Bill C-2 (Historical)

Respect for Communities Act

An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

This enactment amends the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to, among other things,
(a) create a separate exemption regime for activities involving the use of a controlled substance or precursor that is obtained in a manner not authorized under this Act;
(b) specify the purposes for which an exemption may be granted for those activities; and
(c) set out the information that must be submitted to the Minister of Health before the Minister may consider an application for an exemption in relation to a supervised consumption site.

[Gwendolyn Landolt]

The Supreme Court of Canada said there has to be a balance between public safety and public health. It seems to me that Bill C-2 is desperately trying to create that balance. The court ordered a proliferation of drug injection sites to go forward, providing there was that balance. I find that Bill C-2, within the margins that the court gave the government to bring in legislation, has attempted to do that very important job of balancing the two aspects of drug addiction.

[Gwendolyn Landolt]

—that Bill C-2 is essential to try to moderate the terrible tragedies that are taking place in Canada with regard to the drug injection site in Vancouver.

We have done a brief where all this and the police statement are referenced for you to read, and all the studies backing up what I said are in our brief, if you care to read it.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[Gwendolyn Landolt, National Vice-President, REAL Women of Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I very much appreciate being invited to come here to speak.

REAL Women of Canada was an intervenor in the Supreme Court of Canada case on the drug injection site in Vancouver. Our organization was the only one of 15 intervenors that did not have a financial, personal, or professional interest in the outcome of that case. Our concern was entirely based on the addicted individual and the implications for his or her family and society.

lt is essential that any discussion on Bill C-2 and drug injection sites to which Bill C-2 relates is based on factual evidence. Evidence indicates that InSite, which is the only drug injection site in North America, has given rise to very serious problems, which Bill C-2 is trying to address.

During the debate in the House of Commons on Bill C-2, reference has repeatedly been made in the debate that over 30 peer-reviewed studies indicated that InSite was purported to have curtailed crime and disease, and led to a 35% reduction in deaths caused by drug overdose.

The crucial point that was not disclosed during the debate in the House of Commons was that these 30 studies on lnSite were all carried out by the same individuals from the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, located at UBC, who were one and the same activists who had lobbied for the establishment of the drug injection site in the first place. As a result, they had a personal interest, as well as a conflict of interest, in ensuring that InSite be deemed successful. That is, their research was carried out for the purpose only of supporting the political objective of continuing the operation of InSite.

According to information obtained under the Access to Information Act, between 2003 and 2011 these same researchers from the B.C. centre at UBC, who had previously lobbied for the injection site, have received over $18 million from the Canadian lnstitutes of Health Research to carry out their research on lnSite. All their studies were peer-reviewed only by supporters of the drug injection facility. Also, these researchers, contrary to standard scientific procedures, have refused to share their data with other researchers so that their studies can be replicated. Without exception, these advocates and researchers concluded that the injection site was reducing harm and death rates for addicts.

One such study on lnSite was published in a British medical journal in April of 2011. The study erroneously claimed that there was a 35% reduction in overdoses in the 500 metres surrounding lnSite, while in the rest of Vancouver, the rate decreased by only 9%. However, an international team consisting of three Australian medical doctors, a Canadian academic, and an American psychiatrist found serious and grave errors in the study, which entirely invalidated its findings. Also, a B.C. coroner's report has shown that overdoses actually increased in the area by 14%, or 11% if population were adjusted, between 2002, before the site opened, and 2005, when the study was carried out. Other evidence further contradicts the claims of these advocates and researchers from the centre at UBC that this InSite has been successful and that Bill C-2 is redundant.

One study that is never, ever reported is in fact the government's own expert advisory committee on drug injection sites. The federal government established an expert review committee to determine whether the claims of those supporting InSite were legitimate. The findings of the expert committee were released on March 31, 2008. The expert committee found as follows. Only 5% of the drug addicts in the area used the drug injection site, and of these, only 10% used the facility exclusively for their injections.

In other words, 90% of the drug addicts continued to inject their drugs on back streets, alleyways, etc., leaving their contaminated needles behind.

Two, there is no proof that the site has decreased the instance of AIDS and hepatitis in drug addicts.

Three, there is no indication that the crime rate has decreased.

Four, only 3% of InSite clients are referred to treatment.

According to Inspector John McKay, responsible for policing the drug injection site, 65 police officers from the Vancouver Police Department are required to patrol the five-block area surrounding InSite in order to control the crime. The police officers are prohibited from charging addicts with possession, and instead are obliged to escort them to the injection site.

The drug addict or casual observer obtains illicit drugs of questionable purity from a drug trafficker in the area, which he or she then brings into the site for drug injection purposes. The drug injection site, in fact, becomes a honeypot, a meeting point for drug traffickers.

According to the government's expert committee, it is estimated that each addict causes $350,000 worth of crime each year in order to purchase drugs from a trafficker to feed his or her addiction. It is not surprising, therefore, that in 2006 Vancouver had the second-highest rate of violent and property crime of any major city in the United States or Canada.

These are some of the reasons why more than two dozen major European cities have signed the 1994 European Cities Against Drugs declaration, opposing drug injection sites and free distribution of drugs. Officials from Berlin, Stockholm, London, Paris, Moscow, Oslo, etc., have embraced the principle that the answer to a drug problem does not lie in drug injection sites.

Another problem has arisen with the Vancouver drug injection site. In November 2013, an audit was undertaken of InSite, which is operated by the Portland Hotel Society. The audit revealed that the directors and executives used much of the approximately $21 million per year that it received from the federal and provincial governments for their own personal use. The examples include wining, dining, travelling, staying in luxury hotels, flower arrangements, hair salons, spas, and limousines, all being placed on the business card of the association administering InSite. The co-executives and the board have been dismissed, but it indicates that keeping the drug addicts on drugs only enhances those who are supposed to be helping them. It only helps mainly those who are operating InSite.

Well-off individuals such as doctors, lawyers, airline pilots, can afford to obtain treatment for their addiction. It is the addicts without money or support who are shuffled off to InSite, where they inject themselves continuously with street drugs, which only deepens their addiction. This results, eventually, in the addict having further degradation and often a terrifying death. The problem of drug abuse is not solved by enabling drug addicts to use more and more drugs, or assisting them in using a drug injection site.

The real question we must address is whether addicts should continue to be marginalized and manipulated—or should they be helped with treatment, so as to return them to healing, and to a normal life with their families? It is obvious that a compassionate society should not kill addicts by furthering their addiction, but rather should reach out to them by way of treatment.

Bill C-2, which seeks to provide a moderating influence on the problems that have arisen with the InSite drug injection site in Vancouver, has shown how necessary it is to curb the abuses that have taken place. Moreover, there are better and more competent ways of dealing with drug addiction than the proliferation of drug injection sites.

The criminal justice system today serves as a major engine that gets addicts into treatment and recovery. The drug courts make recovery possible for thousands of offenders each year. In fact, according to experts in the field in the United States, 50% of people in treatment are there because of referral by the criminal justice system.

International research indicates that treatment of drug addiction actually increases when drug enforcement occurs. That is, positive results flow from drug enforcement in that one of the aftermaths of police operations is that there is a marked increase in the proportion of drug users seeking treatment. This is because drug courts allow the conviction to be suspended if the offender agrees to take treatment and be monitored through regular urinalysis and counselling. Those who complete the drug-free program receive a suspended sentence or conditional discharge. Those who fail are required to return to the regular court system for sentencing. When offered a choice between drug conviction or treatment, the addict invariably chooses treatment.

[Chief Bryan Larkin, Chief of Police, Waterloo Regional Police Service, Member of the Drug Advisory Committee, Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, everyone. I appreciate this opportunity to appear before you today.

It's a pleasure to be here.

