This bill is from the 41st Parliament, 2nd session, which ended in August 2015.
Rona Ambrose Conservative
This bill has received Royal Assent and is now law.
This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament has also written a full legislative summary of the bill.
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.
All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.
Bill numbers are reused for different bills each new session. Perhaps you were looking for one of these other C-2s:
Respect for Communities ActGovernment Orders
The Acting Speaker Bruce Stanton
I appreciate the intervention on the part of the hon. member for Malpeque. Indeed, we will in fact do that. As I did with the member for Winnipeg North, we will let the member for Kootenay—Columbia continue until we have verified that.
He has spoken already. That being the case, the hon. member for Winnipeg North on a point of order.
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I think maybe if you attempt to recanvass the House, you might find the will to see the clock at 5:30 p.m. so that we can get into the private members' hour, possibly.
Respect for Communities ActGovernment Orders
The Acting Speaker Bruce Stanton
Order, order. We are losing control here, or at least I am. We can only deal with one point of order at a time. We have had another member suggest that if we sought it, we might have the unanimous consent of the House to see the clock at 5:30 p.m.
Do we have the unanimous consent of the House to see the clock at 5:30 p.m.?
Respect for Communities ActGovernment Orders
Some hon. members
Agreed.
Respect for Communities ActGovernment Orders
The Acting Speaker Bruce Stanton
The House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.
The House resumed from January 30 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 motion that this question be now put.
Libby Davies NDP Vancouver East, BC
Mr. Speaker, Bill C-2 was first introduced in June 2013, a little over a year ago, as Bill C-65 and came back to the House as Bill C-2 in October.
I am proud of the fact that about 50 members of the NDP caucus have spoken to this important legislation. However, I am ashamed to say that what we have heard from the government side is divisive debate. From day one the Conservatives have portrayed the issue of respecting the Supreme Court of Canada's decision on safer injection sites in Canada as a black and white issue.
I go back to January 27 of this year when the government House leader told the Hill Times that he will tell people that opposition parties want drug injection sites to be established in their neighbourhoods without people having any say. He then talked about the extreme position that the NDP was taking. Nothing could be further from the truth.
For the government House leader to portray our discourse on this legislation in that manner shows first, how the Conservatives like to create division and fear among people, and second, that they know absolutely nothing about North America's only safe injection site, which is located in Vancouver's downtown east side and called InSite. The fact is that InSite was set up over 10 years ago after extensive consultation with the local community.
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that InSite and other supervised injection sites must be granted Section 56 exemptions under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act when they “decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety....”
Upon reading the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada it is clear that it understood the arguments that were being made by the litigants, that this was a health measure, that it was about saving lives and that it was about preventing people from needless drug overdoses. Over the past 10 years, InSite has gone on to become incredibly successful and has helped improve the health and well-being of many people. It has saved literally countless lives in the Downtown Eastside.
Over 30 peer review studies have been done on InSite. It received its first exemption in 2003. From the extensive research that has been done since it opened, Vancouver has seen a 35% decrease in overdose deaths. Furthermore, InSite has been shown to decrease crime and communicable disease infection rates and relapse rates for drug users. That is quite remarkable. NDP members have always said that InSite is just part of the solution; it is not the only solution.
It is quite remarkable that this facility has been able to accomplish so much. One would never know that after hearing the speeches from government members. One would think it was just about chaos and law and order, that it was about imposing something on a community.
InSite did get a further exemption under the act for another year. I want to put firmly on the record that InSite has done a remarkable job in Vancouver.
I would also note that over those 10 years, organizations like the HIV/AIDS Legal Network, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, the Canadian Medical Association, and the Canadian Nurses Association, never mind the 30-plus peer review studies, have all come out firmly on the side of evidence that InSite is about saving lives. They came to this conclusion upon their analysis of how InSite is operated. They have been critical of Bill C-2 because they know, as we know having examined the bill, that it is really about setting the bar high. So much discretion and subjectivity is given to the minister that it would be very easy for her on flimsy, non-evidence-based opinion to turn down other applications across Canada.
That is the fundamental problem with this legislation. At the end of the day, Bill C-2 would not meet the test of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision on InSite.
