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.

Drug-Free Prisons Act

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, clearly addiction has a significant medical part to it. Part of addiction is related to the physical addiction to the drug. It drives people to criminal activities for the sake of the addiction, so to get at the problem of crime related to drug addiction, we have to get at the addiction. Whatever makes that work and can help make that work ought to be considered by any government that is serious about reducing addictions and crime. Obviously that includes some of the measures the member was talking about in terms of harm reduction, but by removing that as a possibility, the government has removed the possibility of reducing addictions in our society.

In fact, as we heard in the debate on Bill C-2 and the information that stakeholders provided, people are dying who would otherwise live and survive to fight their addictions if proper programs were in place. The government does not seem to be sensitive to that at all.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member for St. John's East sees the same pattern that I see when we talk about drugs and the Conservative policy on drugs.

In 2007, the Conservative government removed harm reduction from the goals of our national drug policy. Bill C-2 is on safe injection sites, and the government is treating it as a public security matter rather than a health matter. In talking about drug-free prisons, it is a failure to acknowledge that addiction is a medical problem rather than a moral problem.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, or the Drug-Free Prisons Act.

The bill would add to the act a provision confirming that, when deciding whether someone is eligible for parole, the parole board may take into account the fact that the offender tested positive in a urinalysis or refused to provide a urine sample for a drug test. The new provision would give clear legal validity to a practice that we support and is already in place.

Bill C-12's title is misleading. Indeed, apart from giving legal validity to urine tests, it does not offer any real strategy to make prisons drug-free. Rather than providing a concrete solution, for example by investing in inmate rehabilitation, Bill C-12 simply enshrines in law what is already the current practice.

The NDP has always supported measures aimed at making prisons safer. However, it is a shame to see that, in this bill as in so many other government bills, the Conservatives keep ignoring recommendations. In this specific case, they are ignoring recommendations from corrections staff and the correctional investigator that would really help curb violence, gang activity and drug use in the prison system.

The fact is that the Conservatives are making prisons less safe, since they keep reducing investments in key corrections programs like drug addiction treatment, as well as increasing double-bunking, which leads to more prison violence.

Our role as parliamentarians is to worry about the safety of our communities first, by promoting the reintegration of offenders and preparing them to become part of the community again by helping them become free from drugs and taking preventive measures to reduce the risk of recidivism.

None of this is included in Bill C-12, and in my opinion this is a serious shortcoming. To be clear, the stakeholders agree that this bill will have virtually no impact on drug use in prison.

Like so many other government bills, Bill C-12 is just a dog and pony show that plays well to the Conservative base, but offers no actual solution to the problems caused by drugs and gangs in prisons.

However, we must give credit where credit is due. The Conservatives are excellent illusionists. They would make Criss Angel and David Copperfield green with envy. In today's episode, entitled Bill C-12, they are still trying to hide the emptiness of their bills by giving them misleading titles that play well to diehard Conservatives. However, behind this legislation there is a complete vacuum that only worsens the problems they want to address.

In this case, Bill C-12 misses another important problem. Indeed, the Conservatives' misguided approach to public safety, which we also saw with Bill C-2, will significantly increase the collateral harm from addiction, instead of reducing it, as the bill claims to do.

Any government with the least bit of sense, vision and compassion would invest, through Bill C-12, in programs providing support to offenders with drug problems.

This may be hard to believe, but under this government, the budget allocated to the Correctional Service of Canada to be used for basic correctional programs, such as drug treatment, was reduced, while some treatment centres for inmates with mental health disorders were even closed.

The ideological inconsistencies that guide the course of this government are frightening. As an example of such an inconsistency, note that the government passed legislation imposing mandatory minimums, while at the same time it closed numerous prisons.

That leads to the very controversial and dubious policy of double-bunking, which inevitably results in a substantial increase in the number of violent incidents and puts prisoners' lives in danger. It also put the lives of the prison staff in danger.

If the government really wants to address the issue of drug addiction in prison, instead of making a lot of noise and getting terrible results, it must allow Correctional Service Canada to develop an intake assessment process that would allow CSC to correctly determine how many prisoners have addiction issues and offer adequate programs to offenders in need who want to get off drugs. Otherwise, without addiction treatment, education and an appropriate reintegration process on their release, prisoners run a high risk of returning to a life of crime and victimizing other individuals when they get out of prison.

Clearly, the term “prevention” is not part of the Conservatives' vocabulary. That is too bad. The government claims to be tough on crime, but the best way to reduce crime in society is through prevention and awareness, not wishful thinking.

Despite all the bill's flaws or, rather, its lack of content and solutions and its very limited scope, the NDP will support Bill C-12. The NDP is committed to supporting cost-effective measures that are designed to punish criminals and improve prison safety.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of this government, which governs from an ideological standpoint instead of relying on facts and reality. As we can see with this bill and Bill C-2, where the government did not even bother to have someone try to explain their indefensible legislation, we need to move towards a corrections system that offers effective rehabilitation programs such as addiction treatment and support programs so that it is easier to reintegrate prisoners into society upon their release. That is the only way to lower the recidivism rate and really address the issue of repeat offenders.

Even the Correctional Investigator has said—in not one report, but multiple ones—that it could have some unintended consequences on the correctional system if simplistic and narrow solutions are used to address the very complex problem of drug addiction in prison. He suggests taking meaningful action, such as conducting an initial assessment of detainees when they are integrated into correctional programs, in order to curb their drug addiction problem and give them better access to detox programs, which would help reduce drug consumption and gang activity in prison.

