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

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

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my hon. Liberal colleague, but first I would like to thank him for mentioning the importance of harm reduction so many times.

Yesterday the Standing Committee on Health was examining the issue of prescription drug abuse. Witnesses from the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Nurses Association and the College of Family Physicians of Canada all agreed that the government should correct the mistake it made in 2007 when it removed the fourth pillar from the government's anti-drug strategy, which is harm reduction.

My question is very simple. He already mentioned that the fourth pillar was eliminated from the strategy based on ideology.

Can he explain why the Conservatives and people on the right oppose the notion of helping people who are struggling, who might not yet be ready to begin treatment, and who could be helped through harm reduction strategies such as a supervised injection site?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, this is a very valid point. This issue tends to divide itself along ideological lines, not just in Canada but also in the United States and Europe. As I mentioned earlier, I went to Europe and I found that a lot of people look at the idea of harm reduction and in particular look at these supervised sites as some kind of promotional or enabling mechanism to allow people to continue their bad practices.

However, what I find, which is promising, is that when people such as the hon. colleague get in front of people who are the practitioners, the physicians, the nurses, the health officers, the people who live in Vancouver on the east side, the councillors and politicians within Vancouver, when they are exposed to the evidence I would say the vast majority of them, if not all of them, change their attitudes toward it.

There is nothing wrong with changing our attitudes toward an evidence-based policy that is put in front of us. We change our minds a lot around here. The problem is that we all fault each other for doing it.

We must look at the evidence in this case. As my colleague points out, in that committee, just listen to the people who deal with this day in and day out. Here we are as politicians making decisions based on what we read on paper, but the police of Vancouver say it is the way to go. Now if the police are saying it, there has to be something to this.

To address my colleague's question, I hope more of these right-wing ideological people get more exposed to the evidence, as he was.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think the debate is not one of ideology, it is one of understanding public policy and the nature of what a broad vision of public safety is, not only in what the member talked about in terms of harm reduction but also in the community that he is questioning, the community where such a site would be.

I mentioned to one of my colleagues earlier the fact that there is no framework right now for a supervised injection site.

Presently there are just two aspects in section 56 and they are explicitly for research and for things like using illicit drugs when sniffer dogs are being trained, et cetera. Does the member not think that there should be some framework for a site that has such a high level of risk so that communities can have the input from police, councillors, the general public, the provincial health authority? Does he not think that is something that should be necessary?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what the member is trying to say about the framework. There is no doubt it. Any plan that we want to carry out that reduces harm has to have an established framework as such.

However, the requirements in the bill, and let us talk about the bill for a moment, are so prescriptive and overly restrictive, we are starting to read between the lines that Conservatives do not want it to exist. I would not kill a mouse with a bazooka, pardon the analogy, but nonetheless, it is the only analogy I have right now, because the Conservatives are trying to take the very spirit of harm reduction out of these supervised sites with an overly prescriptive bill.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-2, an Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. In listening to the debate in the House, it is good we are having it.

Today, I would like to talk about the history of the Vancouver safe injection site, or the harm reduction site, because it adds to the debate on of how we might move forward with future sites.

If I have time, I will also talk a bit about the scientific evidence that backs up the creation and continual operation of these sites because as a science and tech critic that is something I look at quite regularly.

In looking at the history of the safe injection site in Vancouver, the theme would be local choice. I have lived very close to the site. I know people who manage the site. When I was a professor at SFU, I would take students to the site when there were no clients there. I have known people who have used the site.

Sometimes when we talk about the facility in the House, we tend to overstate what it is. I am not sure if any of my colleagues on the other side have had a chance to visit the safe injection site, but I think they would be amazed at how innocuous it is. There is a lot to look at when walking down Hastings Street because it is a very active community. However, one would walk right by the site because there are no flashing lights which say “Inject heroin here”. It is a medical facility.

When one enters through its doors, it looks kind of like a hair salon. It has maybe up to 15 stainless steel booths with mirrors in front of them, bright lights, chairs and a nurse's station so when people are injecting there they are using clean needles and are being supervised. If they overdose, they can be rescued. There is also a room where they can relax and adjust to the effects of the drug. Then they move out. It is not a scary place. It is a place of comfort for a lot of people. That is why the history of this site is so important.

The safe injection site was created in Vancouver because there was a policy problem that emerged in the late eighties and early nineties where hundreds of bodies were being pulled out of hotels in the Downtown Eastside. I know this because I had spoken with Senator Larry Campbell, who was the coroner. He said that he would go into hotels in the Downtown Eastside and would pull dead bodies out. This was happening over and over again, mainly because of overdoses.