By way of introduction, my name is Bryan Larkin. I'm the serving chief of the Waterloo Regional Police Service. I've been a police officer for 24 years. I sit as a member of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police drug abuse committee. As well, as a community builder, I've had the opportunity to serve as the chair of the board of directors of the Stonehenge Therapeutic Community, which is a residential drug treatment centre that provides a full spectrum of addiction services, including supported housing, for Waterloo and Wellington counties. This opportunity, coupled with my policing experience, has provided me tremendous insight into the social challenges and the impact of substance abuse in our communities.

CACP president Clive Weighill of the Saskatoon Police Service and I would like to express our sincere appreciation to this committee for allowing us the opportunity to contribute to this important community safety and well-being discussion, which ensures local community input into decision-making on potential safe injection sites within our communities. On behalf of Chief Weighill, I'd just like to make a quick statement.

As law enforcement leaders, we always focus on ensuring the safety of our communities. Our officers are the most vulnerable among us. We are dedicated to the protection and security of the people of Canada. Likewise, our colleagues in the Canadian Armed Forces proudly serve Canadians by defending our values, interests, and sovereignty, both at home and abroad, and we'd like to join in mourning their loss.

We've all been shaken by the recent tragedies in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and here in Ottawa. It was truly an unprecedented week for all first responders, but, as is typical with Canadians, such tragedies bring out the best in our people, our leadership, and our collective resiliency. Parliamentarians and staffers from all political parties are to be commended. Through a moment of terror to uniting in resolve, you each provided incredible leadership and have demonstrated that we will not be deterred, nor will we continue to stand still. We will move on as Canadians do.

We'd also like to recognize the House and Senate security staff, including one of our own CACP members, Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers. We'd like to make that statement before getting into this important discussion.

As many of you are aware, the CACP, through its 20 committees related to public safety and justice, contributes extensively to the House and Senate committees. For your own background, the CACP represents in excess of 90% of the policing community in Canada, which includes federal, first nations, provincial, regional, and municipal police leaders and services. Our mandate is clear: it is the safety and security of all Canadians through innovative police leadership.

In 2007 the CACP adopted a drug policy that was developed through our drug abuse committee. This policy sets out the position of our CACP members on this very important national issue that has a direct impact on Canadians and our communities on a day-to-day basis.

I'll give you a brief overview of the CACP drug policy. Our strategy is balanced. We believe in a balanced approach to the issue of substance abuse and abuse within Canada. It consists of prevention, education, enforcement, counselling, treatment, rehabilitation, and, where appropriate, alternative measures as well as judicial diversion of offenders in order to ensure appropriate support as well as to counter Canada's drug problems.

Our mission is very clear. Our goal is to transition to a healthy lifestyle in order to provide a second chance at life. We believe in a balanced continuum of practice distributed across each component. In addition, the policy components must be fundamentally lawful and ethical, must consider the interests of all, and must strive to achieve a balance between societal and individual interests. We believe that, to the greatest extent possible, initiatives must be and should be evidence-based.

The CACP supports the principles being established as a part of this bill, in particular the need to balance public safety with public health. In fact, that is the future of community well-being. The future of community safety is more collaboration and enhanced integration.

The CACP is not making a specific statement with regard to supervised consumption sites. Our position is that the decision to support or not support supervised consumption sites is a local community issue. It must be localized.

We are pleased to see a clear process that will provide criteria for community consultation prior to a decision being made by the Minister of Health. As all of you know, there are 90 safe consumption sites across the world, two of them in Canada, and we would concur that there's no one unique or cookie-cutter approach. The needs, the demands, and the impacts vary from community to community.

Bill C-2 establishes 27 criteria that an applicant must meet before a supervised consumption site is granted by the Minister of Health. One of these criteria requires that the applicant make contact with and obtain the input of local police services, as noted in proposed paragraph 56.1(3)(e):

a letter from the head of the police force that is responsible for providing policing services to the municipality in which the site would be located that outlines his or her opinion on the proposed activities at the site, including any concerns with respect to public safety and security.

I want to thank and acknowledge and applaud the inclusion of such.

Again, the CACP maintains a neutral position on the actual merits of safe consumption sites. Our focus is on public safety and security. This is why we believe that while law enforcement is an integral part of the decision-making process, we are simply one stakeholder. We are one partner. It is the greater community response that is required. It is the collaboration that is the spirit that builds healthy and strong communities in Canada.

We want to reiterate that every community is unique, and that is reflected, we believe, in the spirit of the bill.

Thank you very much. Merci .

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

I just want to begin by saying that when the process for InSite in Vancouver began 11 years ago, there was a great fear from many of us—it was a controversial discussion, and a lot of consultation took place—that InSite would become this lightning rod, that it would be held up as a panacea for solving everything, and that everything would revolve around that. Of course, that's not the case. A safe injection site is really part of a solution. It's really part of an overall health strategy for dealing with injection drug users and drug overdoses and health and treatment and so on.

It's very interesting, because I saw the debate that happened in Vancouver and that eventually settled down. Now the facility is very well accepted. I see the same debate taking place here today. It is the fear that somehow InSite is responsible for every problem that we have with drug use. I think we should remember that the purpose of a supervised injection facility is primarily to prevent people from dying from drug overdoses and to help people connect to treatment options. There is a very well-used saying in the downtown eastside that a dead drug user can't get treatment. It's certainly a place to begin.

So it's very disappointing to me today to hear a representative from a police association pose the question “Which neighbourhood will be sacrificed?” It's very, very disappointing for me to hear that, because it makes me realize really just how much fear there is and how little understanding there is about what a supervised injection site means and what it actually does.

To just give one quick example, earlier in the summer this year there was a spate of bad drugs on the street in Vancouver. There were public warnings issued by the police department. There was a number of overdoses. In fact the police department issued statements and e-mails urging drug users to be extremely cautious and told them to go to InSite. It was a public health advisory from the police department who were seeing what was taking place on the street.

To Dr. McKeown from the Toronto Board of Health, thank you very much for the excellent brief that you sent in. One of the concerns that I saw in your written submission, and I think was echoed in a brief from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, is that in effect Bill C-2, and I would like to focus on the bill, doesn't ever indicate what level of information, research, opposition or support would actually result in an application being accepted or denied. So in effect there is never a threshold that is given.

I would like to ask you whether or not there is any other service you provide where you might have to meet criteria where that would be the case, that you are actually going into a unknown situation where you have no idea what it is you actually have to meet. It seems to me with this bill that the criteria are so open-ended, with no threshold established, how would you ever know that you'd collected enough information or enough opinions?

[Dr. David McKeown, Medical Officer of Health, Toronto Board of Health]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to thank the chair and the members of the committee for the opportunity to speak with you today.

My name is Dr. David McKeown. I'm the Medical Officer of Health for the City of Toronto and the executive officer of the Toronto Board of Health. My remarks today are presented on behalf of the board of health.

You should a have a copy of our full written submission.

My perspective is somewhat different from that of my law enforcement colleagues, because I come at it from a public health point of view. Toronto is one of several cities in Canada looking to implement supervised injection services as part of an evidenced-based, comprehensive approach to health services for people who inject drugs. As you know, potential operators of these services require an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act in order to legally operate, and Bill C-2 sets out the proposed requirements for this exemption process.

The Toronto board of health considers the requirements in the act to be excessive and quite disproportionate when compared with processes for making decisions about other kinds of health services, and we urge the development of a more appropriate exemption application process.

The board also feels that the proposed bill is not consistent with the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada ruling on supervised injection. If Bill C-2 is passed as written, we believe it will be a significant barrier for any community or any health system in any province that has come to the decision that these services would serve both the public health and public safety interests of local residents.

