Quebec’s immigration minister says he will fully collaborate with an investigation by the legislature’s ethics commissioner into whether he violated conflict of interest rules.

Jean-François Roberge is being investigated for allegedly sharing data produced by his department with the two Coalition Avenir Québec leadership candidates — Bernard Drainville and Christine Fréchette.

Drainville had boasted in a Journal de Montreal article and online that the Immigration Department had confirmed his policy would result in 18,000 temporary foreign workers being grandfathered into a fast-track residency program that had been closed.

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La Presse has reported that the analysis conducted by Roberge’s office indicated Fréchette’s plan would open permanent residency to between 123,00 and 126,800 immigrants.

The Liberals and Québec solidaire accused Roberge of violating the part of the ethic’s code that bars elected officials from disclosing information that is not generally available to the public to further the personal interests of themselves or others.

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In a statement to The Canadian Press, Roberge confirmed he was under investigation and planned to collaborate with the office of the ethics watchdog.

He did not say whether he shared the information with Drainville and Fréchette.

Drainville and Fréchette are squaring off in a race to replace outgoing Premier François Legault.

Voting is already underway and the winner is expected to be confirmed on April 12.

The City of Moncton has launched a pilot program to help businesses offset the costs associated with crime, including break-ins.

The program will offer money to help pay for damages and to improve security in order to prevent crime.

“There’s two streams. The first is rapid response, so for example somebody breaks a window, we replace the window. We cover 100 per cent of the cost up to to the insurance deductible,” said Patrick Richard, the executive director of the Downtown Moncton Centre-ville Inc., which partnered with the city on the project.

“The second stream is more prevention, so if someone wanted to install cameras or fencing or lighting, we cost-share 50 per cent with the property owner.”

The rapid response stream will have a $5,000 limit, while the second stream has a $10,000 limit.

Richard says the downtown core represents 27 per cent of the city’s gross domestic product and this pilot project is a way to protect those revenue-generating businesses.

However, some argue the funding just isn’t enough.

Jo-Anne Phillips, a business owner and member of the Enough is Enough Coalition, says business owners are frustrated with crime. The coalition has been vocal about the city’s property crime issue,

“Not that we don’t welcome an effort to sort of ease the pain, but it’s really missing the mark,” said Phillips.

“I mean, $5,000 per property is — even for my smaller properties — it’s hardly a drop in the bucket.”

She says she’s had first-hand experience with a break-in, and it’s not just about the money.

“Ultimately it doesn’t change the fact that the property and the person and the business owner feels violated. It doesn’t that we felt unsafe and unprotected,” she said.

The coalition has been advocating for stricter bylaws and increased law enforcement visibility.

Moncton City Council is currently seeking public input on a crime reduction plan, a month ahead of the municipal election in May.

&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Plans have been unveiled for festivities across Canada as the country prepares to co-host the FIFA World Cup this summer

FIFA released the route Wednesday for Canada Celebrates, a tour that will make 38 stops in 34 cities from Halifax, N.S., to Whitehorse, Yukon, between June 1 and July 19.

Vancouver and Toronto are among the 16 cities across Canada, the United States and Mexico hosting games in this summer’s tournament.

The plan has long been to include the entire country in the excitement, said Victor Montagliani, FIFA vice president and CONCACAF president.

The first stop will be in Mount Pearl, Nfld., on June 1 when Canada faces Uzbekistan in a friendly in Edmonton, and the final events will take place in Brampton, Ont., and Niagara Falls, Ont., on July 19 when the championship game is held in East Rutherford, N.J.

The tour will swing through every province and one territory, with FIFA saying in a release that it will bring “FIFA World Cup energy” within a two-hour drive of more than 75 per cent of Canadian residents.

“This really, I think, wraps up, sort of in a big hug, the diversity and the breadth and width of our country, because it will go close to coast to coast,” Montagliani said.

“It’s a sort of a festivity of football, where you can go watch the game on the big screen, you can go interact and have games that are going to be there for families, there’ll be food, there’ll be music. So it’s a real festival of what football and the community really is. It’s a real Canadiana feeling in the end.”

