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.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you very much for sharing your time.

Thank you for your comments and testimony today. I just wanted to say, in the last few minutes of our week-long session on this, thank you to the clerk and his staff. I was doing some research to see how many witnesses have come to speak to an act before. The Fair Elections Act had 74. Bill C-51, the Anti-terrorism Act, had 75. Bill C-2 , an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act had 20. After that, it's lower numbers. I think we might have hit the benchmark with over 100 witnesses on this topic, which speaks to the importance of it to Canadians and the social change that's coming with it.

My comment, for the Emerys and for others who have been part of this very strong culture in trying to create change, is that the purpose of the act is to prevent young persons from accessing cannabis, to protect public health and public safety by establishing stricter product safety and product quality requirements, and to deter criminal activity by imposing serious criminal penalties.

If you read the bill, the goal is not about recreational marijuana users, by optimizing their experience and optimizing their choices. It's a very different lens. I think that's the social difference or maybe the philosophical difference. I understand and hear your frustration. I hear the background that you're coming from, but the act would address different social agendas than the one you've been speaking to.

Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as the member pointed out when he talked about how we got here, one of the reasons we got to Bill C-37 is that initially, the Conservatives' Bill C-2 established 26 criteria, which were very burdensome for communities that need and want safe consumption sites, which science demonstrates save lives.

Our idea was to come back to the five criteria established by the Supreme Court and to get closer to those criteria so we could move more swiftly, because we know that every single day Canadians are dying from opioid use in this country. We need to take swift action and act decisively, with respect for the communities where they would be established. We need to make sure that where they are needed and wanted, these safe consumption sites are established.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in support of Bill C-37, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make related amendments to other acts.

While I am supporting this positive move, I must say I am still deeply troubled by this crisis that continues to hit communities. On a personal note, I was deeply touched after hearing from those affected. As a member of the Standing Committee on Health, I, with my colleagues from all parties, studied this crisis. In fact, we chose to pass a motion to undertake an emergency study of the crisis.

We were all in lockstep with the minister, trying to make a positive difference and to make choices that would save lives. That motivation drove us to work hard, and work together. We worked collectively and openly on this. That is something I am quite proud of and something I have valued in my time as the MP for Brampton South, and as a fellow parliamentarian of all who serve together in this place.

In committee, we heard from wide-ranging front-line perspectives, experts, and from the Minister of Health directly on this. I would like to make particular note of the testimony the committee heard from indigenous peoples on October 25, which I feel was compelling, honest, and a real wake-up call about what we need to do to ensure we address the needs of indigenous communities. For starters, improving access to naloxone treatment, the life-saving medication used in the case of an opioid overdose, was needed for rural and remote first nations in particular. That was a key part of the minister's action plan coming out of the summit, and goes to show what we can do when we consult all communities.

In looking at the bill, I see that Bill C-37 addresses what we heard from the Canada Border Services Agency about practical changes that would help prevent drug-making materials from entering the country. I applaud the minister's work also to check suspicious international mail packages that are 30 grams or less, which could be used to smuggle in any amounts of substances that may cause harm. This is a good precaution to benefit Canadians.

I want to remind colleagues that the bill is the product of hundreds of voices coming together. Our committee members were graciously invited to join in the health minister's summit on this as well. Coming out of the summit, we saw action. In fact, the joint statement of action by 42 organizations to address the opioid crisis was a broad but concrete approach that includes all those involved, from health care providers, to first responders, to educators, to researchers, and to families as well. I want to applaud our Minister of Health, and Ontario's minister of health as well, for leading that conference, which focused on concrete steps and delivering clear results.

Our government has taken action from day one, building on our five-point action plan to address opioid misuse. We have taken concrete steps, such as granting section 56 exemptions for the Dr. Peter Centre and extending the exemption for lnsite for an additional four years. We made the overdose antidote naloxone more widely available in Canada. Our government recently approved three safe consumption sites in Montreal that the community asked for.

Further, at the local level, we have seen action already undertaken. In the city of Toronto, the mayor met with the mayor of Vancouver and other officials in order to plan a proactive not reactive response for Ontario as the crisis drifts eastward. The mayor of Hamilton held a discussion about this as well, and other municipalities have been doing the same. I hope more municipalities will reach out, learn from one another, and take proactive measures in their communities.

The numbers and the experts support this as the right way to public health, and it also delivers cost savings. I see how various aspects of the bill address a lot of the concerns we heard at committee and at the opioids summit. While many members have made note of the urgency of passing the bill, I think the majority of members showed time and time again in recent weeks that they were willing to collaborate to move quickly on this.

I want to reassure members that I believe the bill is an extremely collaborative and well-thought-out bill that responds to experts in the field as well as front-line needs. It gives me comfort to know that this bill would make a difference.

As others have said before, and I agree, we are in a national public health crisis in Canada. In 2016, thousands of Canadians tragically died of accidental opioid overdoses, and more will die this year. Our government and its partners must work together aggressively to save lives.

If people have friends or neighbours who are hearing the Conservatives' argument that facilities like Insite are the wrong approach, I would encourage them to contact me or other members on the health committee who would be happy to provide non-partisan, evidence-based information on why that does not reflect the safe consumption site model we see working already in Canada. All members of this House can agree that our hearts go out to the families and friends affected personally when a loved one has lost his or her life instead of having another chance. Last year in British Columbia alone, more than 900 people died from a drug overdose, an 80% increase from 2015.

This legislation simply proposes to ease the burden on communities that wish to open a supervised consumption site, while putting stronger measures in place to stop the flow of illicit drugs and strengthening the system in place for licensed controlled substances facilities. Experts and stakeholders told the previous government and then told our government that Bill C-2 as it stood was not helping this crisis. That is why we took action to reverse the barriers that were holding back communities that have long been asking for the ability to save their citizens' lives.

We know there is more to be done as we move forward. We know that sadly the situation is getting worse. The deaths from overdoses will now be greater than deaths caused by car accidents. This tragic crisis continues to move eastward in Canada, with increasing drug seizures of fentanyl and carfentanil across the country. We will continue to work with our partners across the country to continue bringing forward evidence-based solutions to save lives and ensure that 2017 is the year that will mark a turn in this national public health crisis.

Many people in Brampton South have asked me about my work on the health committee, and I have mentioned over and over that we all agreed we should turn our focus to this study due to the emergency at hand. They ask me why and they are always engaged when hearing about how we can work together at committee to address real problems and issues that our fellow Canadians face. Again, the way our committee worked together is one of the cherished moments I have of being an MP, and I hope we get more chances to work collaboratively again. This crisis called on us as leaders in our communities and as parliamentarians to take action.

In October 2016, I put forward a motion that the health committee call upon the Minister of Health to move as quickly as possible to conduct a review of the laws and regulations in place with regard to safe injection sites. I suggested that the review have an end goal to improve the health and safety of Canadians, using a strong evidence-based approach. With Bill C-37, I feel the minister and government have responded fully to the motion that the health committee passed in October of last year.

I am proud to be supporting this legislation that would save the lives of Canadians who need our help.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, for any Canadians who are watching, I am glad that they can see that the Liberal Party, the New Democratic Party, the Green Party, and I am not sure about the Bloc, are willing and ready to move quickly on this legislation and not sit here and debate and slow down legislation when Canadians are dying every day.

It has been well established that Canada is currently in the grips of an unprecedented national public health emergency. I am glad to hear both my Liberal and Conservative colleagues increasingly using that term to describe the opioid crisis. The New Democratic Party started using the term back in November, and that is because this is a national public health emergency and our fellow Canadians are suffering and dying every single day.

Fifty Canadians are dying every week from opioid overdoses in this country. That is a national crisis. It also bears repeating that this crisis has become dramatically worse in recent months.

In 2016, in my home province of British Columbia alone, there were 914 drug overdose deaths. That is an 80% increase from the year before. In December, just a couple of months ago, we recorded the highest number of overdose deaths in B.C.'s history with 142 lives lost. That is more than double the monthly average of overdose deaths since 2015 and a sharp increase over September, October, and November. There were 57 overdose deaths in B.C. in September, 67 in October, 128 in November, and 142 in December. I can only guess that the number will be even higher for January. While the Conservatives want us to debate and consult, New Democrats want to act and save lives.

In December, the B.C. Coroners Service announced that morgues in the city of Vancouver were frequently full as a result of the unprecedented number of overdose deaths, forcing health authorities to store bodies at funeral homes.

This crisis is in large part the legacy of Canada's now defunct anti-drug strategy. Decades of a misguided criminal approach to drug policy has proven to be counterproductive, fuelling Canada's unregulated illegal drug market and leaving a scarcity of evidence-based health services, including harm reduction and treatment programs for people suffering from substance use disorder.

The Conservatives cut 15% from the addiction service budget in their last year in office. International research demonstrates that the criminalization of drugs increases rates of drug production, consumption, availability, and adverse drug-related health effects, but that is the evidence, and for the last 10 years our drug policy in this country was not based on evidence. It was based on ideology.

Because this crisis has been years in the making, it will not be solved by any one action or piece of legislation. I think we all know that. The passage of Bill C-37 must be the beginning of a much deeper examination of how we understand and respond to drug use and addiction in Canada.

For many years, New Democrats have been advocating for an evidence-based and health-focussed approach to drug use and addiction. Our party understands that substance use is not a moral failure. We also understand that criminal approaches that aim to punish or isolate those with addiction issues only serve to compound the suffering of those already experiencing tremendous pain.

As Dr. Gabor Maté, a Canadian physician who specializes in addictions has said:

Not all addictions are rooted in abuse or trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experience. A hurt is at the center of all addictive behaviours. It is present in the gambler, the Internet addict, the compulsive shopper and the workaholic. The wound may not be as deep and the ache not as excruciating, and it may even be entirely hidden — but it’s there.

That is why New Democrats have pushed the federal government to reinstate harm reduction as one of the four pillars of Canadian drug policy ever since it was removed by Stephen Harper. That is why New Democrats led the fight against the Conservatives' Bill C-2 from the day it was introduced. That is why we have pressed the Liberal government to repeal or amend Bill C-2 since February 2016, one year ago, when the opioid overdose crisis was in its earliest stage.

Last fall, the NDP successfully moved a motion at the Standing Committee on Health to conduct a study on the opioid overdose crisis. This led to a report with 38 recommendations to the federal government, most of which have not yet been implemented, I would point out.

We were the first to call for a declaration of a national public health emergency. Such a declaration would empower Canada's Chief Public Health Officer to take extraordinary measures to coordinate a national response to the crisis, a measure the Liberal government, still to this day, refuses to take.

Last December, we attempted to fast-track Bill C-37 because of the dire need to deal with this crisis as quickly as possible, but that, again, was blocked by the Conservatives.

Indeed, Bill C-37 continues to be delayed because the Conservatives refuse to acknowledge the crucial importance of harm reduction, and the evidence that supervised consumption sites save lives now.

Today, I am saddened to see that the Conservatives still have not learned from their mistakes, and I am deeply troubled that they continue to liken supervised consumption sites and the approval of same to pipeline approval processes.

After their bizarre offer to trade supervised consumption site approvals for pipelines, at the health committee, the Conservative member for Lethbridge argued that these health facilities should require the same social licence as energy projects before they are permitted to save lives. The member argued that we must maintain Bill C-2's unnecessary barriers because the placement of a site will impact the communities in which they are located.

For once, I agree with the member for Lethbridge. It is absolutely correct that these sites do indeed impact communities: by saving lives, by reducing crime, and by providing opportunities for recovery to people suffering from a disease.

The Conservative Party likes to imagine that supervised consumption sites might be imposed on communities by the federal government. The opposite is true. Supervised consumption sites only exist in Canada due to the tireless efforts of advocates and community members who contribute their time and talent to provide evidence-based, life saving health services. Sometimes, they have even done so at the risk of their own liberty.

Vancouver's Dr. Peter Centre provided supervised consumption services, in violation of federal law, for over a decade, since 2002, before the federal government finally granted it a legal exemption.

Vancouver's Insite had to fight the federal government all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada to keep its doors open. Even then, instead of complying with the spirit of the ruling, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper passed Bill C-2 as a thinly veiled attempt to prevent any new site from opening in Canada.

Today, as we speak, at least three overdose prevention sites are operating in the open in Vancouver without a legal exemption, against the law, exposing the staff who work there to criminal sanction because they are answering a higher call. They are answering the call of saving lives. That is why they are doing it.

The truth is supervised consumption sites do not harm communities; they help them. The evidence from Insite has been overwhelming and crystal clear.

By the way, the Conservatives talk about the negative impact of supervised consumption sites on communities. They never quote a single piece of evidence, not a shred, from any operating supervised consumption site because there are only two in Canada. Those two in Canada have been studied and written up in periodicals as respected as The Lancet and the evidence is crystal clear. They save lives. They reduce crime around the area. They stop open drug use. They reduce the spread of disease, and they stop the detritus of used needles in consumption sites from being out in the community where they can harm our community members and our children. That is the evidence.

When the Conservatives say that these sites impact communities, darn right they do, and they do so by helping the community. There is not an iota of evidence to the contrary.

Perhaps the Conservatives should listen to Edmonton's Mayor Don Iveson who recently said, “This is not a homeless, addicted issue. This is in pretty much every neighbourhood.”

The opioid crisis is here. It is already affecting our communities. Every day, it is claiming the lives of our friends, our family members, our neighbours.

The Conservative Party's argument that supervised consumption sites will somehow introduce opioid addiction to unaffected communities is baseless fearmongering, and it is deeply stigmatizing to Canadians with substance use disorders.

The truth is communities across Canada have been asking to open supervised consumption sites for years. It was by refusing to grant section 56 exemptions that the federal government was overruling both my home city of Vancouver and my home province's repeated requests. Indeed as Vancouver's Mayor Gregor Robertson has said: “Factors such as the impact of the site on crime rates and expressions of community support or opposition should not be relevant to the federal government's approval process. Those issues are local matters, and as such, are best dealt with by local officials, such as municipalities, health authorities, and local police agencies, who understand the issue.”

I will leave it to the Conservative Party to explain why it does not trust local authorities to make those determinations.

It has been community heroes, not the federal government, who have been on the front lines showing leadership throughout the current crisis. The efforts of these selfless people have undoubtedly saved lives and although there are too many to name individually here, I would like to specifically acknowledge the Herculean efforts of a few people.

The are: Ann Livingston and Sarah Blyth, founders of B.C.'s Overdose Prevention Society; Hugh Lampkin, long-time member of the Vancouver area network of drug users; Daniel Benson of the Portland Hotel Society; Gregor Robertson, mayor of Vancouver; Kerry Jang, city councillor of Vancouver; Maxine Davis, executive director of Vancouver's Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation; Katrina Pacey, executive director of Vancouver's Pivot Legal Society; Dr. Perry Kendall, B.C.'s Chief Medical Officer, the first and only medical officer in the country who has declared a public health emergency in British Columbia because he recognizes the extent of the crisis facing our community; and Dr. Gabor Maté, who is an internationally-renowned expert in addictions.

Having repeated requests for a declaration of a national public health emergency ignored by the current federal Liberal government, these front line organizations and the Government of British Columbia were forced to take the extraordinary measure of disregarding federal law by opening non-exempt pop-up supervised consumption sites which are operating right now as I speak. These sites have operated for months despite the daily risk of prosecution faced by those working at them as staff and volunteers.

Here is what the College of Registered Nurses of B.C. said to its membership last month.

This crisis may be prolonged and continue to worsen; as these overdose prevention services are being established across our province, in any place there is a need, we are being asked by nurses, “Is my licence at risk if I provide nursing care in these sites and conditions that can be less than ideal?”

Our courageous front line health workers should never be forced to ask that question.

That is why the NDP introduced an amendment at the health committee that would have allowed provincial health ministers to request in writing from the federal health minister emergency approval for supervised consumption sites in response to a local crisis.

Such an exemption would bypass the normal application process, and go into effect immediately for up to a year with the possibility of renewal. The federal minister would be required to post a provincial request online and post the response within five days.

This change was aimed at removing the potential for distant political considerations in Ottawa, many of which we hear expressed by members of the House today, to undermine or impede timely evidence-based decision responses to provincial public emergencies.

In the unusual situation where a province has declared a provincial health emergency, instead of forcing it to go through the application process which takes time, and time in a crisis like this costs lives, it gives the federal health minister the ability to grant a temporary approval quickly.

The Liberal government has repeatedly claimed that, with this legislation, it is now doing everything in its power to address this crisis, but that is demonstrably false. The government has failed to take many actions. There are literally dozens of them that are open to the government to take to respond to this crisis which it seems reluctant to do.

Recently, the City of Vancouver sent a list of nine recommendations to the federal government to help address this crisis, including calling for a central command structure, daily meetings with Health Canada, and improved treatment services.

A coroner's jury in British Columbia recently issued a list of 21 recommendations for action and the Standing Committee on Health in December issued a report detailing 38 recommendations for the government alone, again most of which remain unimplemented. The Liberal government is not doing everything it can to address the opioid crisis. It is taking some measures, but not all the measures it needs to.

When the health committee conducted the emergency study last fall into the crisis, the first recommendation made with all-party support was to declare opioid overdoses a national public health emergency. This call was echoed by Dr. David Juurlink, the keynote speaker at the health minister's own opioid summit last fall and now by B.C. Health Minister Terry Lake, a Liberal, and stakeholders across the country. In the face of a mounting death toll, a declaration of a national public health emergency would allow us to start saving more lives today.

Furthermore, during our study, the health committee heard that access to treatment for opioid addiction is almost nonexistent in indigenous communities, and where there is access, it is short-term access. That is because nurses employed by Health Canada do not have the scope of practice to support indigenous people in addressing opioid addiction in their own communities beyond 30 days. Yet, the Liberal government has made absolutely no commitment to ensuring full access to long-term, culturally appropriate addictions treatment in indigenous communities.

Finally, the health committee's recent report on the crisis made three separate and specific recommendations, calling for significant new federal funding for public community-based detox and addictions treatment. But the federal government will not commit to making any new funding available for detox and treatment in budget 2017, so far.

The health minister continues to recycle money dedicated to mental health, and claims that money can be used for addictions treatment. We are looking for new, specific, targeted funds for addictions treatment in this country. Mental health is a huge area, and there are many needs in this country. We all know that. We wanted targeted money from the government, and the government has refused to make that commitment so far.

I believe it behooves this House to be honest with itself. Would the federal government be so noncommittal and cautious in its approach if these deaths were caused by any other disease? As we look to the future, we must let go of our prejudices in order to hold on to our loved ones. Donna May, the founding member and facilitator of mumsDU, moms united and mandated to saving drug users, lost her daughter Jac to addiction at the age of 35. She said:

Most people would think that the hardest thing I’ve ever had to face was her death; the death of a child; the death of my only girl. However, that’s not it at all.

The hardest thing I’ve had to face in my life is realizing how my ignorance towards my daughter’s addiction cost me years with her that I will never get back. There are no ‘do-overs’ when your child is dead! Now I can only share my experience and what I’ve learned since, so that other parents can take something from it.

In many respects, substance abuse is one of the last remaining acceptable targets for health care discrimination. With all the evidence available to us, we should know better. If we are to succeed in treating addiction as a disease, which it is, we need to acknowledge that fear, stigma, and ignorance about those who suffer from addiction are widespread and in many respects have framed our approach to this crisis.

That is why, although these legislative changes are long overdue, they do not go far enough, fast enough. We need federal coordination and funding to address the crisis right now and over the long term. Canada's failure to treat addiction and substance use disorders by successive federal governments as a medical condition was explained to the health committee by Dr. Evan Wood from UBC.

He said:

I'll just ask you to imagine a scenario of somebody having an acute medical condition like a heart attack. They would be taken into an acute care environment. They would be seen by a medical team with ex1pertise in cardiology. The cardiovascular team would then look to guidelines and standards to diagnose the condition and to effectively treat it. Unfortunately, in Canada, because we haven't traditionally trained health care providers in addiction medicine, we have health care providers who don't know what to do, and routinely do things that actually put patients at risk.

In addition to the lack of training for health care providers, the overall lack of investments in this area has meant that there aren't standards, guidelines [or beds] for the treatment of addiction.

Dr. Mark Ujjainwalla, medical director of Recovery Ottawa, said:

The problem we face here is that the real issue with addiction is not opiates. The real issue is the inability of the present health care system to treat the disease of addiction. An addiction is a biopsychosocial illness that affects 10% of society, probably more if you include families, and it is the most underfunded medical illness in our society.

The problem is that it's also a highly preventable and very highly treatable illness. It's very unfortunate that people don't see that. When it affects your family or you, you can feel the pain and suffering, and you watch the tragedy unfold in front of you.

I would like to conclude my remarks by imploring this House to take a lesson from Estonia, a country that recently overcame an opioid crisis very similar to Canada's. The head of Estonia's drug abuse prevention department said, “I think the most important thing is you don't waste time. If you really want to learn from us, that's the mistake we made. Don't look for some new solutions, because you have them.”

We could say that history does not look kindly on those who dither in times of crisis. To put it bluntly, it is not the history books that should keep us up at night; it is the lives that we continue to lose every single day to entirely preventable causes.

Canadians are looking to us to provide leadership in a crisis. It is time for us to deliver.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is a little hard to listen to the member in this debate. I am part of a community that has been very hard hit by the opioid overdose crisis. I have observed the operation of the supervised injection site, Insite, in Vancouver, and the Conservatives thwarted every effort to open additional health-based life-saving supervised injection sites for the 10 years that they were in power. It is a little hard to listen to the words of my colleague.

Only an hour after the Conservatives introduced Bill C-2, the Conservatives were fundraising, stating that Liberals and New Democrats wanted addicts to inject heroin in people's backyards. It is no wonder we ended up with communities being concerned about the impact of actually delivering a health care service to people who are addicted and whose lives are now in peril because of the fentanyl crisis that no one has been able to get ahead of.

I would like to hear the member's thoughts on that. Even though he was not in Parliament last time around, I would also like his thoughts about his own party having cut addictions treatment funding by 15% while the Harper Conservatives were in power.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned that community support as stated by the Supreme Court was not meant as a way to prevent safe consumption sites from opening. It was not meant to prevent the opening of safe consumption sites. We have taken the exact language that is in the Supreme Court judgment, which states that one of the factors to be taken into account is the expression of community support or opposition.

What was meant to prevent these sites from opening were the 26 criteria in Bill C-2 that the previous government put forward.

The member mentioned that three sites have opened in Montreal. Does he know how long it took for those sites to open even though we are facing a health crisis in Canada when it comes to opioids? I will answer my own question. It took nearly two years for those sites to open even though the community, the mayor, the provincial actors, as well as health professionals in Montreal wanted them. Is the member at least aware of the time it took for these sites to be approved under the previous legislation?

While I have the floor, I must say that I am a bit challenged by the comparison that the member made between pipelines and these safe consumption sites. Addicts are people. The government has a responsibility to protect people sometimes from themselves and that is what these safe consumption sites are all about.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak on behalf of the people of Nanaimo—Ladysmith, but this is certainly a hard story. I support the government's approach moving forward, but I want to talk about the impact in my immediate community, to describe the imperative of why action is so important.

Since 2008, Nanaimo has had more deaths per capita from drug overdoses than anywhere else in British Columbia. Our region had a 135% increase in opioid deaths last year, and fentanyl was present in 50% of overdoses. This is a national emergency. Our region has not had the action that we need on it and the federal government response has been unacceptably slow.

