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

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his well-informed speech. He must have named more than 10 stakeholders, individuals, associations and groups in this area that are opposed to this bill. That shows just how outraged experts are about Bill C-2 and the government's plan.

I would like to know what my colleague thinks about property values, which a parliamentary secretary mentioned during this debate. She is concerned that opening a supervised injection site will lower property values in the surrounding neighbourhood. I understand that. However, I think that that reasoning would lead us to close all prisons, all assisted living facilities, and so on. Do we want to stop providing all services that could bother the neighbours? Should we not try to combat these kinds of prejudices to reach some kind of social consensus so that we can provide these services?

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is no secret: the Conservatives' Bill C-2 is the product of this government's opposition to the decision by the Supreme Court, which found that the government should uphold the exemption that allows Vancouver's supervised injection site, InSite, to remain open.

InSite is North America's first and only legal supervised injection site. It seems obvious that despite the many people speaking in favour of opening at least three more sites elsewhere in Canada—in Toronto and Ottawa in particular—Bill C-2 is simply meant to create obstacles for anyone wishing to undertake such initiatives.

Even the Canadian Medical Association said in its press release that it “is deeply concerned that the proposed legislation may be creating unnecessary obstacles and burdens that could ultimately deter creation of more injection sites”.

The Supreme Court, medical community experts and street workers all agree that this type of approach “is a central pillar in a comprehensive public health approach to disease prevention and health promotion”.

In its decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the evidence indicated that a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and where there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the minister should generally grant an exemption.

The Conservatives have managed to inflate statistics on crime, repeat offenders and abortion, and are simply continuing to impose their political and moral agenda and ignoring all the evidence and trends before them.

These situations show the problems associated with cuts to statistical and psychosocial studies, the collection and analysis of information and the social sciences in general. This results in decisions being made solely on the basis of beliefs and prejudices, not facts.

A number of groups believe that this bill is irresponsible. The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition issued a joint news release, and had this to say about Bill C-2:

The bill is an irresponsible initiative that ignores both the extensive evidence that such health services are needed and effective, and the human rights of Canadians with addictions. In essence, the bill seeks to create multiple additional hurdles that providers of health services must overcome.

The bill imposes about twenty conditions that must be met in order to obtain an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, especially with respect to the consultation of experts and groups. Proponents of the project would be solely responsible for fulfilling the requirements for consultations with government and community stakeholders.

The irony is that when InSite was being established in 2003, the Mayor of Vancouver claimed the following:

[It] was launched after extensive dialogue in the local area, and with thorough city-wide debate, and its programming continues to be shaped with ongoing input from nearby residents, businesses, and service organizations.

This bill is based entirely on bad faith and stereotypes and has been promoted through a fearmongering campaign. The very day the previous bill, Bill C-65, was introduced, the government began a shock advertising campaign entitled “Keep heroin out of our backyards”. The campaign speaks out against supervised injection sites in utter disregard for all the scientific arguments, statistics and research that managed to convince every judge who sits on the highest court in the country.

On the campaign site, it reads:

Yet, as I write this, special interests are trying to open up these supervised drug consumption sites in cities and towns across Canada—over the objections of local residents and law enforcement....Add your name if you demand a say before a supervised drug consumption site is opened close to your family.

The government did a good job of scaring people.

This campaign was strongly criticized by organizations including the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, which felt that the Conservatives' initiative was clearly:

...an attempt to stir up opposition to these life-saving services and to the people who use these services.

The coalition also criticized the language used in the campaign, which directly targets families by calling into question the safety of their loved ones.

That is irresponsible and dishonest. InSite is not located in a residential neighbourhood right next door to an elementary school. It is located in one of the poorest and most violent neighbourhoods in Canada, Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Many experts testified in committee about the benefits this centre has brought into the lives of those who use it and the positive impact it has had on their environment. I would like to quote Ahmed Bayoumi, a doctor and researcher who continues to fight for the establishment of other supervised injection sites. He had this to say about InSite:

[InSite] has been associated with a reduction in public injecting, no increase in drug-related loitering or drug dealing, no changes in crime rates, no evidence of increased relapse among people who had stopped injecting drugs, and decreased fatal overdose in neighbourhoods near Insite. Among people who used the facility, there was an observed increased rate of referrals for drug treatment and a decreased rate of sharing of injection equipment.

Needless to say, there was no shortage of reactions when this bill was introduced, and those reactions were not really complimentary to the government.

Let us begin with the Supreme Court, which in its September 29, 2011 ruling basically accused the government of acting in an arbitrary manner and overestimating the risk associated with these types of facilities as compared to the positive effects they can have. According to the Supreme Court:

According to the Supreme Court, applying the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to InSite was:

...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 to injection drug users outweigh any benefit that might be derived from maintaining an absolute prohibition on possession of illegal drugs on Insite’s premises.

Along the same lines, Dr. Bayoumi had this to say about Bill C-2:

...sets up barriers and puts in place opaque mechanisms that could lead to narrow perspectives dominating the decision. It is a step backwards for informed health policy decision making.

In a press release issued in response to Bill C-2, which was Bill C-65 at the time, the Canadian Medical Association stated that this bill:

...is founded upon ideology that seeks to hinder initiatives to mitigate the very real challenges and great personal harm caused by drug abuse.

In fact, even Vancouver's Mayor Robertson defended the centre, saying he considers it a key resource and part of any good public health policy. He concluded his press release by saying:

Especially in light of the Supreme Court’s affirmation of the program’s proven ability to prevent overdose deaths and the spread of disease, I am strongly opposed to any legislative or regulatory changes which would impede Insite’s successful operations.

In the way it has managed this issue, the Conservative government has demonstrated its utter contempt for the Supreme Court, which had to act as a counterbalance to the government's ideological policies.

The Conservatives never hesitate to lower the standard of debate around real arguments in order to spew rhetoric or propose strategies simply to achieve their own ends.

This is not only appalling, but unworthy of someone who is supposed to carry the responsibilities of the Minister of Health.

This government is ignoring the Supreme Court's clear, unanimous decision by introducing a bill that distorts the nature of the rationale given by the judges.

Using our role as legislators in this way is unacceptable and proves only one thing: the Conservatives will do anything to achieve their own ends.

In his book on the Prime Minister and his model of governance, author Christian Nadeau said something that rang very true and still holds true today: the Prime Minister is giving himself four years to:

...overhaul the country's institutions so that the Conservatives have the maximum possible room to manoeuvre in terms of citizens’ rights and security, freedom of conscience and social justice...

When we are dealing with supervised injection sites, we should be listening to and supporting the experts and the people on the front lines, the people who work with drug addicts every day. We should take their advice.

The government has no scientific studies to back its claims. Sites like these are not there to encourage drug use. Far from it. It has been proven that these kinds of sites can help decrease drug use and addiction. If we keep these people underground, how will street outreach workers and health care experts be able to help the addicts who want help?

These kinds of sites bring addicts out of hiding so that we can make contact with them, provide support and eventually help them rebuild their lives.

I urge the government to rethink its approach. I urge them to withdraw Bill C-2 because the official opposition will clearly be voting against this bill at all stages.

In my opinion, this bill will do some very serious damage to the fight against drug addiction.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question.

When the Conservatives ask us to support Bill C-2 in order to keep heroin out of our back yards, it shows just how out of touch with reality they really are. Safe injection sites do not bring heroin into your neighbourhood. This is not a question of wanting to keep heroin out of our neighbourhoods, but of how it can be controlled. Do we want people on the street, unsupervised, without access to help or services? Or do we want them supervised, with access to services?

They are there anyway. They are not going to disappear. The problems are not going to disappear. We need to ask ourselves how we can offer services in order to address the problem. Minimum sentences are not always the answer. They do not reduce crime. We know that. There is proof from around the world. Intervention and prevention are what truly fight crime and improve quality of life.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the bill, but I think this is a sorry debate. This debate is clearly demonstrating that ideology conflicts with the facts.

Bill C-2 before us would amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which would prevent groups from setting up supervised injection sites and offering those services across the country.