Those are the kinds of proactive prevention measures the NDP believes are necessary to truly fix the problem of drug addiction in our prisons.

In conclusion, we will support Bill C-12, since it essentially reinforces the legal significance of a practice that already exists in our prisons. However, we believe that Bill C-12 lacks teeth and substance. We believe that this kind of bill must include solutions to prevent drug addiction and treat drug addicts in our prisons if we truly want to help detainees reintegrate into society and not just find an easy way to please voters.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, how exciting.

At the outset, I would like to mention that I will be sharing my time with my friend and colleague, the wonderful member for Laval—Les Îles.

Mr. Speaker, I like the phrase “bumper sticker justice” that my colleague from Gatineau came up with. That is exactly what we have here. I will support the bill because it does clarify an existing practice of the Parole Board, but it is such a narrow bill that it is hard to wrap one's head around it.

I have two concerns with it, and first is the title. We have been talking about the “bumper sticker” title. The bill is not going to make our prisons drug free. I think there has to be some kind of procedural way to prevent having bills named in a way that is clearly not in line with what the bill actually does. I would look to you, Mr. Speaker, for an answer on that.

It is an extremely misleading name for the bill. As my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca pointed out earlier, the title is there for political reasons rather than for sound policy.

The second problem I have with the bill is that it has profoundly little impact in the scheme of things. While it does formalize existing practices, it is not actually going to do anything about drugs or addictions in the prison system. It is not exactly a revolutionary idea that we are dealing with here; it is standard practice. Do I think that prisons will be drug free once the bill is passed? No. Do I think we are going to see a reduction in drug use? No. Do I think we are going to see safer prisons or reduced crime? No.

I am not alone in thinking this. First of all, when we look at zero-tolerance drug policy, we have heard my colleagues say this is an aspirational policy rather than an effective policy response to improved prison safety. If we look at the annual report of the Correctional Investigator for 2011-2012, the report said, “Harm reduction measures within a public health and treatment orientation offer a far more promising, cost-effective and sustainable approach to reducing subsequent crime and victimization”.

The bill does nothing to deal with drugs in prisons in real terms and it also does not deal with the myriad of other problems we have in the prison system, such as overcrowding or the fact that we are not engaging in real, substantive rehabilitation anymore.

The Conservative tough-on-crime agenda is not working. It is not tough on crime; it is pretty stupid on crime. If we are going to seriously tackle crime in our communities and safety in prisons, we need to leave behind this outdated tough-on-crime mantra and mentality. We need to look at smart justice and abandoning that old way of thinking, which is about applying simplistic solutions to really complex issues. It has not brought us very far.

We have heard in the House that since 2008 the Conservative government has spent $122 million on tools to try to stop drugs from entering the Canadian prison system. Members have heard it before, but it is worth pointing out again: this is vastly more money than exists for addiction and treatment services, and I would look to my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca. I think it is at around half. It is incredible that we are spending that much more money than we are spending on addiction and treatment services.

That $122 million is a lot of money, and it also sounds impressive, so we have to ask ourselves whether it is working. Is it actually doing anything? I do not think so. I think this continues the failed approach to justice.

We are seeing our prison population grow by about 5% a year. By March 2014, the Correctional Investigator estimates that with new legislation there will be over 18,600 inmates in our prisons. This is the highest number in Canadian history. It is unbelievable that we keep adding to the number of people we are putting in prison, when at the same time, looking at Statistics Canada numbers, in 2012 we reported the lowest crime rate in our country since 1972.

The former minister of public safety said that unreported crime was increasing. How do we know that? It is unreported. That is ridiculous. The crime rate and the severity of crime have been falling since 1991, but the number of people incarcerated—I am not talking about people charged or going through diversion programs, but incarcerated—and the length of incarceration are increasing with mandatory minimum sentencing and other government initiatives.

More people in our prisons obviously leads to increased double-bunking, which frankly leads to increased violence and increased gang activity. I know I would be angry if I were double-bunked. In addition, the majority of these people who are incarcerated suffer from mental illness and addiction. To add to that, we have lists of at least several thousand people who are waiting in line for addiction treatment rather than receiving it. We have had cuts to funding for support and treatment programs. It is backward logic.

We need to start looking at a smart justice approach on how we deal with these issues. Putting more people in prison while overcrowding them and cutting funding for harm reduction programs does not make any sense. These measures are damaging for rehabilitating people who have been incarcerated.

An article in The Kingston Whig-Standard in 2012, entitled “Sentenced to suffering”, said, “Addiction to drugs or alcohol, a history of physical or sexual abuse and previous attempts to harm themselves often follow inmates through the doors of a penitentiary”.

Why would we not act on those issues? Why would we not have a bill that does something to deal with these issues versus bumper sticker justice, saying that we are keeping drugs out of prisons when in fact we are not? The reality of the situation is that we can lock people up, but we cannot close the doors on these social issues that will inevitably affect individuals during the time they are incarcerated and afterward if they do not get the treatment and support they need.

The focus is on punishment and not on rehabilitation, which is overall more costly. When we do not focus on rehabilitation, it is also more dangerous for our communities. The key has to be rehabilitation. However, punishment is a much more splashy title than rehabilitation. It helps the Conservatives with their fundraising, and that is really what this is all about, is it not? Why else would they take a practice that is already happening, turn it into a bill that has nothing else in it, and wrap it up in a fuzzy title called “drug-free prisons act” when it will not actually lead to drug-free prisons?