In October, at the health committee, I urged action of a study, which was initiated by an NDP motion by my colleague, the member for Vancouver Kingsway, that federal leadership was needed immediately to tackle the opioid overdose epidemic. I urged better access to Drug treatment programs and safe consumption sites, and support for health professionals, including addiction training. I urged that the government also create a national action plan on post-traumatic stress disorder for front-line emergency personnel and public safety officers in this vital line of work.

When I talk with firefighters in Nanaimo, they tell me they used to see three overdose calls a year. Now they see three a shift. These fine young men and women signed up to fight fires mostly. I want to read some of the words from Mike Rispin, one of the chiefs at the downtown Nanaimo fire department. He says:

In my 25 years as a fire fighter we have had periods when there was a sharp increase in opioid overdoses, due to a stronger drug on the streets. These periods lasted usually only a few weeks.

Sadly, the recent introduction of fentanyl has made our response to overdoses a regular occurrence and I can only foresee this as a regular ongoing issue...I...can only imagine what we will see with the use of carfentanil (which has been discovered in town now). We will be having even more O/D's and more difficulty bringing those patients back to consciousness.

Nanaimo is a small community of 90,000 but the overdoses we are seeing now is increasing dramatically. Thankfully the Island health authority has opened a safe injection site which should assist in reducing deaths from the use of opioids.

How did we get here? Opioid prescription rates are sky-high in Canada versus other countries. Our doctors over-prescribe, and that is because the pharmaceutical companies oversell.

Chronic pain is not managed well in our country. Some people are just left completely on their own and they do become drug-dependent because they are not getting the pain management support they need.

We also have, and we have seen this particularly in the riding of my colleague, the member for Vancouver East, childhood sexual abuse unrecognized, unreported, untreated. Gabor Maté, a doctor who has worked particularly in the Downtown Eastside, said every drug-addicted woman patient of his, every one of them, was a victim of childhood sexual abuse. This is the “hungry ghost” syndrome that he describes a psychic wound that cannot be healed, people turn to drugs.

Some communities were used as a test market for new drug ingredients. That certainly is our speculation about Nanaimo. Many people using illegal drugs are not aware that fentanyl is included in them and they get into terrible trouble.

In my community, I want to salute the many heros who have stepped up in the absence of provincial and federal leadership. They have saved a lot of lives, but it has been at a great personal cost to them. I am hugely grateful for their work. By supporting this bill, I hope we will get the support they need to do this very difficult job they have been given.

Another group that is such a hero in my community is AIDS Vancouver Island and the AVI Health Centre. Claire Dineen, the health promotion educator in Nanaimo, has led training for 800 people who are now trained in how to administer naloxone, which is the antidote to fentanyl. That woman has saved a lot of lives.

I also want to salute Dr. Paul Hasselback, who is the chief medical officer for the Vancouver Island Health Authority. People are very lucky to have a man like him in our riding. When I meet with him, he has both the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on his desk. That is a sign of a man who is fully integrated in his work and making change in our country. He wrote:

For the past four years, the riding that “you” represent has had rates of narcotic overdose fatalities that are some of the highest in the country....During this time close to one hundred of our neighbours, friends, and families have passed away from this preventable tragedy. In four years, overdoses have become a leading cause of preventable deaths in our community....an integrated approach to a community response has resulted in a much smaller increase in 2016 when compared to other BC communities. Action can save lives.

He went on in his letter to state:

When finally presented through actions of the province of BC with ways to implement overdose prevention sites where emergency response is available, the community has overwhelmingly embraced the service....Supervised consumption is to be recognized as a health service that can and should be provided in a variety of settings....We also need to look to the future and how to prevent drug addiction. Youth employment, affordable housing, meaningful community contributions are our best approach to engaging those that illicit drug predators would target as future consumers.

Action is needed now to mitigate this crisis, and needs to consider what could be done to reverse the recruitment of persons to experiment with potentially addictive drugs....While legislation is welcomed, it focused again predominantly on the enforcement side of the equation, permitting for harm reduction services. What actions will the federal government take in prevention and in facilitating treatment or at least research into effective treatment? What actions will the government take on engaging youth on drugs similar to past efforts to work on tobacco?

He finished by saying:

Family Day is a great day to remember that many of our friends and colleagues have personally been affected through a member of their family. I have many stories that I have heard that are gut wrenching efforts to help loved ones. There are also stories of success to be shared.

I have another success story from my riding. This is sent by a third-year biology student attending Vancouver Island University. He was one of the organizers of Vancouver's first unsanctioned supervised injection sites. When people were dying on the streets and we could not get provincial or federal support, Jeremy Kalicum and others took action, and he writes this description:

In short order, we established an unsanctioned supervised injection site equipped with harm reduction supplies, volunteer nurses, and naloxone. Our goal was to provide a judgment-free space that would allow people who use drugs to feel that their situation and struggles were not being ignored. Although people who use drugs were initially skeptical of our service they soon learned that we were not there to entrap them...[we] wanted them to be safe.

That facility is not operating now because the health authority opened a supervised injection site in the last few weeks.

I am proud that the New Democrats led the fight against the Conservatives' Bill C-2, which was absolutely damaging at the exact time we needed progressive action. I am glad the Liberals are bringing forward Bill C-37. It is overdue. We wanted it a year ago. We want the Liberals to call this a national emergency.

The war on drugs approach has clearly been a failure. Instead of stigmatizing and punishing Canadians who are suffering from substance abuse disorders, it is time for bold and compassionate leadership from the federal government. We need to rapidly expand proven harm reduction approaches, while making significant long-term investments in prevention and public addiction treatments of all kinds.

I urge Parliament to vote in favour of Bill C-37. I urge the government to accelerate its action in some of the other areas that New Democrats have identified, to view drug addiction as a health issue, and, most important right now, to send our thanks and support to the front-line responders who fill a tremendous gap in a time of true national emergency.

Motions in amendment

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, first and foremost, I want to the thank my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie for his speech, and I thank his party for the position it has taken on Bill C-37. Indeed, this bill will ease the criteria so that safe injection sites can be approved quickly in communities where they are needed most.

I agree with my colleague. We know that safe injection sites save lives and prevent the transmission of disease. In response to the Supreme Court ruling, the previous government unfortunately took a highly ideological approach, but at least now we are taking a facts- and evidence-based approach.

With regard to the opioid crisis, which is killing too many people in Canada and needs to be addressed, earlier I listed a whole series of measures the government has already taken to deal with this crisis, Bill C-37 being one of them.

I wonder if the member could talk about the advantages of coming back to the five criteria set out by the Supreme Court, rather than the 26 onerous and convoluted criteria required under Conservative Bill C-2.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very touched to be able to rise in the House today to speak to this important bill. I am very touched, but at the same time, I think it is a real shame that we have to talk about this again. This is an extremely important debate. There is likely no other parliamentary debate that is more vital or that will have a greater impact on the lives of Canadians than the debate that we are having right now.

Simply put, it would have been nice if this issue had been resolved years ago because we are now dealing with an urgent situation in our municipalities, in our big cities, and on our streets.

People are dying from overdoses of illegal drugs, particularly opioids, and this is a crisis. Hundreds of people are dying in our communities and on our streets because our facilities are not equipped to adequately respond to this serious substance abuse problem, particularly when it comes to increasingly dangerous and hard drugs. For example, fentanyl is 100 times more potent than heroin, and it is wreaking havoc on our cities and communities.

There is even a fentanyl derivative that is so potent that first responders are now being advised to wear masks and gloves when helping people because, if the drug is inhaled or comes into contact with the skin, it can be deadly for the paramedics and nurses who are in contact with those who need help.

Hundreds of people are dying every day in our streets and alleyways because we have failed to adequately respond to this situation. In all seriousness, this is one case where I am sad to say that our federal government dropped the ball and we have collectively failed. We could have taken measures that would have saved lives. There is a national crisis, and people are dying from lethal opioid injections because of the laws that we pass or fail to pass. This is serious.

Indeed, we in the NDP are calling on the Liberal government to declare this a national emergency and give greater powers and funding to the chief public health officer of Canada, so that he can coordinate efforts to help these individuals. I find it extremely unfortunate that the Conservatives did not respond appropriately to the Supreme Court decision and instead chose to stand in the way of public health stakeholders who wanted to set up safe injection sites to help addicts in crisis.

As I reminded the parliamentary secretary a few minutes ago, I also find it unfortunate that the Liberal government dragged its feet for 16 months before introducing a bill to fix the mistakes of Bill C-2 passed by the Conservatives. I will come back to this point a little later.

I would like to share some statistics. I am talking about people who are dying because of the lack of health facilities, that is, safe injection sites, particularly in our big cities. This is no joke. In 2016, there were 914 overdose fatalities in British Columbia. That represents an 80% increase over the previous year. Across Canada in 2016, there were about 2,000 fatalities. In December alone in British Columbia, 142 people died of drug overdose. In Vancouver, more specifically, there were between 9 and 15 deaths every week.

In Ontario, there are two deaths per day. Our young people are dying in our streets because we do not have what we need to help them. Supervised consumption sites are proven to save lives. When Insite was finally given the go-ahead several years ago in Vancouver, community officials realized that the number of deaths dropped by 35% in the area surrounding the site.

It works. It works in Vancouver, it works in British Columbia, and it works around the world. It has been proven.

Why have we been unable to respond appropriately? The previous government spread all kinds of prejudices, which is a terrible shame. In 2011, a unanimous Supreme Court ruling authorized Insite and encouraged the government to change the law to define the process. The previous government was very right-wing and focused on repression, and it wanted to turn this into a partisan issue. When that government introduced Bill C-2, it was not to help people involved in public health; it was to create more barriers to setting up these very important sites. That is a terrible shame.

What did the Conservatives do in their day? They added 26 eligibility criteria that had to be met before Health Canada could authorize a supervised consumption site. What was the outcome of that? How many sites were given the green light? Zero. Not one. We are years behind because of that.

Health Canada was unable to authorize the opening of such sites despite the fact that the experts, the scientific community, municipal officials, and the groups that work with addicts every day all wanted them. Montreal had been asking for a supervised consumption site since May 2015. We can say that was a while ago. Every year, between 70 and 100 people in Montreal die of an opioid overdose. How many people could we have saved in that time?

Communities approve of this type of measure. I want to share a few short quotes to that effect. The first one is from Gregor Robertson, mayor of Vancouver. “Every month we lose because of Bill C-2, and an onerous process that's totally unnecessary and overboard, means we're losing dozens of people.”

Denis Coderre, the mayor of Montreal, asked, “What are we waiting for? People are dying.”

Adrienne Smith, health and drug policy lawyer at Pivot Legal Society, said that she feared that while we wait, while we set up working groups and give the Liberal government the benefit of the doubt, hundreds of people could die.

Sterling Downey, a Montreal municipal councillor, asked, “How do you go into the media and announce over a year ago that you're going to open these sites and back off and go radio silent?”

According to another quote, the organizations that are supposed to host the sites don't even dare set opening dates any more. They are stuck in a grey area where, every year for the past three years, they are told that the sites will open in the spring, but it doesn't happen.

I have pages and pages of quotes like that. For years, people have been anxious to help our young people, and the older ones too, but especially the street kids who fall victim to these opioids, these hard drugs.

I think it is a shame that society has lost so much time because some people tried to score political points by holding fundraisers. I would remind hon. members that the director of the Conservative Party sent a fundraising email and used the politics of fear by accusing the NDP and the Liberals at the time of wanting to put our children in harm's way, claiming there would be more syringes in our schoolyards and back alleys. They would have people believe that with injection sites comes increased risk, but the facts say otherwise. If a person enters a supervised injection site and is treated by a professional, that person will be given a course of treatment and drugs to help ween them off the hard drugs. That person will pull through. What does that mean? It means that thanks to supervised injection sites, there will be fewer syringes in the streets, in the parks, and in the back alleys, not the opposite. For years, people have tried to convince us that this is more dangerous, but that is not true.

The NDP moved a motion in the House a few weeks ago. My colleague from Vancouver Kingsway wanted the debate to end and to send Bill C-37 to the Senate so that it could come into force as soon as possible.

It is too bad that the Conservatives refused and blocked the NDP's motion. That is why we would like to see this bill pass through all stages, intelligently and diligently of course, but as soon as possible. We have wasted enough time. We need to save lives.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage (Multiculturalism)]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise today in support of Bill C-37. We have a national public health crisis in Canada right now. Last year, in British Columbia alone, more than 900 people died from drug overdoses, an increase of over 80% from the previous year, and the situation is getting worse. Deaths from drug overdoses, including fentanyl and carfentanil, are now predicted to exceed deaths by car accidents. Thousands have died, and thousands more will die unless we, as parliamentarians, take decisive action. Bill C-37 represents decisive action.

This bill would address our public health crisis and help save lives in a few important ways. It would simplify and streamline the application process for communities that wish to open supervised consumption sites to limit drug overdoses. It would put stronger measures in place to stop the flow of illegal drugs into our communities.

Bill C-37 represents a vitally important step and necessary shift in the treatment of drug addiction from a framework of punishment and strict law enforcement, practised by the previous government, to one focused on health care and based on scientific evidence.

I am proud to support this bill on behalf of my constituents in Parkdale—High Park. The care and compassion of the people in my community, coupled with their political engagement and depth of knowledge on these issues, has translated into overwhelming support for a shift in how we treat people experiencing drug addiction. My constituents want a federal government that responds to health crises, like the tragic deaths of thousands of Canadians from accidental opioid overdoses in 2016, with a compassionate strategy based on evidence, not the knee-jerk ideological responses that characterized the previous government's zero tolerance approach.

This past July in Toronto, the city where I live and serve the people of Parkdale—High Park, city council approved plans for three future safe consumption sites. In Toronto, there are already 50 such locations that offer harm reduction services and access to clean syringes and needles, including the Parkdale Community Health Centre and the Breakaway Addiction Services Satellite clinic in my riding. Both of these organizations provide an invaluable service in my community. They help save lives in Parkdale—High Park by treating addicts with care and compassion, not punishment and stigma.

Bill C-37 would help by expanding the harm reduction network that already exists in my community and across the city of Toronto.

I want to explore the idea of harm reduction a little more. At its core, the principle of harm reduction is about taking a realistic approach to drug use and addiction and thinking practically and respectfully about the best options for treatment. As we all know in this chamber, drug addicts do not desire or choose to continue using substances that put them at risk of harm. Addiction is a brain disorder; it is not a choice.

People experiencing addiction compulsively engage with rewarding stimuli, despite the harm it does to their health, their relationships, and their very lives. While prevention and treatment are the central pillars of any drug strategy, we acknowledge, on this side of the House, the reality that people who are experiencing addiction will use drugs for a period of time until they are in treatment.

Harm reduction strategies and treatment goals are not incompatible. To the contrary, they are actually mutually reinforcing. Harm reduction strategies assist by helping to keep addicts alive and moving them toward treatment. Harm reduction strategies are the best alternative for people for whom prevention or criminal sanctions have not been effective. Harm reduction does not mean that we are giving up on these people or enabling them to use. It is quite the opposite. Through harm reduction, we are refusing to give up on these very people. We are refusing to let them die.

The contrast to harm reduction initiatives are the zero tolerance policies favoured by the previous government. Zero tolerance policies aimed at criminalizing addicts do not work. We have seen the negative effects of these strategies on marginalized communities, especially among those who are over-incarcerated, like the indigenous and black communities. We have seen the negative stigma. We have seen misinformation based on anecdotes instead of scientific facts about drug addiction. People who are suffering from a condition they cannot control are treated as criminals instead of patients. This is fundamentally the wrong approach.

By contrast, harm reduction not only serves individuals affected by their own addiction but helps friends and families of addicts, and society as a whole. When we stop pushing addicts out onto the street and into alleyways, our communities become safer. When we provide a safe space for consumption, equipped with medical professionals, parents of addicts do not have to bury their children. When we shift our narrative to focus on providing health care for Canadians afflicted with a difficult condition, our society, as a whole, begins to heal.

This basic idea that harm reduction, in the form of safe, supervised consumption sites, can promote public health and safety was recognized by the Supreme Court in the Insite case.

With members' indulgence, I am going to put on my constitutional lawyer hat for a moment and discuss the Vancouver safe injection site that was at issue in the Insite case. I will not go into all the details, much as I would love to, but it is important to note that, in short, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously found in that case that the denial of a ministerial exemption by the previous government under the Controlled Drug and Substances Act was a violation of the charter, specifically the section 7 right to life and security of the person of Insite's clients. The Supreme Court, by way of remedy, unilaterally reinstated the exemption, allowing Insite's doors to remain open so the facility could continue to prevent unnecessary deaths on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

The previous government's response to that decision, after some negative reaction on the part of the previous government, was to ramp up the number of conditions that had to be met for supervised consumption sites to be permitted to operate.

The government cannot do through the back door what it is not permitted to do constitutionally through the front door. The old Bill C-2, which is called, and we know the Conservatives had a penchant for these catchy names, the Respect for Communities Act, was an ideological response, not one based on evidence. It prompted observers, like the HIV/AIDS Legal Network, to note:

...Bill C-2, imposed near-insurmountable obstacles for supervised consumption services (SCS), such as Insite in Vancouver, despite ample evidence of the benefits of these health interventions. Not only have [supervised consumption sites] been shown to save lives, they are also cost-effective, as revealed by a new study conducted by the Toronto-based St. Michael's Hospital

If the members opposite want evidence of that study, I am happy to provide it.

We have heard such critiques, and we have responded as a government. Through Bill C-37, our government is taking the number of criteria that must be met to open a supervised site from 26 conditions, which to my mind is not intensive community involvement but is actually a barrier to providing authorization, and reducing it to five. We did not just dream up this list. We are using the very five criteria entrenched in paragraph 153 of the Supreme Court's unanimous decision, lest we be accused of perhaps not taking community consultation seriously, as some of the members opposite have opined.

Through Bill C-37, our government has responded to calls for a change in the legislation from organizations and people on the front lines who care for and treat drug addicts. They see the negative impact of a system imbalanced between public safety and public health.

Criticism of the bill has suggested that the government's new approach would turn society into an enabler of drug addiction, as opposed to a preventer. On the contrary, we will not stand idly by and enable Canadians to fatally overdose because we failed to act to provide them with safe spaces to receive health treatment.

We will prevent more people from dying by shifting our approach from criminalization to treatment with compassion. While we are shifting our approach, we are not diminishing the ability of law enforcement and the criminal justice system to enforce the law. We are shifting the treatment of addicts from punishment to treatment by treating addiction as a health issue. Critics of the bill forget that we are also increasing law enforcement's ability to prevent illegal substances from making it onto Canadian streets with changes to the Customs Act.

Bill C-37 would also further reinforce the commitment to consult with communities before making decisions that would directly impact them, such as the opening of safe consumption sites. Law enforcement, first responders, business owners, and residents down the street would all be consulted before the health minister delivered an evidence-based decision.

This bill is not revolutionary. We heard this in some of the earlier speeches. There are already over 90 safe consumption sites operating effectively worldwide, including two sites right here in Canada. The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health has completed extensive research, in collaboration with other prevention programs, on the effectiveness of harm reduction. Researchers discuss drug addition as a continuum, “where harm may occur at any level”.

Drug addiction is not black and white. It is not an all-or-nothing disease. If we continue to impose the rigid standards of Bill C-2, passed by the previous government, we will continue to deny communities and addicts the help, support, and life-saving services they desperately need and deserve. Balancing public safety and public health is not easy, but I am confident that Bill C-37 would help do just that. I am very proud to support legislation that puts the health and safety of Canadians at the forefront of our strategy, and I urge all members of the House to do the same.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway for a very excellent presentation. I think he understands the issue very well. This is an issue about health. This is, as the minister has said and as we have acknowledged, now a national public health crisis and steps are being taken to work across the country with resources, as we heard the minister saying, as well as working with all of the public health officers in every province to deal with this issue on the ground.

As a physician, the first thing I look at in any kind of public health emergency, whether it is a virus, whether it is a bacteria, whether as we see now overdose deaths from tainted opiates, is the immediate, urgent means of stopping the problem and of saving lives, of looking at a medium set of policies and legislation that would help us look at longer term solutions to the problem.

I want to congratulate the New Democratic Party for helping to move this so quickly through the House. It means that members get it; for most of us in the House, saving lives is paramount. We can put nothing else before saving lives.

I want to congratulate the Minister of Health for bringing about this change in repealing Bill C-2, which I consider to have been a very tragic and heinous, cruel bill that stopped people from doing what was necessary to save lives. If I may paraphrase something that was said by the Conservative health critic earlier on today, it was that yes, indeed, safe consumption sites save lives, but they help people to stay on drugs.

I want to ask anyone who has any ounce of common sense, which would they put first, saving a life, or saying that people should be able to stay on a drug that they are addicted to. We know all of this is a public health issue and all of this has to do with patient care and understanding the issues of public health.

I want to congratulate the minister because when the Supreme Court brought down its ruling, the Liberal Party was very adamant that we should listen to what the Supreme Court had said. I was the health critic at the time. The Supreme Court had exactly word for word the five criteria that the minister has put in the bill.

At the time I remember most of us were absolutely concerned that the Conservative Party brought in what was then called the Safer Communities Act, which no one saw the irony in because it certainly was not about safer communities at all. Therefore, what we see now is that since 2011 when the Supreme Court made the ruling, until 2015, four years had passed before the Supreme Court's decision had been considered by the government.

I think that is a pity and it was sad because it stopped safe injection sites from being set up across this country. It stopped harm reduction, which is about bringing down the mortality rates of any disease, of any condition, of any public health problem, and bringing down the disease rates as well, not just saving lives, but bringing down disease rates. We saw the safe injection sites. I am proud to say I was the minister responsible for the Downtown Eastside, setting up the Vancouver agreement and agreeing with the harm reduction principles that were set out in the four-pillar approach by the then mayor of Vancouver, Philip Owen. During that time, we had the UBC Centre of Excellence for HIV/AIDS, which did the actual project by 24 peer bodies around the world that was accepted as being well done and the evidence was completely accepted.

At that time, we had 90 safe injection sites around the world, in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Scandinavian countries, Australia, and Portugal. This was happening. People had seen that evidence and this was when we were concerned about 234 overdose deaths in the Downtown Eastside. We saw that once a safe injection site had been set up, evidence showed that there were no overdose deaths from anyone who came into that safe injection site. We had in fact stopped deaths. The other thing that was noticeable was that the crime rates had gone down in that area, so public order was restored.

We also saw that these very high-risk people who had actually started to use Insite at the time suddenly decided that they wanted to go into treatment. These were high-risk addicts. They went into treatment at OnSite, which is above the Insite site. There were 25 beds there for people who wanted to go into treatment. This was an important piece of the evidence as well. It not only saved lives, it also helped people to go into treatment. We saw that it had restored order, and fulfilled another criteria; it allowed people to have hope and to begin to want to build new lives.

These are some important things when we look at harm reduction. When I heard the Conservative health critic say in the House this morning that evidence shows it may save lives, but it helps them stay on the drugs, I wonder why ideology should take human life so lightly. These are human beings, and just because they happen to be addicted to a drug does not mean they are unworthy. Who should say what lives are unworthy and what lives are worthy? That is what we are talking about here.

I am pleased to see the minister moving forward, calling this a national public health crisis. I am pleased to see the extra pieces with regard to opening of suspicious mail that may contain up to 30 grams of fentanyl. We know that 30 grams of fentanyl can actual cause 15,000 deaths. This is a huge number. We are talking about deaths in the thousands.

