I will admit to a sense of skepticism when Calgary Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner published an open letter this week calling on the minister of health to instruct her department to “further investigate the possible benefits and harms of using alkyl nitrites as a sexual aide, noting a recent change that took place in Australia, allowing them to be accessed via prescription.” As we march toward an election, it seemed like a very niche issue for the Conservatives to try and go to bat for in their quest to have more Canadians “see a Conservative in the mirror.”
But it turns out that this may have been a case of Rempel Garner doing the right thing as both an MP and as the Conservative health critic. The move was largely in response to an outreach campaign by the Community-Based Research Centre (CBRC) in Vancouver.
“We’ve been trying to put pressure on MPs,” says Jody Jollimore, executive director of the CBRC. The campaign, Jollimore says, asks Canadians to “send a letter to your local MP and to the health minister, asking for a review of the poppers policy, the crackdown, and to do a study on both the harms and benefits with the ultimate goal of creating a safe supply.”
Jollimore says that the issue has been something they’ve been advocating for a couple of years now. Their stance is rooted in the CBRC’s National Sex Now Survey, which showed that the use of poppers among queer men hadn’t declined since the ban was enforced in 2013.
“We’ve noticed a difference in access to where you’re having to buy them, who you’re having to buy them from—and when it comes to quality, are you even getting poppers?” Jollimore asks. “Then we started hearing about harms coming from some of the community members saying they were definitely getting shitty products, and we started doing some investigating.”
Jollimore wonders what the point of the ban was: it didn’t work, and it only made the supply unsafe and driven underground.
“Before, you used to have to go to sex shops where you have to be an adult to get it, and you purchased these as consumer products,” says Jollimore. But, he notes, because they were in a “grey zone” and referred to as “leather cleaner,” there were still quality issues.
“Wouldn’t it be great if we could just label them for what they are, and while you’re at it, put on the label, ‘Don’t drink these’?” asks Jollimore. “That’s where we’re hearing the harms come from—with all respect, people aren’t using poppers properly.”
“The enforcement of the ban on the sale of poppers began under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper.”
The CBRC did initially attempt to engage Health Canada, but found that they were being bounced between different branches and divisions, and eventually decided that it was time to get MPs involved. That’s where Rempel Garner came in.
The enforcement of the ban on the sale of poppers began under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, at a time when Rempel Garner was around the Cabinet table—something she has not acknowledged in her letter to Minister of Health Patty Hajdu. Poppers have been considered drugs under the Food and Drugs Act since 1985 and need authorization from Health Canada to be legally sold, which has never happened (and is the reason why they were packaged as “leather cleaner” or “room odorizer”). In 2013, Health Canada inspectors began raiding sex shops that sold them.
Rempel Garner reached out to CBRC when she got the letters, and Jollimore says he took her call when some people may not have, citing that queer health is a non-partisan issue.
“If we can work across party lines, similar to the [health committee] report in 2019, that was a unanimously passed report on LGBTQIA2 health, which even the Conservatives voted for,” says Jollimore. “There might be some common ground for all parties when it comes to the health of queer and trans Canadians—I certainly hope so.”
“The issue here is largely harm reduction and safe supply.”
Jollimore says that he has been trying to engage with the NDP health critic, Don Davies, but has not received an acknowledgement of support, though he believes it will come in time. Minister Hajdu has not responded to a request for comment on the letter. [Update: Since this story was published, Don Davies has pledged his support for CBRC’s call for Health Canada to change its policy on poppers.]
The issue here is largely harm reduction and safe supply, though it remains to be seen what kind of model would ultimately be implemented—whether poppers are sold as a pharmaceutical product or as a consumer product as it was previously, only with stricter controls. The dangers of an unsafe supply include getting a product made from isopropyl nitrite, which can cause central vision blindness. Countries across the globe, including France, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, have all scrutinized the use of poppers and decided not to ban them, so Canada would not be an outlier if it made the change.
For all of her faults and extreme partisanship, we should acknowledge that Rempel Garner has been an ally to queer and trans communities throughout her political career, standing up to Conservative colleagues to defend our rights and pushing the party to moderate some of its more extreme positions on issues like same-sex marriage. And with that in mind, the letter to Hajdu was under her name and did not advocate a party position, which is why I’m convinced that this is not a niche policy outreach to queer men by the Conservative Party as a whole.
The real test will be how this comes up during the election. If this is being treated as a non-partisan issue where Rempel Garner—and perhaps more of her Conservative colleagues—want to see harm reduction and safe supply, then we can consider this a genuine example of Rempel Garner doing her job as an MP and health critic. If, however, this becomes weaponized as some kind of “Liberals/NDP don’t really care about queer men” attack with poppers as the punchline, then we can treat this with the cynicism that it deserves.
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