Not one person on the other side could stand up in the House with a straight face and say that the bill would lead to drug-free prisons. That could be why we have seen such total and utter silence from the other side of the House. They are not standing up to defend the bill, to speak to it, to talk about whether it is good or bad. They are silent because they cannot stand up and say that this will lead to drug-free prisons, or even stand up and say that this will lead to slightly less drugs in prisons. It is enshrining a practice that already exists.

It is about scaring Canadians because I think fear is a powerful tool for keeping citizens in line. They are trying to scare us into Conservative submission. They are trying to scare us into donating to their fundraising campaigns.

We saw the same thing with Bill C-2, a bill limiting supervised injection sites. It flies in the face of a recent Supreme Court of Canada case. On that same day we saw a website launch saying “keep heroin out of our backyards”, showing an empty street and a needle and scary black and white photography.

It is not a call to action. It is not a call for the community to come together and solve the problem of intravenous drug use. It is to raise money. That is what this Bill C-12 is all about. That is why we have bumper sticker justice these days. It is a fundraising campaign.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thanks, Chair.

Thanks to you and all your staff, Minister, for being here.

I'm going to carry on with the conversation that Ms. Fry and Ms. Davies had picked up on. You spoke in your opening remarks about healthy living and said further that protecting Canadians from harm is part of your mandate, as is ensuring that both licit and illicit drugs are dealt with in a manner that is responsible for all Canadians.

Recently, injection sites have been in the spotlight, and specifically how communities should have a say in their placement. As a former police officer, I think it's only fair that people have the right to say whether one is in their community or not. I wonder if you could comment from your perspective on the Respect for Communities Act and what it's trying to accomplish, and then, further to that, on the importance of treatment, recovery, and support.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the comment that just came from the other side from the parliamentary secretary about facilitating drug abuse goes back again to another bill before us, which is Bill C-2, on safe injection sites. The Conservatives seem to confuse harm reduction with their own slogans. Harm reduction actually works to get people off drugs, whereas their slogans do nothing to get people off drugs.

Could the hon. member comment on the fact that the Conservatives have actually removed harm reduction from the goals of our drug treatment programs?

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her speech and her kind words to me.

The NDP has a very solid team working on the public safety committee. One of our great frustrations is the tendency of the government to go back to propaganda, as the member described.

One of the things missing in the discussion about drug-free prisons, and it is something the member touched on in her speech, is the fact that addictions are a health problem. When we look at Bill C-2, which deals with safe injection sites, we see that it is also a bill that is being sent to the public safety committee rather than the health committee.

Could the member say a few words about the Conservatives' tendency to rely on moral condemnation and interdiction instead of treating these problems as health problems?

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin my speech I want to take the liberty of answering the question that was posed by a Conservative member to another Conservative member.

The bottom line here is that no one in the House wants to see drugs inside or outside of prisons. That is the reality.

There is an economic law called the “law of diminishing returns”. At a certain point, if enough money is spent on a particular investment, the return is less than the money spent on it, so one has to look at other ways to allocate that funding.

I am talking about the $122 million that the government allocated for the prevention of drugs in prison. The result of that $122 million, and I want Canadians to know because this is taxpayers' money, was zero. Basically the Conservatives put some gimmicks in place to prevent drugs from coming into the prisons. There were ion machines that gave false positives a higher than usual number of times. There were sniffer dogs and other gimmicks that the Conservatives brought in.

However, the result of that $122 million that we spent on preventing drugs from getting into prisons was zero. There was a zero result, which the head of correctional services, Don Head, pointed out in a study done a year ago by the committee. He pointed out that the urinalysis rate of prisoners' testing positive for drugs in the prison system before the $122 million was spent was the same rate as after three years.

In other words, it did not reduce the number of people taking drugs in the prison system. What it did do was shortchange taxpayers in the amount of $122 million.

That is the supply side when I talk about the “law of diminishing returns”, and it is maxed out. We spent an extra $122 million trying to prevent drugs from getting into the prisons, and it did not have any effect.

However, we have a waiting list on the other side of the economics. I know my friends do not believe in facts and figures. In fact, the member for Newton—North Delta often points out the Conservatives are allergic to data, research and facts.

The facts are that if we look at the demand side in prisons, we have a waiting list of 2,400 prisoners waiting to be treated. They want to get into a program. They want to rehabilitate. They want to get rid of the addiction they have so they can move into our communities and live a normal life.

What does corrections mean? Corrections means that we correct our behaviour. We correct the behaviour in prison. When people commit crimes, they go to prison and become part of a captive audience. Believe it or not these people are going to return to our communities. How can the government make sure these people are able to integrate into our communities? It could provide those rehabilitation services and apprenticeship opportunities, so when the prisoners get out into our communities they are better able to integrate into our society. That is how it works. That is the demand side of it.

On the demand side of the equation, we need to reduce the demand of people wanting to take drugs. The best way to do that is to treat the people who are taking drugs. We were able to spend $122 million on the interdiction side, which showed no result, yet we are cutting programs that have shown to be effective.

The corrections investigation officer has, time after time, pointed out that we need additional funds and resources to provide services to people who want to be rehabilitated. We have experts from our communities. There have been many peer studies done around the world that very clearly point out that we also need to work on the demand side to reduce drugs in prisons. However, facts, figures and research do not really work with the Conservatives.

Earlier today, one of the members from the Conservative side pointed out that some members somehow want drugs in our prisons, or they do not care how many drugs are in prisons. That is absolutely incorrect. I am perplexed. I do not usually get mad, but I do not think there are any members in the chamber who want more drugs, let alone in prisons. We do not want any drugs in our society.