Injection drug use, as we know, is associated with significant public health risks, including the transmission of blood-borne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis and, of course, overdose. The risk of overdose, in fact, is twice as high for injecting illicit drugs as for other forms of consumption. This risk increases when people inject alone, as no one is available to intervene or seek medical assistance in an emergency. Without a safe place to inject, some people turn to public spaces such as washrooms, alleyways, or the street.

Public injecting is not only an issue for people who are homeless. People living in shared accommodation, in shelters and temporary housing, or rooming houses may fear losing their housing if they're found to be injecting, and so will turn to public spaces.

Based on these and other risk factors, the Toronto and Ottawa supervised consumption assessment study, a research study, concluded that Toronto, with its pattern of drug use, would benefit from multiple small supervised injection services integrated into existing health services, which are already serving people who inject illicit drugs. This is a different model from the Vancouver InSite service. The Toronto board of health supports this model and this approach to expand a continuum of health services for the needs of this particularly at-risk population in our city.

As you know, in 2011 the Supreme Court ruled that the Minister of Health's decision not to extend the section 56 exemption for Vancouver's InSite service was not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice, and violated section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Supreme Court also ruled that for future exemption applications, the minister must exercise discretion within the constraints imposed by the charter and aim to strike an appropriate balance between achieving public health and public safety goals, and both are important in this issue.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court said that the minister should generally grant an exemption where the evidence indicates that a supervised injection service will decrease the risk of death and disease—that's the health interest—and where there is little or no evidence of a negative impact on public safety.

The requirements set out in Bill C-2, we feel, rather than striking this appropriate balance are focused much more on public safety concerns without recognizing significant public health benefits. If we are truly to have respect for communities, we must recognize that harm reduction services such as supervised injection not only provide better health outcomes for people who use drugs but they may also help to improve public safety in local communities. For example, as we read the research, it is shown that supervised injection services can help reduce public drug use and the discarding of needles, and certainly do not increase crime.

People who inject drugs are, from a public health practitioner's point of view, among the most vulnerable members of our community, and they often struggle with complex health and mental health issues. They are much more likely to be victims than perpetrators of crime, and the profound stigma and discrimination they experience create barriers to their accessing mainstream health and social services that the rest of the community would use.

Broadly, harm reduction services tend to be effective because they're designed to be welcoming and non-judgmental, and they focus very specifically on the health needs of people who use drugs.

The board of health has a number of specific concerns about the requirements set out in Bill C-2, and I'm going to mention each of these briefly.

Demonstrating local need for a health service is a very reasonable requirement for an organization seeking to implement supervised injection services, whether making that case to the provincial government or for an exemption. However, producing scientific evidence on the medical benefits of these services should not be necessary at this point.

The evidence has been reviewed over and over again. The Supreme Court and many other health organizations have already recognized that these services are an evidence-based health intervention based on a wealth of peer-reviewed national and international research.

The exemption application process laid out in Bill C-2 requires letters from a broad range of officials outlining their opinions about the proposed service and identifying any related concerns, along with details of how the applicant will address those concerns. There really is no other health service that is required to obtain a consensus of opinion from a wide range of sector leaders in order to operate.

Bill C-2 also requires consultation with professional medical associations and a broad range of community groups. This breadth of consultation is likely to be beyond the capacity of most health service organizations or health systems seeking to implement these services. Furthermore, there's already widespread agreement among health professional organizations—the CMA, the CNA, and so forth—that supervised injection services should be available as a part of a comprehensive range of interventions in health facilities that serve people who use drugs.

The proposed bill also does not specify what would constitute an acceptable community consultation process, including the range and type of community groups to be consulted. Some community engagement is prudent, and in fact good practice, in order to inform local residents and businesses about the service, how it will operate, and to establish mechanisms for addressing any issues that might arise.

I think this process is part of being a good neighbour for any health service, and it benefits everybody involved. However, it is not reasonable to expect organizations to consult with individuals and groups in the community who are not expected to be affected in any way by the service.

Bill C-2 also requires police checks for all staff who will work in the program for the previous 10-year period, including noting any drug offence convictions. Further, police check documentation is required from people whose country of origin is not Canada, if the staff member resided outside the country during the previous 10 years.

On a practical note, applicants can't really conduct police checks in advance of submitting an exemption, because they're not likely to be recruiting or retaining or hiring staff until they've secured the exemption and are ready to open. Furthermore, the need for police reports from countries outside Canada clearly discriminates against anyone who has emigrated from an area of the world that is war-torn or has an oppressive regime where the information is not likely to be available.

It also discriminates against workers who have past drug offence convictions but are now law-abiding and suitable for employment. Workers with that kind of first-hand knowledge of the issues facing drug users play a critical role in the delivery of harm reduction services, as they're often able to connect better with at-risk individuals because of their shared experience. Given that a key goal of these programs is to engage with at-risk individuals, to link them with health services, including treatment services, strategies such as employing peer workers who have past experience with drugs should not be impeded by the legislation.

Bill C-2 also allows the Minister of Health to request any other information deemed relevant. This is a very open-ended provision in the legislation, and depending on the inclination of the minister and the nature of the request there could be significant further barriers.

The bill allows the minister to give public notice of an exemption application, and the general public would have 90 days to comment, regardless of whether they have any relationship to the application or the proposed service at all. Both of these requirements could lead to cumbersome delays or impediments to implementing supervised injection services.

Legislation generally should provide clarity and certainty in public policy on whatever issue it concerns. An overarching concern with Bill C-2 is that there's really no indication as to whose opinions of support or opposition or what level and what type of information submitted would result in an application being accepted or denied. It has been the experience of other cities that once a supervised injection service is up and running, community concerns tend to either be addressed or not materialize at the level in which they might have been predicted.

This certainly has been the case in Vancouver, where both InSite and, perhaps more significantly because it's relevant to the model that looks more appropriate for Toronto, the Dr. Peter Centre have secured broad community support. The emphasis in Bill C-2 in demonstrating widespread support from many different stakeholders does not recognize the challenge of the poor level of understanding of the nature and benefits of supervised injection services in the general community.

Bill C-2 imposes an onerous and complex process on the approval of supervised injection services, which is unlike that for any other health service. There's no indication that provincial governments, which have constitutional responsibility for health services, were consulted in developing the legislation, nor is there any indication that health professionals or other organizations with expertise in supervised injection were involved.

Given this lack of process and the onerous requirements laid out in the legislation, we encourage the federal government to take the time to go back and develop a more appropriate, practical, and well-informed process for CDSA exemption; and further, that the application process be developed in consultation with the appropriate provincial public health, public safety, and community stakeholders.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[Michael McCormack, President, Toronto Police Association]

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Michael McCormack. I'm the president of the Toronto Police Association. Here in Toronto I represent one of the most diverse communities in all of Canada. I also represent over 8,000 members.

First of all, I want to thank the standing committee for giving me this opportunity to speak to some of our association's concerns regarding amendments to Bill C-2.

I'd like to start off by stating that our association does not support the current configuration of supervised safe injection sites. I'm not here to argue the medical evidence, whether or not they reduce the number of deaths from overdoses or prevent the spread of infectious disease. I'm here to speak about our public safety concerns from a policing perspective.

The goal in policing is to improve the quality of life in the community by reducing crime and disorder and the fear of crime and disorder, and enhancing public safety, which is something that we do in the policing community. We believe supervised injection sites contribute to social and economic deterioration and further victimization where they are located. They do little to achieve our goal in policing, which is public safety.

I've worked—again, this is from a policing perspective—in 51 Division in downtown Toronto, which is a unique division. It has the second-highest density of government housing in North America; almost 90% of all the halfway houses and stationary homes in Toronto are located within the boundaries of 51 Division. I've worked there for almost 15 years, in major crime, street crime, dealing with all types and different levels of crime. What we found was that in a division like this, 90% of the crimes we dealt with were either drug or alcohol related. This is a big concern to us in the policing community.

