Don Davies

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, February 15th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I have to point out something that is just demonstrably false from the Conservative Party. It is right in the legislation before us, if my hon. colleague cared to read it. The bill would specifically require an applicant to furnish evidence of the local conditions giving rise to the site, the potential health benefits, and more important, expressions of public support or opposition. When the member tells this House and Canadians that the community's wishes are not part of this legislation, he is simply wrong.

I wonder if he could comment on that. Has he read the legislation?

[Health, February 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, after the last election there was hope that we would see a renewed collaborative approach to health care funding, but 18 months later, all we have seen is a divide and conquer tactic from the Liberal government, and 90% of Canadians remain with no national health accord.

Shockingly, the Prime Minister's Office says it is okay with this and that it has a “high tolerance for failure” for a pan-Canadian agreement. When it comes to health care, Canadians do not have a high degree of tolerance for failure. When will we see a new national health accord for all Canadians?

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, February 14th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, those are very powerful comments. Fundamentally, this issue occurs at the grassroots level in our communities, affecting real people.

As we sit here debating this, people in Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, all across the country are injecting opioids in an unsafe manner and are overdosing. Our first responders are dealing with these situations on the ground right now, in very stressful circumstances. Brave nurses and medical personnel are operating right now to try to get a handle on this.

I really think the answer is that substance use disorder is not a moral failing. It is not an issue of character. It is a health matter. Ultimately, we need to respond compassionately to ensure that the people who are suffering from substance use disorder have access to the best health care they can get. We have to quit looking at them as if they are criminals. We must look at them as if they are patients.

Once we start doing that, we can move beyond the dark decade of Conservative rule in the House, when the Conservatives substituted their ideology and their disrespect for evidence, and finally return to an evidence-based, compassionate, health perspective on what is fundamentally a health issue. I am happy to work with the government in every respect to accomplish that.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, February 14th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, there is no question that section 37 would restore the balance to the law in this area and respect the Supreme Court's direction to Parliament in instructing a health minister and a government as to when or when not an application for a supervised consumption site ought to be approved.

As I mentioned in my speech, there are six criteria set down by the Supreme Court, each an every one of them important. What will happen is when section 37 becomes law, it will ease the burden on applicants who are seeking to open safe consumption sites. It will streamline the process and make it quicker. Those communities that want safe consumption sites, where there is a need for that, will open them more quickly and we will start saving lives.

It is a fact that not a single person has ever died in safe consumption sites in Canada, and they have been operating, I believe, for 12 years now. As my former colleague, Libby Davies, used to say, “dead addicts don't get treatment”.

The very first principle of harm reduction, while nobody here is countenancing the use of drugs, is to help people get off substance use and we want them to get treatment. While they are doing so, we can ensure that at least the community is protected, disease is not spread, lives are saved, sterile equipment is provided, and there are medical personnel around in case of an overdose. Those are the facts around supervised consumption sites. They save lives and they are better for our community as well.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, February 14th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I think all members of the House approach this debate with a very trenchant and acute sense of the crises gripping communities across the country. The opioid overdose crisis is not restricted to any one province or territory. It is affecting communities from British Columbia to Newfoundland and Labrador, from Inuit territories all the way down to the border with the United States, and in every major city, from Vancouver to Edmonton to Calgary to Winnipeg to Toronto to Montreal. I am told that even Cape Breton is having a serious problem with opioid overdoses. This is not restricted to any one place. It is touching communities and families across our country.

We are here debating Bill C-37 because the Conservatives have put in amendments at report stage which they could not get passed at committee. We are dealing with an amendment from the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands as well.

It has been the consistent position of the New Democrats, going back over a year now, that the opioid overdose crisis is a national public health emergency, and we need action now. It has been our position that this political issue is different than many other issues and, in fact, almost every other issue that comes before the House. It is an issue that affects life and death.

The consequences of the decisions we take in the House and the consequences of the decisions we do not take have the effect of perhaps meaning someone lives or dies on the streets of Canada today. We cannot say that about every issue in the House. It is that seriousness, that sober reality the New Democrats bring to this debate, and have brought to the debate from the beginning.

The previous speaker, on behalf of the Liberal government, felt that the government had been doing everything possible that it could be doing. That is demonstrably false. The government has failed to take into account many factors and many actions it has not taken up to now, and they remain before us. There are literally dozens of actions that are open to the government to take to respond to the overdose crisis, which it seems reluctant to do.

Interestingly, the last speaker talked about taking 16 months for three supervised consumption sites in Montreal to be approved. He blamed that on the previous Conservative government. It is true that this application was dealt with under Conservative legislation introduced in 2015, but 16 months is about the length of time the Liberal government has been power. Therefore, it unjust for the Liberals to blame that on the previous government.