How do we deal with it? The best way to deal with it is by helping those individuals who have addictions.

We heard the figures earlier; 80% of the people coming into our prisons have some sort of drug or alcohol addiction. That tells me that there are not enough resources in our communities to help these people and to get them off drugs and alcohol. If we can do that in our communities before they commit crimes, we would not have victims. We would be helping them by eliminating the victim side of it.

The member also talked about how we are going to bring in a charter for victims and help them. I have been in this place for two and a half years. I have not seen a single piece of legislation from the other side of the House to help victims.

The Conservatives will talk about the veterans and how they are the champions for veterans' rights. I know of a number of cases in my own constituency and I hear from veterans across the country that the government has failed. These are our heroes. These are people who have served our country. These are the people who have given us the right to speak here and outside the House in a free and democratic society.

Going back to the bill, I look at the title, the drug-free prisons act. The correctional investigation officer wants zero tolerance for drugs in prisons. I agree with that. We should strive to do our best, but that is an aspiration. It is not the reality in our society.

We talk about spending $122 million on the interdiction of drugs in prisons. We have seen no results. The results that the experts have given us are from the rehabilitation and prevention side. That is where the results are. That is where we can still have economies of scale. We can get more prisoners off drugs. Those are real facts. That is science. Those are economic models.

The Conservatives will tell us that they are great economic managers, but they have been in government for seven years. In seven years, how many surplus budgets have they had? Can someone tell me from the Conservative side how many surplus budgets they have had? They have all gone quiet, because they have had none. The budgets have all been deficits. Not only that, the Conservatives have had the largest deficit for any government in the history of our country, yet they call themselves good managers of our money.

Here is another example. When the Conservatives formed government, we had $26 billion in a current account trade surplus. Under their management we have somehow turned a $26 billion surplus into a $62 billion deficit. That is their record.

When we are talking about real records, facts and figures, science and economics, economics tells us that the $122 million did not have the impact that the government was hoping for. We, along with experts, were telling the Conservatives that they needed to spend money on the other side.

Going back to the title of the bill, this is just like the title for Bill C-2 with regard to InSite in Vancouver, making our communities safe. Their talking points are that they want to hear from the communities when this is decided. In 2003, when InSite was being put in place, the community decided. The City of Vancouver met with stakeholders, whether they were public safety officials, police officers, public health officials, medical officers, doctors, nurses or community organizers, and they came up with a plan to set up InSite in Vancouver. It has been highly successful in regard to reducing crime rates and reducing needles in the area.

Conservatives say the opposition parties want the needles out in the community or that we want our kids to have access to these needles. That is not true. In fact, the needles that were in the alleys and in front of businesses are no longer there. That has been reduced because of InSite, which was put in place to deal with heroin addicts in Vancouver.

A process was in place that was working well. However, what do the Conservatives do? They said they want to consult the community. In 2008, they took it to the court in B.C. and then to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court clearly told them that under the charter people have the right to access these particular services. Well, we know the Conservative ideology. They were not satisfied with the Supreme Court decision. What did they do? They came up with this fancy name that the bill is protecting our communities, yet it does exactly the opposite.

It is the same with Bill C-12, the drug-free prisons act. There is nothing in the act that gives facts and figures or how it is going to reduce drugs in our prisons. In fact, Bill C-12 basically adds a provision to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that makes it clear that the Parole Board may use positive results from urine tests or refusals to take urine tests for drugs in making decisions on parole eligibility.

This gives clear authority to an existing practice of the Parole Board, which we support. In other words, the practice is already in place if a prisoner has a positive test for drugs, that information is taken into consideration by the Parole Board before parole eligibility is decided.

Bill C-12 has a misleading title, “drug-free prisons act”. Maybe the Conservatives are hoping to send a letter to their base or maybe they have already, because they did that when C-2 came to the House. They fired off a letter to their Conservative base asking for money based on how they were protecting the community. In fact, it was exactly the opposite. The bill does not protect the community. It puts roadblocks for communities to make local decisions. The bill is basically Ottawa telling our municipalities what they can or cannot do in their neighbourhoods. The communities can decide for themselves.

I do not see any facts or figures for some sort of program or plan that would show us how this measure would make our prisons drug-free.

I would certainly like that, but I am also pragmatic. We have had laws for hundreds of years prohibiting drugs in our society. The United States raised a war on drugs and said they were going to get rid of them. Did they get rid of them?

We have spent billions of dollars trying to. There are the times when we have to keep going back to this law of diminishing returns.

However, we have to look at the other side, which I have also talked about. That is the rehabilitation side, but there are shortages of space for people who want to get into these programs. The title of the bill has nothing to do with trying to make our prisons safer and rehabilitating and correcting the behaviour of prisoners.

Bill C-12 has a misleading title, as the bill would do little to eliminate all drugs from our federal prison system. An investment in rehabilitation is required if we are serious about rehabilitating prisoners and integrating them back into the community.

I think all people in this House believe that the prison sentence has to fit the crime. There is no doubt that if somebody commits a crime, we put him or in prison. I think all Canadians agree with that. The bottom line is that in two years, three years, four years, 10 years, or whatever the sentence is, these people are going to come back into our communities, so how do we deal with them?

Well, we try to rehabilitate them. We try to correct them in our system. They are a captive audience, and we have seen that when people have taken programs in prison, the recidivism rate for those individuals goes down quite low. Would it not make sense for the Conservatives to provide those resources, instead of wasting money on fancy titles for a bill or sending letters out to their base saying that they are actually doing something here and asking for money?

