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

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today in the House to speak to Bill C-2, which has been known under different names in the past. This is not the first time that we have heard speeches on this issue, but they are informative in many ways.

First, I must say that I am disappointed. When they talk about the northern gateway pipeline, for example, the Minister of Natural Resources and Conservative members say that we must rely on science and studies.

Actually, this bill is a very telling example of this. The InSite safe injection site is supported by the scientific and medical community as a whole. All of the studies have shown that this site has had a very positive impact on the community and on people who want to escape the hell of drug use. It is the most effective approach. In fact, it is even more effective than the hard line, a position that has been favoured by the various levels of government since Confederation. The facts are there and they have been mentioned many times by the members who spoke on this issue.

However, the government ignores these facts and takes a position that many speakers and experts who have studied this issue described as being dogmatic and ideological.

The InSite experiment, which is a success, has played out not only in Canada, but also in Europe and the United States. This experiment clearly shows that the best way to help people in distress who are trapped in a vicious cycle of drug use and addiction is to provide opportunities for them to get the support they need.

There is another paradox here. In the abortion rights debate, I am pro-choice. I have noticed that, in the speeches I have been hearing for a while, the members who consider themselves to be pro-life on the abortion issue—or what I would call anti-choice—are the same ones who oppose this bill or who support the bill but are against supervised injection sites.

The thing is, these sites save lives. Studies have made that clear. InSite itself has been a determining factor in reducing overdoses by about 35%. Many lives have been saved immediately following drug use. I am not even talking about lives saved by rehabilitation, by helping people get back on track and conquer their addiction.

The question the Conservatives keep asking is not about community consent. They ask us questions because there are not a lot of arguments on their side to justify this bill and all of their barriers to setting up supervised injection sites. The Conservatives' question would be much more relevant and appropriate if they had not already launched a campaign to convince communities that they do not want heroin in their backyards and to sow panic and fear.

This bill creates so many bureaucratic obstacles to setting up supervised injection sites that can help communities that any organization wanting to help its community in this way will find the process very discouraging from the start. The Conservatives talk about consultations, but what they really want to do is base their campaign on emotional arguments instead of facts, statistics, and the opinions of specialists and medical experts.

I will list the bureaucratic barriers this bill would create for the establishment of safe injection sites. Applicants must meet the following criteria in order for their application for an exemption to be considered: scientific evidence demonstrating a medical benefit; a letter from the provincial or territorial minister responsible for public health and safety, municipal councils, local chiefs of police and senior public health officials.

As well, they will have to provide information about infectious diseases and overdoses related to the use of illicit substances; a description of the drug treatment services available at that point; a description of the potential impact of the site on public safety; a description of all the procedures and measures, including measures that will be taken to minimize the diversion of controlled substances; relevant information, including trends, on loitering in a public place that may be related to drugs, drug trafficking and crime in the vicinity of the site at the time of the application; and a report of the consultations held with a broad range of community groups from the municipality, including copies of all written submissions received and a description of the steps that will be taken to address any relevant concerns.

Any group wishing to set up a safe injection site similar to InSite to help the community and those caught up in the spiral of drug use will have to provide all that information, and more.

Does this approach comply with the Supreme Court ruling and the instructions given in its 2011 ruling? Certainly not. That is why we are wondering whether the Conservatives are attempting once again to provoke another Supreme Court refusal. This will eventually pay off because their base likes confrontations with the Supreme Court.

The Conservatives believe that elected members make the laws, prepare legislation and should vote on it, and that the Supreme Court should not interfere. However, the court's role is to ensure that the rights and freedoms of Canadians are upheld, and it uses the Charter to that end.

Since Bill C-2, which is supposedly a response to the Supreme Court ruling, is more like an attempt to skirt the spirit of the decision, this leads us to believe that it is a Conservative dogmatic and ideological process that seeks to please their electoral base and fund their election campaign, since the Conservatives have used this issue before to raise money.

The gun registry is no longer an issue. From an election perspective, that was their cash cow. Now, they need to find other issues. They dreamt up this issue so they could go out and raise funds from their base.

That is deplorable because it is an extremely sensitive and important issue for our communities. Our main critic on this matter is the member for Vancouver East and she is aware of this. I had the opportunity to work for an organization with offices in British Columbia, in the Gastown district, which is very close to Vancouver East.

I had the opportunity to go for a walk in the neighbourhood, which is not where InSite is located, but is in the community it serves. I can say that this initiative is doing a lot of good. This has been proven by the people who studied how the clinic operates and its results. And I also saw the good it is doing in the community because there is support.

Drug addicts who want to get rid of their addiction do not feel abandoned or ignored. They do not feel that people just walk by without paying attention to them. They see people reaching out to them. There is immediate help for those who are still addicted and help for those who want to find a way out. It is the best way to connect with them.

For social and street workers who wish to help those who are at the end of their rope, it is much more difficult to go into the streets randomly than to provide information at a supervised site that is managed in the most medically competent way possible. It is much easier to do the work, and that is the reason why the whole medical and social work community is in favour of such initiatives.

