Tories try to spotlight overdose deaths — using Brandon

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This article was published 07/02/2025 (273 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A new political ad created by the Conservative Party of Canada released this week that claims that Canada has become a “drug manufacturing hot spot” is an attempt by the Tories to change the channel on recent losses in political fortunes, according to a local political scientist.

Released on X — the social media site now owned by Elon Musk — on Wednesday, the nearly six-minute video uses 30 seconds of visuals from the city of Brandon to drive home a point about the number of people who have died from fentanyl overdoses since 2016, the year that the Trudeau Liberals came to power.

“Recognize this place? This is Brandon, Manitoba. Population, just over 50,000. A small, beautiful city like many others that dot the Canadian landscape,” says Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in an audio voiceover at the start of the video, while images of Brandon streets and the McKenzie Seeds building are shown. The visuals then move on to a crowd picture from inside the Keystone Arena during a Brandon Wheat Kings game.

“Now imagine if every person in Brandon vanished. Well, since 2016, we’ve lost a city the size of Brandon to drugs. That’s 49,000 Canadian lives lost — more than died fighting for Canada in the Second World War.

“Close to eight out of 10 of those overdose deaths involve fentanyl. It wasn’t like this before the Liberals radically liberalized drugs.”

In his video dialogue, Poilievre goes on to describe a case from last November in which federal investigators dismantled the “largest, most sophisticated drug superlab in Canada” in British Columbia, and noted that one of the accused had been out of jail “following earlier convictions.”

“Let’s call mass fentanyl trafficking what it is… mass murder,” Poilievre is heard saying.

The video is part of a larger media release shared on Wednesday in which Poilievre promised to enact mandatory life sentences for those convicted of trafficking, production and distribution of more than 40 milligrams of fentanyl.

The tone of the advertisement, which directly blames the Liberal government of allowing the manufacturing of drugs to flourish in Canada, is dark in tone, and falls much in line with recent messaging by the federal Conservatives that “Canada is broken” and needs repair.

The new political ad by the Tories comes in the midst of a tariff controversy that has been instigated by U.S. President Donald Trump who has complained about fentanyl entering the United States from Canada.

Trump has promised 25 per cent across-the-board tariffs on all Mexican and Canadian imports — with a lower 10 per cent tariff on Canadian energy — and has linked these duties to what he calls the illegal flow of people and fentanyl across the borders. The U.S. president decided to pause the implementation of these tariffs last Monday, but only for a month.

U.S. border patrol statistics show that less than one per cent of fentanyl seized is found at the northern border.

However, this latest Tory video appears to be supportive of Trump’s allegations against Canada, in particular about the fentanyl situation, according to Prof. Kelly Saunders, the chair of the Political Studies department at Brandon University.

Saunders said the video seems to be directed not only at a local voting audience in Canada, but also at Trump himself.

“I think that (Poilievre) is trying to show him that as the next prime minister of this country, ‘I am in line with you,’” Saunders told the Sun Thursday. “Trump has come up with all kinds of different rationales for this tariff war that he has initiated. Certainly, the baseless claims that he’s been making that Canada is a major supplier of fentanyl and illegal drugs, and illegal immigrants into the United States, that Canada is a supplier of all those things.”

“Poilievre is playing into that messaging and reinforcing those false facts that Trump is trying to portray out there. So yes I think he’s speaking to him, but he’s also speaking as well to his own base.”

While the ad doesn’t attempt to make Brandon out as part of the fentanyl drug problem in Canada, Saunders said it doesn’t give viewers a great impression of the city either.

With much of the Conservative base in Western Canada, Saunders suggested that maybe the party picked a community in Manitoba to help solidify his base, rather than one in Nova Scotia or Quebec. But using Brandon to start the video doesn’t help the city’s image.

“In people’s minds, there might be an association when they hear Brandon that the association is going to be drugs and fentanyl and death from drugs,” Saunders said. “Not the kind of image we want to present of ourselves … I certainly wish that he wouldn’t have used us, because we don’t need that kind of guilt by association.”

Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett did not take much issue with the video ad, or the use of the city of Brandon. Though noting it is “highly political,” he said the party could have used any city in the country and it would have had the same impact, as far too many communities in Canada — including Brandon — have been affected by overdose deaths.

“It could have been any city, because the message is the same,” Fawcett said. “I didn’t take that as a message directed at Brandon. Brandon was likely chosen as centre of the country. Everybody recognizes its sort of a beautiful Prairie city, and it was presented that way.”

With recent national polls also showing that Poilievre’s Conservative Party have been dropping in popular support against the Liberal Party since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he was stepping down earlier this year, and the growth of Canadian nationalism in the last few weeks as a result of the tariff threat from the United States, Saunders also pointed out that the ad was a way to try to reset their messaging.

But she was quick to add that there’s a danger that in the face of increasingly negative news in the media, this kind of negative message might fall flat among Canadians.

“We need relief,” Saunders said. “We’re all so beaten down, you know. We need something to feel good about, and Canadians are finding it, which is wonderful. And the Conservatives have got to be careful that they don’t run against that tide.”

When reached by phone on Wednesday, Brandon-Souris MP Larry Maguire said he had not yet seen Poilievre’s video, but was aware of his party leader’s announcement earlier in the day. Maguire echoed Fawcett’s dismissal of the ad carrying any negative connotations for Brandon, saying the point was to put Poilievre’s point into perspective.

“A city of this size has disappeared while the Liberals have been allowing these fentanyl operations to operate within Canada,” Maguire said. “We are not in as near as bad a shape as the major cities, particularly Vancouver, where the experiment that the federal government and the NDP in B.C. tried to use their safe drug sites, and even wanting to license opioids as late as a year ago.”

Though federal courts have struck down the mandatory minimum sentences that were enacted by the previous Conservative government of Stephen Harper, Maguire said the Conservatives are right to push for drug “kingpins” to spend more time behind bars.

“I think that we’re faced with today is a totally different situation than what we’ve ever faced in the past and we need to be very cognizant of making sure that the people that are producing these drugs and trying to pass them off to our youth are penalized for it in a proper manner.”

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