Liberal MP Majid Jowhari

From LifeSiteNews

By  Clare Marie Merkowsky

Liberal Members of Parliament (MPs) resisted a motion to disclose payments made to pharmaceutical companies for “safe supply” opioids.

During a May 15 session in the House of Commons, Liberal MPs blocked a vote on a motion by Conservative MP Garnett Genuis to publish the contacts between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government and pharmaceutical companies for “safe supply” opioids.

“Allow the public to see the contracts,” Genuis told the Commons government operations committee, questioning, “What do you have to be afraid of?”

“There are contracts involving this government and big pharmaceutical companies involved in producing and selling dangerous hard drugs which then end up on our streets,” he argued.

“Big pharmaceutical companies are involved in supplying hard drugs that are used as part of the government’s so-called ‘safe supply’ program,” Genuis continued. “These programs are a failure. We oppose them. In any event, we believe the public has a right to see the contracts.”

However, a committee vote on his motion was quickly blocked by Liberal MPs.

“I don’t think this is a motion we should move forward with,” Liberal MP Majid Jowhari said.

“I think we should go back and look at it and say our objective is to get an understanding of the source of safe supply and how it is being procured, which is different than going and saying, ‘Give us all the contracts,’” he continued.

Similarly, Liberal MP Irek Kusmierczyk claimed the request was a political tactic, saying, “They are against safe supply and safe consumption sites. That is clearly spelled out by my Conservative colleagues.”

Genuis’ request comes as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) testified in April that Trudeau’s taxpayer funded “safer supply” drugs are being diverted to the black market.

“Organized crime groups are trafficking not only illicit substances but any prescription drugs they can get their hands on,” Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald, commander of the RCMP in British Columbia, testified.

Genuis put forward a motion asking that the committee “order the production of all contracts, agreements or memoranda of understanding to which the Government of Canada is a party signed since January 1, 2016” concerning the purchase of opioids.

Liberals’ refusal to release the contracts comes as the Trudeau government recently rejected a proposal from the Alberta government to add a “unique chemical identifier” to drugs offered to users under “safe-supply” programs so that authorities could track its street sales.

Indeed, the Trudeau government seems determined to pretend their “safe-supply” programs are a success despite the rising deaths and crime in cities that have adopted their policy.

However, the program proved such a disaster in British Columbia that the province recently requested Trudeau recriminalize drugs in public spaces. Nearly two weeks later, the Trudeau government announced it would “immediately” end the province’s drug program.

Beginning in early 2023, Trudeau’s federal policy, in effect, decriminalized hard drugs on a trial-run basis in British Columbia.

Under the policy, the federal government began allowing people within the province to possess up to 2.5 grams of hard drugs without criminal penalty, but selling drugs remained a crime.

Since being implemented, the province’s drug policy has been widely criticized, especially after it was found that the province broke three different drug-related overdose records in the first month the new law was in effect.

The effects of decriminalizing hard drugs in various parts of Canada has been exposed in Aaron Gunn’s recent documentary, Canada is Dying, and in U.K. Telegraph journalist Steven Edginton’s mini-documentary, Canada’s Woke Nightmare: A Warning to the West.

Gunn says he documents the “general societal chaos and explosion of drug use in every major Canadian city.”

“Overdose deaths are up 1,000 percent in the last 10 years,” he said in his film, adding that “(e)very day in Vancouver four people are randomly attacked.”

Dr. Hilary Cass, author of the Cass Review

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The typically left-wing New York Times published an interview on Monday with consultant pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass on her comprehensive review of so-called “gender medicine” in the United Kingdom, indicating that awareness of the damage due to surgical and chemical “transitioning” continues to spread despite the best efforts of LGBT activists.

Released in April, 366-page Cass Review was commissioned by National Health Service (NHS) England following ongoing scandals about the practices of British “gender clinics” such as the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), operated by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. The four-year project consisted of comprehensive reviews of current research and international standards, as well as extensive interviews with gender-confused children and adults, family members, detransitioners, doctors, and activists.

It found that “gender medicine” is “built on shaky foundations” and that while such interventions require a great deal of caution, “quite the reverse happened in the field of [so-called] gender care for children,” and that “[w]hile a considerable amount of research has been published in this field, systematic evidence reviews demonstrated the poor quality of the published studies, meaning there is not a reliable evidence base upon which to make clinical decisions, or for children and their families to make informed choices.” Her findings led NHS to stop prescribing puberty blockers to children with gender confusion earlier this year.

Speaking to the Times, Cass explained that she was planning her retirement when she was first asked to tackle the project and was initially apprehensive about wading into the controversy.

“The most important concern for me is just how poor the evidence base is in this area,” she said. “Some people have questioned, ‘Did we set a higher bar for this group of young people?’ We absolutely didn’t. The real problem is that the evidence is very weak compared to many other areas of pediatric practice.”

The Times acknowledged that her “findings are in line with several European countries that have limited the treatments [sic] after scientific reviews. But in America, where nearly two dozen states have banned the care outright, medical groups have endorsed the treatments as evidence-based and necessary,” including groups the paper contacted for its latest story. Cass described American medical consensus as “out of date” on the issue.

“When I was president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, we did some great work with the A.A.P. [American Academy of Pediatrics],” she elaborated. “They are an organization that I have enormous respect for. But I respectfully disagree with them on holding on to a position that is now demonstrated to be out of date by multiple systematic reviews.”

“It wouldn’t be too much of a problem if people were saying ‘This is clinical consensus and we’re not sure,” she added. “But what some organizations are doing is doubling down on saying the evidence is good. And I think that’s where you’re misleading the public. You need to be honest about the strength of the evidence and say what you’re going to do to improve it.”

A significant body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them.

Studies find that more than 80% of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that even full “reassignment” surgery often fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide — and may even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.

Yet while mounting evidence against youth “gender transitions” is prompting European nations such as the United Kingdom and France, which are normally to the left of America, to move away from the practice, in America, the medical establishment and the Biden administration continues to dig in their heels, despite Biden’s own Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) releasing a since-deleted report last year acknowledging that “lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults are more likely than straight adults to use substances, experience mental health conditions including major depressive episodes, and experience serious thoughts of suicide.”

The White House’s comprehensive pursuit of the transgender agenda has included reopening the military to recruits afflicted with gender dysphoria, promoting gender ideology within the military (including “diversity” and drag events on military bases), holding White House events to “affirm transgender kids,” condemning state laws against underage “transitions” as “close to sinful,” promoting underage “transitions” (potentially at taxpayer expense) as a “best practice,” and trying to force federally funded schools to let males into female athletic competitions and restrooms.