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.

Respect for Communities Act

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know where the Conservatives come up with their facts. On this side of the House we rely on research, on medical professionals, on community workers, on health authorities, and on law enforcement agencies. All of them have said that having a site similar to InSite actually reduces crime. It takes drug users off our streets.

How can the hon. member justify that this somehow pushes drugs on to our children? It is beyond me. This is clearly an ideological position of the Conservatives. There are no facts at all behind the legislation.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise spontaneously after hearing the arguments from our friends across the floor. I feel as though I am listening to a sixth-grader who has not done his homework before speaking to the class. This is incredible. Their argument is black and white and borders on the absurd. It makes no sense. This is Conservative magical thinking, pure and simple. According to them, we just have to say to people who are unfortunately addicted to hard, intravenous drugs that that is bad. Then they will stop using drugs immediately. If we do not agree with the Conservatives, it means we support drug use. It is ridiculous. I cannot believe this. We are not in the sixth grade, and the committee is not made up of twelve-year-olds. In fact, my twelve-and-a-half-year-old son is capable of taking a longer-term view.

I wonder if my colleague could talk about how ridiculous this is.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, prior to my speech, I talked about 12-year-olds in grade 6 at the Surrey Traditional School I visited. I can assure my colleague that they certainly came prepared to ask the right questions.

I can see what the hon. member is trying to say in regard to the Conservatives. The Canadian Medical Association approved having InSite facilities available that reduce harm. It is good for public safety and it is good for public health. The Canadian nurses' union endorses the position of having these facilities open for people to use.

If we are to be making laws in this place, they should be based on facts, research, and science, not on ideology. Unfortunately, the Conservatives do not respect the decision that was made by the Supreme Court, and they need to rethink that.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleagues and apologize first off: I am really going to try my very best to freshen up the debate by presenting the same facts in a new light.

It is now clear that we have been discussing Bill C-2 for three or four hours, and I am the 12th or the 13th speaker for the NDP. Obviously, we have a shared vision of the whole thing, because that is what we have been talking about.

In the House of Commons, the place where all debates to enhance draft legislation should be held, the Conservatives are using one of two strategies: they either systematically gag the opposition, to reduce members’ speaking time in the House, or else they give us what we are getting today, nothing but silence from the Conservative members, who are probably now well aware that they have introduced a bill that is completely indefensible.

This government has lost the basic quality that allows any ruling class to claim that it is working on behalf of the people it represents. That quality is the ability to listen. I would even go so far as to say that it is especially the ability to listen.

Encased in its guiding ideology, the Conservative government is showing once again, with Bill C-2, that the Conservative way of thinking overrides reflection, analysis, any empirical findings, the desire of the majority of Canadians to do things differently, and even rulings handed down by the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court.

By way of introduction, I would like to remind members that in 2008, when InSite’s exemption was about to expire, the minister refused to renew it. The incident prompted a series of court cases that revealed how, even then, the Conservative government was on the sidelines of a society that was looking for solutions and ways to provide assistance to people who were dealing with many different issues.

To use a baseball metaphor, everyone would understand quite quickly that, after three strikes, the batter is out. However, in the Conservative ideology, that is not the case: either you believe or you die. After a defeat in the British Columbia Supreme Court, a second defeat in the B.C. Court of Appeal, and finally, a rejection of its case in the Supreme Court of Canada, the Conservatives are still ignoring the consensus among the majority of Canadians, to try to satisfy its voter base so that it will line the Conservative coffers again, I guess.

Do not forget that in 2011, this same government—elected with just 39% of the vote from the 60% of the population that voted—claimed to have been given a strong mandate. We can see that the government does not really understand what it means to consult a majority.

However, I feel it is crucial to remind the House that in 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the minister's decision to close InSite violated the rights guaranteed by the charter and that it was arbitrary, going against the very objectives of the act, particularly with regard to health and public safety.

The court based its decision on section 7 of the charter, which states that:

7. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person...

That means that even if someone uses drugs, they have the right to life, liberty and security of their person.

Continuing with the quotation:

...and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

No matter, if the law does not allow the Conservatives to do as they see fit, they will change the law. That is basically what Bill C-2 is doing. This is not the first example of this style of governance, which has practically become a trademark of this government. It seems to think that democracy and democratic institutions are a hindrance and a burden to be contended with.

While the NDP recognizes the sensitive nature of the permits granted to organizations such as InSite, we firmly believe that these decisions need to be based on proven facts and expertise.

How can the Conservatives scrap the results of no fewer than 30 studies published in journals with recognized credibility, including the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal?