When we talked about where we go, when we looked at all the anecdotal and other evidence around safe injection sites, and when we reviewed the evaluations of these sites, we were very critical of their methodology and the findings. We found that the public safety issues have been downplayed or not considered, or even poorly measured in a lot of this research.

For example, one study used only three crime types for benchmarks: drug trafficking, assault, and robbery and vehicle theft. Notably absent were the other crimes that from practical experience we found were missing in the indicators linked to drug use, such as break and enter, shoplifting, theft from auto, fraud, prostitution, panhandling, selling of stolen property—not to mention the countless provincial offences.

What we find too is that it's really hard to measure these offences, because given the way.... We just looked at the report on unreported crime that the federal government puts out every year. We find that people who are using drugs—we consider them victims of drug abuse or addiction—are very reluctant to come forward and report when they are, in fact, the victims of crime, whether of theft, sexual assaults, or involvement in prostitution. That's something that really concerns us.

But overall, when I look at policing somewhere in Toronto, with such diverse and widespread communities in different pockets throughout this city, when we're dealing with people who are looking to use intravenous drugs—it's not only heroin, it's also MDMA and other types of chemicals that they inject—they call it jonesing, or needing a fix, for a reason. We have all these communities throughout Toronto, as I described, and we have different pockets where you have a concentration of drug users. It's not one area where all your intravenous drug users will be congregating or hanging out. We found in working in the projects that the drug users will go get their fix, and we will find needles and syringes in schoolyards, elevators, corridors, and stairwells. The drug addicts get their drugs, they need their fix, and they go to the nearest location where they can have a little bit of privacy. They'll inject and then move on from there.

The whole premise of having a centralized injection site really baffles us in the policing community, because you're taking a heck of a leap of faith to think that a person who's addicted to drugs is going to, for instance, go to wherever the drug dealer is, buy their drugs, get their syringes, jump on the subway or take a taxicab or ride their bike to go to a safe injection site, and then inject—and go through that process four or five times a day, which is what we find with intravenous drug users. It's not a once-a-day event and then they move on and their day is normal. They inject up to four to six times a day.

So the logistics escape us. There needs to be some dialogue around how this would actually work. How do people see that as being effective? We're very puzzled about how that would be applied to somewhere like the city of Toronto.

As I said earlier, most of the drug addicts that I've ever dealt with as a practical matter were forced into criminality to support their habit. Where are they going to get $100 to $200 a day, which is what it requires to support this addiction? They do it by supporting their habit with theft from autos, break and enters, and other types of crimes. With that addiction they're victims, but they're victimizing the community as well.

Again, when we're talking about safe injection sites or supervised injection services, you go where the market is. Drug dealers are, for lack of a better word, business people, and they're going to go where the market is. So if you have a safe injection site—this is some of the experience we've found from the Vancouver experience as well—drug dealers will go where the market is. They'll go where people are going to use.

If they're going to traffick, they'll congregate in the areas where they can sell to the users. When we have a safe injection site, we have people who are going to be using. The drug dealers are going to go there, which is further going to facilitate and increase the amount of crime and that type of activity in those neighbourhoods. So we're very concerned about the drug dealers going there and about further victimization of the addicts.

When I worked in 51 Division, I could look out the back gate of 51 Division and see a methadone clinic. That's quite a different premise: people are getting treatment, the product is on site, and it's managed. This is a very different concept. So we're very concerned about the practical basis for this and how this would work.

The other concern we have from a policing perspective is that we are the ones expected to police those areas and increase enforcement and our presence. When we looked at it, we found in Vancouver that there was a dip in crime around the supervised injection site, but there were, I think, an additional 83 police officers who were put into that area to police. We found in Toronto that whenever we increase policing into a community, there is a significant dip. Police presence does have an impact on crime. For us, the police, we're going to be left mopping it up and it's going to be a demand on police resources. Police need to be consulted and have more dialogue and evidence on how this is going to impact our already taxed police resources.

We have some real concerns about the practical basis of this. Again, I'm not talking from the health perspective. That's not what I'm here to do. I'm talking from a public safety basis. From the Vancouver experience, when the 81 police officers were surveyed, in I think 2008, the individual officers who worked in that area said that their perception and feeling was that there was no actual decrease in the indicators of that type of illegal activity, whether it was public injection of drugs—they were still cleaning up syringes and needles from all over that community—or the congregation of people in that area, including prostitution, and street-level crimes. We're obviously very concerned about that, and that's something the policing community is going to be left to deal with. So we need to have more dialogue and see more evidence-based discussions, as Matt referred to, around what the outcome is going to be and how this is going to work with these communities.

I'll conclude my remarks by saying that we feel there needs to be more independent research to provide a more balanced and inclusive review of the impacts of these injection services on public safety. We need to improve the body of research in this area with objective studies, evaluations, and measurables that all stakeholders can agree on. We feel that the measurables would include crime rates, disorder indicators, property values, other economic indicators, social indicators, and data gathered through the community, law enforcement, and multi-sector consultation.

We also need to explore other strategies, including education and prevention strategies, and judicial enforcement strategies—

[Diane Labelle, General Counsel, Legal Services (Health Canada), Department of Justice]

Briefly, it's to bring about the very purpose of Bill C-2, which is to provide the legislative framework for the minister to exercise her exempting powers in keeping with the direction given by the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada didn't take issue with the discretion exercised by the minister but, rather, the manner in which the discretion is exercised. Therefore, under the proposed bill the information would be provided in support of a request for, or information obtained in relation to, an exemption to conduct activities with illicit substances at a supervised consumption site. This would inform the minister's assessment. The minister understood that she must make an assessment of the public health considerations as well as the public safety considerations that arise in a particular case. This would assist her in balancing these considerations in accordance with the section 7 rights to life, liberty, and security of the person guaranteed by the charter and in the manner described by the Supreme Court of Canada.

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Edmonton—Spruce Grove, AB]

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, our government firmly believes that supervised injection sites should not be built without community consultation. We've embraced the need for consultation as one of the major ways that we are demonstrating respect for Canadians and for their communities on an issue like this.

The community opinions both for and against are one solid criterion that the Supreme Court has said that I, as Minister of Health, or any future minister of health must consider when looking at an application. My message to the committee is to allow me and future health ministers the ability to do just that. That's a big part of what this legislation does. These consultations will point to broad-based support, opposition, or perhaps even measured comments from either viewpoint. But the principle of having these discussions remains paramount. We obviously take very seriously the harm caused by dangerous and addictive drugs. We know serious concerns are raised by communities about what an injection site would bring to their neighbourhood.

It's for this reason and in support of the Supreme Court's requirement that Bill C-2 would require that rigorous criteria be addressed in advance of an application for a supervised injection site to be considered. It's also the reason why it's so important for all Canadians to have an opportunity to provide views before any site opens. As you've mentioned, the criteria that are set out in the bill would allow many different voices to be heard and inform the Minister of Health's consideration of an application. Applicants seeking to open a supervised injection site will have to seek input from local perspectives in the form of a letter outlining their opinion on the proposed activities from numerous groups.

For example, a letter would be required from the provincial health minister who is responsible for where the site would be located. The letter would outline his or her opinion on the proposed activities at the site, describe how these activities are integrated within the provincial health care system, and provide information about access to available drug treatment services for persons who would also use the site. Not only would this allow for the relevant provincial authority to have a say in the process, but it would also serve to further inform a federal health minister during the approval process.

The support of a provincial health minister in the application of a supervised injection site is certainly something worth considering.