Therefore, I have a hard time figuring out why the Conservatives persist in putting up more barriers to the use of this risk and harm reduction method. Unfortunately, I can see nothing but electoral, political and ideological reasons, and I am really sorry to see that.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the last two speeches with interest.

I have the following question for my colleague. The hon. member who delivered the previous speech and a number of NDP members this evening described InSite as a perfect and splendid model. How does my hon. colleague really see the situation?

Yes, there is this centre. However, we all know where the product that is distributed there, heroine, comes from. For the most part, it comes from Afghanistan, a country at war in part because of this illegal trafficking. The centre is also surrounded by a neighbourhood where prostitution is rampant, where crime is off the charts and where theft and drug and alcohol addiction are beyond the norm and sometimes extremely so compared to almost any other urban centre in Canada.

What does my hon. colleague truly think of that area and this situation? Is it really the perfect model?

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

Mr. Speaker, I understand what my colleague is getting at. I talked about how I visited this neighbourhood and indeed, it is a poor neighbourhood where people need support and where some need a helping hand. The InSite centre is there to help them. What is the alternative? Should we close our eyes to these problems? Should we take a hard line and send them all to prison? I do not really understand the reasoning of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration in that regard.

The issues of prostitution and the extremely low standard of living in that sector, because poverty and unemployment are permanent fixtures there, will not be solved by closing InSite. These problems were there long before. There are reasons that escape the Conservatives as to why poverty is prevalent in some neighbourhoods and why some people are drawn to drugs and the illusion of escaping daily reality. Those people descend into the hell of drug use and are caught in a spiral that takes them where they are now, where they need a helping hand.

InSite gives these people a supervised environment in which they can be reached much more easily than when they are on the street, where they are left to their own devices and feel vulnerable and isolated. In answer to the minister's question, I would like to know whether he thinks that a laissez-faire attitude should be the norm and that closing InSite will solve the problems that he raised.

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

Mr. Speaker, first, my apologies to the minister. I think the question was posed to him, but it seems I am not giving him a chance to answer. I would like to address what he had to say, which was about striving to reach a perfect model. What he was alluding to was the fact that we can eliminate all incidents of drug abuse, when in fact, we need to focus on reducing the harm for drug users.

The study carried out by Dr. Julio Montaner found a 35% reduction in overdose deaths after this program opened in 2003. Vancouver Police support InSite and broad community consultation, with the support of the provincial government and local governments. The Canadian Nurses Association and the Canadian Medical Association are national organizations, I know. Still, local practitioners are telling us, by way of evidence, that harm reduction is taking place.

Perfection is not what we are looking for. We just need to strive for perfection.

Obviously, the rules that are being slapped on this lead us to believe that they have no interest in opening up more sites across this country that are based on reducing harm. True or false?

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

Mr. Speaker, to that, I say bravo. This is exactly the approach we must take.

In fact, the member provided a very accurate description of the approach used by safe injection sites. It is a matter of harm reduction. We have to deal with a hard line approach. According to this approach, the plight of these people is their own fault. It is their own fault if they are hooked on drugs, and they should be left to their own devices.

Sites like these will not only help to save lives by reducing the number of overdoses, but they will also help to reduce the rate of HIV and hepatitis infection. In that sense, I think that InSite and other sites in Europe and the United States have clearly shown that this approach is much more positive for the community than an approach where authorities simply ignore the facts while hoping for the best, and drug users have to make it on their own.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise this evening in this quiet chamber where only New Democrats seem to want to talk about how to make a better future for Canada and Canadians.

I am talking tonight about the misguided Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. We are at second reading in the legislative process, but it is certainly early enough to say an unqualified no to this proposed piece of legislation.

It comes to us, into this chamber, in response to the 2011 Supreme Court decision that concluded that the Minister of Health's refusal to grant an extension to InSite's exemption under that act was:

...arbitrary, undermining the very purposes of the [Controlled Drugs and Substances Act], which include public health and safety.

Here we have Bill C-2. It is typical legislation from the government in a number of respects. First and foremost, it reflects a government unable to deal with, and unwilling to acknowledge, the complexities of real life. Consequently, it is a government unfit to govern.

It is a government that provides ample evidence of this to us every day, as with Bill C-36, the government's response to the Supreme Court's Bedford ruling, and the monkeying about with judicial appointments in response to the Supreme Court's Nadon ruling. This is a government that does not take advice from, but responds with infantile defiance to, that body in our system of government that is the guardian of basic rights and freedoms for Canadians.

However, there are constraints on its conduct, thankfully. In this particular circumstance, the Supreme Court was clear on the constraints the government had to work within. It was section 7 of the charter in this case. To quote the court on this decision specifically:

...the Minister must exercise 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.

There we have it. No clearer an articulation can be imagined, I do not think.

