'Same as murder': Tories demand life sentences for fentanyl producers and traffickers

Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre has pledged to introduce mandatory life sentences for anyone involved in producing or selling fentanyl.

Highlighting British Columbia – including last year’s “superlab” bust in Falkland – Poilievre said trade in the drug “is mass murder.”

He added: “Selling 40 mg of this poison is enough to kill 20 people. I will lock up fentanyl kingpins and throw away the key.”

The Tories said they wanted life sentences for anyone caught trafficking, producing or exporting over 40 mg of fentanyl and 15 years for traffickers caught with between 20mg to 40mg.

There is currently no mandatory sentence for fentanyl production or trafficking in Canada.

BREAKING: Poilievre will impose life sentences for fentanyl kingpins.

Overdoses have killed 49,000 Canadians under Liberal open borders & soft on crime laws.

Fentanyl traffickers are mass murderers. Lock them up and throw away the key. pic.twitter.com/3T2L0DfzCS

— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) February 5, 2025

Just last week, however, a man found to be “an executive member of a large-scale fentanyl production and trafficking operation” was sentenced to 16 years in jail.

Jonathan Loyie’s crimes were described as “staggering” by the judge in Alberta, with the director of public prosecutions adding: “Wholesale dealers in fentanyl put Canadians, especially the most vulnerable members of our society, at risk of death or other grievous harm … They will be prosecuted to the full extent of the evidence available and prosecutors will seek sentences that will denounce and deter their conduct through the punishment imposed.”

In a press notice this morning, accompanied by the release of a video, the Conservatives also highlighted that Canadian-made fentanyl is “increasingly being sent abroad, including to the United States.”

Even though the amount of fentanyl recorded going into the US from Canada is miniscule – 43 lbs in 2024 compared with 21,100 lbs from Mexico – it has drawn the ire of US President Donald Trump and his lieutenants.

The president has at times claimed his threat of a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian goods heading into the US is motivated by fentanyl coming into his country from the north. He’s also claimed he simply wants to annex Canada, however.

More than 49,000 Canadians have died from fentanyl overdoses since 2016. More than 2,200 people in BC died from drug overdoses in 2024 alone, with fentanyl involved in most of those deaths.

“It’s like spraying bullets into a crowd—even if you don’t aim, you will kill people,” Poilievre said.

“The penalty should be the same as murder. I will pass mandatory life sentences so fentanyl kingpins never get out of jail and stop killing our kids.”

Doing so will mean repealing Bill C-5, the Tories added, which abolished minimum sentences for certain crimes, including related to drugs. The Liberals said the law was in part designed to "address systemic inequities" and what they call the "overrepresentation" of non-white people in prisons.

The Tories also attacked the “radical” BC NDP and federal Liberals for their “failed hard drug legalization experiment,” a familiar line of attack for the party.

Premier David Eby rolled back the province’s decriminalization pilot project last year after political and public outcry over open drug use.

He also ordered the scrapping of the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions and put drugs under the purview of the health minister.

Thumbnail photo credit: NowMedia/RCMP