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

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I agree completely. This is about both health and public safety. It does not address the health issue, because the facts show that their bill is not consistent with reality. I repeat: there has been a 35% decrease in overdose deaths. In addition, there has been a decrease in the rates of infection and communicable diseases, the relapse rate for drug addicts, and crime.

In 2011 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the minister's decision to close InSite violated its patrons' charter rights and that the minister's decision was arbitrary, undermining the very purposes of the Controlled Drug and Substances Act, including public health and safety.

Not addressing the health issue, ignoring the facts and going against the Supreme Court decision clearly shows just how incapable the government is of governing for all Canadians.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House to represent the good people of Davenport in the great city of Toronto.

I have listened to this debate all day with great interest. It must pain the Minister of Veterans Affairs to get up and hector the opposition around an issue that he very much knows, based on his past work experience, is an incredibly complicated, complex issue that interweaves both public safety and public health. This is why we are here today, to debate this issue, but it must pain him to have to get up and try to present the ultrasimplistic description of the bill in the talking notes that the Conservatives foist upon their members, including their cabinet ministers.

What we are dealing with today from the Conservatives vis-à-vis this bill is a document that they use for fundraising. Of course, we see this time and time again with the Conservative government. They isolate refugees, limit their access to health care, and then send a fundraising letter out to see what kind of manna falls from heaven.

This reminds me of several issues that are at play in my own community. People everywhere in Canada, I think it is fair to say, want safe streets. Everybody wants to be able to walk their kids down the street and not have syringes lying around. I think it is fair to say that we like to see our streets safe. That is why it is important to have safe injection sites in Canada.

I find it amazing that we have a government that cannot brook any kind of large-scale public engagement plan when it talks about, for example, line 9 reversal in Toronto or when it talks about, for example, a nuclear fuel processing facility in the riding of Davenport, which, by the way, exists and has existed there for 50 years. Section 2.5 of its operating licence says that it must engage in a comprehensive public information program with the residents. For 50 years, very few people knew that the plant existed. Even the folks that I have spoken to, who have lived there for at least 40 years, were never once informed of what was going on in that factory.

Some folks on the other side of the aisle might start wondering why I am exposing their lack of interest in public information and public engagement. It is because they are not interested so much in that. In fact, with the line 9 reversal, they made it so difficult for people in my city to depute during those hearings that the hearings became a sham, yet the principles around public consultation for the setting up of a safe injection site are exhaustive.

Let us go through some of that. It requires a letter from the provincial minister who is responsible for health. It requires a letter from the local municipal government. It requires a letter from the head of the police force outlining any issue that it has. It requires a letter from a leading health professional organization. It requires a letter from the provincial minister responsible for public safety. It requires a statistical analysis. It requires police checks for people. It requires extensive public consultation.

All of this has to be gathered, in addition to a 90-day public notification period that the minister herself can also conduct. There are two streams of information coming in, and even then, as we can see from the bill, the minister does not have to even consider the application. In other words, once all that rigorous public engagement happens, the minister can decide whether he or she wants to even entertain the application.

I read that and I think that is very rigorous public engagement. I can tell the House that in my community, we are looking for rigorous public engagement when we are debating and considering very serious development projects in our community.

That public engagement is lacking. What is also lacking is a willingness on the part of the government to hold the relevant agencies to account to ensure safety in our communities. The reason is that it does not play well politically for the government members in their base, whereas this is a whole different story.

I want to go back to an issue that is very important in my community, and that is refugee health. We have people in our community, people living here in Canada, who cannot access health care and have to rely on volunteer doctors and nurses and donated medicine in order to deal with their illnesses. What is happening with these decisions to cut the federal interim health program for some refugees is that it is creating a public health issue as people delay care for illnesses until those illnesses get worse. Some of them are communicable illnesses. We have pregnant women who are not getting the kind of care they need because they are not able to access health care.

However, that is okay for these guys over here, because for them it is all about fundraising, as we saw very shortly after decisions were made with respect to safe injection sites, with a letter going out to the Conservative base and a website set up to scare Canadians.