That is wrong. It is not going to help us in the long run.

The NDP has been very steadfast in its support for measures that would make our prisons safe, while Conservative governments have ignored recommendations from correctional staff and the Correctional Investigator that would decrease violence, gang activity, and drugs in our prisons.

I have had the chance to visit a number of prisons. I had the chance to visit a couple of prisons in Kingston. I had a chance to visit prisons in British Columbia, my province. I visited Kent prison and I also visited Matsqui prison. I talked to the prisoners. I talked to the correctional staff. Overwhelmingly, the response from those individuals was that, first, they do not have enough rehabilitation programs to rehabilitate the drug addict. In addition, money for apprenticeship programs is being cut.

To sum up, we certainly need more investment . There is a long list of people who are waiting to get into drug rehabilitation programs. That is the correct way to go forward: to prevent these individuals coming into our communities without any treatment in the correctional system.

New Democrats will support the bill at this stage, but the title does not reflect the true intent of this bill.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps this is something I neglected to say in my conclusion due to running out of time, but I could not agree more with the member. Addiction is a health problem.

One of the things we have seen with Bill C-2, which deals with safe injection sites, is that instead of going to the health committee for study, it is being sent to the public safety committee. This somehow implies that safe injection sites are a threat to public safety and public health, instead of a support to public safety and an important measure to improve public health.

What I am saying about morality is that I do not object to the Conservatives having morality. I object to them trying to apply their morality to problems that will not be solved by moral condemnation because they are not moral problems, they are addiction problems.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on Bill C-12, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the drug-free prisons act.

If members heard me speaking yesterday on the private member's bill, Bill C-483, they might think I would be happier today than I was yesterday. I was criticizing the Conservatives' use of private members' bills to amend the Criminal Code and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, because using private members' bills avoids the scrutiny of charter compliance, results in less debate in the House of Commons and results in a piecemeal approach, amending various pieces of legislation without actually seeing what has happened with the previous amendments. I guess I am happier today because it is a government bill, so we will have more time to debate the bill. It has been scrutinized for its adherence to the charter and it probably avoids a piecemeal approach in that it has been examined by the department before being presented.

Then why am I not really happy this morning in comparison? It is because the bill illustrates yet another unfortunate tendency of the Conservatives, and that is a fondness for propagandistic titles that obscure the real content of the bill. This is much like Bill C-2, which is called respect for communities act, when in fact it is the opposite. Communities that want to set up safe injection sites to try to reduce the harm caused by the injection of drugs will be prevented by the provisions of Bill C-2 from actually doing so. Therefore, how is that respect for communities? It is directly the opposite.

This bill has an even wilder title. I would say that if we are ever doing a documentary on the legislative process and we use this as an example, the documentary should be called, “A Title in Search of a Bill”. The Conservatives are wanting to send out to their members a piece of mail that would help them fundraise that says, “We passed a bill for drug-free prisons”, but when we look inside the bill, there is very little, if anything, that contributes to the goal of drug-free prisons. I really do suspect the title has more to do with Conservative Party fundraising than it does to getting good public policy for prisons.

The public safety committee, of which I am the vice-chair, did a study on drugs and alcohol in federal prisons and more than 20 witnesses appeared at the committee. I did not agree with the government's report, in which the government produced 14 recommendations on drug-free prisons. However, in its bill on drug-free prisons not one of those recommendations, their own recommendations, appears. Instead, it is something else that appears in the bill. It is passing strange to me why the House of Commons committee would spend weeks hearing from dozens of expert witnesses and then the government would ignore that and introduce something completely different from that.

Maybe I should be happy because what is proposed in the bill is, in fact, a very modest change in the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, which simply makes more clear in law what is already the existing practice of the Parole Board. It says that the Parole Board of Canada can make use of positive results from drug tests or refusals to take urine tests for drugs when it makes decisions on parole eligibility. It already does this. It is just not clear in law, so this has a positive impact.

Giving clear legal authority to an existing practice is something New Democrats can support, so we are placed in an odd spot in the House of Commons. If we were voting on the title, we would vote against it, but the content of the bill we will actually support. Therefore, we will support the bill going to second reading and will be proposing a more realistic title. I am having trouble thinking of anything that could compete with a slogan such as “drug-free prisons”, but I guess what we are going to look for is something that would actually tell the public what happens in the bill.

As I have said many times, drug-free prisons are, at best, a worthy aspiration, and at worst, simply a political slogan. It is not a policy. Saying we have a policy of drug-free prisons is like saying we have a policy against rainy days during our vacation. We cannot have a policy for drug-free prisons. We have to attack the addiction problem in prisons.

We are in an unfortunate situation in this country where 80% of those who end up in federal custody have drug or alcohol problems. What do we do about that? The Conservatives, instead of having a really meaningful debate with us in the opposition, try to set up straw men and propose and tell the public what our policy is. Part of that is, I think, because they know the public does not really accept their policy, so they want to create phantoms for us to debate in the House of Commons.

The Conservatives are very quick to say that we are somehow condoning drug use or are soft on drugs on this side of the House. In fact, what we are saying on this side of the House is that we have to do things that would actually be effective in combatting the drug problem in prison and that would actually have better outcomes for the prisoners. It is not because we love the prisoners but it is because on this side of the House we are interested in public safety.

If people leave our prison system still addicted to drugs or alcohol, they will fall right back into the patterns that got them into prison in the first place. They will create more victims in our communities, and they will become victimized by their addiction.