The mayor of Vancouver at the time was Philip Owen. He was in the Non-Partisan Association, which is the name of the party. It is a coalition of federal Liberals and federal Conservatives. He was a three term mayor at that point. I would describe him, and I think he would agree, as a very Christian man. He has a predilection for ballroom dancing, but is a deeply religious man who, as mayor of the city, felt that he had to address this. What had happened simultaneously was that a number of addicts had started the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, which was an unofficial safe injection site. Mayor Philip Owen, who was a good policy maker, decided to meet with those people and ask them what their problems were. I do not want to speak for him, but some of the questions he was facing were some of the questions my colleagues on the other side have. The idea of providing a safe site for people to inject clashes with the values they hold.

Philip Owen is a brave man. He commissioned a study on harm reduction and put it through council as official policy. It was voted through Vancouver city council. I believe the party then kicked him out as leader. It said that there were people with other ambitions who decided to move against him. It became the main debate of the 2002 civic election in Vancouver, which featured Larry Campbell, who had moved from coroner to mayoralty candidate, versus Jennifer Clarke, another mayoralty candidate. The debate throughout that whole election was about this safe injection site.

Larry Campbell ran for a party called COPE that had really never in the history controlled an absolute majority on council. He won, and that is why we have InSite today. Larry Campbell championed this cause, won an election on it, convinced all the local area residents and merchants, police, emergency services, that this was necessary and, as we heard, in 2003, this site was created.

The bill is problematic because it is too prescriptive.

If we listen to the story about how InSite was developed in Vancouver, it was a local choice. However, these local choices sometimes need some flexibility in terms of development. The are really driven locally anyway.

If we look at the funding of who provides these facilities, this is also co-operative and negotiated. We have federal, provincial, municipal agencies. We have police forces. We already have the local community negotiating. I can tell members that if a local community does not want a safe injection site, it will not get it, whatever federal regulation because it is solely driven by a local policy problem.

What now we have in Vancouver I think has been around the world in other places too. It is not like we invented this in Vancouver. We borrow from other places around the world. We have a facility where people can go and inject their drugs safely, under supervision, and then get on with their lives.

Heroin is a bugaboo. It is an illegal substance. However, I think the question that Philip Owen would have asked himself is what the alternatives were. I think the other side perhaps would prefer abstinence.

If somebody is a heroin addict and has perhaps other mental health issues and has a low income, it is very difficult, impossible actually, to safely go from being a heroin user to a non-heroin user overnight, especially because there are hardly any facilities for that person to do it.

It is about management. That is really what these sites do is help manage these problems that keep people alive.

My core belief is an idea called “intrinsic equality”, meaning that everybody's life is worth the same. Wayne Gretzky is not worth five drug users. Everybody's life is worth the same. It is found in many religions, but I am not coming at it from a religious perspective, but more of a philosophical perspective; all lives are of equal worth.

I think this is the problem Philip Owen would have faced. I believe life, in his perspective,would have been a sacred thing that is worth protecting. “If I do not go forward with this policy, people are going to die. Can I have that on my conscience?” I think the answer was no. This safe injection site is a simple policy solution to manage our problem that could not be eradicated.

It is a very mature way of looking at things and I am very grateful.

It is not for every community because there is not the need. This is why a local community choices are so important.

I would have believed the bill was a genuine attempt if the other side had not tried for so many years to shut down the safe injection site in Vancouver, indeed, writing fundraising letters about how it was shutting it down and so forth.

If this had been entered much earlier in the debate, it would have been something I would have considered,. However, my colleagues are right, that this is not a genuine attempt to open this debate. It is disappointing.

Again, I would ask my colleagues to reconsider, to visit the site themselves to see how innocuous it is and how it is helping people and bringing the community together in a positive way, in a community that is suffering greatly at times.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for sharing a lot of the history of InSite. It is fantastic to hear how that unfolded and how we ended up with the site in Vancouver.

One of the interesting things we are hearing from the other side is a lot of talk about communities and how communities need to have their voices heard. We are representing the community. The member comes from the community where this site is located.

Once upon a time, I had the opportunity to live in the Vancouver area, in the city of north Vancouver, and worked in the Downtown Eastside quite often. I would see individuals on the street in the 1990s with needles in their arms. One of the things that the social workers and the folks in the Downtown Eastside would say was that they wished they had a facility where they could at least monitor these people to ensure they were not dying and give them an opportunity to know that treatment was there, where they knew they could step into a building, not feel judged, do what they had to do safely and then be offered treatment if they were ready for it. InSite is doing that.

Could my colleague comment on that?

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my grand colleague from Sudbury, who I enjoy working with on the industry committee.

He is exactly right. It is important to know that this facility is not just a place where addicts go, inject and then leave. It is also a place where they can get help. If we talk to people who are or have been heroin addicts, the last thing they want to do is continue with this. They do not want to be heroin addicts. It is not something that they choose; it is usually because of depression or other reasons why people get addicted to these drugs. They desperately want to be able to manage their problem to get their lives back under control and, ultimately, reduce their dependency.