In a similar vein we would expect letters from the municipal government as well and the head of the police force in the community to state their opinion on the record whether or not the proposed activities at the site are safe, including any concerns around public health, so of course public safety.

Lastly, we would hope to see letters from the head or the lead health professional such as the chief public health officer for the province and the provincial minister responsible for public safety to make sure their opinions are on the record. Applicants will also be required to hold consultations with relevant professional licensing authorities in the province and a broad range of community groups in the municipality. They'll need to provide reports of these consultations, including summaries of the opinions heard, copies of any written submissions received, and a description of any steps taken to address any relevant concerns that were raised during consultations.

The bottom line here is that the voices of the local community need to be represented clearly. They need to be provided with the opportunity to make their views known. This is an issue that affects people in their community. Whether or not someone is applying to put a site in a residential neighbourhood I think it's just common sense that we would involve all stakeholders in the process and that their views would be sought before we move to an application.

When we go through consultation processes, whether it's other controversial projects proceeding, we see time and again relevant stakeholders and stakeholders directly impacted by that project wanting to have a voice in the process. That's what this does.

I think it's absolutely necessary that it happen.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for having me here this afternoon at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. I look forward to coming back here to discuss Bill C-44, The Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act, which was just tabled in the House and aims to protect Canada against terrorism.

As Minister of Public Safety I strongly believe that we must do everything in our power to keep our streets and communities safe for us and for our children. That is why I would like to thank my colleague Minister Ambrose for her leadership on this vital piece of legislation, and more specifically for involving communities in a decision that could so dramatically transform their neighbourhoods.

Bill C-2 proposes new requirements for organizations that seek an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act in order to set up supervised consumption sites.

The bill you will be examining guarantees that those who could be affected by the creation of these centres will be consulted before such a centre is built in their community.

In other words, ordinary Canadians, civic-minded community groups, and front-line law enforcement will be able to have their voice heard as to whether or not these drug consumption sites belong in their backyards.

Canadians expect that the decision to allow for a designated area where laws can be broken and illicit drugs can be consumed by addicts will not be taken lightly. But shockingly not a single Canadian would be consulted if one of these drug consumption sites were to open today in any one of your constituencies. What I find shocking is the deputy leader of the NDP, Ms. Davies, announced that they oppose allowing members of their community to add their voices on this decision. For me consulting is a key principle of a democratic decision process, and that's why I am so grateful to stand by Minister Ambrose, Minister of Health, and also to bring my full support to this bill so people involved, people impacted, or consulted can have a say.

On a public safety issue we saw the New Democrats call for a plan to give needles to convicted criminals so that they could continue their drug habits while behind bars. I don't agree. I don't think this is part of rehabilitation where we want our inmates to go on with their lives when they are free. Instead we brought forward the drug-free prisons act. On the other side we have the Liberals' stand. Mr. Trudeau's signature policy is to legalize the sale of marijuana, which would make it easier for our children to access. He has made clear that his vision of legalization would make smoking marijuana a normal everyday activity. I don't agree. I think we can do more for our children. I think we can offer them more as a protective society.

That's why I totally reject this radical pro-narcotic ideology. Let's take a look at what the bill before us today actually does.

First and foremost, this bill guarantees that requests to allow the consumption of controlled substances in our communities will be carefully reviewed.

Proposals to set up such sites raise important public safety concerns on the part of the staff in those sites, families and local police services.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the viewpoint of local enforcement organizations should be taken into consideration.

Substances obtained from illegal sources have a nefarious and devastating effect on public safety and could favour organized crime.

This summer I saw first-hand some of the challenges police officers face while safeguarding our communities, including in areas where drug use is prevalent. I walked the streets of the downtown eastside with the Vancouver Police Department. These are certainly not the types of criminal activities I would want occurring near a school, or near any community. Front-line police officers tend to agree.

Tom Stamatakis, President of the Vancouver Police Union and the Canadian Police Association said:

...my experience in Vancouver is that these sites also lead to an increase in criminal behaviour and disorder in the surrounding community and have significant impact on police resources.

Is it the kind of Canada we want, Mr. Chair?

For these reasons, I support Minister Ambrose's bill. Not only does it give a voice to Canadians who are directly affected by the decision to build a supervised consumption site, but it adds to other rigorous measures taken by our government to counter drug consumption.

As I mentioned, the Drug-Free Prisons Act is another important bill being examined by Parliament. That bill will guarantee that the Parole Board of Canada has additional legal power when it makes decisions on the conditional release of offenders who have obtained parole, but whose tests have come back positive, or who refuse to submit to a drug test before being released from an institution into a community.

This bill will also guarantee that the Parole Board of Canada pays particular attention to whether or not the obligation to abstain from consuming drugs or alcohol should be made a condition of the offender's parole.

Our Conservative government is proud of our efforts to support communities and keep them safe, including through tackling the problem of illicit drug use.

Thank you for your time today to discuss this very important issue.

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Minister of Health]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm very pleased to be here with all of you, with Minister Blaney and our officials, to discuss the government's respect for communities act, a bill that protects and ensures public health and public safety in our communities.

Before I begin in earnest, I want to say that our thoughts and prayers remain with the family and friends of Corporal Nathan Cirillo of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada. Likewise, of course, our thoughts and prayers remain with the family and friends of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, who was killed by an ISIL-inspired terrorist.

Last week's events, which unfolded in parts of these very halls, were a grim reminder that Canada is not immune to these types of attacks that we've seen elsewhere around the world. I've been very moved to see Canadians pulling together with the kind of firm solidarity that has seen our country through many challenges. Together, I know we will remain vigilant against those at home or abroad who would wish to harm us.

Mr. Chair, I'll turn to the business before us today, which is the respect for communities act. It strengthens Canada's drug control framework, codifying the factors laid out by the Supreme Court of Canada. Our government takes very seriously the harm caused by dangerous and addictive drugs. These drugs tear families apart, they promote criminal behaviour, and they destroy lives. They make our streets less safe, and have harmful impacts on our communities. Indeed, the level of drug use in Canada remains concerning. Amongst youth it is still far too common. The ripple effects of drug abuse are being felt throughout our society.

Our government is taking action to address these problems, through the respect for communities act, to protect the health and safety of Canadians and the communities in which they live. This legislation was not prepared overnight or on a whim. This bill was drafted to specifically codify a detailed ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada in September 2011 on a supervised injection site. In this ruling, the Supreme Court was crystal clear. They ordered that I, in my capacity as Minister of Health, must consider specific factors when reviewing applications that grant exemptions from Canada's drug laws allowing for such sites.

I do not have an option to ignore these factors. Those factors are included in this legislation, and are as follows:

...evidence, if any, on the impact of such a facility on crime rates, the local conditions indicating a need for such a...site, the regulatory structure in place to support the facility, the resources available to support its maintenance, and expressions of community support or opposition.

I feel, Mr. Chair, that the last point is particularly important. Our government sincerely believes, and the Supreme Court agrees, that communities deserve a say when there is a proposal to build a supervised injection site.

The court wrote that their ruling was:

...not a licence for injection drug users to possess drugs wherever and whenever they wish. Nor is it an invitation for anyone who so chooses to open a facility for drug use under the banner of a “safe [consumption] facility”.

Our government respects this ruling by the highest court in the land. It with that in mind we are moving forward with the respect for communities act. This bill amends the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which is Canada's federal drug control statute. It has a dual purpose: the protection of public health and the protection of public safety.

While prohibitive in nature, it also provides for exemptions for the legitimate use of controlled substances and their precursors. Exemptions are currently prescribed as being for medical or scientific purposes or otherwise in the public interest. It's one of my roles to sign off on these exemptions as Minister of Health. Exemptions that I see most often are for use in clinical trials, research in universities involving controlled substances, or for delivering aid in other countries. In all of those examples, the activities being exempted from the provisions of the act involve controlled substances accessed through a legal source. Exemptions of this sort, involving activities where controlled substances are accessed through a legal source, account for almost all of the exemptions that are being granted.