That is national leadership. That is the kind of leadership that we are getting from the current Conservative government. Instead of a government that understands the complexity of issues like drug addiction, we are seeing it writ large and played out in public today. I am sure that the Minister of Veterans Affairs and members of cabinet and certainly the Prime Minister are good friends with a well-known public figure who is struggling with drug addiction right now, yet what they are trying to do is vilify people who are often poor and powerless, people who cannot access the kind of care they need. Sometimes it is folks struggling with mental health issues as well.

The debate we are having today is about safe injection sites, and it is about something bigger than that. It is about who we are as a country. It is about who we look after. It is about what the role of government is if we are not attempting to solve complex issues with rigorous consultation, with scientific fact-based arguments, with a view on public health and public safety. That is what this debate is about, that is why this is so important, and that is why Canadians who are watching it are not buying the simplistic argument that people are going to have heroin in their backyards.

I represent a downtown Toronto riding. I get people calling my office constantly, asking me what kind of programs we have to serve addicts and help them get off the street and have the streets safer. They want to see real solutions. They do not want to see another attempt by the Conservatives to divide Canadians in order to fill their party's coffers for the next election.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague and I am surprised that he would have a problem with public consultation and studies of the science of having a supervised injection site and getting other stakeholders in the community to provide their input. Is his fear perhaps that if people found out that there was going to be an injection site, they would disallow it, or is he just not confident in his own argument on the healthiness of these injection sites?

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there have been at least 30 scientific studies on the one safe injection site we have right now. There is a boatload of data that speaks to improved markers around public safety, the transmission of HIV-AIDS. The data is in on this, so the member might want to take a look at the data. I think he would be convinced of the rightness of this.

I would also encourage the member to speak to his colleagues about developing more rigorous public participation around some of the significant infrastructure projects that we have in Canada right now. That would be a solution.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, in talking about this issue it is important for us to recognize that we do have stakeholders, whether they be the City of Vancouver, the Vancouver police or the Government of British Columbia. There are many ground-game stakeholders that are directly involved. There are outside organizations that are very supportive. They look at the facts. The facts do matter. Science does matter. It all boils down to the fact that this site in Vancouver has been a huge success.

I wonder if the member might want to provide some comments on that fact.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the government does not like science or science-based facts much. However, let us talk about Dr. Evan Wood, a renowned scientist, who works for the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. He points out that one of the important aspects of a safe injection site is that, given that each HIV infection costs an average of approximately $500,000 in medical costs, InSite has contributed to a 90% reduction in new HIV cases caused by intravenous drug use in British Columbia. That is why the B.C. government has been such a strong supporter of the program.

That underlines some of the very important reasons we need to take this seriously. We need a complex and comprehensive conversation. It has already happened. Those debates and those studies have already taken place. We have the stats that show the great success of this facility.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I must congratulate my colleague on his intervention. It was a balanced and thoughtful presentation.

I want to pick up on this point. He talked about the fact that there are members of our society who are not being served by programs that now exist to provide services to Canadians. He talked about people in health care receiving services from nurses who are volunteering their services and receiving donated drugs and so on in order to keep them alive. He speaks very much to the generosity of spirit of many Canadians.

Would the member agree that some of the suggestions made by members opposite as they relate to this particular group of Canadians, who the Supreme Court says have rights, and the way the government is responding to this very much show a lack of generosity toward these Canadians?

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in many different ways we see this kind of narrowing of focus, expanse, and breadth by the government of the definition of who we are as Canadians. Are we a compassionate country? Do we care for one another? Do we try to find the most balanced way to move forward on complex issues? Time and time again the government has shown that it is not interested in that definition of Canada and who we are as Canadians. It is trying to narrowcast that. In truth, there are times when the government is trying to appeal to some of the worst in us, to the fear in us, as opposed to showing Canadians where we can go as a country and a community.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-2, which was introduced by the Conservative government. I would like to start by saying that, like all my NDP colleagues in the House, I will vote against Bill C-2.

My speech will primarily rely on a very informative document that includes many scientific studies. It was authored by Richard Lessard and Carole Morissette in 2011 and concerns a request from the Montreal metropolitan area to establish a supervised injection site. The document is entitled “Toward supervised injection services - Report of a feasibility study on the implementation of regional supervised injection services in Montréal.” This document is very interesting. It discusses, among other things, what is happening in the world. More than 80 countries around the world have supervised injection sites. They are funded sometimes by the proceeds of crime that have been seized by the government and sometimes directly by the government itself. This document is therefore very interesting.