Plans for a cross-country celebration were included as part of Canada’s bid to host World Cup games more than eight years ago. Montagliani said.

Now he believes Canada Celebrates can be a legacy for other host nations.

“I think it’s something we could give as Canadians to the World Cup moving forward, where it’s a project that could be used in future World Cups,” he said.

There are less than 70 days to go before the tournament kicks off in Mexico City and Guadalajara on June 11.

Canada will play its first game against Bosnia and Herzegovina in Toronto on June 12 before finishing out the group stage in Vancouver with a tilts against Qatar on June 18 and Switzerland on June 24.

Toronto will host six games across the tournament while Vancouver stages another seven.

World Cup excitement is starting to build, Montagliani said. He’s seeing people on the streets wearing World Cup gear and recently returned from Mexico City where he took in the grand reopening of Estadio Azteca.

The reality of having the tournament on home soil will only grow over the coming months, he added.

“I’ve been around the game my whole life, and been around it internationally for 20 years. So these experiences I’ve had in other countries,” he said. “To have them in your own country is almost a bit of an out of body experience, because it’s something you thought could never happen.

“But to know that the work that’s been done by a lot of people in the last 20 years to get this country to be a World Cup country host, you know, I think a lot of people should take pride in that.”

There’s still work to be done getting both Toronto and Vancouver ready for the games.

Construction continues at B.C. Place Stadium and BMO Field, which will be renamed Toronto Stadium during the tournament. Plans are being refined for fan events in both cities. Head coach Jesse Marsch continues to ready his team to play the tournament on home soil for the first time.

“The beauty about the World Cup, it’s about a country,” Montagliani said. “And I know that this country has always risen to the occasion in terms of big events, and this is going to be no different.”

&copy 2026 The Canadian Press

A Toronto man has been charged with trafficking a firearm in connection to the sprawling police corruption investigation dubbed Project South.

Court records obtained by Global News show Dequon Lemonious, 27, was arrested by York Regional Police on March 19 and charged with a single count of firearms trafficking.

According to the documents, Lemonious is accused of offering to transfer a prohibited firearm sometime between April 16 and June 2, 2025, in Toronto and the surrounding region.

York Regional Police confirmed that the charge against Lemonious stems from information obtained through Project South.

“We cannot provide additional information, as it is part of an active and ongoing investigation,” Const. James Dickson said.

The records do not specify who the firearm was allegedly offered to, or how the accused fits into the broader investigation.

Project South, a sweeping York police probe into organized crime, has already led to charges against seven active Toronto police officers, one retired constable, a correctional sergeant and 20 civilians.

In total, more than 170 charges have been laid, none of which have been tested in court.

Police have alleged the investigation uncovered corruption, including leaking sensitive information to organized crime and bribery.

At the centre of the probe is an alleged plot to murder a correctional officer in Ontario.

Investigators said suspects made multiple attempts over a 36-hour period to locate and kill the man at his York Region home, including incidents where masked individuals attended the property and allegedly rammed a police cruiser parked in the driveway.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said police would need to “earn back” public trust.

At an unrelated news conference in March, Premier Doug Ford said he wanted to see those who target correctional officers harshly punished.

“If you want to attack one of our correctional services officers or police, you’re going to pay a real penalty — a real, real penalty,” he said.

– With files from Aaron D’Andrea, Isaac Callan and Colin D’Mello

&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Housing Minister Gregor Robertson’s office is backtracking on comments he made in an interview with Global News in which he had said that Ottawa is in negotiations with the provinces over cutting the GST on new build homes.

“We are in discussions with all of the provinces and territories about taking down the GST for one year on new home purchases,” Robertson said in an interview with Global News on Tuesday.

After the interview was completed and Global News published an article quoting Robertson, his office reached out to Global News to say the minister’s comments were inaccurate.

“To provide a correction to the Minister’s comment: as per the legislation, Bill C-26, An Act to authorize certain payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the purpose of improving housing supply, we are actually in talks on a variety of measures that will improve housing supply, not limited to a GST cut,” Robertson’s director of communications Mohammad Hussain told Global News.