That is exactly what facilities such as this do. They give people options that they do not think they had. They keep people alive. They stop people from taking water out of mud puddles and injecting it into themselves.

It really is a win-win and it saves significant amounts of money, if that is important. It should be a consideration.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his insight, no pun intended, into what has proven to be quite a successful community engagement in Vancouver.

I would challenge anybody in the House to find any drug user who does drugs because he or she wants to or because it would be a good time. Most, if not all, drug users are people who have scars, wounds and things in their lives that they want to hide from.

It seems to me that any legislation on this level should be coming from the perspective of how we can help organizations like this integrate into the community. How can we help organizations like this work with the community so they can serve the community, as opposed to putting up barriers and making it more difficult for organizations like this to exist?

I would like my hon. colleague to comment on that.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the questions are good today and I really hope they add to the debate.

Safe injection sites, again, are a flashpoint for debate just because they are new. They are new because people's thinking on them has started to change, mainly because of the great scientific evidence that we have had. Again, these are peer-reviewed studies that are in international scientific journals which stem from the work that has been done in the Vancouver site, as well as sites all around the world.

We have to pay attention to this evidence, because people are suffering. It is not just the people who are immediately affected by addiction, it is the communities. If we were in the Downtown Eastside before the safe injection site was put in place, we would see a community that was in real pain and chaos. After the safe injection site, it is not totally fixed, but the harm has been reduced.

That is really the key here. When we went from thinking about it as a criminal matter to a health matter, that was when the debate started to change and we had a more mature debate about it. I hope we can do that in the House.

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

Mr. Speaker, I sit on the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health, and yesterday we were considering a somewhat similar issue, namely how to prevent prescription drug abuse.

Witnesses included health experts from the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Nurses Association and the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

These three organizations are the best of the best and represent thousands of health professionals across Canada in all provinces and territories, including urban communities, which struggle with problems of abuse of both prescription and non-prescription drugs, and rural areas. We must not bury our heads in the sand—drugs are everywhere in Canada.

In Saguenay and Chicoutimi, where I grew up, it was said there were both fewer drugs and fewer kinds of drugs, in comparison with major cities like Montreal and Quebec City. In reality, I knew people who used when I was in high school. In short, we should not delude ourselves: drugs are everywhere in Canada.

Until 2007, harm reduction was the fourth pillar of the national anti-drug strategy. The Conservative government unfortunately decided to remove it to focus only on prevention, treatment and enforcement of Canadian laws.

By removing the harm reduction element, the Conservative government has turned a blind eye to an entire category of people, and I am referring to those who are addicted to hard drugs. These people are caught in a downward spiral and feel they are trapped in a hole where their world becomes darker and darker every day. Although they may want to escape from drug abuse, they are not prepared to do so. These people are not mentally or physically able to take the initiative to seek treatment for their addictions.

However, the NDP and I—and I assume the Liberals agree as well—believe that we should not abandon these people. They are Canadians. They may be our brothers, our sisters, our children, adults or parents. No one should be left behind in Canada.

That is why I insist that the Conservative government, or the next government in 2015, which I hope will not be Conservative, put harm reduction back in the national anti-drug strategy.

This is the second time that I am speaking about Bill C-2. For several days, the Conservatives have been really criticizing Canada's only supervised injection site, InSite, which is located in Vancouver. I would like to know what exactly is so bad about it, other than the fact that they want to scare people with campaigns against heroin.

For example, the Conservative government recently launched an Internet campaign called, “Keep heroin out of our backyards”. If we ask parents with children, or even adults without children or single people if they want heroin near their homes, no one would say they want heroin in their neighbourhood, or their downtown or their rural area, except maybe for those who do not understand the issue.

No one wants to promote the use of heroin and hard or soft drugs in Canada, although the Liberal party wants to promote soft drugs. The NDP is more concerned with the marginalized. Drug addicts are marginalized and we must help them.

Yesterday, the Standing Committee on Health heard from some excellent witnesses from the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Nurses Association, and the College of Family Physicians of Canada. I asked all of them the same question. I asked them if they believe that the government should put harm reduction back in the national drug strategy. They all answered yes.

I would like to ask the Conservatives if they have any expertise in health. Harm reduction can only be achieved if we take care of people with serious drug problems. We cannot make them see reason by simply telling them to stop using drugs. We have to help them.

Places like InSite help by taking in heroin addicts and giving them clean needles. If those addicts are on the street and they share needles, cases of hepatitis A, B and C and HIV will increase and it will cost Canadians and the provincial health care systems dearly.

Supervised injection sites take in drug addicts, but they bring their own drugs. I want to reassure the public that the government is not buying drugs for the people who uses these sites.