I would like to quote from this paper, as follows:

Supervised injection services (SIS) are medical and nursing services provided in response to addiction, which is a disease

Indeed the dual objective of a supervised injection site is:

...to help prevent diseases and deaths among people who inject drugs and reduce social inequalities in health that affect one of society's most vulnerable groups.

This really sums up why issues related to supervised injection sites used to be addressed by the Standing Committee on Health and why they are still presented by the Minister of Health. However, for some reason that is completely unknown to me, this bill will be referred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. The Conservatives need to give us a little more information in that regard, because all the answers they give us have more to do with health, and that is the minister in charge of this file.

I would like to point out the documented benefits of a service such as a supervised injection site. In addition to InSite, whose results formed the basis of the Supreme Court ruling, there are over 90 supervised injections sites around the world, including in several European countries as well as Australia.

Although there is a wide range of models, it is generally recognized that the service offers the following benefits: it reaches the most marginalized, high-risk people; it helps prevent overdoses and related deaths; it acts as a protective factor by providing sterile injection equipment and a safe place to inject and teaching safer injection practices, thereby helping to reduce the HIV and hepatitis C epidemics; it does not promote initiation into injection, as some members opposite claim; it helps stabilize the health status of users by providing other services such as HIV and hepatitis C screening, vaccination, primary care and referral to detox, addiction treatment and substitution programs; it relieves pressure on emergency services including ambulance transportation and hospitals by promoting on-site overdose management; lastly, it alleviates the negative impacts on public order by reducing drug use in public places as well as associated nuisances such as discarded syringes; it does not increase drug-related crime.

That has been the case at more than 90 supervised injection sites around the world. Members opposite should not try to make us feel afraid and believe certain things.

I represent a rather unique area, the Island of Laval in the Montreal Urban Community. There is a lot of urban sprawl. Montreal is very urban; Laval, which is right next door, is becoming quite urban. In the past few years, the subway from the Island of Montreal has reached our area. There are several poor neighbourhoods along the Rivière-des-Prairies and they are very close to the Island of Montreal.

One can just as easily travel from Laval to Montreal. According to Laval's public health agency, approximately 4,000 people inject drugs on Île Jésus in Laval. That is a lot of people.

At the time, it was thought that people were shooting up in the privacy of their homes. Over the years, this has changed mainly because of urban sprawl. People shoot up in public places on the Island of Laval.

I decided to consult various community organizations in Laval that have experience with supervised injections, among other things. I contacted outreach groups including TRIL, Travail de rue de l'île de Laval, and Sida-Vie Laval, which have done a lot of work in this area.

I would like to quote one of these two organizations in my speech. I recently spoke to Sida-Vie Laval. This organization agrees with the New Democrats and is strongly opposed to Bill C-2. I would like to read from an email the organization sent me yesterday:

...the impact on the health of the people who visit these centres reduces the risk of transmitting HIV and/or [hepatitis C], having another person there lowers the risk of overdose and/or cotton fever.... [W]e know that over the medium and long terms, people improve their quality of life and decrease or stop drug use. Furthermore, injection sites provide a safe and healthy place for people to inject, in the presence of doctors, nurses and qualified professionals.Drug users often become isolated and surround themselves with people who have a negative influence on them. The supervised injection site helps users take the first step towards reintegrating into society by learning to trust the professionals supporting them and to trust the health care network.

I think the organization touched on a very important aspect of supervised injection sites. The people who visit these facilities do not simply go for injections. There are nurses, doctors and other community workers there. They may go the first time for an injection and then leave, but they will return. Each time they have to see a nurse and a social worker. They will start to build relationships with these people. As they slowly build trust with these community workers, they will be able to find a way out. This is an extremely important resource for getting people off the street, getting them back on the job market and helping them reintegrate into society.

People may be aware that I am the NDP deputy critic for public safety. Public safety on our streets is extremely important to me.