Last week, the federal and Ontario governments agreed to remove the 13 per cent sales tax on new homes in the province, valued up to $1 million for one year.

Both governments also agreed to split $8.8 billion over 10 years to pay for infrastructure in Ontario cities that cut development charges, which are municipal taxes levied to pay for things like sewers and roads to new subdivisions.

&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

The police chief in Saint John, N.B., says complaints against him by several unionized officers are “disappointing and predictable.”

In a statement issued this morning, Chief Robert Bruce says most of the complaints made last summer were dismissed.

He says they were found to be “vexatious, frivolous and not made in good faith.”

Bruce says he took full responsibility for the few remaining allegations.

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He claims the police union used similar tactics to discredit police management and city officials before his arrival to the force.

The chief claims the complaints were timed to coincide with a challenging labour relations process last year.

“These attacks move us farther from the modern, responsive police force the residents of Saint John expect and deserve,” Bruce said in a statement.

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The Canadian Press has not yet reviewed the court file containing the allegations and the police association could not immediately be reached for comment.

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Saint John Police members file harassment complaints against police chief

Someone who bought a Lotto Max ticket for Tuesday’s draw is $75-million richer.

The prize breakdown shows one ticket matched the winning numbers — three, eight, 15, 19, 23, 29 and 37; the bonus number was four.

The winning ticket will be the last before new changes come into effect for Lotto Max starting Friday.

Lotto Max tickets will cost $6 instead of $5, but there will now be four lines of numbers people can win on instead of three. In addition, people will choose their seven numbers from one to 52 instead of 50.

The numbers and cost are not the only things changing, though — the cap on the jackpot is, too, with it being increased to $90 million from the current $80 million.

The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, which runs the game in the province, says Lotto Max will also have new $100,000 “MaxPlus” prizes available, similar to the $1 million MaxMillions. The MaxPlus prizes will be tied to the size of the jackpot.

But while the jackpot is higher and new prizes are available, the odds of you winning vary depending on the prize.

Those hoping for a better chance at the jackpot may be disappointed, as the odds of winning per play are one in 33.4 million, up from the previous one in 33.3 million.

People aiming for a lower amount, though, may be in luck. For example, someone who gets five out of seven numbers matched now has a one in 1,684 chance of winning compared to the previous one in 1,841. In last Friday’s draw under the previous odds, 3,579 people won $110.

The odds for fixed prizes have also increased, with the chances of winning $20 increasing to one in 72, while a free play will be one in seven.

Canadians’ chances of winning any prize overall are improving to one in 5.8.

— with files from Global News’ Sean Previl

&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

At this important moment for our country’s future, Canadians with a broad range of experience and perspectives are uniting to build Canada strong. I am honoured to welcome Marilyn Gladu today as the newest member of this government and our Liberal caucus.

In a time of global… pic.twitter.com/leQXxRL6VO

— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) April 8, 2026

Brandon Jansen’s mother says he was a warm and inviting “health nut” who enjoyed time at the gym.

He was also known for taking people under his wing at some of the 13 drug treatment facilities he attended in the two years before he died. On March 7, 2016, at his last treatment facility in Powell River, B.C., he overdosed on fentanyl. He was 20.

Glenn Rebic was a fixture in Vancouver’s skateboarding scene where people still approach his mother with stories about the impact he had on their lives. He died on June 22, 2019, after using cocaine he didn’t know was laced with fentanyl. He was 29.

Michael Rantanen enjoyed being outdoors and working on his art. His mother now has a tattoo of his signature on her arm as a memorial. He died on July 15, 2022, and toxicology reports found the potent synthetic opioid carfentanil in his system. He was 25.

Ellen Lin remembers her daughter Emmy Liu as a creative teen with a love of playing the flute and a long reading list full of fantasy novels. She died of a fentanyl overdose in bed at the family’s home in Surrey, B.C., on Jan. 30, 2025, aged just 14.

The four young victims are among more than 18,000 people who have died from toxic illicit drugs in British Columbia since a public health emergency was declared on April 14, 2016.

Despite recent declines in fatality rates, almost five people in B.C. are still dying from unregulated drugs every day, on average. Illicit drug toxicity is the leading cause of unnatural death in the province, accounting for more deaths than homicides, suicides, motor vehicle incidents, drownings and fires combined.