There are nurses and therapists at these sites to help the addicts get off drugs. They take the addicts as they are and guide them, not necessarily to a cure, but to a light at the end of the tunnel.

A number of other problems are associated with living in the world of drugs, such as homelessness and prostitution, which people enter into in order to pay for drugs. When a person spends their entire paycheque—if they have one—on drugs, then they cannot put $300 or $500 aside for housing. When people are deeply into drugs, they are no longer able to work. They leave the job market and end up on the streets.

Do my Conservative colleagues want people with drug problems to be on the street? The answer is no. The slogan for the Conservatives' campaign is “Keep heroin out of our backyards”. I agree. I do not want people to use drugs and leave needles in the parks in my neighbourhood. No one wants that, but we have to help those people.

The Canadian Medical Association has this to say about Bill C-2:

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.

I would ask the Conservative Party to think about that before the upcoming vote on this bill.

I will now share a quote from the Canadian Nurses Association:

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.

I have to wonder what is behind this. Why have the Conservatives been fighting since 2007 to block any approaches and treatments based on harm reduction?

There may be an answer, and I think it is important to share. Bill C-2 is part of the Conservatives' greater plan to bring all government programs and policies in line with their own anti-drug and abstinence ideals. I am also against drugs, but the Conservatives' methods are unsound and will have consequences for the Canadian public.

The Conservatives are slowly eliminating all the ways for Canadians to safely access supervised injection sites and for people with terminal cancer to access medical marijuana, for example. I think it makes sense to enable these people to ease their suffering.

In conclusion, the Conservatives' plan will undo all the progress that has been made in public health and will nullify the benefits that communities have experienced from harm reduction programs over the past 20 years. I thank the Conservative government for setting Canadians back and abandoning them. That was sarcasm, by the way.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when I was young, my father was a teacher at Samuel Hearne Senior Public School. The school engaged in regular community cleanups as part of its civic engagement with its local community. Of course, this meant going into different parts of the neighbourhood to clean up discarded trash. Something very serious happened during one of those days: my father, while picking up a pile of garbage, was pricked by a discarded syringe.

This was the late 1980s. I was nine or 10 years old at the time, and that was really my first experience in discovering things such HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and other communicable diseases, which my father then had to get tested for because of that discarded syringe.

I would like to ask the member about the harm reduction and increased safety in communities that could be reached by having supervised injection sites available for intravenous drug users so that they could get clean syringes and not be discarding them in alleyways, parks, and other public spaces where teachers or children could be harmed by them.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my NDP colleague for that excellent question.

I have met his father and he is a remarkable man. As a citizen, teacher and mentor for the young people in his class, he has made an effort to protect the environment, and I am grateful for that. I am also grateful that he is teaching our young people good values, such as taking care of their neighbourhoods and society and picking up litter.

The government intends to close down supervised injection sites. I know that there are no safe injection sites in the riding represented by my colleague. A number of cities in Canada, such as Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal, are interested in opening such sites. Eventually, perhaps he will be interested in having such a site in his area of the country. If Canada prevents supervised injection sites from opening, what happened to the hon. member's father will happen again. Drug addicts are not going to put their dirty needles in the nice little yellow waste receptacles found in hospitals and other secure areas. They are going to leave them on the street. People who want to do their part for the environment or people who pick up litter and empty garbage cans will get pricked. This could be tragic for families. Was the needle infected? Could it make me sick or kill me? I do not wish that on anyone.

I am asking the Conservative government to think about the families that could be affected by dirty needles.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord for his excellent remarks and for his excellent work as the NDP's deputy health critic. He knows his stuff.

His arguments as to why Canada should have supervised injection sites are based on facts. I find it unfortunate that the Conservatives' arguments are based on their ideology and prejudices. What is more, they are unable to provide any scientific evidence or point to any scientific studies that show that supervised injection sites are harmful and detrimental to public safety.

I would like my colleague to elaborate on the importance of supervised injection sites. Their importance has been scientifically proven, through various studies. I would like to hear what he has to say about those studies.

[The Deputy Speaker, Joe Comartin]

The hon. member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord has 45 seconds to respond.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my NDP colleague for her good question. It gives me an opportunity to talk about statistics and the research that has been done on this topic.

A 2008 study conducted by Boyd et al. concluded that 80% of the people questioned who live or work in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside support InSite. A scientific survey was conducted and, according to the study, 80% of people agree with the site. That leaves 20% who do not agree, but the majority of people support this type of site.

In addition, since the site opened, Vancouver has seen a 35% decrease in overdose deaths. The Conservatives should stop and think about that statistic. Do they want overdose deaths to increase by 35%? That is what will happen if the government moves ahead with Bill C-2.