In fact, we on this side of the House are not soft on drugs. We want an effective policy on drugs. Being tough on drugs is really much like being for drug-free prisons. Being tough on drugs accomplishes nothing.

The Conservative approach to drugs, both in and out of prison, is very consistent. They start with moral condemnation and then they finish with interdiction. It is the same approach that has inspired Bill C-2. We talk about safe injection sites, and the Conservatives say injectable drugs are bad and therefore we are going to try to prevent people from having a place where they can safely inject those drugs. It is moral condemnation followed by interdiction. It ignores the reality in terms of harm reduction.

The Conservatives did a mailing on Bill C-2, saying “Let's prevent having needles in your backyard.” What do safe injection sites do? That is exactly what they do. They place people in safe injection sites so the needles do not end up in alleyways, school playgrounds or backyards. The Conservatives are actually doing quite the opposite of what they say they are doing.

When we look at the things that the Conservatives have tried to do on their goal of drug-free prisons since 2008, we see they have spent more than $122 million on interdiction tools. That includes technology, such as ion sniffers, and sniffer dogs to try to stop drugs from entering the prisons.

What did we find? The head of corrections came to the committee during our study on drugs and alcohol in prisons, and interestingly this part of the testimony does not appear in the government's report. He said that after spending $122 million and doing drug testing, the same percentage of prisoners tested positive as before the interdiction measures.

We wasted $122 million on technology and sniffer dogs, instead of spending $122 million on addiction treatment programs. If we want to get drugs out of prison, we have to reduce the demand for drugs in prison by offering people treatment programs.

I have to say there was a very unfortunate side effect of this emphasis on interdiction, and that was that it interfered with family visits. One of the things we know is very important, both to those who are going to reintegrate into the community and especially those with addictions, is family support.

At the time, the Conservatives criticized us for bringing this up, but what happened was that many family members felt the sniffer dogs facing them every time they tried to visit and bring their children was an intimidation factor that made it very difficult for them to visit. Even worse, the ion scanners produced an inordinate number of false positives. Many family members who would have nothing to do drugs at all were prevented from visiting their relatives in prison because of the false positives of this technology, which really does not work in terms of interdiction.

Therefore, spending the $122 million wasted money and interfered with family visits, and it interfered with rehabilitation programs. However, it is very consistent with the Conservative policy on drugs.

I guess we should have known this kind of thing was coming because in 2007 the Conservatives amended the national drug strategy. They took out one of the goals. The goal that they took out of the national drug strategy was harm reduction. It is very shocking. We actually removed harm reduction as one of the goals of our national drug strategy. Why? It is because the Conservative policy, again, is moral condemnation followed by interdiction, and it ignores the reality.

Respect for Communities Act

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I admit to a certain amount of soul-searching before writing my speech on the bill. It caused me to meditate quite a bit about what the role of a parliamentarian really is and the role of lawmakers in general. I am going to start there before going on to the bill itself.

What is our role here? The bill brings up this fundamental question. What are we called to be as parliamentarians? The answer is many things. First and foremost is the voice of our constituents, but we are also asked to use our conscience as any other citizen must do in his or her daily life. It is truly a great privilege to be an elected official, but there are pitfalls to this privilege. It can bring much arrogance, egotism and hubris, and we must keep at the forefront of our minds what we have no right to claim as our own power. No, this privilege does not bring with it any right to judge our fellow human beings. We are in no way morally superior because we have attained high office. We are as everyone, ecce homo, only human; dignified, yes, fundamentally good, filled with light and hope but not perfect. Yes, we are not perfect, but perfectible.

We must evacuate all sense of moral superiority and arrogance from our role as legislators. Most of all, we must be careful not to usurp the powers that belong not to us but to the one who made us. We must be careful when we choose to look upon our fellow human beings and judge them and see them as something other than us, something to be reviled or to be stigmatized. This is not the way of compassion as I have come to understand it.

Addiction is a terrible affliction. As a non-addict, I cannot imagine the struggle it represents every day to need a substance so much to be happy and to alleviate my suffering that I will do almost anything to get it. There is a malaise to our modernity. Our industrial society and its competitive ethos weighs heavily on the human spirit. Many people are unhappy and materialism has kept a lot of us from what is most noble and great in human beings. In this disjointed, mechanized, crass and sometimes violent and abusive culture we live in, how can we blame those most alienated and marginalized from it for suffering?

I believe that a response to this malaise and its many sicknesses must be compassion. We must offer to addicts, like any other human being, a way to be healed from what afflicts them. The question of supporting the bill does not lie in the personal views of the morality of injection sites, but in the evidence of their efficacy as a cure. Do they protect a fellow human being from the ravages of his or her disease? Do they increase his or her chances to be cured? These, in my opinion, are the fundamental and compassionate questions we should be asking.

The facts are clear. For example, people who made use of services at InSite—a supervised injection site in Vancouver—at least once a week were 1.7 times more likely to enrol in a permanent detox program. Evidence also shows that supervised injection sites effectively reduce the risk of contracting and spreading blood-borne diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C. Evidence has also shown that these sites do not negatively affect public safety and that, in certain cases, they even promote it by reducing the injection of drugs in public, the violence associated with such behaviour, and drug-related waste. Furthermore, safe injection sites make it possible to strike the appropriate balance between public health and public safety. They also connect people in urgent need of health care with the services they need, such as primary health care and drug treatment services.

My colleagues do not have to take my word for it. These facts have been confirmed by health care professionals across the country. For example, the Canadian Medical Association said:

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—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.