As B.C. approaches the 10-year anniversary of the declaration, grieving friends and families, former policy makers, medical workers and those who use drugs are reflecting on the decade of crisis and what could have been done differently to save more lives. They describe the explosive and deadly impact of the arrival of synthetic opioids, the public policy battles to arrest the catastrophe as deaths soared, and the personal battles that also ensued.

Lenae Silva, 35, from Nanaimo, B.C., has been using opiates of some sort since she was about 15. She co-founded an organization that helped hand out harm-reduction supplies like clean syringes and smoking kits, while connecting those in need with support.

Hundreds of her friends have overdosed, she estimated. Many died, and she said there are many different answers for how each death could have been avoided.

“It’s almost like a road that each person tumbled down before they passed. All of those roads could have been diverted or forked or led to a door that, you know, could have led to safety,” she said.

“I wish I had a better answer than that, but …” she said, before her voice trailed off.

‘LIKE AN ATOMIC BOMB’

There were signs of trouble before provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall and health minister Terry Lake stood before a news conference and declared B.C.’s public health emergency over what they called a “significant increase in drug-related overdoses and deaths.”

The province had reported 474 apparent illicit drug deaths in 2015, a number that pales in comparison to the 2,000-plus annual deaths that would be recorded as the crisis progressed.

But at the time, it represented a 30 per cent increase in deaths from the year before. And the 76 deaths in January 2016 were the most in a single month since at least 2007.

Ian Tait had already been a paramedic for 15 years when the crisis was declared. He spent some of those early years on 135A Street in Surrey’s Whalley neighbourhood, on the front line of the battle.

He said the number of overdoses that were increasingly difficult to reverse had been growing a year or two before the emergency was declared.

“It just hit like an atomic bomb down there. And all of a sudden we were scrambling, literally, to keep up with the amount of Narcan we were using,” he said, referring to the brand name for the opioid reversal drug naloxone.

“We would go from half a dozen overdoses a day to like 30 overdoses.”

Now a quarter-century veteran of the paramedic service, he says his colleagues are sometimes responding to “hundreds” of overdoses a day. On Jan. 21, BC Emergency Health Services said paramedics responded to 256 overdoses across the province, setting a record.

“I don’t think people realize, if it wasn’t for Narcan, it would be … ten thousand a year (dead),” he said.

B.C. was the first province in Canada to establish a provincewide take-home naloxone program. It hands out 400,000 naloxone kits annually.

It was the introduction of fentanyl into the drug supply, a synthetic opioid that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, that helped set off the crisis. First synthesized in the 1960s, it would become a common painkiller in hospitals and by prescription.

But it would also make its way onto the streets. Data from the BC Coroners Service show that in 2015, fentanyl was involved in about 29 per cent of drug deaths in the province. In 2016, that prevalence soared to 66 per cent.

As the presence of other opioids, such as heroin and oxycodone, in overdose deaths declined, fentanyl would become by far the most common drug involved, in B.C., the rest of North America and much of the world.

Brandon Jansen died from fentanyl poisoning in Powell River on the Sunshine Coast about five weeks before the emergency was declared.

His mother Michelle remembered the struggle to find help for her son. Private facilities cost her about $250,000 over two years before he died.

“There was nowhere you could turn to in terms of government resources. There was no one you could call. I brought Brandon to the doctor. It was all really new territory for the doctor,” she said.

On the streets of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, people who used drugs were relying on each other for warnings about bad batches, and for help when someone was overdosing. That was long before official warnings became commonplace, Lenae Silva said.

“Pre-COVID, Narcan wasn’t really massively available either, so it was a lot of the old-schoolers teaching us young’uns how to reverse these overdoses,” she said.

“Breathe for them,” she said, referring to rescue breathing. “Make sure they go to the hospital if you can convince them to.”

Tait thinks declaring the public health emergency was important, even if the government may have been initially hesitant because it meant admitting what they were already doing wasn’t helping.

“It was one of the first times where we really said, this is a medical problem, this is health problem,” he said.

