Public Safety Committee on Oct. 27th, 2014

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

If I can continue on with time elements, if a community really wanted one of the supervised injection sites, and if that community were rather unified in that desire, and the minister executed his or her duty and wanted to have the public consultations that you have just said are required to take place in 90 days, there could be a very expedited process. In other words, the consultative part of the minister's responsibility could be rather expeditiously executed, if what I've just said occurred.

[Hilary Geller]

Yes. If the minister chose to consult, upon receiving an application, it could not be longer than 90 days. It's a 90-day process. That's correct.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

I think in your preliminary questions, you said that for municipalities, etc.—in other words, all those bodies you mentioned—it's 90 days.

[Hilary Geller]

No. There are 27 criteria that go with an application. Among those criteria is a requirement that the applicant submit evidence of community consultations that have been held, a report from the consultations, the views of people they consulted, any measures they plan to put in place to address some of what they heard. There are also requirements of letters of opinion from provincial health ministers, public safety minister, police chief, etc. That would all come with a complete application package.

How long it takes to get all that material is in the control of the applicant.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much for that because that was going to be my next question: who pays for all this to occur? Because if you have a true community consultative process and if you want to say that we held meetings with the community, etc., there is often a cost to it. I think the average Canadian would want to know that the applicant funds it appropriately.

If we can talk about the supervised injection sites, for those of us who have more rural ridings—not that we don't have problems with addiction and drug addiction being one of them, and in some of the smaller communities there may even be such sites—the minister mentioned some other criteria. There is a consultative criteria. What else would the minister look at, because you mentioned 27 things. You were present when the minister mentioned some of those obligations she has. Would you be so kind as to mention some of the other obligations on the minister or on the applicant, which the minister must consider?

[Hilary Geller]

I can run through some of the 27 criteria, if that would be helpful.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Yes, if you could give us the Coles Notes version, that would be good.

[Hilary Geller]

I will do my best to give you the Coles Notes version.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

You have about a minute to do that.

[Hilary Geller]

All right, just cut me off. I'll see where I get.

On the public health side there is scientific evidence demonstrating that there is a medical benefit; a letter from the provincial minister responsible for health outlining his or her opinion, and also describing how the activities will be integrated into the provincial health care system; and further information about access to drug treatment services, if any, that are available; a letter from the lead health professional in relation to public health of the government in that province with that person's opinion on the proposed activities at the site; information including trends, if any, on the number of persons who consume illicit substances in the vicinity of the proposed site; relevant information, including trends, if any, on the number of persons with infectious diseases that may be in relation to the consumption of illicit substances in the vicinity of the proposed site; relevant information, including trends, if any, on the number of deaths due to overdose in relation to activities that would take place at the proposed site; official reports, if any, relevant to the establishment of a supervised consumption site, including coroners' reports, if any; a report on the consultations held with professional licensing bodies for physicians and for nurses in the province; a financing plan that demonstrates the feasibility and sustainability of operating the site—

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you. We're out of time now but I'm sure that over the course of the next hour you'll perhaps have an opportunity to finish that list.

We will now go to Ms. Davies, for seven minutes, please.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Chairperson.

I have some questions to try to clarify the bill to make sure I understand exactly what the bill is saying.

In terms of a renewal, if a site were approved—and certainly we have two in Vancouver; we have InSite and we also have the Dr. Peter Centre—I'm wondering if you can tell us exactly what the rules are for renewal. Because the bill is not very clear on that, as to whether or not they have to go through the same process all over again, or would the fact that they've already been in existence—for example, InSite has been there 10 years and they've already met a very stiff test in terms of municipal requirements and so on. What is the requirement, and would it be different if it were a new licence?

[Hilary Geller]

The expectation is that once the bill receives royal assent, the process would apply to any applicant, including InSite.

In terms of renewal, there are two additional criteria: evidence, if any, of any variation in crime rates in the vicinity of the site during the period that the site was operating; and evidence of any impacts of the activities at the site on individual or public health during that period.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

They'd have to fulfill all those other requirements a to z. The minister would consider those principles in the bill, and then they'd have to provide those two additional things.

[Hilary Geller]

That's correct.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Okay.

I notice that throughout the bill, in terms of the criteria, the word “opinion” appears a lot. For example, “the opinion of the provincial minister of health”, “the opinion of the chief of police”, etc. I'm just wondering why the opinion would matter as opposed to evidence in terms of factual information. Why was that word chosen? It seems to me that it allows an enormous amount of discretion from the person or organization that's providing an opinion. An opinion based on what: their own feeling, how they think about this stuff, as opposed to evidence that's based on health principles or other studies or reports that might have been done?

[Hilary Geller]

Some of the hard evidence that you talk about comes through in some of the other criteria that are required. The word “opinion” was chosen because the people from whom it's requested are in positions to well understand the local conditions that would either require or not require, in their opinion, a supervised injection site and the impacts on the community and the crime rates, etc., in the current situation. It was really to learn from people in positions of authority who would have the knowledge whether they accepted the idea, rejected the idea, or neither.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I could see that you might have both but to only have opinions seems to me to just leave it so fuzzy. I don't really care about somebody's opinion. I want to know what their professional assessment is. Certainly, for the public, opinion is important and that leads me to another question.

In terms of the public consultation and the 90-day period that the minister can enact, how far can the public consultation go? For example, in an application from Victoria or from Montreal, how far afield is the public opinion considered to be legitimate? Is it the immediate, local, area where the site is being considered? Is there a radius? We see this with municipalities where there's a development taking place and there's a notification within x number of feet or blocks in terms of public impact and notification.

How far does this bill take public consultation for any specific application?

[Hilary Geller]

I would simply say that it's at the discretion of the minister. Based on the application that's put in front of him or her at the time and based on the need for such a consultation beyond what would have been received in the application, it would totally be at the minister's discretion.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Am I correct in saying then that if an application came in in Montreal the minister could consider input and public consultation that she might get from her own riding in Alberta, or anywhere in Canada for that matter, as public input and consultation on which she can base a decision?

[Hilary Geller]

In terms of what a minister would base the decision on, relevance is obviously a key factor.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

But where does it say that relevance—

[Hilary Geller]

It's just a legal principle in terms of decision-making in a discretionary scenario so relevance would be important. How one would define relevance would depend on the circumstances of a particular site at a particular time.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

One of things that really concerns me about the bill is that it seems that the whole bill is tipped in the exact opposite direction to relevance. It's actually not about relevance or evidence. It seems to be more about opinion and discretion. Even if you heroically meet all of the criteria am I correct in saying that for the minister, even when she considers her principles laid out in the act, there's nothing to say that the application should be approved?

Is that correct?

[Hilary Geller]

That's correct.

There's nothing that says that it must be approved or it must be rejected. There's nothing that fetters the discretion.