After Insite, we not only saw the deaths were stopped, we also saw that the rate of HIV reduced. There had been 2,100 new cases of HIV/AIDS at the time Insite opened. That went down to 31. We are talking about the need to look at this as something that is essential.

I am pleased to see the New Democrats supporting the bill. I am pleased to see everyone in the House determined to move it forward, because it is essential if we are going to have safe injection sites, and all the evidence has proven safe injection sites save lives and bring down mortality and morbidity.

I understand when the leader of the Green Party talked about not wanting to intervene in civil liberties by opening these envelopes, but in the case of lives being saved, it is an essential thing we must do.

I am glad to see the minister bringing up precursors in the bill, to stop precursors. They are important in many instances, but at the moment we have to decide that stopping precursors from being given without going through a prescription and being approved, is actually one way of saving lives.

As a physician, I can say that lives will be saved as a result of the action the minister has taken with this bill, and by making naloxone widely available. As the member of the NDP said, it is important that the mobile units that are helping to save lives at the moment in Vancouver Centre, which are infringing on the law, should be able to give this. It should not simply be given in a buffer zone, but should be considered across the country if we see this as a national crisis.

There are other things we can do. We were asked what those were. The minister has moved very swiftly to do some of the things that are necessary, but we need to look at a public awareness campaign for all the young people, the young professionals, and youth who are not necessarily addicted, but who are recreational drug users, to let them know that using drugs off the street is a dangerous thing to do. When the minister first became minister, she moved to allow for the SALOME project, which had also been done under the Chrétien government, to show whether or not the use of substitute pharmaceutical grade heroin was important to save lives. It was shown that allowing hydromorphone, which is being used in the heroin assisted treatment in Europe and Scandinavia with a great deal of success, is saving lives and helping people to manage their addiction so they do not have to buy off the street anymore. They can go to the clinic and get a pharmaceutical drug, which costs pennies, to be able to save their lives and move them off the street drugs. We have to stop the illicit trafficking. That is of key importance.

If we continue to only look at the demand side of the problem and do not look at the supply side of the problem, illicit opiates will continue to not only kill people but damage lives for a long time.

A lot of the work that has been done in New York gives us the ability to truly look at evidence-based solutions to this problem, to act as quickly as we can, and to make these decisions not based on ideology, but based on clear evidence and science.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think all members of the House approach this debate with a very trenchant and acute sense of the crises gripping communities across the country. The opioid overdose crisis is not restricted to any one province or territory. It is affecting communities from British Columbia to Newfoundland and Labrador, from Inuit territories all the way down to the border with the United States, and in every major city, from Vancouver to Edmonton to Calgary to Winnipeg to Toronto to Montreal. I am told that even Cape Breton is having a serious problem with opioid overdoses. This is not restricted to any one place. It is touching communities and families across our country.

We are here debating Bill C-37 because the Conservatives have put in amendments at report stage which they could not get passed at committee. We are dealing with an amendment from the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands as well.

It has been the consistent position of the New Democrats, going back over a year now, that the opioid overdose crisis is a national public health emergency, and we need action now. It has been our position that this political issue is different than many other issues and, in fact, almost every other issue that comes before the House. It is an issue that affects life and death.

The consequences of the decisions we take in the House and the consequences of the decisions we do not take have the effect of perhaps meaning someone lives or dies on the streets of Canada today. We cannot say that about every issue in the House. It is that seriousness, that sober reality the New Democrats bring to this debate, and have brought to the debate from the beginning.

The previous speaker, on behalf of the Liberal government, felt that the government had been doing everything possible that it could be doing. That is demonstrably false. The government has failed to take into account many factors and many actions it has not taken up to now, and they remain before us. There are literally dozens of actions that are open to the government to take to respond to the overdose crisis, which it seems reluctant to do.

Interestingly, the last speaker talked about taking 16 months for three supervised consumption sites in Montreal to be approved. He blamed that on the previous Conservative government. It is true that this application was dealt with under Conservative legislation introduced in 2015, but 16 months is about the length of time the Liberal government has been power. Therefore, it unjust for the Liberals to blame that on the previous government.

The New Democrats stood in the House a year ago and told the government that it should introduce legislation to repeal or amend Bill C-2, the legislation that made it virtually impossible to open safe consumption sites, and to act on that immediately. What was the response at that time? It did not think it was necessary.

The Minister of Health publicly stated that she did not see the problem with the act and if she did eventually see a problem, she would act at that point. She felt that the remedy for dealing with the problems of Bill C-2 were administrative. She did not acknowledge or understand that the problem was the 26 separate criteria that were in the act. It is funny, because my hon. colleague, the member for Vancouver Centre, former Liberal health critic, at the time the Conservatives brought in their bill in 2015, nailed it on the head, as did the New Democrats. She identified that Bill C-2 was specifically brought in by the Conservatives to prevent the opening of safe consumption sites. Yet, when the Liberals came into power, suddenly they changed. Suddenly, they could work with the act.

In the year we have waited, finally dealing with Bill C-2, finally bringing in Bill C-37, which would streamline the act, how many Canadians have died? Approximately 2,000. Now, not all of those deaths would have been preventable. However, when we know safe consumption sites save lives, we know the sooner we can get safe consumption sites open across the country, the sooner lives will be saved. Therefore, we know Canadians died unnecessarily because of the delay of the government, and that is a fact.

The thing about the Conservative amendments are that the Conservatives, with great respect, still remain stuck in their ideological perspective that they want to slow down the introduction of safe consumption sites.

I believe the vast majority of Conservatives do not support safe consumption sites. The only reason they brought in legislation was because they fought Insite all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled, based on evidence, that the government had to grant a section 56 exemption. Therefore, the Conservatives reluctantly brought in legislation to do so, but they did so with poison pills, 26 of them in fact. The legislation had the desired effect. In the time that the Conservatives brought Bill C-2 to the House, not a single safe consumption site was opened in the country. Therefore, I think that is not a coincidence.

What we have done here, and this legislation tracks this quite well, is restore the process and the criteria for opening a safe consumption site back to the criteria identified by the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Supreme Court of Canada said that the minister must grant an exemption to an applicant who wanted to open a safe consumption site if he or she was satisfied that six criteria had been satisfied. The applicant would need to provide evidence of the intended public health benefits of the site, the local conditions indicating the need for the site, the resources available to support the site, the impact of the site on crime rates, the administrative structure in place to support the site, and expressions of community support or opposition.

I want to stop for a moment because I continually hear the Conservatives misrepresent this issue. All parties in the House believe that the expressions of community support or opposition are important and, in fact, must be taken into account by any health minister. That is in the legislation.

I hear some Conservatives say that it is not there. It absolutely is in the legislation, If they have read it, it says that expressions of community support and opposition is one of the factors that must be taken into account. Perhaps the Conservatives can read the legislation on which they want to vote.

While I am on the topic of the Conservatives, I have to say this. While we were at the health committee last week, one of the most bizarre interventions I have ever heard was made by the member for Calgary Confederation. In opposing the position of the New Democrats that we supported legislation to make safe consumption sites easier to open in the country, with an appropriate regulatory structure mirroring the six criteria set down by the Supreme Court of Canada, he said to me:

I think [the member for Vancouver Kingsway]'s intention here is to try to make the application process for safe injection sites easier.

Would you be in a similar position...if we were sitting around the table here talking about application processes for pipelines in Alberta? To apply for a pipeline is extremely onerous. It's extremely burdensome and time-consuming. It can often take years.

We fought hard as Conservatives to try to make it easier to get pipelines built throughout this country, but we're not talking about pipelines here today; we're talking about safe injection sites.

...I don't support what you're doing here...in your motion or your amendments. However, I am making again the comparison between pipelines and safe injection sites.

...If you're willing to make it easier for us in Alberta, we can make it easier for you to put in safe injection sites throughout the country.

That was the most offensive intervention I have ever heard from any member in the House or at committee. To draw a comparison between moving fossil fuels through pipelines and a process that saves Canadian lives is about the most offensive, dishonourable comment I have heard made by anybody in the House. To actually suggest that there is a comparison between the regulatory process for approving pipelines and the regulatory process to open up health facilities to save Canadians is offensive. To suggest that there could be a trade-off, that if one party supported an easier approval process for pipelines in exchange for an easier approval process for opening safe consumption sites, is also offence. This does not surprise me.

However, what I am surprised by, and where I will conclude, is the Liberal government's refusal to entertain the two amendments of the New Democrats.

First, the New Democrats moved to amend the act to better apportion the burden on an applicant for these sites to make it more appropriate. We believe that the six criteria of the Supreme Court ought to be taken into account by the Minister of Health, but that it is only the local conditions, the resources available, and the need for the local community that applicants should have the burden of meeting. The impact on crime rates, the expression of opposition or support for the site, and the regulatory structure are matters for the minister to use her discretion. We should not burden the applicants for that.

Our second amendment would have allowed provincial health ministers to bypass that process on an emergency basis and ask the Minister of Health for a section 56 exemption in order to open up temporary emergency overdose prevention sites, which are operating in Vancouver today against the law.

I am disappointed the Liberal government rejected those amendments, but the New Democrats will continue to work to move this act swiftly through Parliament so we can start saving lives as soon as possible.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I think the government is doing all it can to respond to this crisis. The question allows me to point out a few things that this government has done.

Health Canada has issued a necessary exemption to Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux to provide three supervised consumption sites in Montreal, which took nearly two years under the previous government's 26 criteria in Bill C-2, and now we are moving forward with Bill C-37.

We have made the overdose antidote naloxone more widely available. We have provided an emergency interim order to allow the importation of bulk stocks of naloxone nasal spray from the United States. We have scheduled W-18 under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. We have scheduled precursors to fentanyl. We have supported Bill C-224, the good Samaritan drug overdose act. We have enabled access to diacetylmorphine via Health Canada's special access program.

In addition, we have launched a five-point action plan to address opioid misuse, which focuses on better informing Canadians about the risk of opioids, supporting better prescription practices, reducing easy access to unnecessary opioids, supporting better treatment options, and improving the national evidence-based strategy. We also held a summit on opioids, resulting in 42 organizations bringing forward 128 concrete commitments to address the crisis. Also budget 2016 provides $50 million over two years, starting in 2016-17, to Canada Health Infoway to support short-term digital health activities in e-prescribing and telehomecare. That is just to name a few.

We have done a lot to respond to this opioid crisis, and Bill C-37 is one of the steps we are taking to respond to this crisis. I appreciate the member's support and work on Bill C-37.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that we need a broader strategy.

When we had the previous bill, Bill C-2 at the time, the Respect for Communities Act, so branded by the previous government, we needed to get rid of a lot of the provisions that were making it extremely difficult, close to impossible, to open a safe consumption site.

We may even have consensus on all sides of the House that safe consumption sites in Bill C-37 are not the whole answer to the fentanyl crisis. A lot more needs to be done, particularly for facilities designed, as the hon. member just said, for an adolescent who might not go to to a safe consumption site, and we are looking at better education.

I hope we are using the best diplomacy we have with the People's Republic of China in asking it to do more to stop the flow of fentanyl coming into Canada.

There are many steps: going from the full range of mental health and addiction counselling, supports in communities, helping law enforcement, yes, with safe consumption sites being available, and other steps as needed. They do not all have to be in this piece of legislation. This piece of legislation is likely to pass more quickly by focusing on only one aspect of what I hope will be a much broader strategy.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more with the member when he said that this issue of the opioid crisis in Canada needs to be addressed immediately.

Safe consumption sites, unlike what he said, do not perhaps save lives. They do save lives. That is why we are moving forward with the bill.

He mentioned the approval of three safe consumption sites in Montreal. Would he inform the House how long it took for this community, where it is needed and appropriate to have these safe consumption sites and which has been asking for these consumption sites for a long time, to get these sites approved under the previous Bill C-2 of the Conservative government?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I may have the singular advantage on this committee of being the only MP from Vancouver. I've lived there for the last 26 years, and Insite has been operating for—jeez, I want to say 12 years. I drive through the Downtown Eastside every week. I've been on the Downtown Eastside literally hundreds and hundreds of times, and I want to tell you something: prior to Insite opening, the rate of vacancy of businesses and the general atmosphere on the street was worse. Do you know why? People were injecting drugs on the street, in the doorways, in the alleys. Right in front of businesses, people would inject drugs and collapse in front of the door.

When Insite opened, it was in a very discreet way. I have to tell you that it was several years before I actually knew where they were. That's how discreet they are. They have taken the street drug use that would have been happening on the streets, in the alleys, and in front of businesses, and they've moved a significant amount of it indoors. I talked to members of the Chinese business association—this is located in historic Chinatown—and they had a lot of issues with this site when it first opened. If you go and talk to those businesses now, they are absolutely convinced that the opening of Insite has helped the general environment and atmosphere around Chinatown because it has moved this activity indoors.

You know, supervised consumption sites are specialized health care facilities. They provide a range of services to mitigate the harms associated with substance use. Their core functions are to connect people who use drugs with sterile injection equipment, to supervise people while they are using psychoactive drugs, and to provide overdose reversal, first aid and wound care, and referrals to other health care services. In many cases they also provide referrals to addiction treatment programs, something that I think should be part of every supervised consumption site. I really like the fact that Insite has OnSite upstairs, where there are treatment beds. Every time someone goes into Insite, they have an opportunity to go there.

I want to say that to me, the challenge before this committee is to make sure that the criteria that go before the minister before a section 56 exemption is granted should be guided by the health perspective. We don't ask the community if they are in agreement if an abortion clinic gets opened. We don't ask the community if methadone treatment should happen in a pharmacy in their community. Those are core health services. While it may impact a community, so do hospitals and so does putting in a local fire station, with trucks going in and out of the station at three in the morning. These all have an impact on the community, but we know that these are core public services. Our job here is to make sure that an applicant can get an application in and the proper factors can be taken into account, not extraneous factors that serve only one purpose.

I'll say it here: the only reason that the Conservatives passed Bill C-2, with their 26 criteria, was that they were ideologically opposed to supervised consumption sites and wanted to put up a lot of barriers to opening them. That's why, yes, three sites in Montreal were approved this week, 16 months after they applied. I mean, every stakeholder in the country is telling us that those criteria are making it take an extremely long amount of time. Toronto has been waiting for months. Victoria has been waiting for months and months.

Again, this is a public health emergency. I'm glad to see Dr. Carrie uses that term. The Liberals are using that term. The New Democrats encourage the use of this term. This is a national public health emergency. People are dying, and when people are dying, I think it behooves us as a committee to get a process that is fair, medically based, and science-based, one that can expedite the opening of these life-saving facilities while taking into account the proper criteria.

I think the criteria proposed by Dr. Carrie are just a continuation, in a truncated form, of Bill C-2. Putting up additional barriers by consulting groups that really don't have any particular stake in the health care aspect of this problem will simply delay the process, make it more difficult, and make it more time-consuming. In the meantime, we will see more people die even as we know that these sites could be up and running.

On the first day that Insite opened, they reversed 15 overdoses. Not all of those people would have died, but I bet that some of those people would have died had those overdoses happened out on the street. Those are the stakes that we're dealing with here.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I speak in great support for this. Twenty months ago, I was in the House when Bill C-2 was introduced, and although perhaps we have different views around the table on that bill, the bill came before the committee. There were five meetings and 20 witnesses, who all discussed and debated all of the issues around supervised consumption sites. There was significant testimony on the issue of what criteria ought to be considered in determining an exemption. It was well-canvassed, under 24 months ago. Four months ago, we had the opioid overdose crisis study. We, in this room, heard evidence from a number of witnesses on a wide range of issues concerning the opioid crisis, including the need for supervised consumption sites and their impact.

We know that 40 to 50 Canadians are dying every week from overdoses in this country. I pointed out before that when SARS hit this country, the total number of deaths across the whole country was 40. We are losing that many people every week. We all now agree that this is a national public health emergency. All parties are using that term now, if not the declaration. Bill C-37 provides essential measures to address the crisis—not only supervised consumption sites, but necessary legislation regarding interdiction for CBSA and limits on the production of illicit opioids with respect to pill presses.

I am fully in support of expediting this bill. I don't think this committee can move fast enough.

I just want to end by saying that yesterday someone sent me an article about the situation in Estonia, which suffered from a very similar outbreak over the years. They had a fentanyl overdose crisis in that country. What it says here is that they were asked about the advice they would give Canada and what they said was, “The most important thing is you don't waste time. If you really want to learn from us, that's the mistake we made.... Don't look for some new solutions, because you have them.”

I know there are a lot of issues to debate, but it's not the time to debate and waste time when Canadians are dying and we know that we can take measures that will save lives. I'm asking all my colleagues to support this.

Second reading

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, let me begin by saying a few words about how this affects the people of Victoria who sent me here to speak on their behalf. Where I come from this is not an academic debate; it is a crisis across our community.

In the first 11 months of last year, my community lost 60 people to overdoses. I personally know families who have lost loved ones. None of us remain unaffected. We have been robbed of far too many people who might still be our friends, our neighbours, and coworkers today if we had the services to prevent overdoses and provide the treatment that is so desperately needed in our community. Still, people in Victoria and across British Columbia have taken what action they can in the absence of leadership from their federal government.

Last April, British Columbia declared the first public health emergency in our history. In December, the provincial health minister authorized temporary overdose prevention sites. There are now three such sites in my city of Victoria.

On January 4, thanks to the hard work of so many in our community, the Vancouver Island Health Authority submitted an application for the first full service safe consumption site in Victoria, and there will be more. That application is now before the Minister of Health, and I hope that she will do everything in her power as I will do everything in mine to see that this life-saving community initiative is approved without further delay.

The hard work of those who are fighting to save lives on the streets of Victoria has not been in vain. Because of their efforts, we have three small overdose prevention sites in place. In its first month, one such site reported an overdose nearly every day. But because the right services were available, not a single life was lost. That is the difference these services make in the real world. That is why we called for this legislation a year ago. That is why we will not allow it to be delayed any further.

To understand the scale and urgency of this crisis, we need to look beyond our own communities. My home province, British Columbia, lost 914 citizens to illicit drug overdoses just last year. That is not only the deadliest year on record for us, it is on par with the highest overdose rates among the American states. Last year, Ontario lost two citizens a day. That many lives are now lost each and every day in the city of Vancouver alone.

Some 2,000 Canadians died of this in 2015. We know that many more died in 2016 as powerful opioids like fentanyl spread across the country. I know it can be hard to give meaning to numbers like that unless we know some of the victims by name.

Consider what my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway, our NDP health critic, reminded us of yesterday. In 2003, we lost 44 Canadians during the SARS crisis. During the opioid crisis, we are now losing that many fellow citizens every week. If 40 or 50 Canadians were dying of an infectious disease every week, this House surely would not stand idly by. So let me address something head-on.

There are some in this place who think there is nothing we can do to stop the crisis, who think that addiction represents a moral failure, that it has always existed on the margins of society, and all that has changed is that the drugs just get stronger.

For too long, that outdated view guided government policy, and refused to bend to evidence from doctors, courts, and front-line workers. So let us be clear. What we are facing today is unlike anything Canada has ever experienced before.

This is not just about Downtown Eastside Vancouver. It is about suburban kids experimenting with recreational drugs that turn out to be laced with opiates 100 times stronger than heroin, and then they die. It is about athletes and office workers becoming dependent on prescription painkillers, folks who have never struggled before with addiction, but now have nowhere to turn but the street.

It is about firefighters and paramedics who have to wear masks to stop inhaling drugs so powerful that a dose no bigger than a grain of salt can be deadly. Opioid use disorder is a disease and it should be treated as such. One of those firefighters is Chris Coleman. He came from Vancouver to testify before the House health committee. He said this:

It takes a toll...to work extremely hard but to feel that you are having little or no impact on a problem that is growing exponentially, like a tidal wave, on the streets of your city.

...our brothers and sisters who work in the Downtown Eastside are in trouble. They feel abandoned and they feel hopeless.

It has taken the government far too long to act, but now we have a bill before us that can begin to help. By passing this bill we can lift the barriers, some of them at least, that prevent communities from establishing life-saving safe consumption sites. We can send a signal to provinces, like British Columbia, that the federal government will step up and do its part. We can show people like Chris Coleman, and the thousands of firefighters and paramedics, police officers, and front-line workers like him, that they are not abandoned, that their work does matter, that we do care, and that their community has their back.

We have to be realistic. This bill alone will not solve the opioid crisis. We are here because government after government has failed to invest in detox, treatment, education, and prevention. The government has failed to put in place that foundation of services that would save lives and connect drug users to the support they need to stabilize and begin the long journey out of addiction.

Hundreds of Canadians are now dying in the gaps that governments have let grow year after year. For more than a year, we have been calling for a bill to repeal the Conservatives' Bill C-2 and lift the barriers that the previous government erected to make it harder for communities to open life-saving safe consumption sites. When I spoke to that bill, I called it the “24 ways to say 'no' act”.

It has taken far too long to get here. I regret that the government took so long to come around to our point of view and accept that legislative action repealing Bill C-2, or replacing it, was necessary. Thankfully, here we are.

Bill C-37 would save lives. We must pass it as soon as possible. For that reason, the NDP moved in December to fast-track the bill right to the Senate. It was blocked. I want to make sure that does not happen again and that we get this done.

I will continue to urge the minister to declare a public health emergency and allow emergency overdose prevention sites to operate legally across the country. I will continue to call on the government to use the powers it already has and expedite applications from cities like Montreal, Victoria, and Toronto, that have been gathering dust as Health Canada sits around and looks at them for months at a time. I will continue to ask why the government continues to ignore the recommendations from major cities, medical authorities, and even Parliament's own health committee, on other steps to turn the tide on this crisis.

In conclusion, passing this bill is not sufficient, but it is necessary. Therefore, on behalf of a Canadian community at ground zero in this crisis, I urge all members to support this life-saving bill and pass it now before more Canadians are lost to this preventable crisis.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, everyone in the House wants to do the right thing and recognizes that we have a real issue, especially my colleagues from British Columbia who are really at the coal face of this issue.

We just had a motion that would actually facilitate the vast majority of the bill going right through the system and up to the Senate. We do have some legitimate debate that can happen around community consultations. Perhaps what was in Bill C-2, the Respect for Communities Act, has now been completely gutted.

I know that communities can provide much wisdom. We thought having a methodical process around how communities engaged about a safe consumption was worthy of more debate.

How can the member justify taking the vast majority of the bill, on which we all agree is very important, and delay it? To be quite frank, this will perhaps create a number of weeks of additional delay.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that the opioid crisis unfolding right now in our communities, big and small, right across Canada, is nothing short of a national emergency. The suffering and damage this crisis is causing, not just in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the epicentre of the crisis, but in Vancouver East and cities across British Columbia and Canada, is absolutely devastating.

I am very grateful for the Herculean efforts of first responders, front-line workers, medical practitioners, family members, advocates, and activists who have and are continuing to work tirelessly to save lives in the midst of this terrible crisis.

People are dying in our communities. Both the city of Vancouver's chief medical health officer, Dr. Patricia Daly, and the provincial health officer, Dr. Perry Kendall, have declared this crisis a medical health emergency. In fact, this is the first time in the history of British Columbia that a health emergency has been declared.

It was noted by Dr. David Juurlink, head of clinical pharmacology and toxicology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, that the number of overdose deaths across Canada has vastly outpaced the toll during the 2003 SARS crisis that gripped this country and was declared an emergency by the Ontario government. He stated, “Forty-four people died of SARS. We lose 70 people a week to opioids in Canada”.

Still, the federal Minister of Health has refused to declare this a national health emergency.