This bill's provisions begin where we see requests for exemptions of a different sort—to allow for activities with controlled substances that have been obtained through illegal sources. The serious risks associated with these substances are amplified when they are obtained from an illicit source, as all of us agree that these substances are dangerous and produced in uncontrolled environments. Given the severity of these risks, any application to undertake activities with these illicit substances needs to be assessed using rigorous criteria that include the factors directed by the Supreme Court that I mentioned earlier.

It's for this reason that the respect for communities act proposes to add a new section to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. This new section will deal specifically with applications for activities involving illicit substances, and includes a portion that is specific to supervised injection sites.

This bill sets out the information that an applicant seeking an exemption for activities involving illicit substances at a supervised injection site would be required to submit in advance to be considered for their application. Until all of the information required is provided, their application for an exemption relating to a supervised injection site would not be considered. This requirement ensures that I, as Minister of Health, can effectively carry out my responsibilities in weighing the merits of an application to establish a supervised injection site as ordered by the Supreme Court. The criteria included in this bill are based upon those factors dictated by the court.

One of the more important elements included, and the one that has led to the most debate, has been the Supreme Court requirement that expressions of community support or opposition should be considered. With this new legislation, applicants will have to seek input and local perspectives from provincial ministers responsible for health and public safety, the heads of local police forces, and the lead public health professionals in the province or territory, in the form of a letter outlining their opinion on the proposed activity. They will also be required to hold consultations with relevant professional licensing authorities in the province, and a broad range of community groups in the municipality. They will need to provide reports on these consultations, including summaries of the opinions that they heard, copies of any written submissions they received, and a description of any steps taken to address any relevant concerns that were raised during the consultation.

Our government recognizes the importance of consulting with relevant community groups about a proposed supervised injection site, and is pleased to follow through on a Supreme Court ruling in this regard. As I mentioned earlier, one of the main purposes of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act is the maintenance of public safety. This is achieved largely through minimizing the risk of diversion of controlled substances to illicit markets for use. This is being further enhanced through the respect for communities act's proposal for pre-inspection authority to allow Health Canada to verify that the information provided in the application is accurate and that all required measures are in place. In the event that an exemption of this nature is granted, the site would have to comply with clearly established terms and conditions, and would be subject to compliance inspections.

Given the inherent dangers of these substances, it's paramount that Health Canada be given the tools it needs to ensure the safety of these sites for both its staff and the community at large. As with any other exemption granted under this act, if the terms and conditions of an exemption are not being met, or if there are issues of non-compliance, the exemption can be revoked. By the same token, when exemptions granted under the provisions of the bill are set to expire, applications for extensions are provided for and criteria are set out. For the renewal of any exemption, the applicant would have to provide further information dating from the time of the first exemption, when the first exemption was granted, to the time of the most recent application. This information would then include details of any change in crime rates in the vicinity where the site is located, and information on any impacts that the activities at the site have had on individual or public health.

Given what we know about the risks associated with possession, use, and production of illicit substances, it's just common sense that exemptions to undertake activities with dangerous drugs should only be granted in exceptional circumstances once rigorous criteria have been addressed. This makes for good public policy that provides for the maintenance of public health, ensures public safety, and most of all respects our communities.

The Supreme Court has directed that I must consider those five factors as set out in its decision. This bill sets out the way in which we will accomplish that. Our government is taking action to ensure that the proper tools are available to do just that. This new approach will bring greater clarity and transparency to the way in which I, and future ministers of health, assess applications to establish supervised injection sites. The proposed approach also provides the legislative structure needed to properly address public health and safety concerns, but most importantly it allows the public and the community to have a voice in the process.

Just to wrap up, Mr. Chair, the respect for communities act is an important and necessary element in our government's commitment to address dangerous and illicit drug use. It complements our government's national anti-drug strategy, and provides for an application process that respects our communities. I encourage members of this committee to consider carefully the provisions of the respect for communities act and its genesis in the Supreme Court's 2011 ruling.

The Supreme Court has been very clear in what my responsibilities as Minister of Health are. I believe that the respect for communities act provides the tools necessary so that our government can comply with these rulings.

Just on a final note, Mr. Chair, we believe the communities deserve to have their voices heard in these considerations and these consultations and that public health must remain a priority so that our streets are kept safe.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Colleagues, we will call to order the 34th meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. Today we'll be dealing with Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

For the first hour of witnesses, we will have two of our ministers appearing. They are the Honourable Rona Ambrose, Minister of Health, and the Honourable Steven Blaney, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. They will be here for the first hour.

Accompanying them and staying for the duration will be a number of other officials: from the Department of Health, Hilary Geller, assistant deputy minister, healthy environments and consumer safety branch; from the Department of Justice, Diane Labelle, general counsel for legal services, Health Canada; from the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Kathy Thompson, assistant deputy minister, community safety and countering crime branch; and, closing it out, from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Chief Superintendent Eric Slinn, director general, support services, federal policing.

For the next hour, from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., we will have an additional departmental official from the Department of Health appearing as a witness. That will be Suzy McDonald, associate director general, controlled substances and tobacco directorate, healthy environments and consumer safety branch.

That's the list of our witnesses today.

Colleagues, without further delay we will go to statements from our ministers. First up is Minister Ambrose.

Minister, you have the floor.

Motions in Amendment

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in opposition to Bill C-13, and I think that is unfortunate.

Like many MPs, I had high hopes when the issue of cyberbullying first came before the House. I had high hopes that we would recognize the urgency with which we needed to respond to cyberbullying and the risk of suicides, especially when we were faced with the unfortunate examples of Rehtaeh Parsons in Nova Scotia and Amanda Todd in B.C. taking their own lives.

In fact, we did respond relatively quickly. The member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour introduced a private member's bill in June 2013. It was a simple bill that did not include a lot of extraneous material. It was a simple bill that would have made it an offence to produce or distribute intimate images of an individual without that person's consent.

Unfortunately, despite attempts to get unanimous consent to move the bill forward, the government said that it had to do a lot more study and think a lot more about what it wanted to present in a government bill. When that bill finally got before us in November 2013, nearly a year ago, as usual with the Conservative government we found a far broader bill than was necessary. It is a bill that includes many issues that have little or nothing to do with cyberbullying, including restrictions on telemarketing, theft of telecommunication services, provisions on terrorist financing, and bank financial disclosures.

What we have before us now is a bill with a much broader scope and one that includes bringing back many aspects of the Conservatives' previous Bill C-30, which was widely rejected by public opinion and especially by privacy advocates.

As someone who worked closely with the criminal justice system for more than two decades before coming here, I have some very serious concerns about the government's attempt to expand access to personal information, both with and without a warrant, that remains in Bill C-13

I am very concerned about the new and low bar for grounds for getting a warrant to get personal information. I see no justification for lowering the grounds for a warrant from “reasonable grounds to believe”, to this new category of reasonable suspicion. For that reason, of course, we proposed an amendment to delete this clause entirely from the bill.

In fact, I believe, despite the speeches we have heard from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, that the Spencer case this summer brings into question the constitutionality of many provisions of Bill C-13. This was an important ruling banning Internet service providers from disclosing names, addresses, and phone numbers of customers voluntarily to the authorities.

The bill would also create a worrying new category of those entitled to our personal information. It has expanded from the well-defined, in law, concept of peace officers, and we know who they are, to this unclear new concept of “public officers”. Does this mean tax officials? Who does this mean are public officers?