The New Democrats stood in the House a year ago and told the government that it should introduce legislation to repeal or amend Bill C-2, the legislation that made it virtually impossible to open safe consumption sites, and to act on that immediately. What was the response at that time? It did not think it was necessary.

The Minister of Health publicly stated that she did not see the problem with the act and if she did eventually see a problem, she would act at that point. She felt that the remedy for dealing with the problems of Bill C-2 were administrative. She did not acknowledge or understand that the problem was the 26 separate criteria that were in the act. It is funny, because my hon. colleague, the member for Vancouver Centre, former Liberal health critic, at the time the Conservatives brought in their bill in 2015, nailed it on the head, as did the New Democrats. She identified that Bill C-2 was specifically brought in by the Conservatives to prevent the opening of safe consumption sites. Yet, when the Liberals came into power, suddenly they changed. Suddenly, they could work with the act.

In the year we have waited, finally dealing with Bill C-2, finally bringing in Bill C-37, which would streamline the act, how many Canadians have died? Approximately 2,000. Now, not all of those deaths would have been preventable. However, when we know safe consumption sites save lives, we know the sooner we can get safe consumption sites open across the country, the sooner lives will be saved. Therefore, we know Canadians died unnecessarily because of the delay of the government, and that is a fact.

The thing about the Conservative amendments are that the Conservatives, with great respect, still remain stuck in their ideological perspective that they want to slow down the introduction of safe consumption sites.

I believe the vast majority of Conservatives do not support safe consumption sites. The only reason they brought in legislation was because they fought Insite all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled, based on evidence, that the government had to grant a section 56 exemption. Therefore, the Conservatives reluctantly brought in legislation to do so, but they did so with poison pills, 26 of them in fact. The legislation had the desired effect. In the time that the Conservatives brought Bill C-2 to the House, not a single safe consumption site was opened in the country. Therefore, I think that is not a coincidence.

What we have done here, and this legislation tracks this quite well, is restore the process and the criteria for opening a safe consumption site back to the criteria identified by the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Supreme Court of Canada said that the minister must grant an exemption to an applicant who wanted to open a safe consumption site if he or she was satisfied that six criteria had been satisfied. The applicant would need to provide evidence of the intended public health benefits of the site, the local conditions indicating the need for the site, the resources available to support the site, the impact of the site on crime rates, the administrative structure in place to support the site, and expressions of community support or opposition.

I want to stop for a moment because I continually hear the Conservatives misrepresent this issue. All parties in the House believe that the expressions of community support or opposition are important and, in fact, must be taken into account by any health minister. That is in the legislation.

I hear some Conservatives say that it is not there. It absolutely is in the legislation, If they have read it, it says that expressions of community support and opposition is one of the factors that must be taken into account. Perhaps the Conservatives can read the legislation on which they want to vote.

While I am on the topic of the Conservatives, I have to say this. While we were at the health committee last week, one of the most bizarre interventions I have ever heard was made by the member for Calgary Confederation. In opposing the position of the New Democrats that we supported legislation to make safe consumption sites easier to open in the country, with an appropriate regulatory structure mirroring the six criteria set down by the Supreme Court of Canada, he said to me:

I think [the member for Vancouver Kingsway]'s intention here is to try to make the application process for safe injection sites easier.

Would you be in a similar position...if we were sitting around the table here talking about application processes for pipelines in Alberta? To apply for a pipeline is extremely onerous. It's extremely burdensome and time-consuming. It can often take years.

We fought hard as Conservatives to try to make it easier to get pipelines built throughout this country, but we're not talking about pipelines here today; we're talking about safe injection sites.

...I don't support what you're doing here...in your motion or your amendments. However, I am making again the comparison between pipelines and safe injection sites.

...If you're willing to make it easier for us in Alberta, we can make it easier for you to put in safe injection sites throughout the country.

That was the most offensive intervention I have ever heard from any member in the House or at committee. To draw a comparison between moving fossil fuels through pipelines and a process that saves Canadian lives is about the most offensive, dishonourable comment I have heard made by anybody in the House. To actually suggest that there is a comparison between the regulatory process for approving pipelines and the regulatory process to open up health facilities to save Canadians is offensive. To suggest that there could be a trade-off, that if one party supported an easier approval process for pipelines in exchange for an easier approval process for opening safe consumption sites, is also offence. This does not surprise me.

However, what I am surprised by, and where I will conclude, is the Liberal government's refusal to entertain the two amendments of the New Democrats.