How can they ignore the studies of sites similar to InSite in European countries and in Australia, which are not exactly developing countries? How can they push under the carpet the very telling results obtained by InSite? There is only one answer to all these questions: you have to see things in absolute terms and reduce complex problems to a simplistic black and white. For the Conservatives—I have said this about numerous bills, and it remains applicable today—everything is black and white. The good guys are on one side and the bad guys on the other; white on one side and black on the other; drug users on one side and sober people on the other; better still, the Conservatives on one side and the rest of the world on the other.

The campaign launched a few hours after Bill C-2 was introduced is a wonderful illustration of this narrowness of mind. When a slogan like “Keep heroin out of our backyards” is used, you quickly understand that for those opposite, the ability to offer a measured response to a many-sided problem is completely non-existent. It is the not-in-my-backyard argument to the power of 10.

If my remarks were designed to convert my friends opposite, it would be rather like a voice crying in the wilderness. However, through the media, I know that some people are trying to gain a clearer idea about this bill and the pros and cons associated with a facility like InSite. The silence of the Conservatives with regard to their own bill readily demonstrates the paucity of facts underlying their position.

I will take the liberty of quoting a few statistics to show the benefits of an approach like InSite's to public and individual health and the impact on public safety, which is often the blockbuster argument.

Between 1987 and 1993, the number of deaths by overdose in Vancouver rose from 16 to 200 a year. If that is not enough to indicate a problem requiring a solution, I have to wonder what it would take. In Vancouver East, however, since InSite opened, the rate of deaths from drug overdose has fallen by 35%. A reduction of 35% from 200 deaths means some 70 deaths avoided in a few short years.

Over a one-year period, moreover, 2,171 users of InSite’s services were referred to addiction counselling. That means a similar number of people who may get off the streets and resolve their problems, because they have been taken in hand by community resources.

While we cannot quantify it, there has been a significant drop in the number of discarded needles on the streets or in parks. This contributes to the safety of all citizens, particularly children who often play in parks.

A number of studies have focused on the negative impact of injection sites such as InSite, but none was able to show evidence of harmful effects on neighbouring communities.

Moreover, studies conducted by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction show that supervised injection sites have significant benefits. For example, they reach out to vulnerable groups and they are accepted by communities. That is indeed the case. Of course, some educational efforts are necessary, but it is possible.These sites also help improve the health of people who use them and they reduce drug use in public places. If that is not a major component of public safety, I wonder what we are talking about. As I mentioned, these sites also reduce overdose deaths.

However, it does not take a rocket scientist to see that the Conservative logic puts in place procedures aimed at deterring the individual or the organization from fulfilling the stated mission or objective, if they want to open such a centre.

In this regard, Bill C-2 is no exception to the methodology developed by the Conservatives, as in the case of employment insurance for example. Accessibility is cut back, controls border on the inquisition, and it is increasingly difficult to have individual rights recognized. The result is that people get discouraged by all these obstacles and they simply get out of the system. This may improve statistics, but it does not address the situation of workers or, in the case of this legislation, of people struggling with substance abuse.

Since I am running out of time, I will move on to the conclusion right away.

Obviously, I am adding my voice to those of my NDP colleagues to strongly oppose this government's approach and this foolish binary vision of the world.

While the Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides that all people are born equal, we know that we cannot hide behind such a declaration to avoid seeing our reality.

Our society is made up of individuals with very diverse life experiences, and our ability to live together harmoniously rests on being able to extend our hand to those who suffer, without passing judgment on the events that led them to this situation.

I will be voting against Bill C-2.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

Mr. Speaker, again, the NDP shows no regard for public safety or the greater community. I am going to read three clauses in the bill. They state:

Whereas the money that is used to purchase controlled substances that are obtained from illicit sources often originates from criminal activity such as theft, and that money, in turn, often funds organized crime in our communities;

Whereas the substances that are subject to the Act may pose serious risks to the health of individuals and those risks are exacerbated when those substances are unregulated, untested and obtained from illicit sources;

Whereas the negative consequences associated with the use of illicit substances can have significant impacts on vulnerable subsets of the Canadian population;...

Why would the member possibly have anything against such a well-written bill?

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize. I probably spoke too quickly for the translation to keep up with me. It seems that my esteemed colleague missed out on several pages of my presentation, because I indeed talked about public safety. However, instead of speaking theoretically, I spoke to concrete facts.

When a place like InSite reduces the number of drug users because they get support from organizations that work to meet addiction needs, it is serving the interests of public safety. When I say that a place like InSite makes it possible for parks and streets to be clear of dirty needles that could infect others who do not use drugs, I am also talking about public safety. I have done so many times.