Again we have a familiar pattern, as we just saw with Bill C-36 on the laws pertaining to prostitution. We have a government that is bent on its own ideological agenda and refuses to examine the evidence before it on some of these very important measures that pertain to safety, health, and well-being.
Just to show how important this facility is and that others across the country could provide the same kind of service, in Vancouver, on June 4, I happened to notice an item in the paper that said, “Vancouver Police are issuing a public warning after officers responded to seven reports of suspected heroin overdoses in the Downtown Eastside in the span of a day.” Clearly, there was some really bad stuff on the street and people were really suffering.
The article further stated, “Sgt. Randy Fincham said active drug users need to be 'extremely cautious' and to visit InSite.” There we have it. Even the Vancouver Police Department recognizes that InSite has been a very important health and safety measure for drug users. It provides a safe place to inject, and there is medical supervision and support when it is needed so that people do not die by overdose. As is said so often in the Downtown Eastside, dead people cannot get treatment. I find it very interesting that local police are actually telling people to make sure they go to InSite to take advantage of its services so people can have the medical support and safety that is required.
New Democrats believe that the provisions of this bill before us are very onerous and very partisan. This led us to suspect what research had actually been done in preparing the bill. I put a question on the order paper back in October of last year and asked specifically what kind of consultation the government had conducted before it brought the bill in, particularly for front-line service providers, medical research professionals, and so on. The response that I got from the government, in part, said, “In the development of the proposed legislation, Health Canada consulted with Public Safety Canada, Justice Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and central agencies.” Basically, nobody on the government side actually bothered to talk to the people who are providing the service.
I know that not one Conservative minister of health that I visited and spoke to about InSite over the past years has visited InSite. There is a complete lack of knowledge about what this facility does. I am very concerned that with this bill the minister will confer on herself enormous discretion and power to make decisions based on political opposition and not on the merits of what is what is taking place in the local community and how such a facility can help a population that is very much at risk and marginalized.
There are a couple of other points that I want to make. A very important one is that there was the recent passing of a very wonderful activist, Bud Osborn, a poet, and pioneer at InSite in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. He was much beloved in the neighbourhood, a former drug user himself. He understood from the very beginning, through the poetry he wrote and the words he spoke to people, how important this facility was in fostering a united community, where people were not divided between good and bad.
I want to pay tribute to the remarkable life and work of Bud Osborn and what he did not only in my community but across the country. He became a hero to many people for his courageous, outspoken way of putting the truth before people. He convinced politicians of all political stripes and met with the Minister of Health here in Ottawa a number of years ago, as well as the media, lawyers, prosecutors. He had an enormous amount of influence in my community because he spoke the truth from his own experience and believed very strongly that InSite was a life-saving measure.
As this bill goes to committee, I want to say that New Democrats are very distressed that it is going to the public safety committee and not the health committee. It seems completely in conflict with what the goals of this bill should be in terms of a necessary health measure. We know that the bill is heavily weighted against the acceptance of these medically necessary services, so we will be demanding that there be a thoughtful and thorough review of the bill.
There have been a lot of scientific studies. We need to debunk the myths, the misinformation, and the rhetoric that we have heard about safer injections sites from the government side. When the bill gets to committee, I do hope very much, as we have said earlier today, that there will not be a censor of the witnesses, that there will be a thorough review and that we can make sure that the bill does indeed meet the test of the Supreme Court of Canada.
Rod Bruinooge Conservative Winnipeg South, MB
Mr. Speaker, the member opposite has a lot of knowledge of this area as it is located in her riding. Obviously, I agree that we need to be very concerned with the plight of heroin addicts. I think all of us in this House are seeking the best path forward to find the solution.
She asked that maybe we should tamp down the rhetoric, so I will attempt to remove any rhetoric from my question. The first question I would ask would be in relation to a comment she made on the criminal rate. She indicated that there was a 35% reduction in the occurrence of crime. Might that be in relation to the new legal status or treatment that is being put on to these acts, relative to Supreme Court rulings? Maybe it is not, so I would love to hear her thoughts on that.
My second question would be this: as a member of Her Majesty's official opposition, in theory there may be a future government that this member is part of. What is her view on having these facilities in Canada? Should every major city in Canada have something similar to what she sees in her home city, and in how many cities does she think her government would bring in centres like this?