“So, I feel like when that finally got described as a public health emergency for the first time, the government really owned up to (the fact that) this is actually happening and we need to divert a large amount of resources to this.”

Kendall said in an interview that declarations are conventionally used for epidemics in situations where officials need to order people to get treatment or stay home.

In this case, declaring the emergency meant the government could require that more information be released faster.

“We got more and quicker data from the coroner’s office. We could get data from police forces. We could get data from the emergency ambulance service,” he said.

He said the numbers could be used to determine quickly where overdoses were happening so services could be developed and deployed.

“It also brought a ton of political and media interest into the issue, and we put a lot more time and effort into prevention, into intervention, into drug treatment, whether it was medication-based or behaviourally based,” he said.

The province said B.C. had more than 3,700 treatment and recovery beds of which 790 are new since 2017.

But a decade after her son’s death, Jansen said the government needed to do more to create dedicated places where people can quickly get help.

“It is absolutely nonsensical and unrealistic to expect someone who is in the throes of addiction, where the drug is making the choices for them to be able to … find and source the appropriate treatment facilities, make the calls, set up appointments, get themselves to there,” she said.

“They might not have availability for two weeks. Well, you’ve lost them, you lost them. It doesn’t make any sense.”

THE DECRIMINALIZATION EXPERIMENT, THEN A RETREAT

The trajectory of the crisis has not been a straight line.

BC Coroners Service data show that toxic drug deaths in the province dropped significantly in 2019 to fewer than 1,000, down more than a third from the year before.

Kendall said the decrease had been “encouraging.” Then the pandemic hit.

“What would have happened after that if COVID hadn’t come along? I have no idea,” said Kendall, who retired in 2018.

“I would like to think that we would have gotten on top of it and been able to manage it because it looked like we made a big start. I think COVID threw a lot more people into the ringer.”

In 2020, as the global pandemic shut down borders and forced many to stay inside, there were 1,775 deaths from illicit drugs in B.C., up 79 per cent from the year before.

Silva remembered people she knew “disappearing.”

“It takes a friend of a friend, of a friend of a mom who knows them to come out and say like, ‘Hey, sorry, this person passed away,’” she said.

“So, we were just seeing this massive loss of people, of our friends, of familiar faces who’ve been around for decades and just weren’t there anymore.”

Closed borders had an impact on drug supplies, leading to the creation of new clandestine labs, Silva said.

The number of deaths kept climbing: 2,294 in 2021, 2,390 a year after that, before peaking at 2,590 in 2023.

As the crisis unspooled, British Columbia was thrust onto the cutting edge of global drug policy, expanding safer supply policies and supervised drug consumption sites. In 2016 there was one safe consumption and overdose prevention site in B.C.; by 2021 there were 38, and by the middle of last year there were 58, plus nine in hospitals.

Most controversial was the experiment with decriminalization, launched in 2023, allowing adults to possess up to 2.5 grams cumulatively of opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA under a three-year pilot program.

Advocates would push for higher limits, and seek expansion of safer supply to allow opioids to be provided without a prescription.

But such efforts are now in retreat. B.C. declared in January that the decriminalization experiment was over, having already tightened rules about public drug consumption amid a backlash.

Critics called decriminalization a failure, while studies gave varying opinions on its effectiveness and it became fodder for the 2025 federal election.

A study published in JAMA Health Forum in 2025 found that both safer supply and drug decriminalization policies in British Columbia were associated with increased opioid overdose hospitalizations, although not with an increase in deaths.

In 2024, the province placed tighter restrictions on where the drugs could be possessed and by early 2026 Premier David Eby told reporters that decriminalization “didn’t work.”

Silva maintained that while decriminalization was “not perfect,” it saved lives by allowing people to use around others. “It prevented a lot of people from dying inside alone,” she explained.

As for the province’s safer supply program, which provides pharmaceutical grade opioids to people at risk of overdosing, it has also seen significant changes since it was introduced in 2020.

The B.C. Health Ministry said users of the program peaked at almost 5,200 patients in March 2023, decreasing to fewer than 3,900 in December 2024.