My colleague brings up completely theoretical points. He does make some sense. I would like to see him rise to defend his party's bill, rather than trying to impose his views with questions that are just too far-fetched.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Trois-Rivières for his excellent speech and impressive presentation.

Indeed, as he mentioned, New Democrats have risen in the House all day to explain their position and provide facts. Unfortunately, throughout the day, the Conservatives have not even had the decency to rise to present and defend their own bill and to make their arguments.

This really bothers me and leads me to believe, as my colleague does, that perhaps they do not believe in it that much, and they realize that, as all the courts have previously mentioned, this bill does not hold water. In this regard, I would like to ask my colleague the following question.

Places like InSite are there to help people. They work to protect public health and to promote prevention and detox. This therefore helps ensure public safety. It does not compromise public safety. On the contrary, a place like InSite promotes public safety, and it is a place that can even help prevent crime.

I would like my colleague to comment on the fact that a place like InSite does not work against people's safety or crime prevention and that, on the contrary, it works precisely to help prevent crime.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Drummond for his question and preamble.

In response to the preamble, I will engage in some political science fiction and imagine that I am a Conservative for a few seconds. I believe that I would also find it hard to rise today in the House to defend a bill that is quite simply indefensible.

With respect to InSite or any such facility, what I find to be most perverse about the bill before us is that it completely ignores the humanity of addicts. Only by visiting an addiction centre or a shelter for homeless people, who often have multiple problems, do we come to realize that they are people who need help. Drug addicts are not second-class citizens.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the question to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment is as follows: the hon. member for Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Fisheries and Oceans.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to rise to speak to Bill C-2, which I believe bears the short name of safer communities act, or something along those lines.

Once we get to committee, we will likely be wanting to move an amendment at the clause-by-clause stage. I think a more appropriate new name for the bill might be “an act to make it look like communities will be made safer by spreading drug users to the alleys, parks, and backyards of our cities while simultaneously undermining public health and individuals' rights to security of the person and life itself”. To me, that would be a much better title for this bill.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

It is a charter rights issue.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

What I would like to speak to is exactly what my hon. member is shouting about from across the way, a little bit about constitutional law and the constitutional values that are impacted by this bill.

Let me begin by mentioning that in 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada, in the PHS Community Services case, did make clear that section 7 of the charter, the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice, did apply.

Health and life itself are at stake when the federal government decides to treat as criminal, under federal jurisdiction over criminal law, a health initiative by a province. This decision to treat it as criminal, and in that way not permit the provincially approved activity, occurs by way of the Minister of Health declining to grant an exemption from the ordinary application of, in this case, the CDSA, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

The Supreme Court ruled that the government had indeed violated the charter in the following terms. Let me please read the key paragraph, which is paragraph 136 of that judgment:

The Minister made a decision not to extend the exemption from the application of the federal drug laws to Insite. The effect of that decision...would have been to prevent injection drug users from accessing the health services offered by Insite, threatening the health and indeed the lives of the potential clients. The Minister's decision thus engages the claimants's s.7 interests and constitutes a limit on their s.7 rights. Based on the information available to the Minister, this limit is not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. It is arbitrary, undermining the very purposes of the CDSA, which include public health and safety. It is also grossly disproportionate: the potential denial of health services and the correlative increase in the risk of death and disease for injection drug users outweigh any benefit that might be derived from maintaining an absolute prohibition on the possession of illegal drugs on Insite's premises.

I would remind everybody in this House today that this was a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court of Canada. I would also note two key shorter passages, which I will turn to briefly, that make clear that the combination of the legal effect of section 7 of the charter and the guidance for the exercise of discretion in the CDSA itself means that ministerial discretion is not unfettered. It must be undertaken in accordance with the rule of law, which refers, of course, to both the Constitution and the statute itself.

Let me draw everybody's attention to the last sentence in paragraph 151, which says:

As always, the minister must exercise that discretion within the constraints imposed by the law and the Charter.

The court then goes on, in paragraph 152, to say:

The dual purposes of the CDSA—public health and public safety—provide some guidance for the Minister. Where the Minister is considering an application for an exemption for a supervised injection facility, he or she will aim to strike the appropriate balance between achieving the public health and public safety goals. Where, as here, the evidence indicates that a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

The court went on to order the minister to grant such an exemption in this case, which leads us, of course, to the present bill, which is, in effect, an attempt to do either an end run around the Supreme Court judgment or to perhaps even overturn and resist that judgment.