I would like to talk about this issue in relation to what is currently going on in Quebec. I have here with me a report by the Agence de la santé et des services sociaux de Montréal. Quebec began addressing this issue over 13 years ago. For more than 13 years, health and social services professionals have been working on this, studying the issue, conducting pilot projects and consulting agencies to see how Quebec may or may not want to integrate services such as supervised injection sites. Quebec has been working hard on this and I am sure other parts of the country have as well.

In 2000, at the request of the department of health and social services, Quebec formed a cocaine addicts intervention committee. The committee's mandate was to come up with strategies to improve the quality of life of cocaine addicts. One year later, the committee recommended setting up a pilot project. As you can see, these consultations started quite some time ago.

In 2003, the same department mandated the Agence de la santé et des services sociaux de Montréal to conduct a feasibility study for setting up injection sites. The advisory committee made two proposals: first, a pilot project to create a drop-in centre and social integration services for injection drug users; and, second, consider adding a supervised injection site to existing services.

Experiments and consultations followed. It would be a shame if all this work of the past 13 years became increasingly difficult or was even tossed aside because of a bill that came out of nowhere and is based on Conservative ideology.

Institutions such as the Institut national de santé publique du Québec or the Coalition réduction des méfaits, which is made up of 32 community organizations, are involved in the process. The process takes into account expert opinions and what is happening in Quebec and the City of Montreal.

This is not a situation where you can barge in and do something on an impulse or because it is what a voter base is suggesting. This is serious. Here is how it works: there is a consultation and pilot projects are set up. That is a very important step. I think the Conservatives' approach should be modelled on this sort of process, which takes facts and expert opinions into account, shows compassion and reflects the differences in the communities affected.

This very important step could become obsolete, meaning that it could end up being pointless. The Conservatives' bill is undermining 13 years of consultations and meaningful work. It is unfortunate, and it is not something we should accept.

Le Devoir recently published an article about the reaction of stakeholders in Quebec to Bill C-2. I would like to share a quote from the article:

Cactus Montréal and public health director Dr. Richard Massé are concerned that their jobs will become more difficult. [Dr. Massé wondered] how much of a say minority groups will have in this bill. These services save lives. It is too early to say what will happen, but this appears to create some significant barriers, even though the Supreme Court clearly said that not providing these services was a violation of human rights.

Those involved in the process are concerned and are wondering whether this will make their jobs harder, and understandably so.

I am only naming those ones. However, all the experts who appeared before the committee spoke against this bill. There is no reason to believe that this bill would be beneficial for people's health. It is completely ironic that the Minister of Health would defend such a bill. Indeed, the Minister of Justice should be rising to defend his tough on crime agenda.

Frankly, the connection between Bill C-2 and health is not trivial; it is actually significant. For that reason we should vote against Bill C-2. If we really care about the health of Canadians, then, well, this bill is just plain wrong.

There is a supervised injection site in Vancouver and it is obviously effective. The evidence is there. There has been a 35% decrease in overdose deaths in Vancouver since this site opened. Furthermore, InSite has been shown to decrease crime, communicable disease infection rates and relapse rates for drug users.

This is what I am talking about. If we truly care about the health of Canadians, we must understand that this bill does not make any sense in terms of improving people's health. If the government really wants to help people stay healthy, it will make resources available to respond to their needs and to prevent crime, death and disease. It is high time we trusted the experts working on the ground when they speak in favour of or against such a bill.

I would like to draw the members' attention to a very concrete example involving another bill that I considered. This bill had a nice title and promised to fight elder abuse. In fact, it made only a small amendment to the Criminal Code, which might result in harsher sentences for crimes of elder abuse, although that is not a given. The NDP voted in favour of this bill and supported it.

However, we have to really look at the facts here. Temporary committees were created as part of the federal parliamentary process, and an all-party committee proposed some possible solutions, saying that intervention and prevention programs were needed to combat elder abuse. That is what we need to focus on if we really want to combat elder abuse. The bill was supposed to address elder abuse, and yet it made only one small amendment that would not really change anything in order to address this issue.

The same thing is happening here. An issue has been put on the table. However, if we really want to improve people's health, that is not the right direction to take.

I would like to talk about AJOI, an organization created on the West Island in Montreal to help at-risk street youth. First of all, people did not think that problem existed on the West Island. It took a long time for street youth at risk of becoming involved in crime to have access to this service. The project was created thanks to exceptional stakeholders, like Mr. Langevin, who believed in such projects. A number of stakeholders are now involved in the centre, which is well known in the community. This is the kind of project that really helps people.

Furthermore, the Centre Bienvenue provides supervised apartments for people with intellectual disabilities. That centre had to fight to exist. The neighbours did not want it in their community because they said it would increase crime and reduce property values. Ultimately, after speaking with and consulting their neighbours, the Centre Bienvenue officials convinced them and informed them of the reality of the situation. Thanks to that work in the community, people now have such a centre to turn to.

Here is what the Conservatives should do: instead of responding to people's fears and spreading false information, they should educate people about the benefits of supervised injection sites and forge ahead by reassuring Canadians. That would be the right thing to do for Canadians.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

The member said, in a very light and friendly fashion, I suspect, to “get a life”.

Mr. Speaker, that is the reality of it. That is what the government has chosen to do. It did send out the fundraising letter. The member can nod his head and say “no”, but it is true. The member should check his speaking notes and he will find that is in fact what it is. I can appreciate that the members would have a difficult time with it.

I recognize that we need to be more proactive in supporting our communities that need to address some of the negative social elements out there. Drug addiction, whether it is to heroin or cocaine or other drugs, is very real. We do need to address that.

We need to work with different stakeholders, something that former Liberal governments have done. We need to work with different stakeholders to come up with ideas that would make our communities a better and safer place to be. That is the reason we find it so difficult to even support Bill C-2.

I am thankful to have had the opportunity to say a few words.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have a few thoughts to share with members on Bill C-2. We could start by asking about the message of the Conservatives with regard to drug usage, on Bill C-2, and what ultimate impression they are trying to give Canadians.

The Conservatives do not believe in facts and science, and they are more concerned about how they can portray the image of being the party that is tough on all aspects of crime. Whether it is justified or not is completely irrelevant.

Bill C-2 somewhat exemplifies why the government is so focused on things that are not necessarily in the best interests of Canadians but rather on sending a very strong message, which is ultimately, I would argue, to the detriment of all Canadians. First I would emphasize my disappointment with the Minister of Health, who is responsible for the public health and well-being of Canadians, for bringing forward legislation that will not put our individuals or communities in a healthier position going forward.

The Minister of Health disappoints me most because Canadians from coast to coast to coast are concerned about health care, and she is doing nothing to come up with a provincial agreement for a health care accord that expires in 2014. This is an issue about which people across this land are concerned. We love and care about our health care services, and the Conservatives have completely ignored it. They have not even met with ministers to discuss it. This issue touches each and every one of us in a very real and tangible way, and the Conservatives choose not to deal with it. They want to focus on their message, whether it is in the best interests of Canadians or not.

The Minister of Health should be ashamed of herself for bringing forward a bill such as this, while ignoring an issue that is of critical importance to each and every Canadian across this land. We challenge the Minister of Health to reflect upon the damage she is proposing by introducing Bill C-2. She should get to work on the health care accord, which is a very important issue.

Therein lies the difference between a Liberal government and a Conservative-Reform government. We believe in working with the different stakeholders. When the injection site was put in place in British Columbia, the Liberal administration in Ottawa worked closely with the different stakeholders. The Liberals expressed interest in helping communities in which discarded needles, pipes, and other paraphernalia were left lying on our streets. We expressed interest in how we could help to deal with the lives that were being destroyed, the suicides that were being committed, and the heroin overdoses and so forth.

It was not the Liberal administration alone doing that. The police force, the British Columbia government, and many other stakeholders expressed concern. They all came to the table and came to an agreement that having InSite would help; it would make the community a healthier place.

The national Liberal government did not make that determination alone. We recognized and worked with the other stakeholders, and the key is that we did work with the other stakeholders. Through that work we were able to support InSite, which has been very successful. We only have to look at it.