Now, in defiance of that clear statement, we have a bill that will require InSite to reapply for an exemption, but under the new proposed prejudicial criteria, criteria that make no effort to hide the anti-safe injection site animus.

Under this bill:

The Minister may only grant an exemption for a medical purpose under subsection (2) to allow certain activities to take place at a supervised consumption site in exceptional circumstances and after having considered the following principles:

(a) illicit substances may have serious health effects;

(b) adulterated controlled substances may pose health risks;

(c) the risks of overdose are inherent to the use of certain illicit substances;

and so on and so on.

However, nowhere do we find, along with those principles, anything that even remotely resembles the findings of the Supreme Court in its decision, in which they said:

InSite has been proven to save lives with no discernible negative impact on the public safety and health objectives of Canada.

How does this bill make any effort on the mountain of evidence that has accumulated in support of injection sites, and InSite in particular, as mechanisms for finding a balance between public health and public safety?

The Supreme Court, in its decision, turned its mind to all the facts, to the studies that demonstrate the beneficial impacts of InSite and other like sites around the world. The evidence in favour of safe injection sites is overwhelming. Thirty peer-reviewed studies in deeply respected medical journals, the names of which we all know in this House, are dealing with InSite itself. The studies are supported by findings confirmed by research on the other 70 safe injection sites around the world.

What the studies show, and what the Supreme Court had before it for consideration, was the following: between 1987 and 1993, which is pre-InSite, the rate of overdose deaths in Vancouver increased from 16 to 200 per year. Since InSite opened, the rate of overdose deaths in East Vancouver has dropped by 35%.

One study showed that over a one-year period, there were 273 overdoses, but not a single life was lost. Over a one-year period, 2,171 referrals were made to InSite users to addiction counselling or other support services.

Finally, studies found that those 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.

There are more studies, but let me point to one more important finding. There was a significant drop in the number of discarded syringes, injection-related litter, and people injecting on the streets one year after InSite opened.

I raise this issue not just because I know it is a particularly compelling finding for parents like me, but also because it stands in complete contradiction to the Conservatives' anti-InSite sloganeering, “Keep heroin out of our backyards”. They call on Canadians to support the bill in order to keep “heroin out of our backyards” as though, by abolishing the safe injection site, they will also abolish heroin, as though it will just disappear somehow, as though it was not there before InSite, as though it would not return if we abolish InSite.

This is ideology in the most pejorative sense of the word, a believe that is held tight, not just in ignorance of the facts but in fact in contravention of all outstanding evidence, evidence that is before the Conservatives in plain site that one cannot miss, that the Supreme Court examined in the process of arriving at its decision. Even beyond that, it is the belief that is fundamentally illogical and irrational. This, being prepared to govern a country this way, is why the Conservatives are unfit to govern.

Governing is not some blue sky project where reality changes just because we wish it is different, where heroin disappears because we close safe injection sites, where addictions go away because we do not have harm reduction programs, or climate change does not happen because we silence scientists, empty the libraries and discard the research. It is not as though the charter disappears because the Conservatives can force legislation in contravention of it through this place.

This should properly be the role of government, not to be receiving applications as though we lived in a country without section 7 charter rights, as though the issue of harm reduction was not otherwise a matter of active government concern.

For these reasons, I stand against Bill C-2.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, has the NDP given up entirely on combatting the presence of illegal drugs?

Our forces spent 12 years in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban, a terrorist group that was partly funded by an illegal drug trade. Yes, there has been progress made in Colombia, even in many parts of Afghanistan, against this trade. It does not have to be that way. It does not always have to be there. It would not be inevitable that illegal drugs like heroin result in addiction around the world on the scale they do. If human beings, with Canada central to the effort, would only come together we could do something about it.

Why does the member opposite want to give heroin free to people in downtown Vancouver? Why does he think it is acceptable to have prostitution, crime, poverty, all of the phenomena that the members on that side have admitted are there on this scale, with a drug addiction problem at the centre? Could we not do better? Could we not do better for the people of East Hastings, the way we do for almost every other community in our country?

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if the minister checked the order paper this evening, but he seems to be addressing a different bill entirely. As well, the problem with his remarks is compounded by the fact that he does not understand what actually happens at the InSite safe injection facility.

What we are talking about, in fact, is doing better by Canadians. As I said, addiction does not disappear because we do not have a safe injection site. These drugs exist and people, unfortunately, become addicted to them.

As the Supreme Court stated in its ruling, “Insite has been proven to save lives with no discernable negative impact on the public safety and health objectives of Canada”.

It continues, and this is important:

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.

This site is about saving lives and reducing harm. Shame on the minister if he does not understand that is what we are here in the House to do.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Order, please. It being 10:41 p.m., pursuant to order made earlier today it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the second reading stage of the bill now before the House.

The question is on the motion that this question be now put. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Pursuant to order made on Tuesday, May 27 the division stands deferred until Wednesday, June 18, at the expiry of the time provided for oral questions.