From the beginning of 2016 to October 2016, 338 Albertans died from an apparent drug overdose related to opioids. Fentanyl was involved in 193 of them. Two Ontarians die from opioid overdoses a day. An average of 79 people die of drug overdoses every year in Montreal. If this is not a national health emergency, I do not know what is.

Today I am here once again urging the government to do what is right and what is necessary: declare a national public health emergency. Let us remember as we debate Bill C-37 that people in communities across the country are still dying.

Bill C-37 came on the heels of an announcement by the B.C. government, which was no longer willing to wait for federal approval and decided that it would take “the extraordinary measure” of signing a ministerial order making the provincial operation of temporary overdose prevention sites legal.

For those who want to put up roadblocks to harm reduction initiatives, including supervised injection facilities, I say this. It has been more than a decade since Insite, the first supervised injection facility in North America, was established. There has not been one single overdose death in that facility. Insite has saved countless lives. It has reduced the spread of diseases. The evidence is clear, and it is irrefutable.

Van East led the way, and I am so proud of the progressive forces and the movement in a community that cares so deeply that it took this issue and drove it until we had the first supervised injection facility in North America.

I still recall vividly the imagery of 1,000 crosses planted at Oppenheimer Park in our community, what we call the killing fields. Each one of those crosses bears a name, the name of a person who somebody loved in our community, a daughter, a son, an aunt, an uncle, somebody's child. I still recall how family and friends came together and mourned those preventable deaths. It was a call to action, and we drove the issue and eventually Insite was established.

It is sad to me that despite this irrefutable evidence-based outcome, there are still those who want to block this critical health measure.

The former government took every step possible to undermine the work of Insite. Even after the Supreme Court of Canada's 9-0 decision that ordered the government to exempt Insite from prosecution, stating clearly that the government cannot close Insite because of its ideology, the Harper government passed Bill C-2, the ill-named Respect for Communities Act, which introduced near insurmountable barriers to opening new supervised injection sites in Canada. The roadblocks have been widely condemned and no doubt have contributed to preventable deaths.

After more than a year of foot-dragging, thousands of overdoses, and hundreds of needless deaths, the Liberal government today is finally bringing in measures to address the ideological relic of the years past.

While I support Bill C-37, to be clear, I would much rather that the bill was about repealing Bill C-2. Nonetheless, this is a move in the right direction. It is a step forward, so I am here to support it.

Bill C-37 has to get through the House, then it has to be sent to committee, then has to go to the Senate. It will be some time before the bill passes. I want to applaud my colleague, the member for Vancouver Kingsway, the NDP's critic for health. His proposal to try to get the bill through all stages as quickly as possible, sadly was rejected.

Many concerned citizens and organizers are so frustrated by the glaring absence of substantive action on this that they have felt compelled to act unilaterally with pop-up supervised injection sites. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. This is a testament to those individuals' courage and dedication to saving lives in our community.

Let me take a moment to thank them and acknowledge the numerous volunteers and activists; the leadership shown by Ann Livingston and her peers at VANDU; Sarah Blyth, the former Vancouver Park Board chair; and many others for their incredible dedication and caring. Were it not for their efforts, I can say with confidence that many more people would have died.

In going forward, as we wait for Bill C-37 to become law, what action can be taken to save lives? Let me start with a shout-out to all the tireless first responders for their incredible efforts.

I heard first-hand from firefighters about their experiences in this crisis, particularly from those men and women at Fire Hall No. 2, with the incredible overload of calls that came into that hall and the stresses firefighters had to face each and every day as they had to witness death. Imagine that as their work every single day.

It is not limited to Fire Hall No. 2 in my riding. In fact, all the other fire halls in my community across East Van have had an increase in calls with respect to overdose challenges and issues. I heard from firefighters who told me that during their shifts, sometimes they would have two, three, four, or more calls to go out and try to save lives. That is what they are faced with. Imagine the stress.

The BC Coalition of Nursing Associations hosted an emergency forum on the nursing response to the opioid crisis. Like so many, they are devastated by this medical health emergency, and they themselves are suffering from stress, trauma, and exhaustion. All first responders, nurses, health care workers at emergency rooms, and front-line workers with NGOs are overextended, and they deserve our support.

While the Minister of Health said that the Liberals would take action and provide support to first responders, we are still waiting. Let us get on with it.

I want to say that we need to do much more. We need to move to a longer-term resolution. Real effort needs to be made to provide addiction treatment. For some, traditional treatment works; for others, not so much. We need to move forward with providing treatment that deals with the addiction, including opioid prescriptions and opioid substitutes. The goal of stabilizing people and getting them away from the illegal market saves lives.

We also need to look at the issues around the social determinants of health. We need safe, secure, affordable housing. We need to address poverty. We need to look at the issue of breaking that cycle. We need to address aboriginal child apprehension.

We need a comprehensive approach so that we can move forward once and for all and save lives.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the excellent member for Vancouver East.

I thank the House for allowing me to speak today on Bill C-37, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make related amendments to other acts. Before I get into the substance of Bill C-37, I would like to remind the House of some of the events that occurred before it was introduced.

In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the federal government must grant Vancouver's safe injection site, Insite, and other such sites section 56 exemptions under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act in order to uphold the fundamental right of all people to life and security. The Supreme Court added that safe injection sites will “decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that [they] will have a negative impact on public safety”.

In response to this decision by Canada's highest court, the then Conservative government finally tabled Bill C-2 in 2015. With the thinly veiled intent of not allowing new supervised injection sites to open, the government put in place 26 conditions for obtaining a legal exemption, making it virtually impossible to open new centres.

As if that were not enough, the bill also gave discretionary power to the minister responsible to refuse to grant the legal exemption even if the 26 conditions were met. I always maintained that it would not be possible to obtain an exemption given the number of requirements already imposed by the law. However, this discretionary power proves that the Conservatives were not going to allow, under any circumstances, new centres to open.

I sat on the committee and heard witnesses, with supporting evidence, describe the benefits of injection sites, including harm reduction and public health, and tell us that public safety would not be jeopardized.

By refusing to consider clear and compelling evidence that supervised injection sites save the lives of many very vulnerable people, the Conservatives and their ideological approach only continued to marginalize and criminalize people suffering from addiction. This unfortunately also resulted in overdoses and deaths that could have been prevented.

A serious opioid crisis is plaguing the country, particularly the west coast, as my colleague, the member for Vancouver Kingsway, our health critic, has repeatedly stated here in the House.

In 2016, in British Columbia alone, opioid overdoses took the lives of 914 people, 80% more than in 2015. In April, the situation prompted B.C. public health authorities to declare a state of emergency for the first time in the province's history.

Although we do not have statistics for the number of overdose-related deaths in Canada, it is estimated to have been over 2,000 across the country in 2015. It is easy to imagine the death toll in 2016 being much higher because of the rapid spread of extremely powerful opioids across the country.

Overdoses and drug-related deaths are on the rise in every part of the country, and the crisis is expected to hit Ontario and Quebec this year. The opioid crisis in Canada is now officially out of control.

One of the main reasons the crisis is mounting is that fentanyl is cheap and easy to transport, and just a small amount can be used to make thousands of doses. Because this drug is so cheap, and because too few resources are invested in raising awareness and prevention, young and inexperienced users are overdosing. In many cases, they do not even know that there is fentanyl in the drug they are using.

In February 2016, when the crisis was emerging, the New Democratic Party called for the repeal of Bill C-2 to make it easier for organizations to get legal exemptions to open supervised consumption sites.

Last fall, the NDP got the Standing Committee on Health to study the opioid overdose crisis. In its report, the committee made 38 recommendations to the federal government.

We were also the first to request that a national public health emergency be declared in order to give the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada the authority to take extraordinary measures in order to coordinate a response to the opioid crisis, including the creation of injection sites on an emergency basis. Last December, after Bill C-37 was introduced, we also tried to have the bill fast-tracked in order to resolve the crisis as quickly as possible.

The Liberals say they support supervised injection sites, and yet their government has not approved a single new facility since coming to power. In fact, the Minister of Health initially argued that legislative changes to Bill C-2 were not even necessary, even though the real problem was with the bill itself, with its 26 separate requirements acting as effective barriers to any new sites, as had been pointed out by stakeholders and the NDP.

Faced with the growing crisis across the country and mounting pressure from stakeholders and the NDP, the Minister of Health finally gave in and, on December 12, 2016, introduced Bill C-37, which we are debating here today. Specifically, the bills seeks to simplify the process for applying for a legal exemption so that communities dealing with the opioid crisis can actually open supervised injection sites.

In the preamble, the bill states:

Whereas harm reduction is an important component of a comprehensive, compassionate and evidence-based drug policy that complements prevention, treatment and enforcement measures;

It is in the context of harm prevention that the City of Montreal and the public health authority officially submitted their application for legal exemption in May 2015 for three fixed services in three neighbourhoods and one mobile service. They are still awaiting. It is not surprising. Not a single supervised consumption site has opened in Canada since Bill C-2 was passed.

We are not the only ones calling for the government to move forward with implementing injection services. In summer 2015, the mayor of Montreal, Denis Coderre, who wanted to get moving on this by the fall, said the following to The Montreal Gazette.

“What are we waiting for? People are dying”.

One year later, in July 2016, Sterling Downey, municipal councillor and Project Montréal critic, asked the mayor a question:

“How do you go into the media and announce over a year ago that you're going to open these sites and back off and go radio silent?”

Then, concerned organizations also tired of waiting. Jean-François Mary, executive director of the Association québécoise pour la promotion de la santé des personnes utilisatrices de drogues, had this to say to the Montreal Gazette.

The organizations that are supposed to host the sites don’t even dare set opening dates anymore. We’re stuck in a grey area where, every year for the last three years, we’re told they’ll be open in the spring. But it doesn’t happen.”

We need to move forward quickly. Many groups, such as Anonyme and Dopamine in Montreal, have been waiting for too long to establish services that have been proven to save lives.

In the meantime, in Montreal alone, 70 people on average die every year as a result of drug overdoses. As I have already said, the crisis in western Canada will be coming to Quebec this year. Even without this crisis, and if only for the sake of harm reduction and public health, the services provided by supervised injection sites are vital.

In Montreal, 68% of injection drug users have hepatitis C. Opening these centres could do much to decrease the incidence of disease related to the use of syringes. Speaking of syringes, Hochelaga, the riding I represent, is the second largest area in Montreal after the downtown area, which has the largest number of injection drug users. A supervised injection site could help get needles out of parks where our children play.

I will support this bill in the hope that it will come into effect quickly.

Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to serve with the member on the health committee. We have worked together to make some really good recommendations and directions in our report.

With respect to supervised consumption sites and harm reduction, we heard from many witnesses how important these sites are as part of early treatment and early intervention and better management for people who are consuming.

We also heard from witnesses that the previous government's Respect for Communities Act, Bill C-2, introduced such stringent rules and 26 application criteria that we have not been able to open a new safe consumption site across Canada since Bill C-2 was introduced. The Supreme Court has ruled on this and Bill C-37 would simply enshrine the court's ruling.

I would note that one of the five criteria is support and expressions of community support for the centre. I do believe there is appropriate response to community concerns and that part of the process of approval deals specifically with hearing from and looking for communities' expressions of support or their expressions of opposition.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Brampton East.

The emergence of fentanyl and its analogues, an opioid at least 100 times more potent than morphine, has given rise to a public health crisis in Canada that requires urgent action.

Bill C-37 proposes to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act in a number of ways to address this crisis. In terms of harm reduction, it proposes to simplify the process of applying both for a supervised consumption site and for the exemptions that would allow certain activities to take place at a supervised site. I am pleased to see an evidence-based health-centric focus on harm reduction return to our health policy and legislation.

With regard to law enforcement and border security, amongst many changes, it would prohibit the importation of designated devices, unless they are registered with the Minister of Health. This would specifically prohibit unregistered importation of pill presses and encapsulators. It would expand the offence of possession, production, sale, or importation of anything with the knowledge that it will be used to produce or traffic in methamphetamines.

The bill would authorize the minister to temporarily add to a schedule substances that the minister has reasonable grounds to believe pose a significant risk to public health and safety. It would modernize inspection powers allowing border officers to open mail weighing 30 grams or less in order to stop drugs like fentanyl from entering Canada illegally through the mail system.

I would like to add my support for this bill and the proposed amendments to the CDSA. I would frame my support with particular reference to the recommendations from the December 2016 report by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health, entitled “Report and Recommendations on the Opioid Crisis in Canada”. I am pleased to be a member of the standing committee.

My following remarks draw heavily on this report and the excellent summation of the witnesses' testimony and the committee's deliberations, as provided by the committee's members and supporting staff. The members of the standing committee agreed to undertake an emergency study of the opioid crisis in Canada. During the course of its study, the committee held five meetings, where it heard from a range of stakeholders, including federal and provincial government representatives, health care professionals, addiction experts, emergency front-line responders, representatives of first nations communities, and individuals with lived experience in substance abuse and addiction.

These witnesses outlined specific ways to address the opioid crisis and implored the committee to make recommendations that would lead to concrete action. I cannot emphasize enough the powerful, emotional, and compelling testimony that we heard from all witnesses urging the government to take action on this crisis.

The committee heard from witnesses that this situation began reaching crisis proportions in July 2013, when fentanyl, a prescription opioid 100 times more potent than morphine, became increasingly available on the illicit drug market. The assistant commissioner for federal policing special services with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police advised the committee that, because of the high demand for this drug, organized crime groups began importing illegal fentanyl from China. These are then transformed into tablet forms in clandestine labs in Canada using pill presses and are disguised as legal prescriptions, such as OxyContin, or are used in powder form as cutting agents for other illicit drugs.

The unknown potency of illegal fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, coupled with the fact that users are often unaware that they are taking the drug, has resulted in a dramatic increase in drug deaths in Canada. British Columbia has become the epicentre of the crisis because of its maritime ports and relative proximity to China.

According to the chief coroner for British Columbia, the percentage of drug deaths involving fentanyl increased from 5% in 2012 to 60% in 2016, with the involvement of fentanyl doubling the rates of drug deaths in the province. According to the coroner, the province had experienced—and this at the date of the testimony—488 illicit drug deaths at the end of August 2016, or approximately 61 deaths a month.

In addition—and again, I am drawing from the text of the my committee's report—the committee heard that the RCMP is collaborating with law enforcement agencies in China to combat international drug trafficking networks, as well as to gain support for regulatory control of fentanyl analogues to prevent their distribution in Canada.

In terms of federal efforts at the border, the committee heard that Canada Border Services Agency is using innovative technologies and dogs to detect fentanyl at borders and maritime ports, resulting in more than 115 seizures since 2010.

However, the vice-president of the operations branch of the CBSA explained to the committee that the agency faces challenges detecting and intercepting fentanyl sent through the postal system. Fentanyl powder and equivalent substances are most often smuggled into Canada through the postal stream. Due to the increased volume of packages sent through postal and courier services, it can be a challenge for the CBSA to identify and intercept all shipments of concern. Postal and courier shipments are often accompanied by false declarations or are intentionally mislabelled. The RCMP further elaborated that these shipments are disguised or labelled in a variety of ways, such as printer ink, toys, and DVDs. To address this issue, Canada Border Services was reviewing the Customs Act to see if it could remove the restrictions on the agency's ability to open packages weighing less than 30 grams.

With respect to harm reduction strategies, the committee heard that supervised consumption sites are an evidence-based harm reduction measure. A number of witnesses expressed the opinion that changes to the CDSA, introduced in 2015, through Bill C-2, were a barrier to establishing new supervised consumption sites across the country and should be repealed or significantly amended.

After much deliberation, the committee made a number of recommendations.

Specific to harm reduction measures is recommendation number eight: “That the Government of Canada repeal or significantly amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act where it creates barriers to communities in establishing supervised consumption sites...”. Bill C-37 addresses this recommendation specifically.

Specific to law enforcement and border security, the committee made the following recommendations:

Recommendation 33 says:

That the Government of Canada take measures to grant authority and lawful privilege to Canada Border Services Agency officials to search and/or test suspect packages that weigh under 30 grams.

Recommendation 34 says:

That the Government of Canada develop a federal enforcement and interdiction strategy around the importation of illicit opioids.

Recommendation 35 says:

That the Government of Canada adopt measures to regulate commercial pill presses to limit their possession to pharmacists and others who hold an appropriate licence.

Recommendation 36 says:

That stronger criminal penalties for having a production machine be established.

Finally, recommendation 37 says:

That the Government of Canada provide more resources for drug testing packages and other shipments.

I am pleased to see that Bill C-37 addresses these recommendations and is consistent with the cited findings of the committee.

Looking beyond Bill C-37 and the amendments to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the committee heard that this crisis should be considered a public health crisis, and the committee produced many other recommendations related to harm reduction, addictions prevention including prescribing practices and public education, addictions treatment, the need for mental health supports, and issues unique to first nations.

The Minister of Health has already responded to this crisis through a five-point action plan that includes better informing Canadians about the risks of opioids, supporting better prescribing practices, reducing easy access to unnecessary opioids, supporting better treatment options for patients, improving the evidence base and improving data collection, and also by making naloxone available as an emergency treatment.

Progressive action was also initiated by the minister through a pan-Canadian opioid summit held in November 2016.

Further, the minister has responded to every request that the provinces have raised with the government, and she continues to work with the provinces.

Finally, while this public health crisis must be addressed through the measures proposed in Bill C-37, and while as Canadians we battle the addictions brought on by opioid usage, it is important to remember that some Canadians, like Christina in my riding of Oakville, suffer from unrelenting and incurable pain. My thoughts are with her today. We must always ensure that their needs are addressed and that appropriate pharmaceutical care remains available to them.

I want the residents of my riding of Oakville to be protected from the opioid crisis and illicit fentanyl distribution. I will be supporting Bill C-37, and I encourage all members of the House to support this bill and to work to address this terrible public health crisis. Let us get this bill through the House and the other place as quickly as we can to help these Canadians.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge.

We can, and should, treat drug use and abuse as a health issue and not as a crime. Our government has committed to a sensible and evidence-based approach to drug policy; that approach is emphasized by the recent task force report on cannabis regulation, and it is emphasized by our health minister's actions. Those include restoring harm reduction as a key pillar of Canada's drug strategy, permitting physicians to prescribe heroin to severe drug addicts, and introducing Bill C-37, effectively repealing the previous Conservative government's attack on evidence and supervised consumption sites.

The story of that attack and how we have ultimately come to Bill C-37 begins with Insite and the former Conservative health minister's refusal to renew its exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Insite is a supervised injection clinic in Vancouver. It is North America's first government-sanctioned such facility, having receiving a conditional exemption in September 2003. Since that time, it has been open seven days a week; users are provided with clean injection equipment to use; they are monitored by staff during injection; health professionals provide treatment and support in the event of overdoses; and users are provided with health care information, counselling, and referrals to health authorities and service providers.

In the fall of 2007, a detox centre opened above Insite, named Onsite, to provide detox on demand. It is a drug-free environment, supported by addiction specialists, physicians, nurses, and peers.

Since opening, Insite has saved lives and improved health outcomes, with the support of local police as well as municipal and provincial governments.

The benefits of Insite and supervised injection facilities and the lack of any related negative impacts have been well documented in leading scientific journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and the British Medical Journal.

An expert advisory committee's report to the former Conservative health minister concluded that there was no evidence of increases in drug-related loitering, drug dealing, or petty crime around Insite; there was no evidence that Insite increased the relapse rate among injection drug users; the police data showed no changes in rates of crime recorded in the area; and a cost-benefit analysis was favourable.

Despite all of this, that minister refused to grant a continued exemption and stated that Insite represents a failure of public policy.

Contrary to the claims of that Conservative minister, Insite did not represent a failure of public policy, but the Conservative minister's actions did represent a failure of decision-making in the public interest.

In fact, it was such a failure that the Supreme Court of Canada, in a unanimous nine to nothing decision in 2011, ordered the minister to grant an exemption to Insite and stated, as follows, at paragraph 133:

Insite saves lives. Its benefits have been proven. There has been no discernable negative impact on the public safety and health objectives of Canada during its eight years of operation. The effect of denying the services...to the population it serves is grossly disproportionate to any benefit that Canada might derive from presenting a uniform stance on the possession of narcotics.

At paragraph 153, the Supreme Court held that a minister must consider a number of factors in exercising discretion to grant an exemption from the CDSA, including:

...[one] evidence, if any, on the impact of such a facility on crime rates, [two] the local conditions indicating a need for such a supervised injection site, [three] the regulatory structure in place to support the facility, [four] the resources available to support its maintenance, and [five] expressions of community support or opposition.

Yet, in the face of that landmark decision, the previous Conservative administration remained wilfully blind to the evidence and continued to attack safe injection facilities.

With the introduction of then Bill C-2, the previous government ignored our Supreme Court and, in the words of the Canadian Nurses Association, created “unnecessary and excessive barriers to establishing supervised injection facilities”.

Bill C-37 would remove those unnecessary and excessive barriers. Bill C-37 would simplify the process of applying for an exemption from the CDSA for supervised consumption sites, as well as the process for subsequent exemptions.

Specifically, Bill C-37 would replace the excessive 26 criteria imposed by the Conservatives with the five factors I have reiterated, as set out by our Supreme Court. It would simplify documentation, it would require reasons for a minister's decision, and it would remove the moralizing principles regarding illicit substances.

Bill C-37 would save lives, and one need not condone drug use to want to save lives.

This is a good beginning to a modern drug policy, with public health and harm reduction front and centre.

In addressing the United Nations last year on April 20, our Minister of Health said:

I am proud to stand up for drug policy that is informed by solid scientific evidence and uses a lens of public health to maximize education and minimize harm.

That commitment to evidence is important, but it also demands that we go further. Fentanyl and illicit drug overdoses killed hundreds of Canadians in 2016. B.C. health officials and medical experts have called it a public health emergency. It is so serious that the B.C. government opened two new supervised consumption sites without waiting for federal approval. We need new solutions. The current approach, the so-called war on drugs of criminal sanctions and preaching abstinence, is not working.

In 2011, the Global Commission on Drug Policy called for an end to drug prohibition stating that government expenditures on futile supply reduction strategies and incarceration displace cost-effective and evidence-based instrument investments in demand and harm reduction.

That commission included former presidents and prime ministers of Brazil, Colombia, Greece, Mexico, and Switzerland, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and former Supreme Court of Canada judge and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour. Prohibition has failed to effectively curtail the supply or consumption of illicit drugs, and its unintended consequences can be devastating, creating a lucrative and violent black market and shifting resources from public health to law enforcement instead.

Those enforcement efforts only serve to divert problems to new geographic areas or to inadvertently promote the use of alternative and potentially less safe drugs, and the use of the criminal justice system marginalizes those who are already often at society's margins, diminishing the likelihood that they seek treatment.

Prohibition treats the very people we want to help, the victims, the users, the addicts, as criminals. Looking outside of Canada, we know there is a better path.

In 2001, Portugal decriminalized low-level possession and use of all drugs. Those caught with drugs are sent before dissuasion commissions, which include representatives from law, medicine, and social work. More than 80% of cases are dismissed without sanction, and the number of people arrested and sent to criminal courts declined by more than 60%. There has been no major increase in drug use. In fact, the level of drug use is below the European average. Adolescent and problematic drug use has decreased, and the number of deaths from drug overdoses has dropped significantly.