The Minister of Health has not even visited the site in question, from what I understand. Why? If she visits the place and starts talking to the staff, she might actually find that it is working. She could talk to the local Vancouver police, whom I understand are in support of it. The minister does not want to talk about the evidence.

The Minister of Health does not want to understand the true value of having this safe injection site because it does not fit the ideological agenda that the Conservatives want to espouse. They do not let the facts or science deter them from doing the wrong thing. This is most unfortunate. One would think that the Minister of Health would have gone to the site and worked with, or at least talked to, people to find out what they actually had to say about it. From what I understand, that is not the case.

When we look at the local leadership, the province supports it and the police support it, and many different health care professionals recognize the benefits and support it. We can look at the users who need the site and support it.

We can talk about the facts, about how individuals' lives have been saved. We could go to the community to see different facilities, community centres, schools, or back lanes, and we would find that those areas are healthier environments as a direct result of it.

These are the types of things that are important for us to recognize. However, the Conservative Reform government does not recognize that because it does not fit its political agenda.

We know how much it relies on that political agenda. Within hours of the minister introducing the bill, the Conservatives started a fundraising campaign. They said that the Liberals and New Democrats want to have injection houses throughout Canada, implying that they would go into all these different communities and that the only way to prevent that was to donate money to the Conservative Party.

The Conservatives are using Bill C-2 as a fundraising tool. Here we have a newly minted Minister of Health being manipulated and used as a fundraising tool, when in fact she should be dealing with the issues that Canadians truly want her to deal with.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I have a lot to say on this issue.

We are talking about Bill C-2 today, safe injection sites, and I want to start with what the bill should be about.

I think the bill should be about saving lives. It should be about reducing disease. It should be about reducing harm. It should be about public health and also public safety.

When we talk about what a bill should be about, quite frankly, very often it is up to the government to decide, and we take our cues from it; however, in this case, the bill is actually a response to a Supreme Court of Canada decision. Therefore, we know ahead of time what the bill should be about because we can look at the Supreme Court decision and the language in it and know what the bill should be about. However, in looking at the bill, we see it is all wrong. It is not a proper response to the Supreme Court of Canada case.

As members probably know, this Supreme Court of Canada case is about a situation in Vancouver around InSite, which is a supervised safe injection site. This facility receives an exemption from section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

We had a challenge here, and the Supreme Court of Canada was unequivocal in what it said about InSite, which is a model for other safe injection sites. I will read some of the quotes on this case, because they will tell us what Bill C-2 should be about. It is fascinating what the court said.

The court did rule 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 CDSA, which include public health and safety.”

It is arbitrary, and I will argue in a few minutes that the proposed legislation is an arbitrary response.

Further in the case, the court said that

The infringement at stake is serious; it threatens the health, indeed the lives, of the claimants and others like them. The grave consequences that might result from a lapse in the current constitutional exemption for InSite cannot be ignored. These claimants would be cast back into the application process they have tried and failed at, and made to await the Minister’s decision based on a reconsideration of the same facts.

The court talks about this threatening the health and lives of the claimants, so we are talking about health here. We are talking about section 7 rights, which are that everybody has the right to “life, liberty and security of person and the right not to be deprived thereof”.

The court actually sets out who has the onus of responsibility here in proving a case. The court said:

...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.

The court continues a little further on,

Where, as here, 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.

I stress “should”. This is not “may”; it is not permissive language. The court has been very forceful here in saying “should generally grant an exemption”.

However, with the bill before us, the onus is actually being reversed.

The courts have said that it will decrease the risk of death and that there is little or no evidence of a negative impact on public safety. However, what do we have before us? We have a bill that would actually force communities to prove the benefits. It would force communities into an extensive application to prove what the benefits would be, what the impacts would be on the community.

It is actually reversing that onus, when the courts have been very clear that there is no evidence to show that safe-injection sites would have a negative impact on public safety. This bill would force communities to come up with scientific evidence demonstrating that there is a medical benefit. Come on; we know there is a medical benefit. There would be a letter of opinion from the ministers responsible, information about infectious diseases and overdoses, a description of the available drug treatment services, a description of the potential impact of a site on public safety, and the list goes on.

This is not an appropriate response, because this bill should be about health. It should be about preventing death. It should be about preventing the spread of disease.

I believe that a bill like this would actually stymie the process. There is one safe injection site in Canada right now, InSite, but if community members believe that their community needs a safe injection site, they should be able to open one, because harm reduction works and the evidence shows that. Therefore, I want to talk about how this bill, in creating these barriers and these obstacles to harm reduction and the obstacles and barriers to saving lives, could potentially impact a community like Halifax.

Halifax does not have a safe injection site, but I would say that the people of Halifax robustly embrace the concept of harm reduction. We have many different harm reduction facilities of different forms in our community, including a needle exchange, housing first principles, a mobile street health outreach bus, and a travelling methadone clinic. Halifax understands harm reduction.

We do not have a safe injection site and there are no plans for one. However, on the heels of this case there was quite a bit of media discussion about whether Halifax would have a safe injection site and about how this court case would allow that to happen. There are no plans for a program in Nova Scotia, but after the Supreme Court of Canada decision, the chief medical officer came forward and said he was happy to hear the Supreme Court of Canada's decision. In The Chronicle Herald at the time, he said:

We're very pleased with this because it leaves the option open down the road. If it's warranted then it's certainly something we may consider in the future.

This is from Dr. Robert Strang. Our chief medical officer has said that the decision was a wise one, and it made him happy to think that we may be able to have a site like this, if needed, in Nova Scotia.

Then what is the problem? Why do we have this reaction in the form of Bill C-2? Why is it that the Conservatives have brought forward this bill that would actually circumscribe or limit communities' abilities to take action and enact this kind of harm reduction in their community?

Well, at the same time that Bill C-2 came out, we saw a really interesting little fundraising campaign by the Conservative Party of Canada called “keep heroin out of our backyards”. I have the website right here, and under “keep heroin out of our backyards”, it says, “Add your name if you demand a say before a supervised drug consumption site is opened close to your family”.

That, on its face, seems as though it might be reasonable, but then we read further into this campaign and we realize it is all about not just raising money for the Conservative Party but also about fearmongering:

Do you want a supervised drug consumption site in your community? These are facilities where drug addicts get to shoot up heroin and other illicit drugs.

I don't want one anywhere near my home.

Parenthetically, Mr. Speaker, we are not talking about putting them beside our homes.

It continues:

Yet, as I write this, special interests are trying to open up these supervised drug consumption sites in cities and towns across Canada—over the objections of local residents and law enforcement.

In parenthesis, I ask, “Really? What objections? Where are they being opened? Where is it that communities are rising up against this? There are no proposals for any of them.

It says, “...as I write this, special interests are trying to open up these [facilities].” Is it a special interest to want to keep Canadians alive? I do not think that is a special interest.

I will keep going:

We've had enough—that's why I'm pleased that the [we know who he is] government is acting to put the safety of our communities first.

If members could see this website, they would see that it shows an empty syringe on the sidewalk, instilling fear in all of us.

I biked up to my community office on Monday last week when we were home for our riding week. What did I find in front of my office on the sidewalk? I found an empty syringe. I got some gloves and picked it up. A few doors down is the North End Community Health Centre. It has a sharps disposal container. I dropped it off there.

It is real. The idea that people are using intravenous drugs on our streets is real.

What I actually think is the threat to public safety here is not safe injection sites but the fact that people who have addictions, who may be homeless, who may be struggling with a myriad of other issues, have nowhere to go that is safe and supervised.

I talked to the people at Metro Non-Profit Housing Association, which is down the street from my office. They talk about finding needles in their bathrooms. Why is that? It is because that is where people can go. It is safe and warm, or the safest they can get, and it is warm and private. They can close the door and do their drugs there. Is that appropriate? I think that is more of a threat to safety than safe injection sites.

Behind my office there is a needle drop, a sharps container, that a local community group put in place for people who are doing drugs. It is kind of a dark alley. Stuff goes on there, and we need to acknowledge what is happening in our communities. What happened is that people actually broke into the box to get the needles. That is not harm reduction. Actually creating a supply of dirty needles for people to break into and share is not harm reduction. However, that is the reality of what is happening in our communities.