Libby Davies NDP Vancouver East, BC
Mr. Speaker, those are two very reasonable questions and I will do my best to answer them.
In terms of the decrease in crime, the fact is, there were more than 30 peer review studies that were done around InSite, so all of these questions were looked at. I would encourage my colleague to look at the report so he can see for himself, from these objective, evidence-based reports. What happened in that neighbourhood? Did things improve or not? I can tell him that the reports say that it did improve, but he can read it for himself.
In terms of what the NDP would do, first, we need to understand that InSite came from the local community. It was not imposed by Ottawa. It came from the city. It came from a grassroots involvement, and in fact right now, across Canada, I believe that there are applications from Montreal, from Toronto, even from here in Ottawa, possibly Victoria and even Edmonton.
There are applications being considered right now. A clear response needs to be evidence based. The local community needs to have done its homework and want to go ahead with it. We do not want to see the bill, though, squash that, which it will do, given the enormous powers that it gives to the minister.
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Vancouver East for her fine representation of her constituency. I certainly think we need to maintain these facilities.
I have been shocked by the bill, because it is so transparently an attempt to circumvent what the court has said. I have never seen a subsection of a bill that ran out of A to Z, and then began to come up with other things past Z, that constitute a list of conditions.
Just to give my colleague the sense of how these conditions are clearly efforts to stop centres from being built, an applicant must provide in section (w) the name, title, and résumé, including relevant education and training of the proposed responsible person in charge, of each of their proposed alternate responsible persons, and each of the other proposed key staff members.
This is at the stage an applicant is applying to put together a facility. I do not know any charity or business that, at the stage of application, could fulfill the conditions. These are not the conditions of a government that understands this facility saves lives. This is a transparent attempt to stop the facility from going forward.
Libby Davies NDP Vancouver East, BC
Mr. Speaker, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands is very correct. When I spoke the first time to the bill, I actually went through A to Z. I went through all of those conditions. What makes it even worse, though, to add insult to injury, is that even if it were possible for an applicant to meet all of those conditions—and the member has outlined how difficult that would be—the minister could still turn it down, so it is very discretionary.
It seems abundantly clear that the purpose of the bill is to ensure that no further safe injection facilities will be set up in Canada. That would be a huge issue in many local communities, because the homework has been done. There are organizations and advocates who want to see this kind of health facility and health intervention set up for people who are very marginalized.
It is very unfortunate. I hope we will get into it at committee. We hope to see the bill significantly changed so that it is objective and based on evidence.
Alain Giguère NDP Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Mr. Speaker, we all have all known or seen people struggling with addictions. Very often the problem is with alcohol. Unfortunately, some are addicted to illicit drugs. It is not a happy situation for their parents, their friends, their loved ones or themselves.
These people not only need help, but also some supervision to reduce the problems they can cause. A neighbourhood where drugs are sold is also one where discarded dirty needles litter the ground and where people use drugs out in the open.
In this situation, people could well be using extremely dangerous drugs, perhaps cut with unknown substances by unscrupulous drug traffickers who are only interested in making money on the backs of their customers. This means we are facing a serious public health problem.
Clearly, the fight against drugs includes a policing component: some people need to go to jail. An individual bringing in a container of cocaine or heroin is not really someone who is socially responsible. In fact, quite the opposite is true. People who become victims of this drug need medical supervision. It has been said that all it takes is a little willpower and they could take care of themselves. This is not true. They need medical supervision to leave drug use behind or to not die from it.
Earlier, I spoke about a problem we are currently facing in Montreal. The same problem can be seen from time to time everywhere in Canada when someone cuts drugs with a harmful substance or when the drug purity is too high or too low. This leads to overdoses, and people using this drug are at risk of dying in an alley or a squalid apartment. The risk is extremely high.
People in one Vancouver neighbourhood recommended a medical solution. Right away, this makes it possible to get rid of one problem: no drug trafficker has control over that area. A centre is not meant to sell drugs or encourage people to use them. It is not meant to be placed across from a school, where children could see things.
The danger is already there. If we want to avoid having used syringes in a schoolyard and having children find drug users taking drugs out in the open, the solution is a safe injection site. Obviously, there is a lot of confusion. People think that we want to encourage drug use. However, that is not true. Nothing in the InSite project aims to encourage drug use. The opposite is true. This is a public health project.