As Donna May, a woman who lost her daughter to overdose on August 21, 2012, said that we have to get ahead of this crisis and the fastest and most effective way of successfully accomplishing this may well be done by taking away the profit from the black market and dangerously produced counterfeit opioids by legalizing and regulating all substance use. She said that at the very least following the lead of other countries which have decriminalized drugs and substituted criminalization with a health protocol needs to be seriously considered.

I am not suggesting that I have all of the answers, but I am asking our government and this House to consider additional public health and harm reduction measures. I am asking us to work together to save lives.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we created Bill C-2. There are 26 criteria, which include things like the mayor and council having consultations, the chief of police knowing what is going on, and letting the community know. In Kamloops, I had someone come to me who would have really liked to have had some input in terms of Kamloops and the locations. Under even the current system, the comment period had already closed.

What I am saying is that the Liberals have gutted a lot of reasonable processes around community decision-making on consumption sites. Something that really needs a good conversation in this House is Bill C-2, the Respect for Communities Act, and those 26 criteria. Maybe one or two were overdone, but there were a whole bunch that were great, and the current government has gutted those.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for South Surrey—White Rock.

I am rising to speak to Bill C-37, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make related amendments to other acts.

As we all know, addiction issues have been a challenge throughout the history of mankind. As noted by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, addiction touches everyone. As of 2013, one in five Canadians, or six million people, met the criteria for substance use disorder, causing harm and heartache among families and communities throughout the country. Today, however, we are facing an unprecedented crisis: the casual or addictive use of drugs now includes a much higher risk of death.

I would note there were some questions in the previous exchange where the government talked about how it worked very hard with the provinces in terms of moving forward, but what the Liberals did not say is that they worked hard with the opposition.

There are many pieces of the bill that are very supportable and should move forward in a rapid and timely way, but the Liberals know very well that there is one component that we have a few concerns with, and I will articulate the reasons a little later. If the Liberals are talking about being concerned about this crisis, they should have proposed something that would allow us to immediately move forward with all the things we know we can agree on, and take a little bit more time for the conversation over the one piece that is giving us a bit of a challenge. This is a big concern.

The other big concern which people who are listening and watching need to be aware of is that on April 14, 2016, B.C. declared a public health emergency in response to this rise in drug overdoses and deaths. Now it is months later, at a time when pill presses and encapsulators, and border issues have been identified, but what did the government first talk about in its call for debate yesterday? It was a bill on Statistics Canada. It is absolutely shameful. The government had the opportunity to move forward on some important issues, but Statistics Canada was more important on our first day back. They presented a bill that the Liberals knew there were some challenges with instead of presenting something that we could all immediately support and move forward in a timely way. I think the Liberals should look at how they have dealt with this issue.

An emergency was declared in April, and it was recognized. Maybe it has not hit some of the other provinces, but it is interesting that it was a Liberal member, the member for Vancouver Centre, who said that if this crisis was happening in Ontario or Quebec, action would have been taken much sooner. That was said by a Liberal member, a family physician, who called out her own party on how it responded to this particular crisis. That is absolutely shameful.

The recent epidemic is characterized by an increasing proportion of death related to fentanyl, which is an illicit opioid substance. Back in 2012, fentanyl was seen in about 5% of the illicit drugs, and in 2016 it was seen in 60%. Fentanyl is dramatically increasing in use. In British Columbia in 2016, there were 914 deaths, with 142 in December alone.

Many might have read the Facebook page of the grandmother who was grieving for her young granddaughter saying that she just needed some help. She felt that maybe she could have dealt with her granddaughter who died a couple of days before Christmas.

In Kamloops, a community I represent, there were 40 deaths over the year. It typically had 10 deaths, steady over years and years, but in 2016, 40 people died in Kamloops from a drug overdose. With SARS, there were 40 deaths across Canada, and H1N1 had 400 deaths across Canada. I was on the health committee when H1N1 was happening. I remember that we had daily briefings from the chief public health officer of Canada. It was Dr. Butler-Jones at the time. He kept parliamentarians up to date every day on what was happening. That was for 400 deaths across Canada. We are talking about 900 deaths in British Columbia alone.

We do have in Bill C-37 a partial response to this crisis. As I indicated earlier, there are measures in the bill that are very supportable, such as the prohibition of designated devices, encapsulators, and adding to the schedule of substances reasonable grounds to represent health risks. There are more powers proposed for Canada Border Services Agency. We knew a year ago those were some of the things that could have been done to avert this crisis. The addition to broaden the prohibition and penalties to now apply to the possession, sale, importation, or transport of anything intended to be used is an important measure.

However, if the government had been concerned, it could have dealt with this many months ago instead of debating a bill about Statistics Canada. This is about people who are dying in British Columbia, and soon across the country.

I want to talk about the areas in which I have what I think are reasonable concerns. That is the part we need to be debating as parliamentarians. There is one area where there is a bit of a difference of opinion and it has to do with the process that should be in place for what they call safe consumption sites, or what are more commonly known by the public as injection sites, to move forward. That is a reasonable discussion.

Our Conservative government brought in the Respect for Communities Act. Certainly, there are some people who felt it made it too difficult, but it is a valid place for us to talk about what that should look like. We originally had 26 criteria that were to be addressed when people applied for a safe injection site. This bill changes it from 26 criteria to five factors. That is a little vague.

When I talked to the minister at committee, I tried to go through the 26 criteria. I asked her what objection she had to them, but I really did not get an answer. None of them said they were really concerned about any one piece, “I don't think the RCMP should be able to have a say”, or “I don't think municipal council should have a say”. Those are the criteria that are in place. What is being proposed now is a few factors.

The other thing the government has done is there were six principles that should be part of the thinking around whether the minister would approve a site or not. These principles have been totally removed and there are no principles left. Those are principles that recognize the issue of crime profits or criminal activity that is supported with illicit substances. We have gone from 26 criteria to five and there are no other checks and balances.

Using Kamloops as an example, the mayor and council voted unanimously to support a safe injection site. They have talked to the RCMP. They are having a consultation process under former Bill C-2, which is now the Respect for Communities Act. That process allows the mayor and council to have input. They supported the safe injection site. I am not sure how they would feel if they were told they would not even be talked to about it, that it was just going to happen. They can write a letter and say whether they like it or not. They endorsed it unanimously. Interior health will be looking at it. That is important. As we know, Ottawa has not endorsed it. Those are pieces of public consultation that the government is looking to replace with vague references to talking to the community, but it really does not matter because communities do not tend to like these things. Kamloops council voted 100% for it. Why does the government not trust the community process that is specific and methodical?

There are some good pieces in the bill. We should move forward on those important pieces immediately. We should have done it a year ago. We should have a reasoned and appropriate debate around the changes to the safe injection sites. However, there are some pieces that are missing when it comes to the government's response to the crisis.

My colleague from South Surrey—White Rock and I both have said to listen to British Columbia. Let us call a state of emergency to raise the elevation so that people know about what is happening, because it is happening in B.C. now, and it will be going across the country. Youth councils are saying that there should be a national education campaign. Moms and dads need to be having that conversation. They will not have the conversation if they do not know.

In conclusion, let us look at the pieces, move forward on those critical ones, then look at doing those additional recommendations.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

Madam Speaker, the Liberals have been in power for more than a year now and we have been asking that the Conservatives' Bill C-2 be withdrawn and reworked in order to consider the possibility of opening injection sites to help reduce the number of overdoses and overdose-related deaths.

We know that it is often the young, inexperienced users who end up overdosing. Some do not know that certain drugs contain fentanyl. Why have the Liberals still not reinvested in awareness and prevention? There is a desperate lack of resources for this. Front-line workers are saying that they need more resources to work on prevention.

What is the Liberal government doing to save lives and ensure that young people are not the primary victims of its inaction?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, sometimes Liberals say that the New Democrats are Liberals in a hurry. The corollary to that is that Liberals are New Democrats who will not take action.

My hon. colleague brings up something that I made a central point of my speech, which is that when Liberals were in opposition, they stood in the House and told Canadians that they opposed Bill C-2, that they believed that supervised consumption sites save lives, and that Bill C-2 was deliberately designed to prevent the opening of supervised injection sites in this country. In fact, the member for Vancouver Centre, the senior Liberal in British Columbia and the Liberal critic for health at the time, called the bill unconstitutional.

That is why New Democrats, as soon as the Parliament changed back in October of 2015, at first opportunity, called on the government to introduce legislation to amend or repeal Bill C-2. New Democrats started the call in February of last year. Why? It was because we saw that there was a crisis. People were dying every week.

What did the Liberals do? They told the NDP they did not think, while in government, that there was any problem with the legislation, that they just thought it was an administrative problem. Every month, New Democrats stood in the House and told Liberals they had to act to change it because supervised consumption sites save lives and the bill was a barrier. Month after month, Liberals stalled and did nothing while Canadians died. It took them until December, after over a year in office, before they actually introduced legislation, which will now take months to pass.

I am going to give the Liberal government no credit for its inaction and delay on introducing legislation that is so critical to saving lives in this country, and New Democrats will continue to push the government to take the dozens of recommendations that are necessary to continue to do so.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I support many of the comments the member made in reference to Bill C-2, especially his reflections on the Conservative government at the time. I was here, like him, and I like to think it was not only the NDP. The Liberals were also in great opposition to Bill C-2 and made commitments to look at making changes. What we are talking about today addresses some of the issues that were raised during the debate on Bill C-2 by both opposition parties.

I agree, in good part, with the beginning of the member's comments. Where I take some exception, and where the member needs to get a better appreciation, is on the statement that the national government has not demonstrated leadership. The Minister of Health and the Prime Minister have demonstrated leadership on the opioid crisis here in Canada.

The Minister of Health has been very proactive. The member himself made reference to a series of things the Minister of Health has done. We have to take into consideration an enormous amount of work with the different stakeholders, whether they are provincial administrations, indigenous people, first responders, and so forth. It has to be a coordinated approach.

My question for the member is this. Does he not recognize the importance of working with others, since it will not be just Ottawa that resolves this particular problem? Maybe he could comment further on how the House today can assist in expediting the passage of this legislation.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, Canada is currently in the grips of an unprecedented opioid overdose crisis. According to David Juurlink, one of Canada's leading drug safety experts:

This is the greatest drug safety crisis of our time, and it's not hyperbole to say that every one of you knows somebody with an opioid use disorder. Whether you realize it or not, you do, and it's quite possible that you know someone who's lost a loved one to these drugs.

He went on to say:

The scope of the problem in Canada is completely unknown. We know that in the U.S., the CDC estimates that over the last 20 years, about a quarter of a million people have died from opioids, more than half of them from prescription opioids.... We have no corresponding numbers in Canada. I speculate that somewhere in the order of 20,000 Canadians have died over the last 20 years from these drugs. The fact that no federal politician can tell you that number is a national embarrassment.

In my home province of British Columbia, illicit drug overdoses claimed the lives of at least 914 people last year, making it the deadliest on record for overdoses. This places it at the same level as Alabama, the worst state in the United States in terms of overdose rates.

Last year two Ontarians died every single day from drug overdoses, with one of every eight deaths of young adults due to opioids, and 338 Albertans died last year. Quebec overdose deaths have increased by 140% over the last 10 years.

Although Canada does not track overdose deaths at the national level, which again is an inexcusable deficiency in national health policy, it is estimated that in 2015 alone, 2,000 Canadians died from overdoses. That number is certainly much higher for 2016 due to the rapid proliferation of extremely potent illicit opioids throughout Canada.

It is patently clear that drug overdoses and deaths are increasing in every region of the country and will continue to do so without extraordinary and effective action. The significant increase in overdoses in 2016 prompted B.C.'s provincial health officer, Dr. Perry Kendall, to declare a public health emergency last April for the first time in the province's history. Notwithstanding this extraordinary step, the crisis has deepened.

December saw another record spike in deaths in B.C., with Vancouver alone now registering 15 overdose deaths per week. This is truly a crisis of epidemic proportions.

Fentanyl, an opioid 100 times more potent than heroin, has been called a game-changer for drug overdose deaths in Canada, and now we are seeing overdoses caused by carfentanil, an opioid so powerful that it poses overdose risks to those exposed to it simply through inhalation or contact with their skin. These drugs are so dangerous that a dose the size of a grain of salt can cause overdose or death.

I think we can all acknowledge that there are many aspects to this complex crisis. Fentanyl is strong, cheap, easy to transport, and small amounts can be made into thousands of doses. For $10,000 or $20,000, manufacturers can obtain a kilogram of fentanyl, an amount so compact it can fit in a shoebox, and turn it into $20 million in profit.

Many overdoses are being caused by inexperienced young people experimenting with non-opioid recreational drugs, unaware that they are contaminated with fentanyl. For example, this past fall in Vancouver, there were nine overdoses recorded within 20 minutes in people who were using cocaine that was unknowingly laced with fentanyl.

Opioids have been overused and over-prescribed by doctors for pain management, leading to many patients becoming dependent and addicted. Canada has among the highest per capita volume of opioids dispensed in the world, totalling 19.1 million prescriptions in Canada in 2015, up from 18.7 million the year before. That is about one opioid prescription written for every two Canadians.

Even though there are no credible peer-reviewed studies that demonstrate that opioids afford more benefit than harm for chronic pain, opioid use has been marketed beyond palliative and cancer patients for regular use for people experiencing back pain and other common ailments. Prescribers were incorrectly taught that addiction was a rare consequence of using prescription opioids long term, that less than 1% of patients would become addicted.

In reality, the addiction rate is estimated to be 10%, with 30% suffering from opioid use disorder. This misuse of opioids reveals the absence of broad and effective treatment for chronic pain in Canada. Critically, there is an alarming lack of public detox and treatment facilities available across Canada, caused by underinvestment for decades at both provincial and federal levels, and even less resources dedicated to education and prevention.

Bluntly, our health care system has an appalling lack of publicly covered treatment options for Canadians suffering from substance use disorder, a pox on both Liberal and Conservative governments over the last number of decades.

In indigenous communities, inconsistent federal support for community governed and culturally based treatment has made addressing the opioid crisis a particular challenge. Nurses employed by Health Canada do not possess the scope of practice to support indigenous people in addressing opioid addiction in their own communities beyond 30 days by federal edict.

As Dr. Claudette Chase, a family physician at the Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority recently told our health committee:

I tear up every time I think about this, because our workers are putting themselves on the line to hear the stories of incredible trauma. We have little funding to train them. These are community members who, because Health Canada has refused to step up, have stepped up themselves. They do this and they get traumatized daily, and I have little or no means to support them other than being their family doctor. It's not acceptable.

Addiction is a complex psychosocial disease with genetic, environmental, and social determinant influences of every type. Although this crisis has been garnering increased media attention in recent months, make no mistake that it has been allowed to escalate for years, recently under a Conservative government blinded by superficial ideology and now under a Liberal government paralyzed by timid expediency.

What both Conservative and Liberal governments have in common, however, is a refusal to act on evidence in a timely fashion, and decades of history of failure to make the investments necessary to provide Canadians with essential health options to treat substance use disorder.

Over the last 10 years, the previous Conservative government slashed Health Canada's addiction treatment budget, removed harm reduction as one of the four pillars of Canadian drug policy, and spent nearly a decade trying to discredit the clear and overwhelming evidence that supervised consumption sites save lives.

Indeed, this crisis has undeniably been exasperated by barriers erected by a Conservative government that prevented supervised consumption sites from opening across Canada. Despite an abundance of research that conclusively established that Vancouver's supervised consumption facility, Insite, significantly reduced overdose deaths, the Conservative government obstinately refused to accept that evidence.

In 2011, it took the Supreme Court of Canada to rule that Insite and other supervised consumption sites must be granted a section 56 exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act because 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”.

In response, in 2015, the Conservative government introduced Bill C-2, which sets out a lengthy and arduous list of criteria that supervised consumption site applicants must meet before the minister would grant them an exemption. In practice and by design, these criteria made it effectively impossible for organizations to open new supervised consumption sites in Canada.

For example, Montreal has had applications pending Health Canada approval since May 2015, almost two years, for three fixed services in three neighbourhoods and one mobile service. Indeed, not a single supervised consumption site has opened in Canada since Bill C-2 was passed. Of course, that was exactly the Conservatives' intention.

Only an hour after Bill C-2 was initially introduced, in a move so vile it would impress Donald Trump, Conservative campaign director Jenni Byrne issued a fundraising letter stating that the Liberals and NDP wanted addicts to shoot up in the backyards of communities all across the country. This went beyond a juvenile refusal to accept evidence that ran contrary to their moralizing ideology. It was a clear and utterly disgraceful attempt to campaign on the backs of the most vulnerable Canadians, sick Canadians.

For those Conservative MPs who now claim to have found religion on the issue, who have recently echoed the NDP's long-standing call to declare a national public health emergency, I must remind them that it was Conservatives who blocked my attempt to move this bill swiftly through the House in December, to save lives faster.

Though the Liberals claim to support the expansion of supervised consumption sites, their government has not approved a single new facility since coming to office. In fact, the Minister of Health initially and stubbornly argued that legislative changes to Bill C-2 were not even necessary, since she had directed Health Canada officials to facilitate the application process under the existing law. She refused to acknowledge that the problem was the act itself with its 26 separate requirements acting as effective barriers to any new sites, as had been consistently pointed out by stakeholders, the NDP, and even some of her own colleagues. This tepid response stood in stark contrast to the view espoused by the member for Vancouver Centre, the Liberal member for Vancouver Centre, when she was the Liberal health critic in opposition.

When Bill C-2 was introduced, the member for Vancouver Centre publicly stated that the bill was deliberately written in a way that would ensure no supervised consumption sites were approved in Canada. She also questioned the constitutionality of the bill. It has frequently been observed that Liberals campaign from the left and govern from the right, that they talk progressively in opposition, but act conservatively when in power. I am afraid their conduct on the opioid crisis is yet one more example of this unfortunate truism.

Unacceptably, it took a mounting death toll and universal pressure from medical experts, public health officials, provincial governments, municipal leaders, and the federal NDP before the Minister of Health finally relented and outlined legislative changes she was willing to make to Bill C-2, on December 12, 2016. This came on the heels of an announcement from the B.C. government that it was no longer willing to wait for federal approval and would take the extraordinary measure of signing a ministerial order making the provincial operation of temporary overdose prevention sites legal. This was in turn a response to the unsanctioned, makeshift supervised consumption sites that were being established throughout B.C. by activists like Ann Livingston and Sarah Blyth, who founded the Overdose Prevention Society last September with crowdfunding, due to the severity of the crisis.

While the current government was waiting, while people were dying, people in British Columbia and on the street were acting. Thus, the bill is an overdue acknowledgement that this is, in fact, a crisis and contains some important steps to address it.

I do want to credit the government for taking some positive measures.

The Liberals hosted an opioid summit, where they committed to better informing Canadians about the risks of opioids, supporting better prescribing practices, and improving the evidence base. They made naloxone available in a non-prescription status. They reversed the federal prohibition on the use of pharmaceutical heroin for treatment. They scheduled fentanyl precursors. They reinstated harm reduction as one of the four pillars of drug policy. Now the government has introduced amendments to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and other acts, to streamline supervised consumption site applications.

These changes are all welcome, if overdue, and New Democrats are in agreement with all of them. However, they do not go nearly far enough, fast enough. There is much more that we can and must do. That is why I must take serious exception to comments made by the Minister of Health in a recent interview. The minister said:

I would argue with the fact as to whether or not there's been progress made. I know that the number of deaths are rising, but we have been extremely active on this file....

I do not know how the minister measures progress, but I do know one thing. When Canadians are dying at unprecedented rates, when month after month we see increased death tolls from opioid overdoses, there can be no legitimate talk of progress. We in the New Democratic Party will measure progress by one factor and one factor only: when the death toll of Canadians goes down, not up. However by that standard, the crisis is getting dramatically worse, not better. Annually since 2012, the number of fatal overdoses in B.C. has increased significantly: 273 deaths in 2012, 330 in 2013, 366 in 2014, 510 in 2015, and now 914 in 2016.

Last month alone, we recorded the highest number of overdose deaths in B.C.'s history, with 142 lives lost. That is more than double the monthly average of overdose deaths since 2015 and a sharp increase from the fall. There were 57 overdose deaths in B.C. in September, 67 in October, and 128 in November. That is not progress.

To understand the scale of this epidemic, I would remind the House that during the SARS crisis in 2003, 44 people died in an outbreak of the disease across all of Canada. We are losing that many people every week to opioid overdoses.

I would suggest to members of the House that if 40 to 50 Canadians were dying every week from SARS, Ebola, or any other infectious disease, the House would not rest until it saw a response from the federal government that matched the severity of the crisis. Every life lost to overdose is a heart-wrenching tragedy that leaves devastated loved ones in its wake. The lives cut short by overdose matter just as much as anyone's, and this epidemic deserves the same attention and urgency as any other disease.

Moreover, we must remember that the consequences of inaction are felt severely by those on the front lines of this crisis. As Chris Coleman, a firefighter who works on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, told the health committee:

...it takes a toll on an individual's mental health to see such helplessness and suffering up close on a daily basis; to work extremely hard but to feel that you are having little or no impact on a problem that is growing exponentially, like a tidal wave, on the streets of your city. There is mental strain in watching a population repeatedly harming itself and in ultimately witnessing death and deceased persons who have succumbed to this human tragedy....

I must stress that our brothers and sisters who work in the Downtown Eastside are in trouble.... In conversations with these firefighters, I hear a lot of “It's driving me nuts” and “I can't take it”. I'm told stories of their being in an alley with 20 or 30 drug users. They're unprepared and untrained for that. Part of their hopelessness comes from having to deal with the same particular overdose patient who has a needle in their neck, who's rolling around in urine and feces, more than once on the same shift. They feel abandoned and they feel hopeless

We must not condemn our courageous first responders to the fate of Sisyphus, rolling an immense boulder up a hill over and over again for eternity. They need the Government of Canada to have their backs.

Indeed, the federal government's failure of leadership on the opioid crisis has led to renewed pleas for help from public officials from all across Canada. These include the mayors of Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver, B.C.'s health minister, and health professionals from every discipline.

I know that the Minister of Health has repeatedly stated in public that the federal government is doing everything it can. Of course, that is utter nonsense. There are literally dozens of measures and recommendations made by health experts and stakeholders across Canada that remain unimplemented by the government.

Recently, the City of Vancouver sent a list of nine recommendations to the federal government to help address this crisis, including calling for a central command structure, daily meetings with Health Canada, and improved treatment services. A coroner's jury in British Columbia recently issued a list of 21 recommendations for action, and the Standing Committee on Health in December issued a report detailing 38 recommendations for the government alone, most of which remain unimplemented.

To demonstrate this leadership and illustrate the federal government's understanding of the scope of this crisis, the New Democrats have been calling on the federal Minister of Health to declare a national public health emergency for months. We are now joined in this call by municipal, provincial, and federal politicians of all stripes, including, recently, the Conservatives.

A declaration of a national public welfare emergency under the Emergencies Act would empower Canada's top doctor with the authority to take extraordinary measures to coordinate a national response to the crisis. This could include an allocation of emergency funding on the scale required to actually address the mounting death toll, as well as sanctioning the operation of temporary supervised consumption sites on an emergency basis.

Inexplicably, the minister continues to claim that a national public welfare declaration is unnecessary and untimely. With respect, she is utterly and demonstrably wrong. For example, such a declaration would allow overdose prevention sites across the country to open and operate legally, something they cannot do now. Not only are such sites needed desperately in every major city in Canada, but they would start saving lives today.