There was a local cafe maybe four doors down from my office that closed a couple of years ago. It had to put a sharps container in the bathroom. I think having needles in my local cafe is more of a threat to my safety than a safe injection site where the activity is supervised and the needles are clean and disposed of properly. I would much rather have a safe injection site beside my office than know that there are dirty needles behind my office that people are reusing.

This is about safety. This is about public health, and I want to get back to public health for a second, because nowhere in the bill is there even a mention of public health. I find that shocking.

When we are talking about health and what this bill should be about, which is saving lives and stopping the spread of disease, we have stats; we have real, hard evidence from InSite. The rate of overdose deaths in East Vancouver has dropped by 35% since InSite opened. That is pretty good evidence. Something is working.

Harm reduction works. A study over a one-year period showed there had been no fatalities from those injections. In one year, over 2,100 referrals were made to InSite users to addiction counselling or other support services. There is no referral service behind my office.

People who used InSite services at least once a week were 1.7 times more likely to enrol in a detox program than those who visited infrequently and probably a heck of a lot more likely to enrol than the folks behind my office.

There was a significant drop in the number of discarded syringes, injection-related litter, and people injecting in the streets one year after InSite opened.

Injection drug users who use InSite are 70% less likely to share needles. That is a staggering number. Reducing needle sharing has been listed as an international best practice to reduce the rate of HIV and AIDS.

InSite users are more likely to seek medical care through the site. This means fewer trips to the emergency room and an improvement of health outcomes.

There was a pretty big sigh there as I was reading the evidence. The evidence should speak for itself, but it is not, because we have Bill C-2 in front of us to actually make it harder for people and communities to have this kind of success story in their community.

It is all about evidence. Evidence shows that harm reduction, like safe injection, works, and I am really proud of the harm reduction initiatives in my community.

We have Mainline Needle Exchange, where folks can actually get clean needles and maybe get referred to some services.

We have Direction 180, which is a methadone clinic. It has recently had huge success buying a mobile bus to get to some of the communities that are not in the north end of Halifax and to ensure people get their methadone. These folks are trying to deal with their addictions. They are trying to better themselves. We need to have these harm reduction programs in place for them so they can succeed. What is the alternative? Death?

We have MOSH, or Mobile Outreach Street Health, which is a van that goes around to where people are, such as under bridges, in fields and at the homeless shelters, to give them the medical treatment they need.

This is what we need, but unfortunately the government is not interested in harm reduction. I have a good quote from Cindy MacIsaac who runs Direction 180, our methadone clinic. She said:

Ottawa’s new approach is to criminalize what should still be seen as a health issue...You can’t even use the term harm reduction anymore when applying for federal funding. The taps have been turned off.

This bill is all about creating fear. It is not about health or about helping people get better. Bill C-2 is a bill about power, power to the minister and disempowerment to the most vulnerable members of our society.

There is a more powerful argument against the bill. That is the voices of members of my community and communities across the country that recognize the value of safe injection sites as a harm reduction program. They want the ability to set up similar sites where needed.

Safe injection sites are one way we can help save lives, treat people who suffer from a disease, help people reorient their lives, improve the quality of life for community members and make our cities safer for everyone. We need less barriers to programs like the ones this bill would create. The government is getting in the way of caring for those people who need the most help.

I want to emphasize that addiction is not a choice. It is a disease, and those who suffer from it should be treated with the dignity and the respect we give to other people suffering from chronic illness. When we speak about safe injection sites or harm reduction programs, there is very often a human element that gets left behind in these debates. I want to ensure that we talk about that human element in the House. People who suffer from addiction are also suffering from the stigma and discrimination that follow the disease. This bill lacks the understanding of this human element. It makes it more difficult for safe injection sites to be established in our communities and for individuals battling addiction to receive compassionate care.

When I was getting ready to speak to the bill, I spoke to people at the Brunswick Street Mission and the Mainline Needle Exchange. They said that the people who needed help in my community were increasingly younger people living in shelters, that they were inadequately housed and suffered from severe health issues, including mental health issues and mental illness. The problems face people who suffer from addictions cannot be isolated from housing, health, poverty, education, or addiction. They are all inseparable problems that can overwhelm anyone.

Safe injection sites are an important part of dealing with these issues holistically. At InSite in Vancouver, it is not just a program about drugs. Safe injection sites are about helping people through providing a safe space, peer support services, and health services. Unfortunately, this bill does not look at the whole picture. It makes safe injection sites harder to establish across the country and makes it harder for our community to want to tackle these and other connected issues.

With no safe injection sites and no safe spaces for people fighting addiction, we are pushing those people to the very margins of society, which exacerbates poverty, homelessness, and health and safety issues for our communities.

(The House resumed at 12 noon.)

The House resumed from November 8 consideration of the motion that Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

There will be about eight minutes left for questions and comments when we resume debate on Bill C-2.

It being 1:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if I were to say that there is a system we can use to reduce the number of deaths and communicable diseases in a community, to reduce health care costs and drug use in public places, people would say that is absolutely fantastic and we should do it right away. Tomorrow, even.

Well, there is such a system. There is something that can achieve all of those goals: supervised injection sites like those found around the world, including the well-known InSite in Vancouver.

The bill we are debating today would stop that from happening. It would stop us from reducing the number of deaths, the incidence of communicable disease, health care costs, crime and drug use in public places. That is it in a nutshell. Nobody is asking about the real purpose of the bill, which is to shut down InSite and prevent similar sites from opening.

I am having a very hard time understanding what the Conservatives want. Do they want more sick people, more hepatitis and AIDS cases in our communities? Do they want more crime? Is that really what they want?

People in my riding, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, want fewer sick people, less crime and fewer problems. My riding certainly has drug use issues, but we also have a range of solutions. People working for CACTUS, L'Anonyme, the CSSS network and EMRI have great initiative. However, if we can do more, in consultation with the community, to prevent death, crime and disease, we should do more.

Consider drug use in public places. In Laurier—Sainte-Marie, I have picked up needles lying in the streets, needles that kids could have played with. Do we not want to try to avoid that kind of thing? I do not understand. I am not the only one who thinks that these sites deserve a strictly regulated place in Canada; the Supreme Court thinks so too.

Let us consider the facts. This all started in 2008 when InSite's exemption under section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act expired.

The InSite exemption expired, and the Minister of Health denied the organization's renewal request. The case obviously went to court. It first went to the Supreme Court of British Columbia, which ruled that InSite should receive a renewed exemption. The Conservative government of course did not agree. It appealed, and the case went to the British Columbia Court of Appeal, which ruled that InSite should remain open.

The case then ended up before the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled that the minister's decision to shut down InSite violated the rights of its clients as guaranteed under the charter. This is what the court had to say about the decision:

It is arbitrary, undermining the very purposes of the CDSA, which include public health and safety.”

I think that is rather clear and no one can claim that it was a partisan decision. The court based its decision on section 7 of the charter, which states that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person, and that an individual can only be deprived of those rights in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

The court also declared that:

The infringement at stake is serious; it threatens the health, indeed the lives, of the claimants and others like them. The grave consequences that might result from a lapse in the current constitutional exemption for InSite cannot be ignored. These claimants would be cast back into the application process they have tried and failed at, and made to await the minister’s decision...

The Supreme Court determined that InSite and other supervised injection sites must be granted the exemption provided for in section 56, since the opening of such sites 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...

I raise this point because people often express concerns whereby opening such a site will have an impact on public safety. Studies and previous experiences in Canada and elsewhere have shown that there is no negative impact on public safety. In some cases, it even has a positive impact on public safety, by reducing, as I was saying, the injection of drugs in public, the violence sometimes associated with drug use and the discarded drug paraphernalia associated with illegal drug use.

The Supreme Court of Canada was very clear, as were the B.C. Supreme Court and the B.C. Court of Appeal. Obviously, the Conservatives decided they wanted to circumvent the Supreme Court decision with this new bill. The Conservatives claim to like the rule of law, but they are not really willing to respect it when it does not agree with their ideology. This has nothing to do with facts and reality, it really is a matter of ideology. They do not have any justification to refuse to allow other sites to open or InSite to continue operating.