In February 2025, Health Minister Josie Osborne announced the roll back of the program to a “witnessed-only” model in which users are watched as they consume opioids.

The move followed an outcry over the diversion of the prescribed opioid hydromorphone. A leaked report by a Ministry of Health investigative unit found that a “significant portion” of prescribed opioids were being diverted, with some trafficked provincially, nationally and internationally.

Like many of B.C.’s cutting-edge policies, the safer supply program was extensively studied, with one study published in the British Medical Journal finding that there was a 55-per-cent reduced risk of overdose death in the week after receiving at least one dispensation of safe-supply opioids.

Four or more dispensations of safe-supply opioids were associated with a 91 per cent reduction in risk of death from all causes in the following week.

But a second study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found an almost 63 per cent “relative increase” in the opioid overdose hospitalization rate across B.C. after the introduction of safer supply.

Silva has been using the safer supply program for years and calls it the most life-saving help she has received.

“I was on my way to almost entirely off (street drugs) when they changed it,” she said.

Under the new program, Silva said she had access to less of the safer drugs and has been forced to rely more on what she can get from the street.

“They’re pulling it way faster than our bodies can handle. I’m sick every day now and I’m just barely, barely pulling through and I’m housed and healthy. You know, it’s scary right now,” she said.

DECLINING DEATHS AND A CHANGING SUPPLY

Starting in 2024, the number of opioid deaths in B.C. began to decrease as part of a trend seen in cities across North America.

But for all its policy efforts, the decline was slower to arrive in B.C. than in some other places.

The first year of decriminalization had coincided not with a decline in drug deaths but with a record number of fatal overdoses.

The 2,590 deaths in 2023 represented an increase of eight per cent over the previous year. That rise was faster than in some other places in Canada, such as Ontario, where deaths were up four per cent. And deaths had already started falling in the United States after peaking in 2022.

In 2024, the year decriminalization was curtailed, drug deaths in B.C. fell 10 per cent. That was slower than in Ontario, which experienced a 15 per cent decline, while deaths dropped by 27 per cent in the United States that year.

The decline in deaths in B.C. now appears to have caught up to elsewhere, falling by about 21 per cent last year to 1,833, roughly the same year-on-year percentage decline as in the United States according to the latest data from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics. Canada witnessed a 17 per cent decrease in deaths between 2024 and 2025, representing what the Public Health Agency called “the first sustained decline since deaths surged during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

What might be behind the continental decline in drug deaths is the subject of much debate.

In a report updated in December, the Public Health Agency of Canada lists changes in the drug supply, the availability of naloxone and a “declining population at risk” as “likely” factors.

Hints can be found in a study published in the April 2026 edition of the International Journal of Drug Policy where tested samples of unregulated opioids in B.C. found that median fentanyl concentrations peaked provincially at 11 per cent in mid-2023 before declining to 5.1 per cent in early 2025.

The thesis around reduced fentanyl concentrations may be bolstered by geopolitical analysis. An article published in the journal Science about the decline in overdose fatalities in the United States suggests the trend is related to “a major disruption in the illicit fentanyl trade” possibly tied to actions by the government of China, where most precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl are believed to originate.

It says in 2023 the government of China began more aggressive law enforcement against synthetic drug and chemical precursor suppliers, and by June 2024, it claimed to have taken down 140,000 advertisements and 14 online platforms.

Among other potential factors noted by the Public Health Agency of Canada: regions that distributed more naloxone kits experienced larger declines in deaths, while the sheer number of people who have died — reducing potential future victims — may also have played a role. The agency notes that the largest declines in deaths were in regions with more previous fatalities.

Among “unlikely” causes of the decreasing death numbers? The agency’s report lists supervised consumption and overdose prevention sites as well as opioid agonist therapy.

A STRATEGY SHIFT

A shift on addiction policy in B.C. is now underway, with a stronger public emphasis on treatment and involuntary care for people with severe and overlapping mental-health and substance-use challenges.

“When someone is so unwell they can’t make decisions about their own safety, we have a responsibility to step in with compassion and care,” Premier David Eby said in a statement in November.