New Democrats have worked in good faith with successive federal governments to address the crisis with the urgency it deserves. We led the fight against the Conservatives' Bill C-2 from the day it was introduced, and then pressed the Liberal government to repeal or amend it. Last fall, we moved a motion at the standing committee to conduct an emergency study on the crisis. We tried to expedite this bill through the House in December; and we were the first to call for a declaration of a national public health emergency to address the crisis.

The New Democratic Party will support this bill and work in committee to improve it. We will continue to press the government to take every action it can to address this national public health crisis.

Political Party Financing

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am seeking unanimous consent for a very urgent motion. I think all members of the House know that the opioid crisis is a national health emergency taking the lives of Canadians on a daily basis.

Although it has taken a year, the government has tabled a bill that moves us in the right direction by, among other things, repealing the previous government's Bill C-2. The NDP believes there is a critical and irrefutable need to get this bill passed as soon as possible. It will save lives. Therefore, I am asking for unanimous consent for the following motion.

I move that, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, Bill C-37, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make related amendments to other acts shall be deemed to have been read a second time and referred to committee of the whole, deemed considered in committee of the whole, deemed reported without amendment, deemed concurred in at report stage, and deemed read a third time and passed.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

I'll do a quick question, absolutely.

This question may be hard to answer, but it's not a long question in itself. Previously, when all the provisions of Bill C-2 were in place, there were concerns about an extended timeline to approve supervised consumption sites.

Can you comment in general terms on how removing these barriers is going to change the timeline for approval of a new site? How much time will be saved by these changes?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

I'd also like to thank the member for restoring harm reduction as a key pillar of this issue. As my honourable colleague just talked about, there are a number of different conditions that affect Canadians, from the devastating impacts of thalidomide to the current problem of opioid addiction in this country.

Minister, as you know, in 2015 the Liberal Party publicly stated that the Conservative Bill C-2 was a deliberate barrier to opening safe injection sites. Of course, it was, because we know that not a single safe injection site has been opened since that legislation was passed.

Many stakeholders have called on your government to repeal Bill C-2 for over a year now, and this is not purely of academic concern. In the last year alone, over 2,000 Canadians, as you pointed out, died from drug overdoses, mostly from opioids—as people have died from thalidomide.

Now, in the last week of Parliament of 2016, you've introduced legislation to streamline Bill C-2, and I congratulate the government on doing that. Of course, since it is the last week before Parliament adjourns for Christmas, this bill will not be dealt with until February of 2017 and not passed until spring of 2017 at the earliest. That's months from now.

The Minister of Health for British Columbia last night said that the opioid crisis in B.C. is “like a war” and that they can't wait for this legislation to be passed. I think Dr. Perry Kendall, the public health officer in British Columbia, said the same thing—that they're not waiting—and you've pointed out, I think with some power, the impact in my home province of British Columbia of these opioid deaths: almost 700 British Columbians will die this year.

Pop-up clinics are operating right now in British Columbia to provide emergency services, and they're either illegal or operating in a legal grey zone.

As you know, this committee conducted an emergency study into the opioid crisis, and the very first recommendation that this committee made to your government, with all-party support, was to declare this a national public health emergency, as the thalidomide issue was. The reason for this is that it would give the public health officer of Canada extraordinary powers to act immediately while your legislation works through the House over the next three or four or five months, including opening emergency clinics now for safe consumption, for naloxone administration, or for drug testing—whatever these emergency clinics could be used for right now to save lives.

My first question to you, Minister, is why don't you declare a national public health emergency to give the public health officer of Canada these extraordinary powers in the next 90 days so that we can start saving lives now, while your legislation takes time to work through the process?

Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is my honour to rise to speak to the motion. Let me first thank the member for Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam for bringing this motion to the floor and raising the issue in the House of Commons.

At some point in time, all members in the House have been touched by this incredible issue of addiction, substance misuse in our own communities. Perhaps we have come to know people who have lost their lives. The thing about substance misuse and drug addiction is that it is entirely preventable.

In fact, on the question of overdose, there is overwhelming evidence to illustrate the fact that we need to look at substance misuse as a medical health issue and not a criminal justice issue. That is how we can save lives.

To the point of this motion, this is exactly what the member is trying to do, to take away the criminal element so we can save lives.

Imagine for one minute what life would be like if one of our children, a son or daughter, who might be young, is experimenting, takes drugs, and at that moment in time a life is lost. Imagine what that would be like. I cannot imagine. I am a mother of two young kids, aged 13 and 8. I dread the teenage years to come, the idea of kids experimenting, some horrible, unimaginable thing happening, and lives being lost.

I see this in my own community in Vancouver East. So many people's lives have been lost. There is a saying that dead people do not detox and that is why we need harm reduction. That is why we need to move forward in addressing this from a medical health perspective.

The member's bill is one piece in the harm reduction spectrum on which we need to move forward. We need to tell people that they do not need to worry about a criminal charges being laid against them. In this instance, it would be limited to only simple possession but, nonetheless, it is equally important to send that message.

Additional work needs to be done. There is no question about it. My colleague, the health critic, the member for Vancouver Kingsway, attempted to move in that direction at committee. He moved an amendment to call for expanding the scope of the bill to allow for additional measures. For example, people in my community say that it is not so much that they worry about a charge of simple possession, they worry about outstanding warrants. They worry about violating their parole, for example, and that there would be implications for them. Young people gather at these things called raves. They party and bad things happen. There is no definition of “at the scene”, the scope of that, and whether it would apply to a group of people in that context.

If we want to move in this direction, more work needs to be done and we need to keep pushing to ensure that the issue around substance misuse is looked at from a health perspective. Addiction is a health issue. I know the former Conservative government thought it was a criminal justice issue alone.

I was relieved to hear the conviction of the member who spoke before me to save lives. Let us look at this issue from that perspective. I would assume that if we believe in that and on the evidence that has been presented, we would all agree that the time has come for the government to also repeal C-2, because that prevents saving lives.

The medical health officer in my community in Vancouver, British Columbia, has said on the public record that Bill C-2 impedes progress in moving forward with respect to harm reduction in terms of bringing supervised injection facilities into communities. The litany of onerous requirements prevent medical health officers to move forward on bringing supervised injection facilities into communities.

As it stands right now, there is only one application before the government, and that is from Montreal. My community has tried to move forward with others and has been unable to get it on the table because of the onerous requirements.

The medical health officer from Vancouver, Patricia Daly, has said on the public record that Vancouver is struggling to try to move forward on this because of the onerous requirements on Bill C-2. We need to get rid of this bill. Let us get real about saving lives. This measure is an important one. I absolutely support it, but we cannot stop there. There is so much more that we can do. The fact is that we do have a crisis, a national crisis, on our hands with the opioid overdose situation.

The desperation in my own community is such that there are pop-up tents. In fact, there is one pop-up tent that has emerged in our community. Volunteers have come forward to provide for some measure of safety for drug users. They say that they would not want to continue this operation because it is not a sanctioned site. There are no health practitioners at the site, but they are doing this. Why? Because they have seen their loved ones die. They actually provide naloxone to the tune of up to 24 cases where they have utilized that to save lives on the ground. Each day when the site is up and running, up to 100 people inject at that site.

This should not be how we continue. It should not be the case. We need to bring forward science-based and proven strategies to address this. A safe site, Insite, is one of those measures. We need to ensure there is progress here, and take away measures that hamper progress in that regard. Bill C-2 is one of them.

I once again thank the member for bringing this forward. I support the bill. I applaud his efforts. More work needs to be done, and I look forward to working with all members of the House and moving forward with this goal in mind: we need to bring in measures to save lives.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for seconding the bill at first reading.

I agree that Bill C-2 from the previous Parliament created a problem, an almost impenetrable labyrinth for people to traverse in trying to establish supervised consumption sites. We need to take a hard look at it and should look proactively at streamlining the process to make it more effective, because we need many more supervised consumption sites in this country.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for the motion and the good work he has done in bringing this forward.

I absolutely agreed with his comments at second reading about the need to go further, that this is just a first step. With respect to that and related to the drug overdose crisis, as members know, Bill C-2 is impeding efforts by medical health professionals to move forward in addressing the opioid crisis.

B.C.'s own medical health officer, Perry Kendall, has said that we need to get rid of Bill C-2. Does the member agree with our medical health officer about Bill C-2?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you again to the witnesses.

I want to go back to the crisis we're faced with today. I know that the Vancouver medical health officer, Patricia Daly, has publicly stated that their application for an additional supervised injection facility has been hampered by delays as a result of Bill C-2. The onerous requirements in trying to move forward in upcoming facilities to save lives has been severely hampered. She has articulated that on the public record. I know that the health authority in Vancouver is attempting in the interim to get five additional supervised injection facilities up and operating in the midst of this crisis.

Dr. Evan Wood, do you know anything about that process and whether or not additional sites would be effective in saving lives?

[Dr. Evan Wood]

In terms of your first question, Onsite is located in the Downtown Eastside, so you're exactly right: it's a place where people in crisis, whose lives really are a living hell, see the opportunity for something else. They get a bed, but then what next? Obviously we want to get people out of the Downtown Eastside. Investments in recovery-oriented systems of care have not been there. Unless you have $20,000 to go into an expensive treatment program, the door just isn't there. Wait lists are long. It makes absolutely no sense.

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't want things to get politicized in terms of Bill C-2. I just think there's been a lot of misinformation. I've seen how, when these things become oppositional, people get entrenched in their thinking. They put their blinders on. They don't understand that by focusing on preventing public health interventions, it doesn't achieve the objective of another thing coming forward. I just haven't seen that. I strongly encourage everybody to try to get beyond historical partisan issues around this crisis and to focus on what's best. Clearly that will be an evidence-based approach.

It was alluded earlier that it will cost a lot of money. I would just reiterate the point that we're spending that money. We're spending it on emergency rooms, on HIV and hepatitis C wards, and on programs for people who've had hypoxic brain injuries. There's also a cost to productivity, and of course the cost to families who have lost a loved one. The money is being spent on downstream consequences.

If we can reduce those costs through public health programs that are proven effective, of course I support that, but we need a more comprehensive approach in addition to that, one that involves an effective treatment system. Training health care providers and establishing guidelines and best practices: it's a clear way to identify where those investments should be and then move forward.

[Darshan Singh Kang, Liberal, Calgary Skyview, AB]

We've been talking about Bill C-2. I think the Minister of Health is going to look at the barriers in Bill C-2.

Dr. Juurlink, you said something about doctors prescribing medications. I know some people will go from doctor to doctor to get OxyContin, for example. They will get it, and sell it too.

How can we control the medications? Is there some kind of mechanism in place, so the doctor knows that—

[Dr. Bonnie Henry]

I could talk for a long time on that. Some of them are outlined in the written report that we sent in.

There are about 25 different pieces of Bill C-2 that I find are barriers. One of the key ones is requirement for opinions from neighbourhoods that are not necessarily based on fact, and the types of opinions that need to come in. It's a challenge to get those, because it reopens questioning around supervised consumption services and their worth. It's a challenging part.

The other part that is just ridiculous is that you have to name every single person who will work in the facility, and none of them can have a criminal record. People like Sean would be excluded from working in a site, which we think is ridiculous, because peer support is really important and it helps.

There are a whole variety of them that I can certainly list for you.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Let me pick up on that, both Ms. Henry and Ms. Lapointe.

I'm going to speak bluntly here. There seems to be a division in this room and with this government on Bill C-2. The government seems to stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that it needs to make any changes to Bill C-2 .

Ms. Henry, the words you used were that Bill C-2 contains extreme barriers. Hon. Hedy Fry, when she was the Liberal Health critic, said that Bill C-2 was designed to avoid the opening of safe consumption sites. I think Dr. Perry Kendall has said that too.

I'm going to ask you directly. The Liberal government seems to suggest that the problem isn't with Bill C-2. It's just explaining the requirements to groups, and if we can facilitate that, we can get more safe injection sites.

The facts are that we have two injection sites in the country, InSite and the Dr. Peter Centre. There is not a single site that has opened in this country in the last year and a half. We have one application currently, and that's from the City of Montreal. With the Toronto Board of Health, everybody is telling me that with the barriers, it takes months and hundreds of hours to get an application in.

My question is, what are the barriers in Bill C-2 that you think are unnecessary?

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

David, I also appreciated your comment that you've seen some federal leadership coming on this.

The Minister of Health has laid out a comprehensive five-point federal strategy, including better informing Canadians about the risks of opioids, supporting better prescription practices, reducing the access to unnecessary opioids, supporting better treatment options, and improving the gathering of evidence and getting the evidence together. The naloxone capability was made possible, and the nasal sprays are now coming in from the U.S.

I heard a number of recommendations from you and from Bonnie.

From Bonnie I heard about expanding supervised consumption services, and that Bill C-2 is a major problem across Canada; establishing drug checking as a harm reduction service to make sure you can see what you're ingesting, even if it's illegal; and increasing availability of treatments for opioid use disorders.

From David I heard about prescription changes and better education of physicians to make sure that the use of opioids is better managed.

All of you referenced better surveillance, and that we need a national surveillance program for this.

I heard from John that the dosage of naloxone needs to be increased in some of these kits.

Are there any other recommendations beyond these? The minister is convening a workshop in November as a special consultation. Is there any other advice you can give us to better the situation or to give advice to the minister?

[Sean LeBlanc, Founder and Chairperson, Drug Users Advocacy League]

First of all, thank you very much for inviting me.

I'd like to mention that I'm also a peer support worker in the city of Ottawa. I work pretty well first-hand and front-line with drug users, almost specifically opiate users, on a daily basis.

DUAL is a non-profit that was founded in 2010. It neither condones nor condemns drug use, but sees it as a facet of everyday society. People are going to use drugs, and we just try to best educate them about that. We have several services, some of which Catherine runs, with a couple of drop-ins. It's basically to provide a voice for people who do not have one.

I am someone who has survived an addiction to opiates. I used opiates for about 15 years. It's not a pleasant thing; it certainly isn't. Coming off of these drugs is extremely, extremely hard. I had pretty well a normal childhood and everything. The last thing I thought I would ever be was someone who would inject opiates. Unfortunately, I suffered through a few traumas during my teenage years, and I just wanted to end the pain.

That's one thing that I will give credit to opiates for: they help you to numb the pain, not in any healthy or helpful way, but for someone who's really hurting, opiates do deaden that pain.

My life pretty well spiralled after that. I ended up homeless, with not much self-worth. I guess I have kind of a stubborn streak, and thankfully, around 2010 I started to do some advocacy, and founded DUAL out of that. It was basically the lack of inclusion that really made me want to start DUAL to create a voice for people. I started being on different committees and everything like that. I'd always see some great doctors and police officers and epidemiologists, but there were never people who actually used drugs on those committees. If they were there, it was usually in a really tokenistic way.

This is why I'm so thankful to be invited here today. These offers don't usually come around. I think the best way we can get results in this crisis is by working in conjunction with each other—doctors, coroners, police officers, and, more so than anybody, people who use drugs, because they really are the experts on this.

The Oxy crisis started right around 2010 in Ontario. As my fellow panellists have alluded, it created this whole desire, this need, for fentanyl and heroin. The drugs have gotten so much stronger, and so many younger people are using them now, it's really, really scary.

I think we don't want to get too far into that, though. These drugs do play a really good role in the lives of some people, those who are really suffering from great pain. I've known people who cannot get relief from that pain through an opiate prescription because of the stigma associated with using these drugs. Again, I'm not condoning them or anything, but they do fill a role in our society. Some people need them, and I don't think we want to get too far away from that.

I'll just speak very briefly and very informally, because my fellow panellists have said everything I wanted to say on this. I alluded earlier a little bit to detoxing off the opiates. When I first started to want to get off opiates, there weren't really any substitutes out there for me. There was methadone, but there was no treatment offered. I tried to get into a treatment centre, and that was impossible. To this day it's pretty well a roll of the dice if you can get into treatment or not. We really need to increase all different types of treatment. Right now there's basically one form, and that's detox. That's it. It's not going to work for everybody. Nobody ever wants to grow up to stick a needle in their arm or use opiates, but it's a facet of society and I think we need to deal with it responsibly.

This is a medical issue, as some of my fellow panellists have pointed out, and not a criminal issue. I think we need to continue to deal with it in that way. Almost all my recommendations have already been said by my fellow panellists, but I think we really need to repeal Bill C-2, or at least different parts of it, and have supervised injection sites. The Supreme Court came out unanimously in favour of keeping InSite open in Vancouver, yet we've seen no other supervised injection sites in this country. Frankly, there should be one, if not several, in every major city. They've been shown to reduce overdoses, reduce deaths, and reduce the transmission of diseases.

Another thing that DUAL does is to go into schools a lot, but we're very limited in what we can say, especially in public schools. There's no harm reduction education; it's all abstinence based. And a lot of people who are starting into drugs, specifically opioids, are doing so at that age. Those teenage years are extremely important and we're not allowed to have an honest conversation with them.

I think there can be some really good benefits to getting to people while they're young and showing them that in addiction, addiction to opioids specifically, nothing positive is going to come of that.

I think we need to be educating people who are being released from jail. Right now there are a lot of overdoses among people being released. They'll get out, they'll use, and take the same dose they used before they went in and it is enough to kill them. I'm sorry I'm so emotional, but these are my friends, the people I work with, people I love. I lost my best friend to a fentanyl overdose and it really hits home. In Ottawa we see an overdose on opioids about every 10 days, and that's obviously just not acceptable.

I brought a naloxone kit here today, which has been really great. I've actually used it twice and I've seen it, basically, pull people right out of an overdose. The problem with these kits right now is that the dose of the naloxone is so low and the drugs doses are so high it isn't actually counteracting the overdoses as well as it should. I'd really like to see the dosage of naloxone, a very innocuous and harmless drug, increased so that it can meet the demand that these drugs are putting out.

I'd also like to see and develop other forms of treatment. Right now, even to get somebody into detox is difficult. I've got people approaching me every day wanting to clean up their lives per se and we can't get a bed anywhere. It's basically just the luck of the draw. If you can get somebody in, great, if you can't, then that's a....

What's most important is that we need to continue to include people with lived experience and people who use drugs in these conversations. We have a wealth of knowledge that I think we could share. As I alluded to earlier, in conjunction with scientists, doctors, and politicians, as well, obviously, we can really get to the guts of this problem. There are solutions out there. I believe that Canadians are really nurturing. We really believe in health care. This is a medical issue and I think we need to continue to treat it as such.

A statement that we use at DUAL and other drug-user groups around the country is “nothing for us, without us”. We'd just like to see more inclusion at all levels from the top to the bottom, because there are solutions to these problems. We solved a lot of things with the Oxy crisis and I think we really can do that with the fentanyl crisis. Let's just keep plugging away and I think these problems can be eradicated really quickly.

Again, I apologize for my emotion. My voice was breaking most of the time and I really appreciate the invite here. Thank you very much.

Health

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the reaction of the government has been far too slow. Hundreds of Canadians have died while the government simply plans a meeting in November.

If the government truly believes in evidence-based decision-making, why is it ignoring the advice of health experts who say the evidence is overwhelming that safe consumption sites save lives and should be used to help address Canada's overdose epidemic?

The latest call comes from B.C.'s chief medical officer, Dr. Perry Kendall, who recently implored the federal Liberal government to cut the Conservative red tape imposed by Bill C-2. Indeed, Canada's municipalities, including Kelowna, Kamloops, Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa are publicly expressing their desire to set up new safe consumption sites. However, in two years, there has not been a single new safe consumption site opened up in this country. That is because of the legislation passed by the previous government, which remains untouched by the current government. Meanwhile, two people continue to die every day in B.C. from drug overdoses.

When will the government stop applying Stephen Harper's regressive legislation and repeal Bill C-2 to start saving lives?

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

We'll split our time.

Maybe you can see that the Liberals are really trying to focus on this one thing, safe injection sites, as far as the spectrum of treatment is concerned. That's what I wanted to ask a question on, because Ms. Geller was quite correct when she said there's no evidence of increased crime rates at these safe injection sites.

I'd like to ask the RCMP if you could get back to us with statistics. I don't think you'll have them. My understanding is that where Insite is in Vancouver, it's actually been suggested to the police that they don't charge. In other words, if they're not charging for all the crimes that they see, the crime rates will not go up.

I actually had the opportunity to go down there unannounced, and it is amazing how many ongoing crimes you're seeing, but they just don't charge people.

I was wondering if you could get some of those statistics back to us, because they say one of the reasons for putting these safe injection sites into communities is it won't increase the crime rate. But we do know that addicts usually are not people of means. My understanding is that to get their hit for the day, they have to commit between four and eight crimes. If this is petty crime, prostitution, break and enter, or whatever they need to do, wherever you locate that safe injection site, within the area around it, it will cause an increase in crime, and the police officers we had a chance to talk to down there said there were all kinds of petty crime down there.

I think it's really important when you're looking at Bill C-2, that you see that public safety in the communities, the neighbourhoods, with the moms and dads, the kids in the area is balanced with just the desire to put these through.

Is that information you could get back to us with?

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I wanted to point out that the Liberals seem to be focusing on safe injection sites, and the truth is they are only putting resources into that. In the budget, there was no new money for treatment, prevention, or education. One of the frustrations I have is that in Oshawa, if an addict wants treatment, he has to wait. Sometimes he waits weeks and weeks. Then he relapses before he even gets the treatment. It would be easier for him to just go to a place and keep injecting and injecting.

I just don't think, unless you put the priority on treatment, that we're going in the right direction. It was interesting to see the minister's priorities. I think that treatment was number three. I liked it when the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse said that treatment is number one, because this whole obsession with safe injection sites.... Bill C-2 doesn't stop safe injection sites. It lets people who have the right to know have some input. If the community doesn't support the injection site, then it's not going to be successful.

I want to get back to my question for Dr. Young.

Our government was moving in step with other people around the world. I know we received letters from United States governors and the White House asking us to look at this entire class of drugs and move them toward tamper-resistant or abuse-deterrent formulations. That was where we were going. This past June, Minister Philpott, at a Toronto drug policy conference, said there was strong anecdotal evidence that the introduction of a tamper-resistant form of OxyContin in Canada caused the current fentanyl crisis in Canada. I just wondered, is this true, or is this situation more nuanced and complex than that?

[Hilary Geller]

No, Bill C-2 contained a series of amendments to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Could you clarify something briefly? Under the previous government, was Bill C-2 regarding safe injections sites a stand-alone bill that can be amended?

[Hilary Geller]

Thank you for the question.

I think it's important to recall that before the amendments to the CDSA, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, known as Bill C-2—and Bill C-2 was not a stand-alone piece of legislation; It was a series of amendments to an act—

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you all for coming. This is something that's been near and dear to my heart. I practised emergency medicine for 20 years, much of it in the inner city of Winnipeg. We've seen many of these problems first-hand.

Ms. Geller, Mr. Davies was talking about Bill C-2 and some restrictions it placed on safe consumption sites. In your view, has this bill impeded your ability to monitor the crisis by slowing down the development of safe consumption sites in cities?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

So you're happy with the state of affairs in Bill C-2. Is that the position of your organization?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Okay, thank you.

We've talked about Bill C-2. Ms. Geller, you've crisply described the evidence. We know that safe consumption sites save lives. We also know, from every stakeholder in the country, that Bill C-2, which was passed by the previous government, establishes 26 separate, discrete requirements that every group I've talked to in the country says establishes unnecessary barriers to establishing safe consumption sites. It takes months. It takes hundreds of hours.

I've talked to Toronto's Board of Health. I've talked to the City of Montreal. I've talked to the City of Victoria. These are not fly-by-night operators that want to open safe consumption sites. These are municipalities and boards of health in our provinces telling us that safe consumption sites save lives and that this legislation puts up unnecessary barriers.