The Supreme Court was clear. If a site can cause harm to a community, it can be banned. That is official. However, this harm must be demonstrated and not just a product of unfounded fears. This is true and I will say it again, people are sometimes afraid. However, we should look at Vancouver and examine what is happening around InSite. Fully 80% of the people who live and work in the area around InSite support the project. This is quite impressive. We see the same numbers when we look at what is being done in Europe. People who live in the neighbourhoods of these projects and who can see the results show overwhelming support for this type of initiative. Obviously there must be a balance between health and public safety, but we can have both at the same time.

I quoted the Supreme Court of Canada quite often. Indeed, I think it very often hands down very carefully reasoned decisions. It is still our Supreme Court. The judges spend considerable time analyzing the issues and thinking them through.

However, the Supreme Court is not the only party defending the usefulness of safe injection sites. The Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Nurses Association have both criticized the government for introducing Bill C-2.

According to the Canadian Medical Association:

Supervised injection programs are an important harm reduction strategy. Harm reduction is a central pillar in a comprehensive public health approach to disease prevention and health promotion.

The Canadian Nurses Association had this to say:

Evidence demonstrates that supervised injection sites and other harm reduction programs bring critical health and social services to vulnerable populations—especially those experiencing poverty, mental illness and homelessness...A government truly committed to public health and safety would work to enhance access to prevention and treatment services—instead of building more barriers.

As you can see, all this bill does is create obstacles.

At new supervised injection sites, preparing an application will be such a cumbersome process that it may dissuade applicants from even opening a file. Department officials told us that if an applicant mistakenly forgets to include something, the application could be automatically denied. Even if an applicant manages to obtain all of the documents needed for the application, if the application is perfect, iron-clad from start to finish and has the community's full support, the minister always has the option of arbitrarily denying it.

The NDP feels that decisions about programs that could benefit public safety should be based on fact and not ideology. That is why I will be voting against this bill.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, there is a little heckling on the other side. We were having a little discussion across the aisle, but it is a friendly discussion.

I really did not intend to speak on Bill C-2, because it will in fact go to the public safety committee, of which I am a member, and which I very seriously think that it is the wrong committee for the bill to go to. It should be going to the health committee.

However, what encouraged me to speak on the bill before it gets to committee was something I heard while driving in yesterday morning. There was quite an extensive interview on CBC's Ottawa Morning by Robyn Bresnahan with Dr. Gabor Maté, if I am pronouncing that name correctly. At some point in my remarks, I want to quote some of the information that Dr. Maté presented, because he works at InSite and presents some very good evidence that we should be considering as a committee and in the House in our discussion of this bill.

I might say as background, because it came up in earlier discussions and questions when people asked if they have ever been to InSite in Vancouver or to the Downtown Eastside or Hastings, that I have been there a number of times, some of those times as Solicitor General.

I have said a few times that my initial impression was what a loss of humanity, to a great extent. I can remember driving up a back alley one night in a marked police car when we saw a young woman—whose age I could not tell, but I suspect she was around 18 to 25—sitting on a step with a needle in her arm. It was not necessarily a clean needle. That shocked me. We stopped and talked to her. We were not there to arrest her at the time; I was doing an oversight of that particular area.

I will admit that when I first visited the safe injection site, I did have mixed opinions, because on the one hand, there we were, giving and injecting illegal drugs, and maybe that really does not click rightly with our psyche.

However,when we look at the results, we very quickly start to change our opinion. When we talk to some of those people and actually sit down and have a sensible discussion, rather than completely judging them for what they are doing and how they got into these illegal drugs and got addicted, and when we learn something of their backgrounds—whether they got into prostitution, were on the street, were in abusive families, or whatever it might have been—we can restrict our judgment somewhat and look at what InSite is doing for them in giving them their lives back to a great extent and, I think, providing much better public safety for the community.

That is important. There are fewer needles, and they are using safe needles. They are using proper sanitary conditions. It is proven that there is less HIV as a result. There are a whole lot of health benefits as a result of the injection sites, and we have to look at the evidence.

I will admit that when I went to InSite initially—and I was one of the ones involved in the decision to do it—one of my first questions was “Why would we do this?” I mean, it just goes against the grain to see illegal drugs injected. However, when we look right through to the end, we realize there are benefits to the individuals, benefits to the public, and benefits to health and safety as a whole.

That is what we should be looking at. This is more a health issue than a public safety issue, although I will admit it is both, but from both perspectives, whether we are talking about health or public safety, Bill C-2, as introduced by the Minister of Health, is a very bad and very dangerous bill. If passed, it will hurt public safety. It will injure health and will end up increasing crime.

The government has an agenda of being tough on crime, but I maintain that the net result of this particular bill 10 years down the road will show very clearly that it was a bad bill and the wrong direction to go.

As a party, we support evidence-based policies that reduce harm and protect public safety. That is what InSite was proven to do.

To give a little more background, the bill really flows from a 2011 Supreme Court ruling that declared the Minister of Health's 2008 decision not to grant an extension of the exemption of subsection 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which had allowed Vancouver's safe consumption site to operate since September 2003, had violated section 7 of charter rights.

That section says:

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.

Determining whether there has been a breach of section 7 involves a two-part analysis for the courts. In considering potential section 7 violations, they must ask two questions: whether there is deprivation of the right to life, liberty, or security of the person, and if so, whether that deprivation is in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

The Supreme Court found that both conditions had been met. Therefore, the Supreme Court ordered that the minister grant an exemption to InSite under subsection 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. That is partly why we are here today.

The Supreme Court further explained that the Controlled Drugs and Substances Acts has a dual purpose, public health and public safety, and that the minister should strike an appropriate balance between the two. Therefore, here we are with Bill C-2, and I submit that the bill does not strike the appropriate balance. In fact, Bill C-2 goes far beyond what the Supreme Court ruled in terms of factors to be considered when granting an exception. That is why we are somewhat faced with a dilemma.

I will first go to what provoked me to speak on this issue. That was the interview I heard on the radio, which I think is very good documentation that should be on the record in the House.

To back up, the arguments made by Dr. Gabor Maté were as a result of an interview with Robyn Bresnahan yesterday morning on CBC. I will quote from the transcript. Dr. Maté, when asked a question about where we are at as a country on addictions, and our treatment of addictions, said:

It's better than some countries in the world, but in terms of science, in terms of human compassion, in terms of what we know about addiction, it's very backward.

He means our policy. He went on to say:

Because it [meaning Canada] sees addiction either as a matter of choice that needs to be punished, and so we have increasingly draconian laws against people that use substances despite all the international evidence that that approach simply does not work.

Or it sees addiction simply as a primary brain disease, as if there was some genetic reason why people become addicted. The reality is that people are becoming addicted because they were traumatized and hurt in childhood. And that early trauma and that early emotional loss in childhood shapes the personality in such a way as to create low self-esteem and shapes the brain's physiology in such ways as to make that person susceptible to substances.

And so neither our treatment, nor our legal approaches take into account the impact of trauma and emotional loss and their effect on brain physiology.

He makes the argument about why some people are addicted. When asked a question about the work he has done in lower eastside Vancouver, he was asked if he could give an example of what we are talking about here. He answered as follows:

Yes, and I worked for 12 years in Vancouver's downtown east side, including at the supervised injection site which our current government tried to shut down. In 12 years of work, I did not meet a single female patient who had not been sexually abused as a child.

He went on to make the argument of how some people turn to drugs to either overcome trauma or stress, or whatever. I am quoting him because we should be careful, in all instances, not to judge people and say they clearly had a choice. People say yes or no, but there are reasons that these things happen in some people's lives, and that is a sad thing.

Further on in the interview, and this is where he turns to evidence on the value of InSite, he talks to people about drug injection sites. He said:

I get emails, hundreds of them, thanking me for this perspective.