Now, it may be that the government is hoping that it can do an end run around, or even circumvent, the Supreme Court judgment by downplaying, in the new amendments to the CDSA, references to the positive health effects of a system like the injection site system and to public health, despite the fact that public health remains one of the two purposes of the CDSA. They cannot get away from that.

Also, the Conservatives have written into the act that in the final analysis, when the minister ultimately decides whether she is going to accord an exemption, this is to be done only in exceptional circumstances.

The government may think that by writing the law in this way, it would escape the scope of the Supreme Court ruling. However, the government would really be throwing the question back to an inquiry that will eventually end up in the courts over whether the amended act itself violates section 7 of the charter for totally failing to give the health of users the kind of priority that section 7 of the charter would suggest is necessary.

Here I would like to believe that the Minister of Justice has had thorough advice from his officials on the constitutionality of the bill so as to exercise the duty he has under section 4.1(1) of the Department of Justice Act.

Regrettably, we have all come to learn in the last year that the standard of review that goes on in the Department of Justice these days, and perhaps for longer than we realize, borders on the farcical. A whistleblower has come forward to tell us that instructions have been sent to lawyers to say that if there is a 5% chance that a provision or law would pass muster in the courts under the charter, then it is fine to recommend that it go ahead as being constitutional from the perspective of introducing the law.

I have no confidence at all that the mere fact that this is before the House means that some kind of analysis has been undertaken that suggests that it is presumptively constitutional. Under the current government, that is not the case.

Apart from the fact that on the face of the text it might be unconstitutional, there are two other ways in which the bill would almost certainly be found constitutionally suspect.

The first is that the very intention of a statute under our constitutional law, of course, cannot be to infringe upon a constitutionally protected right. Here, and very unusually, there is every sign that the very intent of the government is, in fact, to block approval of any safe injection site anywhere in this country.

Now, it is very rare for courts to find such direct intent to actually infringe a right, but in the situation at hand, judges will find a good deal of evidence, including in speeches made prior to this House rising for a break and in speeches made by Conservative members of Parliament. It can also be found, I would say, by inference from two things. In clause 5 of the bill, there is a listing of no fewer than 26 criteria the Minister of Health would need to consider by way of information sources if he or she was going to grant an exemption. It is not just 26; a number of these have subsections. Well over 30 separate kinds of detailed information would have to accompany an application for such a safe injection site before the minister even decided whether she was going to look at the issue.

There is also the excision of all public health references and individual health benefits from the guiding principles listed in proposed subsection 56.1(5) of the amended act.

The second thing that might cause this to be looked at suspiciously, from a constitutional point of view, is that there is a constitutional principle of fundamental justice under section 7 according to which it is unconstitutional to hold out a defence or an exemption from a criminal law prohibition if that defence or exemption is arbitrary or illusory. Such a defence or exemption is arbitrary if it is available to some but not to others. This was essentially part of the basis for the Morgentaler ruling. A defence or an exemption is illusory if nobody will be able to access the defence or exemption or where access is so uncertain or unlikely that the defence or the exemption is essentially unavailable.

On that basis alone, given the structure of Bill C-2, I would go so far as to predict that there will be courts finding that it is unconstitutional under section 7 of the charter.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am fascinated by the member presuming what the Supreme Court will or will not say. If we follow his logic to its logical conclusion, we should not even have the debate and just go straight to the Supreme Court, but the fact is that Parliament will vote on this legislation.

As we are all representatives of the people of Canada, the people of Canada would agree that the preamble of the bill, which I have read in part already, is sound and important for public safety and communities. We are putting communities and families first and we do have additional programs, other than being complicit in the illicit drug trade.

Why does the member want to be complicit in the illegal drug trade?

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, at least he did not call me a child pornographer.

The fact of defending the rights of individuals under the charter does not make me want to be complicit in the organized drug trade. The fact is that this bill stacks everything along the lines of public safety. That is all that the purpose would suggest, and the five principles in proposed subsection 5(5) that the minister must look to when she finally makes her decision make no reference at all to either life-saving or individual health effects for users or to public health. This act hits the balance entirely wrong in a way that does not even come close to the spirit of the Supreme Court's judgment.

To go back to the premise of the question from the hon. member, the fact is that we have a duty under our Constitution to do what we can to ensure that the laws that pass the House are not in violation of the Constitution. We do not wait for the courts to rule. I am simply saying what some courts will likely do.

[Marc-André Morin, NDP, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like my colleague to explain something to me. When a person is judged differently depending on whether he is the mayor of a major city, a very powerful person, or a person who is very marginalized by a health problem such as addiction, it is impossible to apply the concept of law and order. At that point it becomes the concept of law and order for all the others.