Ms. Geller, you said that your strategy is to explain the barriers to the groups, but these groups aren't telling me that they need the barriers explained to them. They're telling me that they need the barriers removed.

My question is actually for Ms. Notarandrea. Does your group support the repeal or the streamlining of Bill C-2 so we can get more safe consumption sites up and running and save lives?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there is an overdose epidemic gripping our nation. This year alone, 2,000 Canadians are expected to die. Stakeholders are unanimous that opening supervised injection sites is one way we can start saving lives immediately, yet the government has refused to amend Conservative legislation that the former Liberal health critic said was designed to block new sites. Will the Liberals listen to the evidence and amend Bill C-2 so that we can take action and start saving Canadians' lives?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I'm seeing all witnesses nod. Okay.

We had some mention made of supervised injection sites, and I think we're all starting to recognize that the opioid crisis requires a generalized suite of responses. There's no magic bullet, but it seems there's a bunch of separate things we can do that would help address the problem. I'm wondering if it would be the witnesses' suggestion that former Bill C-2 be repealed or at least amended to streamline the application process so that communities or municipalities that want to open supervised injection sites can do so much more quickly and without as much administrative bureaucracy.

Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, we will be supporting the bill before us, which would provide an exemption from drug possession charges when someone calls 911 to report an overdose. It is a simple, common-sense, proven policy that will save lives. I thank the member for Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam for bringing the bill forward.

We know all too well how desperately our communities need action to end this crisis. As the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo mentioned, British Columbia's health officer has declared a public health emergency. This is the first time that such emergency powers have been used. The province took this step, because in the first three months of this year, there have been more than 200 deaths from overdoses of fentanyl. At that rate, we could see 700 to 800 British Columbians dead by the end of this year. We are talking about an opiate that is exponentially more powerful than morphine or heroin.

We have seen provincial task forces created and police alerts issued in major cities across Canada. We know that this problem will not go away on its own. Indeed, it could get much worse.

Recently, police in Edmonton seized a shipment of white powder from China before it could be prepared for street sale. Lab testing revealed it to be a substance called W-18, a synthetic opiate that is unimaginably deadly. It is 100 times more powerful than fentanyl, and 10,000 times more potent than morphine. To put that in perspective, the amount seized recently in Edmonton, four kilograms, according to public health officials, is enough to kill every person in Alberta 45 times over.

However, this drug is so new that it has not yet been included in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Therefore, it is clear that in the face of such a complex crisis, many things need to be done, and done quickly. Bill C-224 is one essential step, and we must take it without delay.

One study cited by the Pivot Legal Society suggested that most people who witness an overdose do not call 911. Fear of arrest for drug possession is one barrier among many, but it is one that we have the power to lift.

This is a step that many jurisdictions have already taken. In the United States, New Mexico was the first to pass a good Samaritan law in 2007, and 31 states have followed suit. By all accounts, these laws have been successful in reducing the fear of police involvement as a barrier to calling emergency assistance during an overdose.

We need to do more, as well, to ensure that drugs that counteract opiate overdoses are more readily available where they are needed. Naloxone was delisted by Health Canada on March 22. This followed the unanimous recommendation of 130 community groups, health experts, and other groups. However, this still leaves it up to the provinces to ensure broader access.

In B.C., naloxone is now available without a prescription and is in the hands of almost all EMS personnel. In Alberta, more than 500 pharmacies are offering free kits without prescriptions. However, access is not as open in some other provinces, where it is still available only to trained responders, or through a doctor's prescription to friends and family of opiate users. Furthermore, cost and access in rural areas still present barriers to saving lives from overdoses.

There remains a federal role to play in encouraging access to easier forms of dosage, for instance, replacing an injection with a nasal spray. Of course, we must also do more to prevent overdoses by increasing awareness about fentanyl-laced street drugs and by reducing its availability by tackling illegal production.

On the former, I note, for example, the recent initiative by Toronto Public Health to create a simple website, ReportBadDrugsTO.ca, to allow fast, anonymous reports of tainted street drugs so that warnings can be spread immediately to opiate users through community agencies. On the latter, I note the recent introduction in the Senate of Bill S-225 by Senator Vernon White. This bill would add the ingredients of fentanyl to the schedule of controlled precursors in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Together with the provinces we must do more to control the use of highly addictive prescription opioids. These initiatives must be considered as elements of a broader response by all levels of government to a crisis that is overwhelming too many communities.

The bill deserves to be praised in the context of removing the ideological blinders of the previous Conservative government and instead adopting the evidence and public health based approach to drug policy for which New Democrats have long been proud advocates.

I salute here the work of Libby Davies, the former member for Vancouver East, who has been a powerful advocate for harm reduction, public health, and safer communities for many years.

If we are to make this long overdue paradigm shift real it will take much more from the government. We need to see the government's promise to repeal Bill C-2 honoured and to support supervised consumption sites. We need to see a review of criminal justice laws, including mandatory minimum sentences in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. That, as we saw in the Supreme Court just days ago, may not only be costly and ineffective but also unconstitutional.

I know I speak for many communities when I say that this is not an issue that we can afford to leave on the back burner. In communities across Canada, overdoses are an epidemic, and we need action now.

Just last week, the CBC printed an interview with a Winnipeg opiate user named Amanda. She reached out to reporters after a close friend died of an overdose. She said, “I've had 15 contacts on my phone and two of them die in three days. That's scary enough, that says it all.”

There are many things we can do to help Amanda and the thousands of Canadians struggling with addictions and to renew and strengthen the health and safety of the communities they call home. This is one step we can take now, and I believe we should do it without delay.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question and I am certainly 100% in favour of continuing the work on harm reduction. Just last week I did a tour of InSite in the member's riding, and it was very informative. In passing, I should note that the staff and workers at InSite are also in support of the bill.

I am aware of Bill C-2. I think it does need a little work and I certainly would appreciate working with the member and other members to correct the problems.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam for bringing this bill to this House. I thank him also for his heartfelt comments. For all of us who are parents, we can only imagine the pain that a person goes through for a senseless loss, for something done by a youngster who is going through life. So often what youngsters do is experiment and in that process lose a life. I can imagine the pain and suffering a person can go through. Having to endure that is for something that my heart goes out to every single parent.

There is something monumental about the bill brought forward by the hon. member. It would change the course of things in that there would be an opportunity to save a life. That is the whole purpose behind this bill.

Substance misuse, as we know in Vancouver East, is the major issue in my community. There was a point in time in the early 1990s when there were 1,000 crosses planted in Oppenheimer Park. Each one of those crosses commemorated the loss of life, a brother, son, or daughter. We called for harm reduction initiatives and we fought for it. It took so long and we finally got the first North American supervised injection facility.

To that end, in terms of harm reduction, this is a continuum of that effort. I want to thank the member for bringing this forward. I want to ask him, what else we can do? How else can we work together, collaboratively, to extend the measures of harm reduction to ensure that we put evidence first to save lives?

Will the member also work with us to call on the government to repeal Bill C-2?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

We'll do our best. I want to get a couple of quick questions in on Bill C-2. I know I'm running out of time. I applaud your evidence-based decision on supervised consumption sites. I come from Vancouver and there's no question that they save lives, they help stop the spread of disease, they help encourage people seeking help and assistance, and, in fact, help them in getting off drugs.

But I am puzzled by the fact that despite your positive comments you have indicated quite clearly that you are not interested in repealing Bill C-2, which every stakeholder in the country who favours supervised consumption sites says presents unnecessary barriers to opening such sites. Twenty-seven different criteria in that bill make it very difficult to open those, which I think was the entire objective of the previous government in introducing it.

Can you tell us why your government wouldn't repeal that law if you truly believe that opening these sites saves lives and we need to actually make it easier for communities to get them, not harder?

Health

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there is a national epidemic of drug overdoses, and the Minister of Health has acknowledged that safe injection sites like Insite in Vancouver make sense and save lives. Public health officials in Toronto and cities across Canada are asking for federal help to open these desperately needed facilities. Yet, Liberals are refusing to repeal Conservative legislation that blocks communities from providing harm-reduction services.

Will the government stop stalling, make an evidence-based decision, and repeal the Conservatives' Bill C-2?

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I have the honour to inform the House that when the House did attend His Excellency the Governor General in the Senate Chamber, His Excellency was pleased to give, in Her Majesty's name, the royal assent to the following bills:

Bill C-247, An Act to expand the mandate of Service Canada in respect of the death of a Canadian citizen or Canadian resident—Chapter 15.

Bill C-452, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (exploitation and trafficking in persons)—Chapter 16.

Bill C-591, An Act to amend the Canada Pension Plan and the Old Age Security Act (pension and benefits)—Chapter 17.

Bill S-3, An Act to amend the Coastal Fisheries Protection Act—Chapter 18.

Bill S-6, An Act to amend the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act and the Nunavut Waters and Nunavut Surface Rights Tribunal Act—Chapter 19.

Bill C-51, An Act to enact the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act and the Secure Air Travel Act, to amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts—Chapter 20.

Bill C-46, An Act to amend the National Energy Board Act and the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act—Chapter 21.

Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act,—Chapter 22.

Bill C-26, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Sex Offender Information Registration Act, to enact the High Risk Child Sex Offender Database Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts—Chapter 23.

Bill C-63, An Act to give effect to the Déline Final Self-Government Agreement and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts—Chapter 24.

Bill C-66, An Act for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the financial year ending March 31, 2016—Chapter 25.

Bill C-67, An Act for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the financial year ending March 31, 2016—Chapter 26.

Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Firearms Act and the Criminal Code and to make a related amendment and a consequential amendment to other Acts—Chapter 27.

Bill C-555, An Act respecting the Marine Mammal Regulations (seal fishery observation licence)—Chapter 28.

Bill S-7, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Civil Marriage Act and the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts—Chapter 29.

Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act—Chapter 30.

Bill C-52, An Act to amend the Canada Transportation Act and the Railway Safety Act—Chapter 31.

Bill S-4, An Act to amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act—Chapter 32.

Bill S-2, An Act to amend the Statutory Instruments Act and to make consequential amendments to the Statutory Instruments Regulations—Chapter 33.

Public Safety

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Mr. Speaker, this Conservative government has a strong record of keeping communities safe from dangerous and addictive drugs. This week we passed the respect for communities act, which will guarantee residents, law enforcement, and community leaders a say when drug injection houses want to open. Unfortunately, the Liberals voted against communities having this important say, and the Liberal leader has called for more injection houses to open across the country.

Drug injection houses allow the use of dangerous and addictive drugs that tear families apart, promote criminal behaviour, and destroy lives. The Liberal leader's pledge to blindly open drug injection houses in communities across Canada is both disturbing and wrong.

Our Conservative government will continue to support treatment and recovery programs that work to get addicts off drugs while ensuring that our streets and communities are safe for Canadians and their families.

Respect for Communities Act

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Order. The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at third reading stage of Bill C-2.

Call in the members.

The House resumed from March 13 consideration of the motion that Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, be read the third time and passed.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

I think it is inappropriate to use something as serious as the addiction problems of the less fortunate in our society and make money from it. I hope that Canadians will realize that the Conservatives are not acting in good faith. I will try to use what little time I have to elaborate.

To use the issue surrounding supervised injection sites in order to raise money, the Conservatives came up with the slogan “keep drugs away from our children”. That is nothing new for the Conservatives. We saw that recently with Bill C-53, Life Means Life, introduced by the government. A few hours after announcing this very important justice bill, they launched a fundraising campaign for the upcoming election. Frankly, their way of using very sensitive issues to try to make money on the backs of poor people is deplorable. No one is fooled: we know that the Conservatives are using Bill C-2 to try to score political points.

I listened to a number of speeches from both sides of the House, and I paid particular attention to the speeches by the government members. They keep saying that this bill addresses the problem of drugs in our streets. Is obstructing groups like InSite in Vancouver East really the best way to eradicate addiction problems? Of course not. This makes no sense.

If the government really wants to address problems related to addictions and mental health, as well as access to drugs and other illicit substances in our communities, there are much simpler ways of doing that. For example, it could invest in our police forces across the country.

I am thinking of what happened in Montreal, for example. The Conservatives allocated $400 million to special projects across the country. I do not remember the exact amounts and I am not going to get into that, but several million dollars were granted to Quebec. The province decided to create the Eclipse squad to deal with the problem of street gangs and, by extension, addiction and access to drugs in its communities. The Eclipse squad worked miracles for five years. Unfortunately, the Conservatives decided not to renew the funding. If they really wanted to address the problem of access to illicit substances in our communities, restoring funding for projects like the Eclipse squad would have been a much better way of doing that than standing in the way of groups like InSite, which is only trying to address certain health issues and help people overcome their addictions.

Other than parliamentary procedures, which I do not want to get into, I would also like to mention something that was talked about in the last speech, and that is the need to respect our communities. That is what we must do. In Montreal there was a project that the mayor, elected officials from all levels of government, the police, community leaders and health leaders were participating in. They were in the process of setting up a project like InSite, in the typical Montreal way of doing things. Unfortunately, if Bill C-2 is passed, it will create obstacles for our communities.

I would like to ask the Conservative government to reverse its decision, rethink its strategy for dealing with addictions and access to illicit substances, and completely dismiss the idea of moving forward with Bill C-2.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak once again about Bill C-2 on supervised injection sites.

I wanted to mention that because we have been talking a lot about health in the context of this bill. The Minister of Health appeared before the committee. However, oddly enough, this bill was referred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security because that is what the Conservatives wanted.

Even though this bill has to do with health, I sincerely believe that the Conservatives wanted to politicize the issue by demanding that it be sent to that committee. Everyone here knows that, and nobody is falling for it. However, that did give me the opportunity to hear from excellent witnesses who came to talk about this bill in committee. We had some very enlightening conversations about the issue.

With respect to the debate on Bill C-2, nobody here is a fool, and Canadians are not fools either. My Conservative colleagues have a lot to say about the problem of addiction and drugs, and they think that supervised injection sites make it easier for people to get drugs on our streets. They have created a climate of fear around supervised injection sites. What is even sadder is that the Conservatives are also using this issue to raise funds for their election campaign. That is truly deplorable.

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to add to the discussion in support of this important bill. My comments today will highlight the work that is already being done in this area throughout our great country.

Under this strategy, our government has spent well over a half a billion dollars on drug prevention, treatment and enforcement. That is an outstanding sum of money and should highlight for members the importance our government places on addressing drug use and addiction in Canada.

The national anti-drug strategy provides a focused approach aimed at reducing the supply of and the demand for illicit drugs. It is addressing prescription drug abuse and the crimes associated with illicit drugs. To accomplish this, the national strategy has implemented three action plans, which are focused on prevention, treatment and enforcement.

Under the treatment action plan, the province of Quebec has received $11.8 million from 2011 to 2014, which has resulted in a number of positive outcomes. These outcomes include the establishment of new partnerships and formal agreements to support integrated rehabilitation services and continuity of post-rehabilitation services by developing agreements between addiction treatment centres and partners, such as hospitals and community organizations, as well as the establishment of a substance abuse and homelessness pilot project to implement concerted interventions by all concerned stakeholders in 12 health and social service regional authorities.

Another investment under the strategy's treatment action plan is the $7.68 million the government has provided to the province of British Columbia from 2009 to 2014. This has had funding for many positive outcomes, including improved medical student education by expanding a student's education in addiction medicine, from two hours a week to two weeks in rotations; the co-creation with aboriginal partners of the content and design of motivational dialogue workshops; and the creation of a community-based integrated health service for people with substance use and mental health concerns.

In addition, funding is also being provided to support priorities under the prevention action plan. For example, Klinic Community Health Centre in Winnipeg is being funded for $223,000, from 2014 to 2016, and is assisting youth 14 to 19 years of age at a higher risk for substance abuse. There are three main components: an illicit and prescription drug use prevention workshop for youth; a training program with an emphasis on drug prevention for peer support volunteers; and training to enhance the ability of Manitoba-based service providers to deliver prevention education to high-needs youth.

Another project supported by the prevention action plan is a project with the University of Victoria's Centre for Addictions Research. This centre will receive funding of $481,000, from 2014 to 2016, to enhance the ability of teachers to deliver effective drug education to our youth. To support professional development, the project will create and use online training modules as well as resources for face-to-face training such as lesson plans, learning activities and existing evidence-based drug prevention resources.

Our government also continues to work hard to prevent drug addiction and improve the accessibility, quality and effectiveness of treatment services for first nations, and Inuit youth and their families. To this end, in 2014 through 2015, $80.9 million is being provided to support a network of 44 treatment centres and community-based drug and alcohol prevention services in first nations and Inuit communities across Canada. Included in this funding are $12.1 million from the national anti-drug strategy to improve the quality, effectiveness and accessibility of addiction services for this population.

Investments have also improved access to community-based, client-centred, multidisciplinary mental wellness teams. These teams provide comprehensive addiction and mental health services to first nations and Inuit communities across Canada. They are owned, defined, and driven by the community and include aboriginal traditional, cultural, and mainstream clinical approaches to mental wellness services that span prevention to aftercare.

Investments made through the national strategy also helped to develop “Honouring our Strengths: A Renewed Framework to Address Substance Use Issues Among First Nation People in Canada”, which has been highly successful in strengthening the system of addiction services for first nationpeople.

The recovery and rehabilitation of people living with addictions is another critical element in addressing substance abuse. The Minister of Health participated in two national recovery round table discussions with physicians and leading addiction recovery specialists to discuss practical solutions to support Canadians in recovery.

People in recovery are dealing with many complex issues related to their addictions. Some of these issues may include untreated mental health problems, family problems, environmental factors, employment challenges, or legal problems related to addiction. This type of dialogue is vital in reducing barriers to accessing treatment so that the people battling addictions, and their families, can get the help they require.

We must not forget about research. The Government of Canada invested over $126 million in addiction research between 2006 and 2014 through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, or CIHR. It was part of its overall investment, approximately $4.5 million in funding, to support 28 research projects focused specifically on treatment systems for illicit drug use and overall treatment strategies for substance abuse and addiction. Strategy funding also supported the launch of the Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Misuse. This network will address relevant research questions related to substance misuse.

Research and investment in recovery and treatment services will continue to be a priority for the government in its effort to help people and communities in Canada suffering with the issue of drug addiction.

Substance abuse and addiction affect people of every race, age, economic status, and background. Effective treatment and recovery programs need to be multi-faceted to ensure that components such as physical health, culture, family, community, and mental health are all part of an integrated solution. The Government of Canada recognizes the importance of collaboration in this regard and continues to work closely with the provinces, territories, and key stakeholders to help individuals and families living with addictions.

We all have a role to play and contributions to make. Bill C-2, the respect for communities act, would expand on the Supreme Court's decision regarding Insite. It is another tool the federal government would use to better protect and maintain the health and safety of Canadians. The government's commitment to the protection and safety of Canadians is also reflected in its significant investment in prevention and treatment funding.

The proposed legislation acknowledges that street drugs have serious health effects and that organized crime profits from the use of illegal substances. It is only common sense that activities with illegal drugs would be permitted only once rigorous criteria had been addressed by an applicant seeking to open a supervised consumption site.

I urge all members to vote in favour of Bill C-2. Our communities depend on our support.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me the opportunity to add my words of support for Bill C-2, the respect for communities act.

Before I go on, I would like to advise you and the House that I will be sharing my time with the distinguished member for Whitby—Oshawa.

I want to thank all colleagues for their participation in this debate, especially those who are doing it in a measured manner.

Also, I was very pleased that my friends on the committee for public safety and national security were able to conduct a thorough review of this legislation and to return it to this House without amendment.

The opposition’s constant delay tactics—including almost 18 hours of debate at second reading alone—will not stop your government—the government that I support in the House of Commons—from ensuring that Canadian communities get a say before supervised injection sites open in their communities.

Bill C-2 reflects the concern that the government has for Canadian families and communities, and our commitment to their protection. The rigorous criteria set out in the bill and the principles articulated within it are a reasonable and responsible approach.

This approach is based on the premise that any exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act for activities with illicit substances at a supervised consumption site should only be granted after an applicant seeking an exemption has addressed rigorous criteria.

This is as much for the protection of our communities and the respect for residents as it is an assurance that the Minister of Health is provided with the information she needs to carry out her duties in considering the applications to open supervised injection sites.

Bill C-2, the respect for communities act, is an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The provisions would be incorporated into the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act known as the CDSA.

What I propose to add to the dialogue today is a glimpse into what would be next for Bill C-2, and to reflect upon how provisions of Bill C-2 would be implemented when they are incorporated into the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Anyone wishing to undertake activities with illicit substances at a supervised consumption site must apply for an exemption from the CDSA. Under this legislation, a new regime will be established for such applications. Under this new regime, the criteria that would need to be addressed before the Minister of Health could consider such an application would be set out.

These changes are in line with a Supreme Court of Canada decision handed down in 2011, and codify the court’s ruling that community opinions must be considered by the Minister of Health with regard to supervised injection sites.

Indeed, the court stated that its decision is:

—not a licence for injection drug users to possess drugs wherever and whenever they wish. Nor is it an invitation for anyone who so chooses to open a facility for drug use under the banner of a “safe injection facility”.

The bill's changes would provide any potential applicant seeking an exemption for activities with illicit substances at a supervised consumption site with greater clarity concerning the application process.

In exercising her discretion, the minister would have to balance public health and public safety considerations.

All members of the House can agree that our communities deserve to have a say if someone would like to build a drug injection site, where illegal drugs are used, in their own neighbourhood.

All we have been getting from the opposition are delay tactics every step of the way.

What members of the opposition fail to realize is that this legislation is a necessary follow-up to the ruling made by the Supreme Court as well as a method for the Minister of Health to receive the information she needs to make an informed decision on supervised injection sites.

This is an important point to note for anyone who might argue that the criteria in Bill C-2 are onerous. The Supreme Court was quite clear that the Minister of Health must consider certain criteria when judging applications. It is only reasonable that applicants provide her with that information.

The applicant would compile the letters, reports, studies and other information set out in the legislation.

Health Canada would review the information provided in the application package to verify that all the criteria had been addressed.

Once a complete application package has been received, the Minister of Health would also have an option to post a notice of application. If a notice of application is posted, it would invite comments from the public on the activities being proposed in the application. The consultation period would be 90 days.

This option is another element provided for in Bill C-2 and would put in place a mechanism for the general public to have its say regarding the establishment of a supervised injection site as also mandated by the Supreme Court.

In considering an application, the Minister of Health would be informed by the information provided by the applicant in their application, and by the public during the public consultation period.

The minister also has the authority to request additional relevant information from the applicant if further detail is needed. With the amendments to the inspection authority specified in Bill C-2, Health Canada would also have the authority to conduct a pre-inspection of the proposed site to verify any of the information provided in the application. In making a decision to grant or not grant an exemption, the minister would balance public health and public safety considerations.

These are very dangerous substances that we are talking about here. The dangerous and addictive drugs that are used at supervised injection sites tear families apart, foster addictions and destroy lives.

It is only prudent that the Minister of Health take very seriously her duties when evaluating the individual merits of each application that comes across her desk for such sites.

In the event that an exemption is granted, the exempted party must adhere to the terms and conditions set out in the exemption. If the terms and conditions are not adhered to, or if there is a risk that controlled substances might be trafficked or diverted for illicit purposes, an exemption can be suspended or revoked in order to protect public health and public safety.