The only sense that I'm yelling into the wind is when it comes to policy. The people higher up seem not to understand these things. They don't want to seem to hear them. And one example of that of course is what's happening currently with the government's withdrawal of Health Canada's decision that would allow Vancouver physicians to prescribe heroin to a small number of patients.

What I'm saying is that there's tremendous appreciation...for this perspective.

He means that InSites are valuable, but not from the people who make the policies. He is saying that people on the ground, people who work with these individuals on a daily basis, know that it helps these individuals and that it is good for public safety. That is evidence. We need to be looking in this discussion at the evidence, not at the ideology. He went on to say:

Well, we do our best to articulate a scientific, evidence based perspective and my only wish is that as a physician, if I'm expected to practice evidence based medicine, so should the politicians be expected to practise evidence based politics.

The evidence internationally does not favour what is currently happening in this country by going against the InSites.

The last point I would make from that interview is what he said about the supervised injection site itself. He said:

But supervised injection sites don't promote addiction. They simply reduce the harm. It makes a lot more sense to use sterile water than puddle water from the back alleys. It makes a lot more sense to use clean needles rather than share them, dirty ones, and transmit HIV. So that the evidence from Vancouver, evidence in dozens of studies now is that there's less disease transmission, better health, more movement into treatment facilities, much less cost to society, every piece of evidence point to benefit and no evidence point to any kind of harm.

Listening to that interview yesterday morning, I thought it was the picture for Bill C-2. That person has spent more than a decade working in that environment and has seen the benefits of injection sites. Bill C-2 turns us away from the potential to give people the opportunity to get their lives back.

These sites protect others in the area, and society in general. They have controlled injections, and there are less dirty needles and less HIV.

My colleague from Vancouver Quadra made the argument the other day about less disease. She pointed out, as we all know in this House, that this site is supported by the province. It is supported by the police authority. Why, then, is the government in this Ottawa bubble, in this town of seeming ideology these days, looking to shut it down and move backward?

I firmly believe that this is an ideological bill, from a government that seems to oppose evidence-based harm reduction measures such as safe injection sites. We certainly believe that safe injection sites should not just be in isolation. They should be part of an evidence-based national drug policy that saves lives, reduces harm and promotes public health.

There is more that needs to be added. When I was in Downtown Eastside Vancouver, there were drug courts, I believe they were called at the time. They have a purpose too. Instead of being sentenced to prison, the addict agrees to certain conditions set down by the court, and if they meet those conditions, they do not end up in prison and they can regain their lives. We need a broader national strategy than just safe injection sites.

I submit that the results of the bill would increase crime, not lessen it. It would damage health care to others in society, take away the opportunity for the people who use those injection sites to be better citizens and contributors to the economy of the country, and lead them to more crime.

I believe the bill would lead to more dangerous streets, greater costs in hospitals, and a tremendous increase in the loss of human dignity. The bill is clearly the wrong way to go.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be pleased to speak for 10 minutes to BIll C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Before prorogation, it also went by the name of C-65, for those who have been following this matter, which has after all been in the public domain for some years.

In 2007, unfortunately, the Conservative government sought to close the only supervised injection site in Canada, InSite in Vancouver. At each stage in the legal process, the government faced defeat. The courts—both the appeal courts of British Columbia and the Supreme Court—stressed that these sites served a purpose in Canada and that they followed the guidelines available to users in this country.

I deplore the ideology behind this. In Canada, after all, we do have an anti-drug strategy, like many other governments, except that an incident occurred in 2007. Before the Conservative government came into power in 2006, we already had an anti-drug strategy with four pillars. It was based on prevention, treatment, enforcement and, fourth, harm reduction.

I say “had” because in 2007, the government updated its national anti-drug strategy, and it mysteriously rested on just three pillars. Harm reduction had disappeared. That is where ideology comes in, because the InSite supervised injection site in Vancouver was intended precisely to reduce harm.

It is therefore understandable that the Conservative government should endeavour to make such a change by all possible means, both legal and legislative. The matter went as far as the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court informed the government that it had lost its case on three occasions. Under the law, people have a right to access a supervised injection site. A little later in my speech, I will explain why such sites can be a good thing for the public.

Obviously, the government has turned around and used the last card it held: changing the law so that it becomes illegal and unacceptable to have such sites in Canada, without even considering the studies done over the years.

InSite has been in operation for many years. It is the first, and the one and only supervised injection site to have been set up in Canada. Its purpose is to research ways of helping addicts who have reached the end of the road and who, unfortunately, use drugs. These are not people who use drugs recreationally, but people who have, for a variety of reasons, reached a point in their lives where they really cannot stop. Such people should not be left to their own devices. They need help.

In the NDP, we are really going to ensure that no Canadian is left behind. I thank my colleague from Timmins—James Bay for sharing our belief that the people of Canada deserve a government that cares about Canadians, and not just about their Conservative Party buddies.

This is a thinly veiled attempt by the Conservative government to put an end to supervised injection sites across Canada. Vancouver is not the only city that wants one; Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa do as well. Other Canadian cities have looked at the same scientific studies as we have and have concluded that it is a part of Canada’s anti-drug strategy to provide assistance for people who—let us face it—may continue to use drugs.

My colleague from Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles was speaking earlier about apartment buildings she owns in upscale suburban neighbourhoods in Quebec City, where people were unfortunately shooting up in the alleyways.

They left their potentially contaminated paraphernalia in the alleys, near places frequented by young and not-so-young members of the public.

It is therefore burying our heads in the sand to believe that the solution is to close injection sites in Canada and that our streets will be safer and our neighbourhoods less dangerous for our children. That is not true. It has actually been demonstrated that if these people are not using drugs in supervised injection sites, they will do so anywhere, even in places that cause concern. I am referring, for example, to playgrounds in this country.

I do not wish to oversimplify either, but I am genuinely convinced that my Conservative colleagues would prefer to have heroin addicts using drugs in a supervised injection site, with nurses and social workers who can help them overcome their difficulties, rather than in neighbourhood parks where children play.

I said that there had been studies on the subject, and it is true. More than 30 peer-reviewed studies have been published in such journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal. The writers describe the benefits of InSite in Vancouver. Moreover, studies of more than 70 similar supervised injection sites in Europe and Australia report similar outcomes. InSite constitutes one of the most important public health breakthroughs in Canada. We believe that this site and other sites in Canada can generate similar benefits and should be allowed to provide services under appropriate supervision.

The word “supervision” is really important here. I will provide some explanation of how InSite operates. First, it is open seven days a week, from 10 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon. There are 12 injection stations. Users bring their own substances. People at home should not get the idea that the government pays for people’s drugs through InSite. On the other hand, staff members provide injection equipment. It is this that is so important, because we know that there are many health risks if users use the same needles or share them around. People in utter misery are not overly careful.

People can develop and transmit blood-borne infections. I am talking about diseases such as hepatitis and HIV. This is a huge burden on the Canadian health care system. However, the Conservative government decided to cut $31 billion from health care transfers to the provinces. It will be harder and harder for the provinces to balance their health care budgets. Of course, it is even more difficult for the provinces to treat people with HIV or hepatitis A, B or C.

I really wonder whether the government has a heart. Where is its compassion? Does the idea of helping one's neighbour still exist? Helping one’s neighbour should be a universal value, but perhaps the Conservative members prefer helping their neighbours only if their neighbours can help them back or only if they have never in their life made a mistake.

However, people do find themselves on the street, they become prostitutes or they use drugs, if not both. Some of them have had a difficult life. Sometimes, they were abandoned by their family or they experienced violence and sexual abuse in their childhood. It is no secret that adults take drugs, and it is not surprising that children take drugs. People who find themselves on the street join together, and unfortunately sometimes they fall into the hell of drug use. We must do more to help them.

The Conservative government thinks that it will solve the problem by closing supervised injection facilities in Canada. In fact, the reverse is true.

I am going to end on this note. I really think the government’s anti-drug strategy—a strategy I hope it will soon change—should include the fourth pillar I mentioned: harm reduction.

Prevention is important, but I would like to stress the fact that treatment is just as important. It is important to punish drug dealers, but when people are needy and destitute, they need help finding a way out. They need help, and this help can come from supervised injection sites.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord.