Moreover, the Supreme Court has been very clear about this. In 2011, it stated that InSite's services were essential and that it had to remain open under the exception set out in section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. It is an essential service in the context of a medical action.
It is understandable that the minister wants to impose conditions to ensure that safe injection sites do not become places where drugs are sold. No one wants that. However, we want at all costs to prevent a situation where a functional medical institution is not allowed to operate under the pretext of ensuring public safety.
At this safe site, drug users can get immediate support if they react badly to a drug. This person may be an old friend or a member of an MP's family because, unfortunately, no one is safe. Also, if someone decides one day that they want to stop using drugs, the employees at the safe injection site can give that person medical and psychological support.
We could go on and on about this. I understand that people are afraid, but this should in no way be turned into a police issue. Would conditions like this be imposed on an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter? Never. Would such restrictive conditions be imposed on other public health organizations? No, we would not do that either. The government obviously has a double standard. Is alcohol more socially acceptable than drugs?
It is not easy living with an addiction, whether it is to alcohol or drugs. These people have the right to our support. We must have a minimum of decency and empathy towards our fellow Canadians in difficulty. Is there anything more difficult than dealing with an addiction? We have to extend a hand to these people who are suffering greatly and provide them with medical, physical and emotional support.
Since a centre was established in Vancouver, there have been 35% fewer deaths. That kind of centre is really needed. The Supreme Court recognized that it was necessary, so, do not tell me it is not. We could talk a long time about the merits of this institution, and I believe that many of my colleagues on both sides of the House think that it makes sense from a medical perspective.
What we really cannot agree on are the conditions for establishing this site. The Conservatives say that it would be horrible for these sites to be located near hospitals or schools, and that we have to think of the children. However, the risk of finding dirty needles on school property is much higher if the neighbourhood does not have a safe injection site. I know that there are some police officers and former police officers in the House.
These centres fall within the realm of public health not just because they help people with addictions, but also because the general public would no longer have to experience the most obvious problems associated with living in a neighbourhood where there is a major addiction problem.
David Wilks Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Mr. Speaker, there are a couple of things I wanted to note in the member's speech with regard to the treatment centre.
Certainly I agree with him about alcohol treatment centres. The difference, of course, is that people going to the alcohol treatment centres are normally sober when they go there. In the case of the safe injection site, the fact is that someone purchases heroin illegally—because not one point of heroin, the tenth of a gram that is normally bought, can be purchased legally in Canada—and then the person takes it to the safe injection site.
The challenge we have is that although safe injection sites are meant to help those people, does the member not believe we should be providing more services for these people to get off the drug, as opposed to having a place where they can take the drug?
Alain Giguère NDP Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Mr. Speaker, his wealth of experience should remind him that these people need help. However, they must take the first step themselves. We cannot do it for them.
You can urge someone to stop drinking or taking drugs, but they have to take some action too. That action has to be encouraged materially and medically. He is right to a considerable extent, except on one major point: people do not buy drugs at these sites. They come in with their drugs.
Giving someone a syringe is an important way to prevent them from contracting AIDS or any other disease. It is especially important to get rid of the used syringe. It really is a matter of public health. These sites do not sell drugs.
The more services that encourage them to get out of the drug market, so to speak, the better it is. Better, not worse. I support his position overall, except on one major point. It is a place where people take drugs but it is not a place where people sell them.
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
Mr. Speaker, one of the points that gets lost in this debate is the fact that Canada has one site, which is often referred to, out on the west coast. That site coming into being did not happen overnight. It took a great deal of effort and thought and looking at how the community and the potential clients might benefit.
A number of professionals weighed in on it, whether they were health care professionals, officers of the law, or provincial and federal politicians. The overwhelming consensus was that they should move forward in trying it out. After a number of years, the overwhelming consensus was that it was a huge success.
There are no communities jumping up and down saying that they want sites. That is because of the government's attitude and ideological opinion, which does not necessarily match up with what the different stakeholders and professionals are actually saying.
I wonder if the member might comment on how important it is for us to reflect on what the community leaders and these professionals are saying about the success of that site in Vancouver.