Kelly DeRidder knows what drug rehabilitation looks like from the inside. Before she became the Conservative MP for Kitchener Centre in Ontario, she was homeless and using drugs on the streets she now represents. On 1 May, she stood in the House of Commons and broke a silence she had carried for years. It was not a political calculation. It was a reckoning.

Her story is not one politicians typically share. But she shared it because it matters. Addiction recovery, she believes, cannot be shaped by people who have never lived it.

A Turning Point in a Trap House

The moment that changed everything for DeRidder did not come from an intervention or a court order. It came from a quiet, devastating clarity.

“I was just looking around,” she recalled. “I was like, ‘What am I doing here? This isn’t my future.’ I had literally lost everything.”

She sat in what she calls a trap house, a place dealers run to keep people dependent and controlled. The environment was dark and chaotic. People around her were in despair. DeRidder describes it as a place designed to hold people captive through their addiction.

That night, she made her decision. The next morning, she walked into detox. She then enrolled herself in Conestoga College and booked her own therapy. She is the first to say that path is not realistic for most people.

“That isn’t normal,” she said plainly. “What’s normal is, you go to a centre and get the support you need.”

According to Statistics Canada, only about one in five Canadians who need treatment for a substance use disorder actually receive it. DeRidder’s bill is, in part, a response to that gap.

Drug Rehabilitation Belongs in the Courtroom

DeRidder’s private member’s bill reached its second reading in Parliament this month and drew support across party lines. It proposes three key changes.

First, judges could attach mandatory drug rehabilitation programmes to prison sentences. Second, prisons and parole boards would weigh an offender’s rehabilitation progress when deciding on release. Third, large-scale fentanyl traffickers would face significantly tougher penalties.

The fentanyl piece is not symbolic. Health Canada recorded more than 47,000 deaths from apparent opioid toxicity between January 2016 and September 2024. Fentanyl drove the majority of those deaths. The numbers keep rising.

DeRidder also rejects harm reduction approaches such as safe supply programmes and supervised consumption sites. She argues those resources belong in treatment beds and clinical mental health services instead.

“I would rather use those resources to have beds, to have brick and mortar clinical and mental health supports,” she said.

On those who profit from addiction, she is equally direct.

“The people making money off this crisis need to be punished very harshly. Addiction is not a business.”

The Accountability Gap Inside Prisons

DeRidder points to a structural failure that rarely makes headlines. People inside prisons often cannot access drug rehabilitation in any meaningful way.

“There is no real accountability for institutions to provide these supports on a continual basis,” she said. “And there is no accountability for inmates to participate in them.”

She asks a harder question too. How can someone heal in a space where open drug use continues around them? Her bill ties judge-prescribed programmes to obligations on both the institution and the individual. That structure creates accountability where none currently exists.

“It helps people focus on healing instead of repeating the same cycle once they get out,” she said.

A 2021 report from Canada’s Office of the Correctional Investigator supports her concern. It found substance abuse programmes in federal prisons were inconsistent. Many people completed their sentence before finishing the programme. The system released them before it helped them.

Family, Community and the Road Through Addiction Recovery

DeRidder credits her mother as a steady presence through the worst years. Her mother refused to let her come home during active addiction. She also never stopped checking in.

“She was always planting seeds with me,” DeRidder said. “I had her by my side when I was ready to make a change.”

Not everyone has that person. DeRidder knows it, and she says so directly.

“I don’t ever want someone to not make the choice because they don’t have a specific person. You’ll find them. In your community, in a rehab centre.”

That message carries weight precisely because it does not come from a pamphlet. It comes from someone who lost relationships, made choices she is not proud of, and rebuilt anyway.

Why Drug Rehabilitation Policy Needs Lived Voices

The sharpest observation DeRidder makes is about who shapes drug policy and who gets left out of the room.

“Research and data are important,” she said. “But it is a huge mistake to disregard someone because they are not an intellect or researcher. We need to be listening to people with lived experience who know how to heal.”

Policymakers tend to trust credentials. DeRidder argues that people who have navigated addiction recovery carry a different kind of knowledge, one that shapes better programmes and more honest conversations.

She is using her seat in Parliament to make that case, not in speeches alone but through the structural detail of a bill built on what she has personally lived through.

What She Wants People to Know

For anyone at the beginning of their journey, DeRidder keeps her message short.

“Just take the first step. Get into a hospital. Reach out to someone who can help. That is all you can see in front of you at that point.”

Recovery rarely feels triumphant from the inside. It looks like one decision, on one morning, after a night when things became unbearable enough to change.

DeRidder made that decision in a trap house in Kitchener. She now makes decisions in the House of Commons.

Source: dbrecoveryresources