First, I would like to go back to the legal aspects of this legislation. Bill C-2 creates so many legal complications that it is now virtually impossible for a safe injection site to meet all these obligations. Even if it did, the minister could still approve or reject the application.

I want to show that this really does not make sense. In fact, this is disguised legislation to convey the message that the government does not want such sites. However, instead of just saying so, the government prefers to make the legal obligations so complicated that none of these sites will be able to meet all of them. The hon. member for Gatineau demonstrated it very clearly in her speech.

I will restrict my comments to the legal aspects of this legislation. I am going to talk about what the safe injection sites do and about drug addiction.

First, we must understand that safe injection sites rely on an approach used by a number of health care professionals, namely the harm reduction approach.

Under this approach, we know that certain behaviours will be exhibited, even though we would prefer that they were not. Consequently, we deal with these behaviours as best we can to minimize their negative impact.

For example, in the case of sexually transmitted diseases, we realized that even if we told young people not to have sex, they still did. We then decided that since young people were still having sex, we would make condoms available in schools and ensure that young people had access to them. That is what this approach is based on.

It is the same with alcohol. If we tell people not to drink, it does not work. People will continue to consume alcohol. That approach is not effective. This is why we tell them that if they drink they should not drive, that they should drink moderately, or that they should have three of maybe four beers instead of a case of 24. We try to minimize the negative impact. We provide alcoholism treatment programs and support groups for those who need them. At least, we are not burying our heads in the sand and telling ourselves that since no one is taking action we are not going to do anything.

It is exactly the same with safe injection sites. We try to minimize the negative impact of this addiction. There are all sorts of consequences, including overdoses. People may die if they go too far. There is also the whole issue of blood-borne infections because people use dirty needles.

I should also mention that, unfortunately, some people who use these sites resort to prostitution to buy drugs. That is why we step in and hand out condoms. We try to minimize the harmful behaviour that may result from this lifestyle.

Safe injection sites prevent people from getting infections from dirty needles. For example, they prevent children from falling on needles in a park or a public area.

Safe injection sites also try to prevent other health problems. We are dealing with people whose hygiene is often a problem. If they go to a safe injection site, we can see whether they have an infection or the first symptoms of pneumonia, and we can encourage them to seek treatment. As for the rest, we can at least try to help these people live a healthier lifestyle.

In a safe injection site, we know that people will inject drugs anyway. Even if we try as hard as we can to prevent them from doing so, we know they will do it.

I searched high and low and, in my opinion, there is no strategy that is safer.

If we tell people to inject drugs at home, they might overdose without anyone around to help them. There are also some who will shoot up on the street. The discarded needles then become a problem because children can fall on them. Then there are people who will do it in apartments, in makeshift shooting galleries, where sanitary conditions are inadequate. I believe that a safe injection site is the best option.

Hon. members may not have noticed, but in hospitals, the yellow boxes containing discarded contaminated needles are locked. This may seem strange, but if they are not locked, people will steal them and use the contaminated needles to inject drugs. This happened to nurses whom I know. People just stole the boxes. Therefore, safe injection sites help prevent health problems that could be much more serious.

Moreover, it is not just in the big cities that people inject drugs. Unfortunately, this also happens in my area. I work with street nurses and I know that clean needles are handed out to prevent the spread of infection. Unfortunately, people are injecting drugs even in remote rural areas like Abitibi—Témiscamingue. We should not bury our heads in the sand when it comes to this issue.

I would also like people to understand that when people who inject drugs come into a safe injection site, the workers do not just show them where things are. An assessment can only be done when contact is made. Nurses assess them when they come in. This is what we always do, as nurses. We constantly assess people's health. It is something of an occupational hazard.

When people come in looking somewhat dishevelled, the nurses will ask questions to see whether those people have a place to sleep, for example. If they do not, workers will then be able to intervene. They will observe how their patients are doing and maybe even realize that they have some kind of untreated injury because they do not want to go to a hospital. There will be a health care intervention.

If the nurses observe increased confusion or symptoms of mental illness or depression, they will be able to intervene and advise the person. That only takes a few seconds. Experienced workers are able to notice these health problems rather quickly. They will talk with the person right away. If the patient has a persistent cough and has trouble breathing, then perhaps the nurse will realize that there is another health problem. If that person is getting a skin infection, someone will follow up.

This means that when people go there for injections, they get a regular health check-up, and a familiar nurse will be able to intervene quickly and provide advice. The individual may not listen to that advice, but at least action is being taken and no one is ignoring the problem. They detect risks and intervene socially, because there are risks associated with injecting drugs.

For example, if centre workers notice that overdoses are increasing in number, they will pass the message along to let people know that there could be drugs going around that may be impure or may be cut with dangerous products that are stronger than normal. They will caution people so that this information can get around. If some people who inject are also involved in prostitution and were in contact with violent or aggressive people, staff will be able to let others know to be careful, because other people have been attacked and they may be at risk.

These centres provide practical social intervention that cannot be found elsewhere. No one would truly rather have this happen in the street and to find someone who died from an overdose in the alley next to their home. That makes absolutely no sense. It should be done in a centre at the very least.

What is more, these centres can help in developing a trusting relationship with the individual.

That way, when an individual feels strong enough to quit doing drugs, someone at the centre can counsel them. Drug addicts will be much more likely to succeed in overcoming their addiction.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

I am deeply saddened that the Conservative government has seen fit to introduce such a retrograde bill, and, as I will discuss, a bill that flies in the face of the unanimous 2011 Supreme Court decision on InSite. It seems obvious to many lawyers that this bill will also be struck down by the Supreme Court, costing Canadians hundreds of thousands of dollars. How many lives will be lost or wasted until that occurs?

I would first like to salute the remarkable work done by my colleague from Vancouver East, the health critic for the official opposition. Her compassionate leadership on this issue has been truly inspirational. It saddens me greatly that the Conservative government is only appearing to implement the Supreme Court of Canada judgment. In reality, this bill does nothing more than throw hurdle after hurdle in the way of those other communities across Canada that might wish to establish a safe consumption site to assist those who are suffering from the scourge of addiction.

At the outset, let us be clear, the federal government lost in the Supreme Court of Canada. The Court agreed unanimously that Vancouver's InSite clinic should be allowed to stay open and required the government to determine the conditions that would allow it and other facilities to do so. This bill is supposed to be the result of that Supreme Court judgment.

Before turning to Bill C-2, let me begin by describing the judgment of the Supreme Court. Then I want to examine the contents of the bill before turning to its importance to communities such as Victoria, which I have the honour to represent.

The court's unanimous judgment is extremely eloquent. I can do no better than to read certain portions of the judgment into the record today. It goes like this:

In the early 1990s, injection drug use reached crisis levels in Vancouver’s downtown eastside [...]. Epidemics of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C soon followed, and a public health emergency was declared [...] in September 1997. Health authorities recognized that creative solutions would be required to address the needs of the population of the [downtown eastside], a marginalized population with complex mental, physical, and emotional health issues. After years of research, planning, and intergovernmental cooperation, the authorities proposed a scheme of care for drug users that would assist them at all points in the treatment of their disease, not simply when they quit drugs for good. The proposed plan included supervised drug consumption facilities which, though controversial in North America, have been used with success to address health issues associated with injection drug use in Europe and Australia.

Operating a supervised injection site required an exemption from the prohibitions of possession and trafficking of controlled substances under s. 56 of the [Controlled Drugs and Substances Act], which provides for exemption at the discretion of the Minister of Health, for medical and scientific purposes. Insite received a conditional exemption in September 2003, and opened its doors days later. North America’s first government-sanctioned safe injection facility, it has operated constantly since then. It is a strictly regulated health facility, and its personnel are guided by strict policies and procedures. It does not provide drugs to its clients, who must check in, sign a waiver, and are closely monitored during and after injection. Its clients are provided with health care information, counselling, and referrals to various service providers or an on-site, on demand detox centre. The experiment has proven successful. Insite has saved lives and improved health without increasing the incidence of drug use and crime in the surrounding area. It is supported by the Vancouver police, the city and provincial governments.