I would like to point out that the Montreal police force has been quite involved in the study to set up a supervised injection site in Montreal. It is prepared to work hand in hand with all medical and community stakeholders to ensure that these locations are safe. The police force stands behind the stakeholders, the NDP, and medical services when it comes to the need for a supervised injection site and agrees that the government must not put up any obstacles for cities that want to have such a site.

It is very important to provide a location for using drugs and disposing of syringes away from the public eye. Supervised injection sites have had positive or neutral effects in terms of reducing the nuisances associated with public injection drug use.

Cites with supervised injection sites do not seem to have experienced an increase in crime or crime displacement.

There are many points I wanted to address, including the positive impact on violence against women, comments by correctional services officers, and the fact that the bill is before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security instead of the Standing Committee on Health.

Most of all, I would like to mention that the closure of sites like Canada's InSite makes our communities less safe. Ever since I was little, whenever I go to Montreal I look at the ground when I walk in the parks and on city lawns because I have found used needles on the ground.

Now that I am the mother of a little girl, I can assure my colleagues that as long as the Conservatives' policy does not change I will not be taking my daughter to play in Montreal's parks and if I have to walk on the grass in Montreal's parks, I will be looking at the ground and holding my daughter in my arms.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to be here this afternoon to listen to this discussion. I have become more concerned as the day has gone on that it is the willingness of the opposition to allow people to continue to live in the misery of addiction.

We heard talk about abandoning people, about public health safety, and about freedom of expression. It seems to me it is a justification for what we hear coming from the other side, which is putting people in a situation where the best they can expect is to be given a room where they can inject street drugs polluted with who knows what contaminants and then leaving them alone until they overdose in some situations and then finally getting them medical help.

It seems to me the opposition could come up with something better than that. Certainly we think it is more important that we do not condemn people to a miserable twilight existence of addiction and that there are other solutions that can be brought in. A couple of our people have already brought those forward.

Instead of giving people the opportunity to live the rest of their lives as free people, why do members opposite seem to be willing to condemn them to lives of the misery of addiction?

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if I had 10 minutes, I would read my whole speech again, since it looks like the parliamentary secretary was not paying attention to most of it, I am sad to say.

We do agree on one thing: we cannot leave people in distress. It will not help them, however, if we shut down safe injection sites staffed by trained community field workers and health professionals who can help those in need. The city police, community organizations and health services are working together to help people in need. There is a solution already, a solution that is getting people off the streets. Everyone but the Conservatives sees how well that system works.

I could lend the parliamentary secretary a whole pile of scientific documents and data, if he were inclined to read them. The fact remains, however, that our friends across the way do not care at all for scientific facts in this debate, and that does not come as a great surprise.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today we learned that 4% of Quebeckers have an addiction problem, whether it involves drugs, alcohol or gambling. With all due respect to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, this is a public health issue. I have a hard time understanding how enforcement will solve a problem that affects 4% of the population. Billy clubs and prison sentences will not make these problems go away. People use drugs in prison.

I would like to know how we can develop a solution to help that 4% of the population through a public health program.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin. It is always a pleasure to work with him. We represent the same populations in Laval. He knows full well the issues that we are facing with urban sprawl and with the drug abuse we witness in our area and in public spaces.

He touched on an important issue. We are using this debate to try and find a solution. It is a broad debate. Addiction is a very serious problem. My colleagues from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca and Drummond, along with all of my NDP colleagues who spoke before me and gave passionate speeches about Bill C-2, are trying, as I am, to prove that we need to trust science and the stakeholders involved. We need to listen to experts who have tried to drive home the point that forcing sites such as InSite to close, keeping other cities from having safe injection sites, keeping those sites from functioning, keeping experts from doing their work is really—and I do not know what word to use that would be parliamentary—a serious mistake.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak for a few moments to Bill C-2. I have listened to my colleagues most of the day, and they have presented some very personal explanations and descriptions of why the government needs to rethink Bill C-2.

Bill C-2 deals with a public health issue. We believe that decisions about programs that may benefit public health must be based on fact. That is at the heart of this issue. All Canadians, regardless, must have the opportunity to gain the benefit of those programs.

This all stems from a program called InSite. It was opened as part of a public health plan by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and its community partners following a 12-fold increase in overdose death in Vancouver between 1987 and 1993. As a result of the efforts of this site, there was a 35% decrease in overdose deaths. Furthermore, InSite has been shown to decrease crime, communicable diseases, infection rates, and relapse rates for drug users.

