at 89th Session
In collaboration with HIV Legal Network, CDPC made a submission to the 89th session of CEDAW – the independent international human rights committee of experts that monitors…
Submission to the Canada Gazette, Part I, Volume 158, Number 22: Controlled Substances Regulations
Download PDF On June 1, 2024, Health Canada published a Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement for the proposed Controlled Substances Regulations (CSR) in the Canada Gazette, Part I. The regulatory proposal was…
67th Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs: Decriminalization as a Public Health and Human Rights Approach to Drug Policy
At the recent 67th Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition co-sponsored and spoke on a panel titled: Decriminalization as a Public…
Submission to the HESA Committee Study on “Opioid Epidemic and Toxic Drug Crisis in Canada”
The Canadian Drug Policy Coalition submitted a brief on January 10, 2024. The submission focused on changes to the unregulated drug supply and made the core recommendation to regulate all currently illicit drugs. The brief also discussed the disproportionate impacts to Indigenous, Black, and racialized people, problems with involuntary treatment, public support for human rights and public health approaches, and the recommendation to declare a national public health emergency from HESA’s own 2016 study on “The Opioid Crisis in Canada”.
Submission to Health Canada on a proposal to control the derivatives and analogues of 4-piperidone and its salts under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act
The Canadian Drug Policy Coalition made a submission that considered the existing legal framework, lessons from previous and ongoing scheduling of substances, and concerns about the health and societal risks created by the existing regulatory environment. The submission noted that the persistent and growing scheduling of substances and pre-cursors does not achieve the intended outcome of reducing the use of substances and has unintended negative consequences, especially for people who use drugs, and encouraged a more fulsome discussion of the models and options available to regulate all substances, drawing on lessons learned from other public health policy issues.
“Innovating Beyond Exclusively Medicalized Approaches” Policy Brief and Recommendations
The Canadian Civil Society Advancing Safe Supply Working Group is a coalition of national, provincial, territorial and regional stakeholders with expertise in drug use, policy, research, and medical and non-medical models of safe supply. This policy brief articulates the limitations of, and the harms of over-emphasizing, medicalized models for safe supply, and proposes recommendations for advancing non-medicalized models for the supply, distribution, and access to safer alternatives to the increasingly toxic unregulated drug supply.