In committee we proposed 37 different amendments to try to narrow the scope of the bill. As my colleague for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour so eloquently put it a few moments ago, we were trying to make sure that this bill did not spend the rest of its life being challenged in court. Unfortunately, we did not see any of those amendments adopted, and I do not think we will see our amendments adopted at report stage.

I want to return to one surprising inclusion in Bill C-13 that I was happy to see there. For whatever reason, the government decided to reopen the hate crime section of the Criminal Code in clause 12 of Bill C-13. There is some connection there with cyberbullying and cyberbullying's relation to an escalation into hate crimes.

I think perhaps there was a justification, but I was very surprised to see that when the government listed the new identifiable groups to receive protection, it added national origin, sex, age, and mental or physical disability. Yet what was left out was gender identity.

The House of Commons had already agreed, in a vote on my private member's bill, Bill C-279, on March 20, 2013, by a margin of 149 to 137, with support from all parties, to include protection on the basis of gender identity. Therefore, there was a deliberate omission from this list of new protected grounds of something that we had already decided in the full House.

This is why earlier today I proposed an amendment to clause 12, which I had already placed in the justice committee. I was optimistic that we would be allowed to debate this bill again. I proposed this amendment in committee to try to correct what I felt was an error in the drafting of Bill C-13. It should have included gender identity, precisely for the reason I cited: we had already voted on this provision here in the full House of Commons.

I was very optimistic in committee. After all, two of the five government members in the justice committee had voted for my private member's bill. Therefore, I expected when I proposed the amendment it would pass in committee by a vote of 6 to 3 in favour, because that is how those members had previously voted on the very same provision in Bill C-279. However, at the last minute, one Conservative changed his vote and one member was substituted out of committee. Hence, my amendment was defeated 5 to 4.

This is why I placed my amendment on the order paper again and asked the Speaker to take the unusual step of allowing it to be put before the full House again. The Speaker ruled that my amendment did not meet the test set out in our rules, which would have allowed it to come before the House today as part of this debate.

The problem, of course, is not the Speaker's ruling. It is instead that the government, which always posed as neutral on the provisions of my private member's bill, has found a way of using a government bill to undo the decision that had already been taken in the House on Bill C-279 to provide protection against hate crimes to transgender Canadians. This shows a fundamental disrespect for the will of the majority as already expressed in the House. Therefore, when it comes to respecting the rights of transgender Canadians, it turns out the government is not as neutral as it was pretending to be. This perhaps explains what has happened to the same provision we could have been talking about today, over in the Senate in Bill C-279.

The second problem we have in achieving protection against hate crimes for transgender Canadians is, of course, the Senate. The bill has been before the Senate two different times. The first time was in the spring of 2011. It was approved by the House of Commons and sent to the Senate, which failed to act at all before the election was called. Therefore, that provision died before the Senate.

As I mentioned earlier, Bill C-279 passed the House of Commons on March 20, 2013, a year and a half ago. It has been in the Senate for a year and a half. I know they only meet three days a week, but there are still plenty of sitting days for them to deal with this. In fact, in 2013, it did pass second reading. In other words, it received approval in principle. Now we have the House of Commons saying that what we were supposed to be dealing with in the bill to be true and the Senate, in principle, agreeing. It was sent to the human rights committee, which held hearings and approved Bill C-279 without amendment and returned it to the full floor of the Senate, where a third reading and final vote was not called. The House prorogued and that bill started over.

Here again is where the supposed neutrality of the government on protecting transgender Canadians against hate crimes comes into question. The bill could have been expedited through the Senate, as it had already been through all the stages there. Even simpler, the bill could have been sent back to the human rights committee, and since it had already held hearings and dealt with the bill, it could have been returned quickly to the floor of the Senate. Instead, the government leadership in the Senate sent the bill to a different committee, the legal and constitutional affairs committee. This is an interesting choice. This not only meant that the committee would have to hold new hearings, but it is the busiest committee in the Senate, with the government's crime agenda. It means this committee will have to deal with bills like the one we have before us today, Bill C-13; Bill C-36, dealing with sex work; and Bill C-2, dealing with safe injection sites. It will have to deal with all of those before it ever gets to a private member's bill.

Again, the fig leaf of neutrality claimed by the government is looking a little withered, since decisions on where the bill is going and its timing are made by the government leadership in the Senate. It is beginning to look a lot like the government intends to let Bill C-279 die in the Senate once again.

The final obstacle to achieving protection for transgender Canadians against hate crimes, and I think the real reason gender identity was omitted from the new groups protected in the hate crimes section 12 of Bill C-13, is the failure to recognize not just the fundamental justice of providing equal rights to transgender Canadians, but the failure to recognize both the urgency and the inevitability of doing so.

Transgender Canadians remain the group most discriminated against in Canada. They remain the group most likely to be subject to hate crimes and most disturbingly, they remain the group most likely to be subject to violence when it comes to hate crimes. All transgender Canadians are looking for is the recognition of the same rights that other Canadians already enjoy. We are missing a chance here in Bill C-13 to provide equal protection against hate crimes to transgender Canadians.

There was a time when other Canadians did not enjoy the equality they do today. There were provisions in our law that seem incredible now. There was a time when Asian Canadians could not vote or practise the professions. There was a time when I, as a gay man, could have been jailed for my sexual orientation, fired from my job, or evicted from my housing. Now, fortunately, that time has passed.

I am disappointed, then, that we are missing a chance today to move forward to the time when we look back and cannot imagine that transgendered Canadians did not enjoy the same rights and protections as all other Canadians. I know that day will come, and I will continue to work to make sure it is sooner rather than later.

Time Allocation Motion

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on this question of privilege about closure.

I am rising at my first opportunity on this question of privilege, given that between the Speech from the Throne in October and when we adjourned June 20, there had been 21 occasions on which closure of debate occurred, and I maintain that the exercise of my rights and the rights of my colleagues in this place have been obstructed, undermined and impeded by the unprecedented use of time allocations in the second session of the 41st Parliament.

Mr. Speaker, in presenting this fairly legal argument to you, I propose to leave out page numbers and citations because I have prepared a written version of this for your office and I hope that will be acceptable to you, that I skip page numbers in this presentation. Hansard may not have the numbers of the debates, but I hope there is enough context so people can find them.

I belive this excessive use of what is often called “guillotine measures” is a violation of the rights of all members of Parliament, but I would like to stress that there is a disproportionate impact on members such as me who are within either smaller parties, that is less than 12 members, or who sit actually as independents, because in the roster of recognizing people in their speaker slot, quite often those of us in the smaller parties or independents simply never get to speak to the bills at all.

My question, Mr. Speaker, bears directly on what your predecessor said in this place on April 27, 2010. He said, “...the fundamental right of the House of Commons to hold the government to account for its actions is an indisputable privilege and in fact an obligation”.

In the autumn of 2011, in a ruling concerning the member for Mount Royal, Mr. Speaker, you yourself said that to constitute a prima facie case in regard to matters of obstruction, interference, molestation or intimidation, you need to “...assess whether or not the member's ability to fulfill his parliamentary [activities] has been undermined”. At that moment in the same Debates, you had the occasion to reflect on “...the Chair's primordial concern for the preservation of the privileges of all members,...” and you added, “As your Speaker, one of my principal responsibilities is to ensure that the rights and privileges of members are safeguarded, and this is a responsibility I take very seriously”.

I now have occasion to turn to other words that will guide us in this matter. From the Supreme Court of Canada in the Vaid decision, in the words of Mr. Justice Binnie, speaking for the court, he outlined the scope of parliamentary responsibility and parliamentary privilege for the management of employees and said, “Parliamentary privilege is defined by the degree of autonomy necessary to perform Parliament’s constitutional function”. He went on to say at paragraph 41 of that Supreme Court of Canada judgment:

Similarly, Maingot defines privilege in part as “the necessary immunity that the law provides for Members of Parliament, and for Members of the legislatures of each of the ten provinces and two territories, in order for these legislators to do their legislative work”.