The facts are clear: these centres have a positive impact on addicts and on our society. For example, the rate of overdose deaths in Vancouver East has fallen by 35% since InSite was opened. A study conducted over a one-year period shows that there were 273 overdoses at InSite but none of them were fatal. In one year, 2,171 users of InSite were referred to addiction counselling or other support services.

Injection drug users who are clients of InSite are 70% less likely to share needles. Reduction of needle sharing has been cited as a best practice at the international level for reducing rates of HIV and AIDS. Users of InSite are more likely to seek medical care through the site.

However, the Conservatives are remaining obstinate: they intend to be the judges of these people who are suffering enormously because of their addiction. Essentially, Bill C-2 is part and parcel of a broader Conservative initiative to bring all government policies and programs in line with their anti-drug and anti-addiction ideals. They are slowly eliminating every means whereby Canadians can access injection sites. The effect of the Conservatives’ agenda is to reverse the progress made in public health and the community benefits attributable to harm reduction programs over the last 20 years.

There is no denying that the Conservatives have been trying for years to close supervised injection sites. They have spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on court proceedings to get them shut down. They are even prepared to defy the Supreme Court ruling, undermine the court’s decision and find some other way to close down supervised injection sites, which do not square with Conservative ideology. Why are they so bent on refusing to heal people who are sick? Why not choose compassion instead of judgment?

If this remedy did not work and had no benefits, I might understand the position of the Conservative government, but that is not the case. It seems to me that it is our duty to rid ourselves of our prejudices, show compassion to addicts and create conditions that will help them overcome their difficult situation.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise today in connection with Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which I oppose. We will definitely be proposing amendments. Prior to prorogation, the government had introduced Bill C-65, which has now become Bill C-2.

In my speech, I would like to explain how we got to where we are, and why we are examining this bill. The intent of the bill, which is largely hidden because the Conservatives have been actively fundraising since introducing it, is to put a stop to supervised injection sites like InSite. At the moment, the only such site is InSite, in Vancouver. In this bill, the government has introduced an interminable list of criteria to deter people from applying for an exemption.

I am going to put this in context. With the support of the community, scientists and experts decided to set up a supervised injection site. The term "supervised" is very important here. The government decided to challenge the site and intervened, taking the issue to court. InSite won and the government lost. The case went to the appeal court, and then all the way to the Supreme Court in 2011. The Supreme Court ruling is called Canada v. PHS Community Services Society. I strongly encourage my colleagues to read this important ruling, because it explains the state of the law. It is a matter of fundamental rights and the charter.

This government is known for being extremely good at introducing bills and taking action that is contrary to the charter. The government says that it is concerned about the taxpayers' money, and yet it continually pushes cases all the way to the Supreme Court. This costs the taxpayers and the stakeholders a great deal of money. If I have time later, I would like to explore the legal aspects. For the time being, I will focus on the public safety aspect and in particular on public health.

The government acts without paying attention to scientific research or the opinions of experts who have commented on the matter. We in the official opposition are beginning to get used to seeing the government introduce scientifically groundless ideological bills. When the government acts, it is only to be expected that it will exaggerate and oversimplify without really addressing all the important points or taking scientific considerations, or the experts, into account. The purpose of all this is simply to raise funds. This is clearly what it is doing at the moment.

Back to public health. Why is it important to consider that aspect? Of course we want heroin addicts to stop using drugs. There has already been preventive work and education around that. From the community standpoint, it is very important. Sometimes, no matter what we do, we cannot help these people. A centre like InSite provides a supervised environment where doctors and experts can ensure that people are not injecting drugs in the street.

In terms of public health, there are tangible results. Studies indicate a decrease of 35% in overdose-related deaths. If the government cared and if it sought the well-being of the public, it would take these figures to heart. Unfortunately, the Conservatives do not do so. They do not look at this aspect, and they oversimplify the problem.

As a member of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, I have had an opportunity to see that the Conservatives always adopt the same ideological approach. They imply that we are with them or against them, and if we are against them, they call us every name in the book. We are in the same situation here.

When we talk about public health, we have to look to the research. And there is research. Canada is not the only country to have studied this issue. Thirty studies have been reviewed by experts, and there are 70 supervised injection sites in Europe and Australia. Studies have also been published in such highly respected international journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal. Actual studies have been carried out on this, and they clearly support the position taken by the NDP, which is that of the InSite people and British Columbia.

We should not forget that all of this has received community support. I am anticipating the question my colleague asks every time. There is support from the community and the authorities in the health care field on this issue. We should therefore pay careful attention.

This is not a free-for-all place to shoot up. In this facility, there is supervision and follow-up, and children are not allowed. The result is that people do not do it in the streets. We must stop burying our heads in the sand. Saying that we do not want this in our backyard will not stop people from doing it. People will continue to do it, and that is a problem. Naturally, there are efforts in the area of education and prevention. In this case, however, we have to rely on facts, and in this respect, the government is turning a blind eye.

Let us talk about public safety. If people do not have access to supervised sites like InSite to inject themselves with drugs, they will do it in the streets, in the parks and in all the other places where it can cause problems. We could have needles lying around, cases that are not monitored, people dying and people doing it in an unsafe manner, reusing needles from other users. This will lead to an increase in blood-borne diseases, and will have a direct impact on the health of those concerned.

The Conservatives tend to say that if we are against them, we will automatically say anything. I would nevertheless like to say that the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Nurses Association and many other organizations support the NDP's position on protecting the health and safety of these people.