In 2008, a formal application for a new exemption was made. Again, I say, the Supreme Court held in favour of InSite. The court stated:

The Minister [of Health's] failure to grant a s. 56 exemption to Insite engaged the claimants’ s. 7 [charter] rights and contravened the principles of fundamental justice.

The minister's decision not to grant an exemption is not in in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. It is arbitrary because it is undermines the very purpose of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the protection of health and public safety. The court continued:

It is also grossly disproportionate: during its eight years of operation, Insite has been proven to save lives with no discernable negative impact on the public safety and health objectives of Canada.

It further stated:

The effect of denying the services of Insite to the population it serves and the correlative increase in the risk of death and disease to injection drug users is grossly disproportionate to any benefit that Canada might derive from presenting a uniform stance on the possession of narcotics.

The court went on to order the minister to grant that exemption to InSite, and here is the key point. It said this:

On future applications, 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, 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 does Bill C-2 do in the face of that judgment? It sets out a daunting list of criteria that supervised injection sites would have to meet before the minister would grant them an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Experts agree; these criteria would make it much harder for organizations to open safe injection sites in Canada.

Do not take my word for it. Let us hear what the experts have said. Pivot Legal Society, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, and the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition issued this statement on BillC-2 when it was first introduced as Bill C-65. They stated the following:

The bill is an irresponsible initiative that ignores both the extensive evidence that such health services are needed and effective, and the human rights of Canadians with addictions.

It is unethical, unconstitutional and damaging to both public health and the public purse to block access to supervised consumption [sites]....

The Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Nurses Association have also criticized the bill. This is what the CMA stated:

Supervised injection programs are an important harm reduction strategy. Harm reduction is a central pillar in a comprehensive public health approach to disease prevention and health promotion.

The Canadian Nurses Association stated:

Evidence demonstrates that supervised injection sites and other harm reduction programs bring critical health and social services to vulnerable populations....

The NDP's position is clear. New Democrats believe that decisions about programs that may benefit public health must be based on facts and evidence, not ideology or appeals to the base of a particular political party. InSite users were found to have charter rights to access services and that similar services should also be allowed to operate with the appropriate exemption.

Over 30 peer-reviewed studies published in famous journals, like the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal, have all described the beneficial nature of InSite in Vancouver. There has been study after study. There were 70 safe injection sites studied in Europe and Australia. They have all shown the same thing; it is a public health achievement. Canadians should be proud of what was forged in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.

Other communities that are seeking to address the scourge of addiction want similar tools to do so, and then the government passes Bill C-2. It is shocking. It is shocking that the Conservative Party's “Keep heroine out of our backyards” fundraising drive started mere hours after it introduced this bill. However, here is the irony. Bill C-2, after setting these virtually unattainable hurdles in the face of safe injection sites, is going to put heroine back in our neighbourhoods. Shame on the government.

We believe in harm reduction programs, including safe injection sites, and we believe that these exemptions should be based on the evidence, not ideology. The bill puts far too much emphasis on communities having to prove the benefits of these sites. No one, for a moment, has suggested that there should not be ample consultation with communities. Of course, there should. However, the number of hurdles in the bill are absolutely daunting.

That brings us back to what the Supreme Court said. It said there cannot be arbitrary decisions by the minister. The NDP believes that any legislation brought forward should respect that ruling imbalance between public health and safety. Bill C-2 does not do that. Therefore, we think the bill is retrograde. We think people in various communities will throw their hands up and not even bother applying, given the hurdles that I will describe. If that is the intent of the bill, which many believe it to be, then the government will have succeeded, at the cost of millions of people around the world who have had similar processes addressed through safe consumption sites, and at the loss of people struggling with addictions in various neighbourhoods in Canada.

If the bill is passed, new applicants in various communities are going to have to include unprecedented amounts of information, such as supporting letters and, ironically, scientific evidence as well. We think that the process will be slowed down. For example, there are no parameters for how long Health Canada is going to have to take to process an application. How long the minister would take to make a decision is wide open and unaddressed. It could be months; it could be years.

In addition, the bill outlines certain principles that the minister must adhere to before approving an application. They are outlined in section 5 of the bill. These principles include a number of things, some of which are entirely appropriate, but when added cumulatively show the government's real objective, which is to thwart the ability to ever have such a facility opened. Therefore, the bill may well achieve its objective, not giving communities the opportunity for a supervised safe injection facility.

What is going on at the ground level? InSite remains the only operational supervised injection facility in our country. Since it opened, what has happened in Vancouver? There has been a 35% decrease in overdose deaths. Furthermore, InSite has been shown to decrease crime, communicable disease infection rates and relapse rates for drug users. It was part of a public health plan. This statistic is absolutely shocking. Between 1987 and 1993, there was a 12-fold increase in overdose deaths in Vancouver. As the Supreme Court said, there was a public health crisis. That is why the community came together with the police, provinces, health authority and community groups to create this remarkable achievement. Now, of course, it seems like it is going to be for naught.

After the Supreme Court made its decision other public health officials, in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa, started to consider opening supervised injection sites. So far, there has not been one such a request made to open a site.

I am indebted to my colleague, the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, for his research on the implications of Bill C-2 in our community, the lower Vancouver Island. In his earlier speech, he described the crisis in overdose deaths in Victoria and surrounding area.

The B.C. coroner reported last year that there were 44 deaths from illicit drug use on Vancouver Island in 2011, and 16 of those deaths occurred in greater Victoria. He noted that Vancouver Island is the region with the highest rate of deaths related to illicit drug use in British Columbia.

The Centre for Addictions Research at the University of Victoria concluded that Victoria's per capita death rate is almost 30% higher than in the Lower Mainland. That is right, so just a few kilometres away, a ferry ride away from our community, in the Vancouver community where InSite exists, 30% fewer people die from overdoses per capita than on Vancouver Island, where we do not have a safe injection site. All that Bill C-2 would do is make it virtually impossible for us to realize the public health benefits that have been achieved on the mainland.

The Health Officers Council of British Columbia has resolved that “supervised injection services have been studied enough as research projects, and that it is time to move them into the mainstream of health service provision.” The College of Registered Nurses and the Canadian Nurses Association have interpreted their professional standards for nurses and nurse practitioners to encompass and support the supervision of drug consumption by clients.

In September 2010, the City of Victoria presented a resolution to the Union of B.C. Municipalities to lobby the province to “legislate that base levels of harm reduction services, including needle exchange and access to safe substance use equipment”, and detox and treatment beds, “be made available in every [local government]”.

In April 2008, University of Victoria addictions researcher, Dr. Benedikt Fischer, and B.C.'s provincial health officer, Dr. Perry Kendall, called on relevant authorities to implement a supervised consumption site trial for high-risk street drug users in Victoria. Their argument would be the basis for an editorial published in the BC Medical Journal on April 1, 2008, which said:

Victoria provides a perfect platform to implement a distinct and scientifically evaluated supervised consumption site program that is uniquely tailored to reflect the local characteristics of street drug use and associated public health needs....

I could go on, but I would like to talk about the recent response to the bill by Katrina Jensen, AIDS Vancouver Island executive director, who said there is a need for such a site in Victoria. In June she said:

“We have had eight overdose deaths in the last six months and those are deaths that could have been prevented if we had a supervised consumption site,” she said.

“I think there’s overwhelming evidence that a site in Victoria would save lives and be beneficial to the community.”

Debra McPherson, head of the BC Nurses' Union, asks:

“How does this respect the Supreme Court of Canada decision that recognized these facilities save lives?”...

She said the legislation is a smokescreen for the government’s real agenda of “pandering to prejudice and misplaced morality over health care, evidence and a coherent strategy on addictions and mental health.”

The bill does not achieve the goals that the Supreme Court of Canada set out. The Supreme Court of Canada suggested a road map for granting exemptions by the Minister of Health to allow supervised safe injection sites, consumption sites, to be established in communities.

The bill would set up all the red tape imaginable in communities that want to do something about this scourge, this public health and safety issue. These communities are only going to be frustrated by the bill. That is essentially why I oppose the bill. I think it is wrong-headed and contrary to public health and safety.