Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Richard Elliott. I am a lawyer and the deputy director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. We have sent you a summary of our brief containing several recommendations on how Canada's Access to Medicines Regime should be amended. As we all know, Canada's Access to Medicines Regime has not met the promise made by Canada to help developing countries to get affordable medicines.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  If I could highlight the point I made earlier, if we only look at this as a foreign policy dialogue, then we're going to miss the boat. I think Mr. Benedict's remarks are quite appropriate in that regard. This is why we highlighted that we need to actually support civil society in China, to raise human rights issues.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you. I have three brief points. One, I wanted to note for the record that we have appreciated the interventions of Foreign Affairs officials, those working within the human rights division, on specific cases of AIDS activists who have been detained in the past, including the one I mentioned, Dr.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes, and I mentioned in my remarks a number of the groups that have been particularly subject to stigmatization and in some cases criminalization and harassment. That includes gay rights activists, sex workers, and people who use drugs. While there is an emerging gay community in China, which has always obviously been there but is now starting to emerge into the light as part of civil society proper--certainly that is more the case in some larger urban centres--it is still the case that there is considerable infringement of freedom of expression in some cases for discussion of gay rights, for example, in China.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  It's hard to come by exact figures. The estimates of the number of people who've been infected will range from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands. As some committee members may know, these government schemes for blood collection and sale were almost the most efficient way imaginable to massively and quickly transmit HIV through the population, with, in some cases, entire villages providing blood donations.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Certainly we have reports of people who have been infected who have been seeking care who have been denied that care, and in some cases, for trying to demand that care have been subject to police brutality. It is difficult for me to say now just how extensive that is, but certainly there are repeated reports of it.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you for your question. Our position is that the dialogue should be suspended until very fundamental changes have been made to it. I specifically want to emphasize one point that I mentioned earlier, concerning the participation of the NGOs and civil society. For years, the dialogue hasn't had a lot of effect, because it's a dialogue of the deaf.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to address the subcommittee today on behalf of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. We are one of the world's leading organizations working on legal and human rights issues raised by HIV. That work includes doing research and policy analysis, as well as providing technical assistance to a variety of organizations that are working on AIDS law and human rights.

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Thompson, for two questions. I think we agree on the statistics of zero tolerance. That is the stated policy. It's pretty much the stated policy of every prison system in the world and has been for decades. It's not achievable, and the stats show that as well. So I think we have to accept that and be pragmatic about it.

Justice committee  In the Canadian context, that's been the stated policy for decades. There's never been any way of actually achieving complete prohibition of drugs in prisons. The second point is about the use of taxpayers' funds. If we have evidence that mandatory minimum sentencing approaches do not work in the case of drug offences, and we are going to spend money on pursuing an approach that does not work when we know there are adverse health consequences that we will pay for down the road, then it seems to me that's not a good use of taxpayers' money and that we ought to be putting that money into more effective responses.

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think your point is well taken, but it raises the question of whether or not mandating incarceration for people who are addicts to drugs and are therefore convicted of drug offences is somehow going to prevent the kind of global trafficking you are talking about.

Justice committee  Thank you. I simply wanted to make the point that it sounds as though there is some agreement that the problem is with the application of the concept of conditional sentencing and not necessarily with the concept itself. But it seems to me that the remedy that is being proposed, perhaps without the benefit of adequate data—as has been pointed out elsewhere—is both underinclusive and overinclusive.

Justice committee  Yes. The way we read the legislation, the drugs listed in schedule III of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which are things like amphetamines, LSD, and psilocybin, are hybrid offences. The offences you mentioned are hybrid and they could be prosecuted by way of summary conviction.

Justice committee  Thank you. I have just two brief points. First, to follow up on the comment that Mr. Griffin just made, if it's in fact the case that it would not usually be the kind of situation for which you would send someone to prison--for, say, a minor trafficking offence--then it seems to me there's little harm in accepting our recommendation that you might exempt those kinds of offences from this legislation, to remove the option of conditional sentencing.

Justice committee  I will. Thank you. Finally, let me offer a couple of thoughts as to why--beyond those health considerations--implementing this variant of mandatory and minimum sentences for drug offences would not be particularly effective. A study done for Justice Canada in 2002 looked at the available evidence at that time and concluded that mandatory minimum sentencing approaches do not work for drug offences.