First, the New Democrats moved to amend the act to better apportion the burden on an applicant for these sites to make it more appropriate. We believe that the six criteria of the Supreme Court ought to be taken into account by the Minister of Health, but that it is only the local conditions, the resources available, and the need for the local community that applicants should have the burden of meeting. The impact on crime rates, the expression of opposition or support for the site, and the regulatory structure are matters for the minister to use her discretion. We should not burden the applicants for that.

Our second amendment would have allowed provincial health ministers to bypass that process on an emergency basis and ask the Minister of Health for a section 56 exemption in order to open up temporary emergency overdose prevention sites, which are operating in Vancouver today against the law.

I am disappointed the Liberal government rejected those amendments, but the New Democrats will continue to work to move this act swiftly through Parliament so we can start saving lives as soon as possible.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, February 14th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the question I have for the parliamentary secretary is, basically, whether he thinks the government is doing enough.

New Democrats have been calling on the government to declare the opioid overdose crisis a national public health emergency since last November. It is going on four months now. Such a declaration under the Emergencies Act would give the government emergency powers to flow emergency funding and, more importantly, provide legal sanction to what are called overdose prevention sites, which are popping up in my home city of Vancouver and operating illegally right now, but are saving lives.

Does the parliamentary secretary agree with New Democrats that such a declaration is necessary to get the sites, which he acknowledges save lives, up and running now, instead of forcing the people working there to work, essentially, against the law?

[Job Losses in the Energy Sector, February 8th, 2017]

Mr. Chair, I was also fortunate enough to be born in Edmonton, and spent the first 25 years of my life there before moving to Vancouver, so I am very familiar with the importance of the energy sector in Alberta. In fact, I grew up within spitting distance of refinery row in Edmonton. One thing I learned from Peter Lougheed and others is the value of adding value to the product.

The Library of Parliament, a few years ago, did some research, and found that if we took $10 billion of bitumen and refined that into refined oil, we would turn that into $20 billion. If we take that refined oil, then process that into the upper level ethylenes, like kerosene, gasoline, naphtha, and aviation fuel, we turn that into $30 billion. If we then take that, and use it as feedstock for a plastics and petrochemical industry, we turn it into $40 billion.

Therefore, why would we ever want to support a pipeline that simply exports raw bitumen, so we send that bitumen to places like China and Asia for them to refine that very valuable product, and get the jobs and extra value that comes from refining? Why does his party support the export of raw bitumen, when that product should stay in our country to create jobs, and add extra value and billions of dollars to the Canadian economy?

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, February 8th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, in the previous Parliament, Prime Minister Harper offered $4.3 billion in compensation to Canada's agriculture sector for the damage that he acknowledged CETA would do to that industry. One does not offer billions of dollars to an industry if it is not going to experience damage.

Prime Minister Harper offered $1.1 billion in compensation to the auto sector, an acknowledgement that the Canadian auto sector was going to be damaged by CETA. Why else would he give taxpayer dollars to the auto sector? Of course, he promised $400 million to Newfoundland and Labrador.

I would ask for my hon. colleague's thoughts on the damage that is going to be done to those sectors, particularly now that we have heard nothing from the Liberal government about honouring any of those promises to those sectors.

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, February 8th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I wonder if the member has any concerns about a couple of areas. One is, of course, with the issue going on in the United States with President Trump and his comments about renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In NAFTA there is a “most favoured nation” clause, which means that if Canada negotiates any other trade agreement with any other country and it contains terms superior to NAFTA, we would then automatically have to give those provisions to the U.S. I wonder if the member has any concerns about that, given Mr. Trump's aggressive talk that he is looking to put America first and take trade preferences away from perhaps countries like Canada for the U.S.

Does the member have concerns that by signing CETA we will be voluntarily giving the Americans preferences and benefits at the very same time that they want to take away benefits from Canada? Does he have any concerns in that regard?

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, February 8th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, a week or two ago I was visited in my office by representatives of the IOWU and the Seafarers International Union of Canada, who have been closely following CETA since it was negotiated. They expressed very loudly their well-founded concerns about the impact of CETA on cabotage rules in Canada, specifically on the rules that will allow European ships for the very first time in Canadian history to ply internal Canadian waters and engage in the dredging of our ports. Beside the obvious impact on security in our country by having foreign-flagged, foreign-crewed vessels plying our internal waters, something the U.S. has never allowed and to this day will not allow under the Jones Act, these representatives are concerned about the loss of the good, well-paying jobs of longshore union members and seafarers.

I wonder if my hon. colleague could answer their concerns. What can he say to them when they say the minute the government signs CETA, Canada will lose good paying jobs on its internal waterways?