In closing, I would like the government to support the amendments the NDP will be proposing, but above all to realize that it has to stop acting ideologically and must finally begin to take the facts and the science into consideration.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. I am not pleased with the act, but I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak against it, because the act does serious damage to the notion of what government ought to be doing to help some of the most vulnerable people in our country, those who are seriously at risk of dying because of an addiction to a particular drug.

Maybe Conservatives do not have any sympathy for addicts, except for Mr. Ford, in Ontario. I do not know, but they certainly seem to be willing to put at very serious risk of death and further harm people who, by their circumstances, end up being addicted to drugs and could make use of a place such as InSite in Vancouver. They tried to shut it down, and they were told by the Supreme Court of Canada that they could not do it, so they are trying an end run around safe injection sites with this legislation.

Let us look at some raw numbers and the reason this safe injection site was established in the first place. There was a situation in the Lower Eastside of Vancouver in the mid-1990s, when about 200 people a year were dying from drug overdoses. That is a serious public health issue. It is a serious crisis in public safety. There were all sorts of other harms associated with all that activity.

InSite was established to provide a safe place where those who were addicted could inject. It was supervised by professionals who were not only providing a safe place but were also providing other services, such as referrals and access to medical services, counselling, and programs that would lead to detoxification and overcoming their addictions.

In fact, users of this site were nearly two times as likely to go to a detox centre and go on drug programs than those who may have gone there occasionally. It was not the idea to allow the addiction to continue. It was an opportunity to get them out of addiction. As a result, twice the rate of participation in detoxification programs to get off drugs took place.

When InSite started to operate, the number of fatalities from drug overdoses in the Lower Eastside in Vancouver went down by 35%. We are talking about 70 individuals a year whose lives were saved as a result of this. Those are a lot of human lives that one particular program was able to save by being in existence. What was the government's response? It was to get rid of harm reduction as a principle of drug treatment and to shut down InSite. It is trying an end run around the Supreme Court with this particular action.

Another statistic reported in a leading medical journal deals with the fact that there were 273 overdoses in a one-year period at InSite, but not one fatality, not one. That is indicative of the fact that the supervision of the safe injection site leads to greater safety and a lack of deaths. That is how it happens. When we add up some of these facts and the startling number of 70 lives a year saved, what is the possible excuse or reason the government has for introducing this legislation?

One thing we hear about often, even from the current government and lots of others, is something called evidence-based decision-making. We have heard that before: evidence-based decision-making. A good, sensible, reasonable government should be making decisions based on evidence.

What do we have here? We have more than 30 peer-reviewed studies published in some of the leading medical journals in the world. Members will have heard of them. They include the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the pre-eminent medical journals in the world; The Lancet, another significant British medical journal, which publishes only serious peer-reviewed, high-standard, high-quality studies; and the British Medical Journal.

More than 30 peer-reviewed studies have described the beneficial impacts of InSite, just this one particular operation. Some people and many studies have looked for the negative impact, but none have come up with any evidence demonstrating harm to the community.

We have a situation where the evidence is on the side of the use of places like InSite to facilitate harm reduction, the saving of lives, detoxification, helping addicts to get off drugs and making communities safer.

Those are the facts. That is the evidence that is brought to this. There is support from organizations like the Canadian Medical Association. It is hardly interested in promoting the use of drugs. It is hardly interested in having activities that are bad for patients and individuals. It sees it as a positive thing, and it has criticized the government for bringing forward Bill C-2.

Who else? The Canadian Nurses Association said:

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.

Here is the kicker. They said:

A government truly committed to public health and safety would work to enhance access to prevention and treatment services—instead of building more barriers.

That is what we have here, a building of more barriers to helping people who are addicted to drugs.

My community of St. John's East has its share of serious drug problems. They have escalated to the point now where we have hold-ups of convenience stores and gas stations taking place. There are houses being broken in to get money to buy drugs. Some of these drugs are actually prescription drugs. There's OxyContin, a major, significant, addictive prescription drug.

How did that become the bane of so many people's existence? It is something that was supposed to be reserved for only the most serious of pain in the rarest of circumstances. I do not want to exaggerate, but I have heard people say that it is being prescribed for anything from wisdom teeth being extracted to very low levels of pain, as commonly as any other painkiller, instead of being reserved for that particular rare occasion when someone was in such serious pain that addiction was not an issue, perhaps because they were in palliative care or were about to die.

In the time I have left, I do want to say that we have serious problems. There can be solutions. The government should be working very hard to find solutions. Instead, what we see is government acting against the medical profession's advice, that of the Canadian Nurses Association, the Canadian Medical Association and all sorts of significant scientific studies that have demonstrated the value of sites such as InSite in Vancouver. We see it taking action to make it nearly impossible for anyone to open further injection sites and perhaps making another attack to try to shut down InSite once again when it gets the opportunity to do so.

As I said at the beginning, I am glad I have had the chance to speak on this bill because I do oppose it. We are against this approach. We think this is a seriously harmful bill that will cause death to individuals who are vulnerable in our society because of their addictions, not allowing them to even get near the help they need. They will stay away. Obviously they will not be able to be near that.

If people are worried about heroin addicts in their backyards, they are going to find addicts a lot closer to their backyards if they do not have a site like InSite that can actually help deliver harm reduction and vital medical and other health services to these individuals.

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in the debate on Bill C-2, it is crucial that we focus on the benefits of supervised injection sites like InSite, which has achieved many things.

What would my colleague say are the benefits of having such a site in Canada?

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.