I would repeat and emphasize that, because although the Vaid decision was on a different fact set, Mr. Justice Binnie spoke to our core responsibility as parliamentarians when he said that we must be able, as legislators, to do our legislative work.

Mr. Justice Binnie continued in the Vaid decision to say:

To the question “necessary in relation to what?”, therefore, the answer is necessary to protect legislators in the discharge of their legislative and deliberative functions, and the legislative assembly’s work in holding the government to account for the conduct of the country’s business. To the same effect, see R. Marleau and C. Montpetit...where privilege is defined as “the rights and immunities that are deemed necessary for the House of Commons, as an institution, and its Members, as representatives of the electorate, to fulfill their functions”.

Mr. Justice Binnie went on to find further references in support of these principles from Bourinot's Parliamentary Procedure and Practice in the Dominion of Canada.

These are fundamental points. The purpose of us being here as parliamentarians is to hold the government to account. It is obvious that no legislative assembly would be able to discharge its duties with efficiency or to assure its independence and dignity unless it had adequate powers to protect itself, its members, and its officials in the exercise of these functions.

Finally, Mr. Justice Binnie—again, for the court—said at paragraph 62, on the subject of parliamentary functions in ruling that some employees would be covered by privilege, that coverage existed only if a connection were established between the category of employees and the exercise by the House of its functions as a legislative and deliberative body, including its role in holding the government to account.

As I said earlier, this approach was supported by your immediate predecessor. In a December 10, 2009 ruling, the Speaker of the House, the Hon. Peter Milliken, said that one of his principle duties was to safeguard the rights and privileges of members, and of the House, including the fundamental right of the House of Commons to hold the government to account for its actions, which is an indisputable privilege, and in fact an obligation.

It is therefore a fundamental principle of Westminster parliamentary democracy that the most important role of members of Parliament, and in fact a constitutional right and responsibility for us as members, is to hold the government to account.

The events in this House that we witnessed before we adjourned on June 20, 2014, clearly demonstrate that the House and its members have been deprived of fulfilling constitutional rights, our privilege, and our obligation to hold the government to account, because of the imposition of intemperate and unrestrained guillotine measures in reference to a number of bills. Over 21 times, closure has been used.

It is only in the interest of time that I am going to read out the numbers of the bills and not their full description. Bill C-2, Bill C-4, Bill C-6, Bill C-7, Bill C-13, Bill C-18, Bill C-20, Bill C-22, Bill C-23, Bill C-24, Bill C-25, Bill C-27, Bill C-31, Bill C-32, Bill C-33, and Bill C-36 were all instances where closure of debate was used.

In many of the instances I just read out, and in the written argument I have presented, closure of debate occurred at second reading, again at report stage, and again at third reading. The limitation of debate was extreme.

A close examination of the guillotine measures imposed by the government demonstrate that the citizens of Canada have been unable to have their elected representatives adequately debate the various and complex issues central to these bills in order to hold the government to account. Members of Parliament have been deprived and prevented from adequately debating these measures, through 21 separate motions for time allocation in this session alone. It undermines our ability to perform our parliamentary duties.

In particular, I want to again highlight the effect that the guillotine motions have on my ability as a representative of a smaller party, the Green Party. We do not have 12 seats in the House as yet, and as a result we are in the last roster to be recognized once all other parties have spoken numerous times. Quite often, there is not an opportunity for members in my position, nor for independent members of Parliament, to be able to properly represent our constituents.

Again, I should not have to repeat this. Certainly you, Mr. Speaker, are aware that in protecting our rights, as you must as Speaker, that in this place we are all equals, regardless of how large our parties are. As voters in Canada are all equal, so too do I, as a member of Parliament, have an equal right and responsibility to represent the concerns of my constituents in this place, which are equal to any other member in this place.

As speaking time that is allotted to members of small parties and independents is placed late in the debates, we quite often are not able to address these measures in the House. This would be fair if we always reached the point in the debate where independents were recognized, but that does not happen with closure of debates. My constituents are deprived of their right to have their concerns adequately voiced in the House.

Political parties are not even referenced in our constitution, and I regard the excessive power of political parties over processes in this place, in general, to deprive constituents of equal representation in the House of Commons. However, under the circumstances, the additional closure on debate particularly disadvantages those constituents whose members of Parliament are not with one of the larger parties.

Mr. Speaker, in the autumn of 2011, in your ruling considering the member for Mount Royal and his question of privilege, you said that one of your responsibilities that you take very seriously is to ensure that the rights and privileges of members are safeguarded. The principal right of the House and its members, and their privilege, is to hold the government to account. In fact, it is an obligation, according to your immediate predecessor.

In order to hold the government to account, we require the ability and the freedom to speak in the House without being trammelled and without measures that undermine the member's ability to fulfill his or her parliamentary function. As a British joint committee report pointed out, without this protection, members would be handicapped in performing their parliamentary duty, and the authority of Parliament itself in confronting the executive and as a forum for expressing the anxieties of citizens would be correspondingly diminished.

To hold the government to account is the raison d'être of Parliament. It is not only a right and privilege of members and of this House, but a duty of Parliament and its members to hold the government to account for the conduct of the nation's business. Holding the government to account is the essence of why we are here. It is a constitutional function. In the words of the marketers, it is “job one”.

Our constitutional duty requires us to exercise our right and privilege, to study legislation, and to hold the government to account by means of raising a question of privilege. This privilege has been denied to us because of the consistent and immoderate use of the guillotine in regard to 21 instances of time allocation, in this session alone.

This use of time allocation, as you know, Mr. Speaker, is unprecedented in the history of Canada, and infringes on your duty as Speaker to protect our rights and privileges as members. As you have said many times, that is your responsibility and you take it very seriously. However, these closure motions undermine your role and your duty to protect us. Therefore, it diminishes the role of Speaker, as honoured from time immemorial.

In fact, you expressed it, Mr. Speaker, in debates in the autumn of 2011, at page 4396, when you had occasion to reflect on “the Chair's primordial concern for the preservation of the privileges of all members..”, and when you added, “As your Speaker, one of my principal responsibilities is to ensure that the rights and privileges of members are safeguarded, and this is a responsibility I take very seriously”.

Denying the members' rights and privileges to hold the government to account is an unacceptable and unparliamentary diminishment of both the raison d'être of Parliament and of the Speaker's function and role in protecting the privileges of all members of this House.

In conclusion, I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that the intemperate and unrestrained use of time allocation by this government constitutes a prima facie breach of privilege of all members of this House, especially those who are independents or, such as myself, representatives of one of the parties with fewer than 12 members.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your consideration in this matter. I hope you will find in favour of this question of privilege, that this is a prima facie breach of the privileges and rights of all members.

Red Tape Reduction Act

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be supporting the bill too because lots of the individuals and businesses in my riding complain about red tape. However, there are also groups that are not small businesses that have to cope with a lot of red tape issues.

For example, an organization in my riding called Ateliers bon débarras does social reintegration work with young people. They used to apply for funding from the skills link program every year. Now they have decided to stop applying because the red tape got to be overwhelming. It got too complicated. It was a very good program though.

Plenty of other community organizations do not always have the time to apply to programs because they do not have enough people to do it. Just like small businesses, many groups could benefit from this kind of bill.

We saw a great example of increased red tape recently. Bill C-2 on supervised injection sites uses red tape to make sure that this kind of service is not offered. It contains so many criteria that it will be impossible for anyone to create such a centre.

What does my colleague think of all this?