In 2008, the government began to take action to close InSite. It took action in British Columbia. The minister of health at that time denied InSite's application to renew an exemption that existed under section 56. The B.C. Supreme Court ruled that InSite should be granted a new extension. The federal government then took it to the B.C. Court of Appeal, which ruled again that InSite should remain open. In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the minister's decision to close InSite violated its patrons' charter rights and that the minister's decision was “arbitrary, undermining the very purposes of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act”, which includes public health and safety.

The decision by the Supreme Court hinges on section 7 of the charter, which says that everyone has 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.

The court found that section 56 exemptions must be granted where they decreased the risk of death and disease and there was little or no evidence that it would have a negative impact on public safety.

I have heard members opposite say that if we poll our community and our community decides that it does not want to have that facility, then why should it have to have it there? The Supreme Court of Canada actually dealt with that question by saying that the government was not able to show that it undermined public safety and, in some instances, had proven to promote it.

We have heard members talk about the problems that result in the injection of drugs in areas that are not safe, with contaminated needles on the ground in parks and with people being exposed to those kinds of health risks. It reduces those health and safety hazards, reduces public drug injections, reduces violence associated with drugs, and reduces drug-related litter.

This is key. Safe injection sites, therefore, strike the balance between public health and public safety. They connect people in dire need of assistance to needed health services such as primary care and addiction treatment.

The point here is this. How do we deliver the services that Canadians need to make them safe? How do we ensure that our communities are safe and healthy? We need to base that not only on facts but on the understanding that every Canadian, every human being in this country, has the right to live life and to liberty and to have access to life-saving drugs and programs.

In relation to further exemptions for additional programs, this is what the Supreme Court said. It directed the following:

...the Minister must exercise that discretion within the constraints imposed by the law and the Charter, aiming to strike the appropriate balance between achieving public health and public safety. In accordance with the Charter, the Minister must consider whether denying an exemption would cause deprivations of life and security of the person that are not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. Where, as here, [referring to InSite] 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.

What we have in Bill C-2 is something completely different. It ignores the direction that was provided by the Supreme Court of Canada. It has been cited by my colleague, who knows much of the constitutional law in this country. Bill C-2 will probably be deemed unconstitutional, which does not seem to bother members opposite. The point is that it not only flies in the face of the recommendations of the direction provided by the Supreme Court decision but goes against the spirit, I would suggest, of what makes us Canadian, what makes us special in the world in our ability to be generous and humane and to show compassion to our sisters and brothers regardless of their circumstances.

If we determine, as has been determined in the case of InSite, that in fact this program saves lives, reduces crime and ensures that the public is safer, then these are the types of programs that we need to make available to people. Some have suggested that New Democrats do not care about addictions, that we just want to make sure people get the opportunity to shoot up. We want to make sure that Canadians are made safe and healthy. This is the safe part and the healthy part is the supervision. Now we have to make sure that the government opposite backs up its words about commitment to addiction to ensure there is follow-up, that there are beds in detox programs and other addiction-related programs, and that there is the support to allow people, when they are ready and able, to kick whatever their addiction is, to turn their lives around and to be more healthy for themselves, their families and communities.

This is fundamental. It is a fundamental principle that has been outlined by the Supreme Court of Canada, and the government is ignoring it. Bill C-2 flies in the face of this principle. The government is going to be told again, as it was in 2008 by the Supreme Court, the B.C. Supreme Court, and the B.C. appeal court, and again in 2011 by the Supreme Court of Canada, that it is on the wrong track, pitting one type of Canadian against another type of Canadian.

We are all Canadians. The Supreme Court will protect that to ensure that this kind of discrimination is not allowed to happen.

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

Mr. Speaker, the bill is very clear.

I am not sure why the member is opposed to the minister gathering the scientific evidence. The bill would provide the Minister of Health with the information needed to make informed decisions. Why does the member opposite not support organizations providing basic information on science, public safety and community views?

Obviously community views are going to be important in any decision. The opposition seems to brush that away, as if that is not important. Well, it is important, and this bill is important to protect Canadians. Why is the member opposed to community views?