The shift includes legislative changes to the Mental Health Act that passed in December, strengthening liability protection for health workers involved in involuntary-care decisions and treatment.

The government also said in November that it was urgently working to boost the more than 2,000 mental-health beds in B.C. available to provide involuntary care.

A panel put together by B.C.’s coroner in 2023 estimated that 225,000 people in the province use drugs.

Some who grieve losses or have been on the front line of the drug battle over the past decade suggest the shift has come too late. Some wonder why more isn’t done about the criminals behind the flow of drugs.

Ellen Lin blamed death of her daughter Emmy on the “absurd” decriminalization experiment.

She said the policy “opened the floodgates to widespread drug abuse, exposing children and youth to extreme danger.

“They created conditions for adults, including drug dealers and other predatory individuals, to supply or sell dangerous substances to vulnerable minors,” said Lin.

Glenn Rebic’s mother, Meredith Dan, agreed that more needed to be done to stop those who sold the deadly drugs.

“Why aren’t they charged with murder? Because essentially they are murdering people,” she said.

She said more resources were needed by both people who use drugs and grieving families.

“I don’t think that there’s a single person in society that hasn’t been impacted by it somehow between a friend, a relative or a colleague,” she said.

Paramedic Tait said his colleagues question how increasingly toxic drugs arrive in Canada and why more isn’t done to stop it.

“Where in the world are they mixing in horse tranquillizers and 100 times more potent narcotics into street drugs? How is that happening? How is it getting into our country? Are they making it here? It’s almost like a geopolitical logistical chain issue,” he said.

Maria Rantanen attends a support group specifically for people who have lost someone in the crisis.

She said it’s hard for people who haven’t experienced that kind of loss to relate.

“There’s a certain stigma around losing someone to drugs that I think in that context people understand. I feel understood and heard in that group,” she said.

“Having to have these groups is indicative of the fact that we are losing so many people.”

— with files by Nono Shen in Vancouver

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth says the U.S. has won the Iran war and is claiming that there is a “new regime” in place in Tehran.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would agree to a “double-sided” ceasefire with Iran that will see him hold off from further attacks for two weeks in exchange for Tehran agreeing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump made the announcement on social media less than two hours before his deadline for what he threatened would be the destruction of Iran’s “civilization.” He said it came after conversations with Pakistani mediators who had been pursuing an end to the war.

Iran’s airforce and missile system has been destroyed, Hegseth said Wednesday, less than a week after Iran shot down a U.S. fighter jet.

“We were locked and loaded. They couldn’t defend against it,” Hegseth said.

While Iran may “shoot here and there” but they can “no longer build missiles,” Hegseth said.

“They can still shoot, we know that” he said.

In a social media post on Wednesday morning, Trump said the U.S. had determined that Iran had “gone through what will be a very productive Regime Change!”

Hegseth also said a “new regime” was in place in Iran.

On Feb. 28, the first day of the war, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei was killed in U.S. and Israeli strikes. He was promptly replaced by his son Mojtaba Khamenei. U.S. and Israeli strikes also targeted and killed several other top Iranian officials.

“This new regime was out of options and out of time, so they cut a deal,” Hegseth said.

Tuesday’s ceasefire deal also included an agreement on nuclear material, Hegseth said.

“Under the terms, any nuclear material they should not have will be removed,” he said, without elaborating further.

However, Trump said there would be “no enrichment of uranium” and “the United States will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all of the deeply buried (B-2 Bombers) Nuclear ‘Dust.’”

The U.S. will also discuss sanctions and tariff relief with Iran, Trump said.

However, he added that any nation selling weapons to Iran “will be immediately tariffed, on any and all goods sold to the United States of America, 50%, effective immediately.”

Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, said Trump had laid out three objectives – destroy ballistic missile capability, destroy the Iranian navy and destroy their defence industrial capacity.

The U.S. military had achieved these objectives, he said.

EU and NATO leaders, including Prime Minister Mark Carney, issued a joint statement on Wednesday, calling for “quick progress towards a substantive negotiated settlement.”

“The goal must now be to negotiate a swift and lasting end to the war within the coming days. This can only be achieved through diplomatic means,” the joint statement said.

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