Safeguards for preserving public health and safety are also built into the process for seeking a subsequent exemption. Under the new legislation, when seeking a subsequent exemption, the applicant would be required to address all of the criteria in the proposed legislation as well two additional criteria. Specifically, they would have to provide information on changes in crime rates in the vicinity of the site and evidence of the impact of the site activities on individuals or public health during the period of the previous exemption.

As I have previously stated, this comprehensive legislation reflects the government's commitment to protecting Canadian families and communities.

Even more than that, Canadian families expect safe and healthy communities in which to raise their children.

My speech is not finished, and I am not a fast talker, but I will respect the restrictions imposed by the Speaker, and look forward to questions.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, today we are debating Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, at third reading.

I have a couple of other suggestions for the name of this bill. It could be called “the refusal to honour the ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada bill”. How about “the pursuing ideology versus evidence act”, or “the refusal to save the lives of people with addictions act"?

This bill was introduced in response to the Supreme Court of Canada 2011 ruling that Insite, in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, had been proven to save lives and reduce harm, and that the government's efforts to close Insite would violate section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to life, liberty, and the security of the person. It is clear that the government did not like this ruling, and therefore has tried to go about refusing to honour the ruling by another route.

It is also clear that this bill will not fulfill the spirit of the court's ruling. Rather, it would make it cumbersome for a group or municipality to apply for a section 56 exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act which allows a facility to operate. However, the likelihood of any future sites opening in Canada would become slim to none. Making matters worse, Vancouver's Insite would have to apply for a renewal based on the same 26 different criteria as new applications, as well as two additional provisions.

Section 56 of the CDSA gives the Minister of Health discretionary powers to grant exemptions from the act under one of three categories. They are medical purposes, scientific purposes, or in the public interest. Of the exemptions that have been granted for activities with illicit substances, two types are for law enforcement purposes. These are to train sniffer dogs using seized drugs in the public interest and to allow the Vancouver Coastal Health authority to operate Insite. It was initially for scientific purposes, but since the Supreme Court's decision, it is considered a medical exemption.

The government's intentions have been clear from the beginning. It has always opposed Insite and has been trying to close it down since it formed government. Thankfully, the work of the community of Vancouver and the courts have stopped these attempts.

I would also like the opportunity to thank the member for Vancouver Centre and the Liberal Party of Canada health critic for her tireless efforts on this file to ensure that public policy is based on evidence and not ideology.

This is an ideological bill based on crass political motivation from a government that has always opposed evidence-based harm reduction measures such as safe injection sites. Only an hour after the legislation was introduced, Conservative campaign director Jenni Byrne issued a crass and misleading fundraising letter to supporters, stating that the Liberals and the NDP wanted addicts to shoot up heroin in the backyards of communities all across the country.

Despite this bill being tabled by the Minister of Health, it was given to an enforcement department, the committee of public safety and security. This is further evidence of the government's view of addiction as a criminal act. The public safety and security committee heard witnesses from three meetings, with many expressing concern that this bill would effectively shut down the current safe consumption site in Vancouver and deny the creation of further sites.

There were amendments suggested by the Province of British Columbia, the chief public health officer of British Columbia, and the City of Vancouver, which were consistent with the Supreme Court of Canada criteria. Even witnesses in favour of the legislation expressed concern that in some parts the legislation is too restrictive. Over 60 amendments were moved by the opposition parties to bring this legislation in line with the Supreme Court ruling. However, the legislation, as usual, was not amended.

The Liberals proposed amendments to the legislation at committee to amend clause 5, which outlines the criteria that new and existing applicants for exemptions must meet by deleting measures that were not outlined in the Supreme Court ruling. Due to a motion passed by the Conservative majority at the public safety committee, a party can only have five minutes to speak for each clause of the bill while moving amendments. Clause 5, which is the majority of the legislation, required several amendments.

Due to the time constraints, the Liberal Party was unable to speak to the majority of the amendments, as time had elapsed. This is undemocratic and restricted our right to speak and to explain our amendments at committee.

Liberals recognize the need for some form of legislation based on the Supreme Court of Canada ruling. However, this legislation does not reflect the spirit nor the intent of the court's decision.

As stated in the 2011 Supreme Court ruling:

The factors considered in making the decision on an exemption must include evidence, if any, on the impact of such a facility on crime rates, the local conditions, indicating a need for such a supervised injection site, the regulatory structure in place to support this facility, the resources available to support its maintenance, and expressions of community support or opposition.

Instead, of the five criteria listed in the Supreme Court of Canada ruling, Bill C-2 lists 26 different prescriptive criteria that must be met, including the areas that are intrusive into provincial and municipal jurisdiction. It also interferes with the jurisdiction of regulatory bodies on health care providers, as well as provincial and municipal police forces and provincial public health officers.

Liberals support the need for broad community consultation for the establishment of any safe consumption site, which is how the Liberal government established Canada's first safe consumption site in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. When the Liberal government gave the exemption to Vancouver's safe consumption site, we consulted broadly and worked in conjunction with provincial and municipal governments, public health authorities, business associations, and the public.

Insite was the product of co-operative federalism. Local, provincial, and federal authorities combined their efforts to create it. The Vancouver police support Insite, as well as the City of Vancouver and the British Columbia government.

It was initially launched as a scientifically based research project based on experience with SCS in Europe and Australia on very high, at-risk and resistant groups, which had proven to be successful. It has saved lives and improved health without increasing the incidence of drug use and crime in the surrounding area.

lnsite has an average of 700 to 800 visits a day, and over 275,000 visits annually. As of March 2010, there have been over 1.5 million visits, over 12,000 unique individuals registered, and an average of 11 visits per month, per person

It has been proven to reduce harm. There has been a total of 2,395 overdoses since the facility opened, with zero fatalities. There were 20,000 referrals to health services in 2008-09, and over 50% of those were to detox.

lnsite users are 30% more likely to engage in addiction treatment than non-lnsite users. It has also dramatically reduced the rate of new HIV infections in the Downtown Eastside. There are three in ten injection drug users in the Downtown Eastside who are HIV positive; 18% of lnsite clients are HIV positive. There were 30 new HIV cases in the Downtown Eastside in 2011, compared to 2,100 new cases in 1996.

I would like to highlight the four pillars of any effective drug strategy: harm reduction, prevention, treatment, and enforcement. The bill underlines the government's misguided decision to remove harm reduction from the equation and from an effective drug strategy.

As Liberals, we support evidence-based policies that reduce harm and protect public safety. Liberals established Vancouver's safe consumption site, which has proven to be effective in supporting those suffering with mental illness and addictions, reducing crime and protecting public safety.

Across Canada, medical officers of health, such as David McKeown, in my home community of Toronto, need this public health approach to get on with creating new life-saving facilities such as this.

Unfortunately, the bill raises the criteria to establish a safe injection site to such an extraordinary high level that it would be nearly impossible for any future site to be established in Canada.

Legislation proposed in this House must adhere to the rule of law. The ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada was clear. This legislation would put lives at risk and would likely be challenged in the courts again.

We cannot support the legislation. To put it bluntly, we cannot help people if they are dead.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, be read the third time and passed.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with every word in the speech by my friend from Victoria. Bill C-2 is not so much a disguised attempt but a blatant attempt to do indirectly that which the Conservative administration could not do directly, which is prevent the building of any new Insite clinics.

As for use of this issue politically, I harken back to when the former minister of foreign affairs—now we must refer to him only as the member for Ottawa West—Nepean—was in the Mike Harris cabinet. He said that they wanted mandatory tests of drugs for welfare recipients because “We don't want to see them shooting their cheques up their arms”. It is a long-standing use for propaganda and for fundraising.

I want to draw his attention to one of the many criteria that are there for purposes of defeating the building of an Insite clinic. They are listed as A through Z and Z1. There is one that says before a clinic is built an applicant must provide the CV and work history of senior employees.

Could the hon. member for Victoria recall any instance in his experience where a facility that does not yet have a permit to be built knows the names and has the CVs of every senior employee?

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to participate in such an important debate.

I wish we had longer to discuss such a critical issue, but the government, of course, has issued another one of its time allocation motions. I cannot remember if it is 91 or 92 times thus far. We will have a grand total of two and a quarter hours to debate this pressing public health issue, but that is the way it is.

In my remarks today, I want to first examine how we got here on safe injection sites. Second, I want to talk about the bill itself. Third, I want to talk about the ideological underpinnings that are self-evident in this legislation.

I cannot do better, frankly, than to start with an almost poetic description of the crisis that led to this. This is from the Supreme Court of Canada in its famous 2011 judgment relating to the Insite centre in Downtown Eastside Vancouver:

In the early 1990s, injection drug use reached crisis levels in Vancouver’s downtown eastside.... Epidemics of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C soon followed, and a public health emergency was declared in...September 1997. Health authorities recognized that creative solutions would be required to address the needs of the population of the [downtown eastside], a marginalized population with complex mental, physical, and emotional health issues. After years of research, planning, and intergovernmental cooperation, the authorities proposed a scheme of care for drug users that would assist them at all points in the treatment of their disease....

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

The court ordered the minister of health to grant a “constitutional exemption”, as it called it, to the Insite facility, so it could continue to operate free from federal drug laws. The minister was then ordered by the court to grant an exemption under section 56. That is what happened.

The government responded with Bill C-2, which is before us today. It is my strong belief that the bill before us will be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada. Many lawyers and experts have said the same thing. Why? Because it is a thinly veiled attempt to not do what the Supreme Court of Canada required.

This is a public health emergency, and the response is to provide a list of criteria that is so vast that no one believes there will ever be a safe injection site as a function of this legislation. It is absolutely opposed to the spirit, if not the letter, of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision.

The parliamentary secretary just spoke about the criteria being perfectly normal. Of course, it was all very much in place when the city of Vancouver got its Insite facility.

No one is suggesting that there should not be public consultation and the like. I have had a raging debate with my colleagues as to just how many hoops will have to be jumped through to ever get one of these safe injection facilities under Bill C-2. I cannot decide. There are 26 criteria listed in the bill, but, as they say on television, there is more. After the 26, the long, many-paged list of criteria that has be jumped through before the exemption can be granted, there are two at the end that raise a number of eyebrows.

I will just read them, so members can see why it is so difficult to know. One of them at the end is “any other information that the Minister considers relevant to the consideration of the application”. I have no idea what that means. It is entirely subjective. She could consider the price of tea in China and that might be considered relevant.

However, there is more. It says, “any prescribed information that is submitted in the prescribed manner”. I guess they can make a regulation and prescribe a bunch more. It is 26-plus open criteria, plus a whole list of others that might be prescribed later. This is not a normal series of criteria for granting an exemption.

It then goes on and provides a series of principles that seem to swallow the entire thing. It states, in part, “The Minister may only grant an exemption for a medical purpose” to allow these safe injection sites in exceptional circumstances and after considering a whole bunch of other principles, including criminal activity, organized crime, risks of overdose, and unadulterated controlled substances.

We cannot read this legislation without basically saying that the government is trying to make it as hard as possible to do what the Supreme Court ordered in one of Canada's leading public health emergencies ever.

There is no need to take my word for that. The British Columbia Medical Journal had an article, before this legislation, by a number of leading AIDS researchers. It starts with this, “Our current approach to the epidemic has been an utter failure”.

The article then lists the costs for people having to go to the hospital, There is a cost of $500,000 per patient to deal with AIDS, and the cost of emergency care in hospitals, not to mention the homeless. That is why the police have been so strong in Vancouver in support of Insite. The article goes on to talk about how it has been a failure because of the traditional law enforcement paradigm of the current government: more crime, more legislation to deal with crime, more police. It has been an utter failure, according to the police themselves.

I had a chance to meet with Dr. Simpson of the Canadian Medical Association yesterday, and the CMA is strongly in favour of this kind of harm reduction approach. It is reflected in the strategy that Vancouver, the Vancouver Board of Trade, and small business have embraced. It seems that everyone has embraced it but the Conservative government, which seems to think it will help its base in passing a law that is so obviously contrary to the spirit of the Supreme Court.

The four-pillars approach has been what Vancouver has embraced. Those four pillars to dealing with the crisis are the following: one is enforcement, that is granted; second is treatment; third is prevention; and fourth is harm reduction. It is harm reduction of the kind that is reflected in the Downtown Eastside Insite facility, and a very comprehensive plan was put in place by the city to address this.

At this point, I must pay tribute to the retiring member for Vancouver East, in whose riding this occurred. She has been utterly amazing in her advocacy on behalf of the poorest people in our community: aboriginal people, frequently; people from cultural communities; people who have come from all over the country to live in the Downtown Eastside and deal with addiction. They are dying at overdose rates that are absolutely staggering.

I want to pay tribute, as well, to Senator Larry Campbell, who was then the mayor of the City of Vancouver. He embraced a harm reduction strategy from the start and deserves a lot of credit for helping implement the four-pillars strategy in Vancouver.

All that the health advocates have been saying is that we need this in other communities. We need it in my community, and I will come to that. The public health officer of Toronto has been pleading for meaningful legislation. What they are getting from the current government is a farce. They know it, and the courts will soon know it. We will have wasted a lot of time doing something that is so obviously not a public health measure but simply a sop to the Conservative Party base. I will demonstrate the truth of that in a moment.

That is where we have landed with Bill C-2. This is a government that is more concerned with punishment than compassion; a government that is putting ideology over evidence.

Let me speak about the Canadian Medical Association and its members response to this legislation. They were asked, like so many, to be consulted on this, and they were. What they said was quite staggering. They said the following:

The CMA fully endorses harm reduction strategies and tools, including supervised injection sites....

Bill C-2...proposes new, far reaching, and stringent conditions that must be met by a proponent who is applying to establish a supervised injection site. The CMA maintains that safe injection sites are a legitimate form of treatment for the disease of addiction, that their benefit is supported by a body of research, and that the conditions proposed under Bill C-2 are overly restrictive.

That is what the doctors are telling us. It is obvious to them, and it is obvious to most Canadians who have had an opportunity to read this thinly veiled effort to stop supervised injection sites.

When the government looked at the evidence and consulted on this, it was self-evident that it needed a harm reduction strategy, that it needed to make exemptions possible under section 56 more readily available. What it ended up with is what has brought us here today.

The number of people who are opposed to this legislation is staggering, such as the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Nurses Association. However, we also need to address those people who are trying to get safe injection sites in their communities. There is only one in Canada, and it is in danger now I suppose, but certainly Toronto wants one. Dr. David McKeown, the Medical Health Officer of that great city said:

I come at it from a public health point of view. Toronto was one of several cities in Canada looking to implement supervised injection sites as part of an evidence-based, comprehensive approach to health services for people who address drugs. The board feels the proposed Bill C-2 is not consistent with the decision of the Supreme Court on supervised injection. If Bill C-2 is passed as written, we believe it will be a significant barrier for any community or health system in any province that has come to the decision that those services would serve both the public health and public safety interests of local residents.

Good luck trying to get one, Toronto. Good luck, Victoria.

I happen to represent the city of Victoria, and I am proud to do so. Let me tell everyone what is going on in my city. Many local agencies have expressed an interest in opening a safe injection site, but there is no application because it is considered that there is no way they would get it. Why bother? There are so many conditions that are required, that they do not think there is any chance.

Nevertheless, people are dying in the streets. Katrina Jensen, AIDS Vancouver Island executive director, in 2013, said:

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

Good luck getting one, Victoria. I am here to say that the chances of doing so are remote at best.

That is where we are. That is why I asked the parliamentary secretary whether or not Conservatives had any projection as to how many of these facilities would be up and running a year later. I did not get any answer at all.

I will refer to something that I know many people have been concerned, which is why it is taking this long to get here, and why it is that the Conservative government has done everything it can to thwart this legislation coming forward.

Stephen Maher, a journalist, wrote the following in 2013:

On the afternoon of Friday, September 20, [2013, the health minister] sent out a news release announcing she was taking action against Health Canada officials who had approved an application from doctors who wanted to give heroin to addicts.

“Our policy is to take heroin out of the hands of addicts, not to put it into their arms,” she said.

It was odd. Why would [the health minister] issue a news release attacking her own officials? The next morning a clue landed in the inboxes of Conservatives across Canada.

Fred DeLorey, director of political operations for the party sent an e-mail to supporters: “Drug treatment programs should be focused on ending drug use--not giving illicit drugs to drug addicts. That's why I was shocked to learn today that Health Canada approved funding to give heroin to addicts--against the wishes of the elected government.”

There was a link to surprise, surprise a Sun News story:

“What the heck is Health Canada on?”, the anchor asked, throwing to a reporter who said that “government bureaucrats, many are saying, have used a loophole to allow individuals to legally receive prescription heroin”.

DeLorey's email ended with a link to a Conservative Party website with a big picture of a hypodermic needle and a place for people to enter their name and email address.

Here is the punchline. If one enters one's data, half an hour later DeLorey will send an email with a warning “If the NDP or Liberals are elected in 2015, you can bet they would make this heroin-for-addicts program permanent”, and then hits readers with a pitch for $5 to help the Conservatives fight back.

I guess it is clear why we have taken this long. We know about the fundraising efforts on the backs of people who are dying. This is a public health emergency, yet the Conservatives are trying to use it as a fundraiser. I do not know what to say except that people deserve better than such a mean-spirited government addressing the legislation in this kind of way.

I need to go back to the criteria. The parliamentary secretary was making it sound, and I will use her word in her debate, “typical”. However, as a lawyer, I have never seen anything like the criteria the Conservatives have put forward in an apparent attempt to implement the Supreme Court of Canada's response to this public health emergency. Here are the criteria in the new and improved bill, Bill C-2, to get one of these exemptions to allow a safe injection site.

Let me be clear. Talking to the police and the neighbourhood, and doing full consultation is a no-brainer. Everybody understands that. How could any municipality get away with doing otherwise? It is what Vancouver did so effectively. However, there is more criteria set out in the bill, such as:

The Minister may consider an application for an exemption...that would allow certain activities to take place at a supervised consumption site only after the following have been submitted:

Here I will paraphrase.

First, there is the requirement for scientific evidence demonstrating that there is a medical benefit. Duh, there have been 30 studies already on Insite. Europe and Australia have learned about this, but I guess we need more science on this.

The second is the requirement of a letter from the provincial minister, a letter from the local government, a description of the measures that have been taken to address any relevant concerns in the letter, a letter from the police force saying it is okay, a description of this and that. I am only at five, but there are 26 criterion, including this open-ended thing.

I do not want any Canadian to think this is somehow an ordinary list of relevant criteria, because that would be to misstate and distort the evidence before us.

Speaking of evidence, I need to talk about what happened after the safe injection site was opened in Vancouver.

First, there had been a twelvefold increase in overdose deaths in Vancouver between 1987 and 1993. There had been an astounding increase in communicable diseases among injection-drug users, such as hepatitis A, B and C, as well as AIDS. However, when the safe injection site was opened, there was a 35% decrease in overdose deaths, a decrease in crime as well as communicable disease rates and infections and relapse rates for drug users. That was because a science-based, evidence-based approach was taken.

People were now saying, and the Supreme Court of Canada was persuaded, that this health service would save lives. It would save a lot of money as people were no longer presenting at emergency centres and hospitals. It would reduce the amount of crime. That was evidence before the Supreme Court of Canada, and it was why it decided that a constitutional exemption was required by the minister.

The bill before us is public health legislation, although one would never know it. It was sent to the public safety committee, not the health committee, by the government. Public health does not get a lot of mention in the legislation nor in the parliamentary secretary's speech.

If we are to face a public health crisis as adult Canadians, then we need to face up to the fact that the four pillars work, that a comprehensive approach is required, that safe injection sites must be licensed and welcomed into communities when reasonable consultation has occurred, rather than the legislation before us, which thwarts this, sadly, for nothing but political purposes.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the member across talks about the opposition dragging out the debate, and she also underlined the importance of consulting with community groups.

In terms of the consultative process regarding Bill C-2, has she gone to the grassroots community partners around her, places such as ASK Wellness, Henry Leland House, Crossroads Inn, the Phoenix Centre? Has she talked to the president of ASK Wellness, Elizabeth Harris, about the bill? Has she talked to the president of the Phoenix Centre, Fawn Holland?

I am just wondering what their input was in her own community and whether she has consulted closely with them in Kamloops.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health and for Western Economic Diversification]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to lend my voice to the ongoing dialogue on Bill C-2, the respect for communities act.

Since Bill C-2 was introduced in the House of Commons, it has been the subject of much debate. Over the past few months, we have heard many different opinions about the proposed legislation. At the same time, there are aspects of the bill I believe we should now all agree on. They relate to the bill's contribution to maintaining public health and public safety in all of our communities.

As this is my first opportunity to speak about the bill, I will take some time to review the important points raised by the members of the House, the members of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, who led the consideration of this bill at committee stage, and the expert witnesses who were called before that committee to share their knowledge and views on the substance of this bill.

The health and safety of Canadians is something our government is committed to protecting and maintaining. It is an important issue, which we campaigned on. It is why Canadians elected this government and why we stand on this side of the House working to bring forward bills that allow us to do just that.

What is this bill about? In its decision regarding Insite in 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed the Minister of Health's discretion to grant or deny exemption applications and to request information for that purpose. In exercising her discretion, the Minister of Health must take into account public health and public safety considerations in accordance with the charter.

The Supreme Court of Canada decision also stated that the Minister of Health must consider evidence, if any, of the five following factors when assessing an exemption application related to activities at a supervised injection site: one, the impact of such a facility on crime rates; two, the local conditions indicating a need for such a supervised injection site; three, the regulatory structure in place to support the facility; four, the resources available to support its maintenance; and five, the expression of community support or opposition.

Why are supervised consumption sites considered to impact both public health and public safety? Let us look at what is actually at play when it comes to providing an application for an exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, or CDSA, for activities at a supervised consumption site.

As we have all heard, the CDSA controls activities involving controlled substances and precursors to minimize the risk of diversion to an illegal use. The CDSA and its regulations do, however, allow access to controlled substances for medical, scientific, and public interest purposes. One way the CDSA makes this possible is through exemptions under section 56 of the act. Section 56 provides the Minister of Health with the authority to grant an exemption from provisions of the CDSA for activities involving controlled substances.

Bill C-2 would amend section 56 to create a distinct regime for an exemption for activities involving illegal substances that are obtained on the streets and are then used in supervised injection sites. This is the reality of what is going on now, every day, at Insite. I hope we can all agree that a solid framework is needed when we are overseeing the use of street drugs in this way.

According to a 2008 report by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, supervised consumption sites are described as specialized facilities that provide injection drug users with sterile consumption equipment and “a clean, unhurried environment”. The clients frequenting these sites typically have a long history of drug use and drug abuse and often live on the margins of Canadian society, untouched by traditional health or social services.

It has been argued that these types of sites serve to meet the needs of those who use drugs by serving as a point of entry into health and social services. However, it is also important to remind listeners that the drugs used on the grounds of the facility are illegal and that these pre-obtained illegal drugs are acquired on the black market, usually from drug dealers and others who are exploiting the addictions of Canadians. This market presents obvious health and safety risks, so it is only right that the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act should lay out a framework to address this.

That is why the bill is clearly needed. The current system does not provide the tools needed to adequately consider the complex risks associated with supervised drug injection sites.

The respect for communities act would provide the minister of health with information needed to properly assess section 56 exemption applications and to balance public health and public safety considerations, in accordance with the charter.

To be more specific, the bill sets out the criteria that build upon the five factors set out by the Supreme Court of Canada. These criteria would provide clarity to the applicants on the type of information the minister would consider in an exemption application related to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Given the serious risks to human health and public safety associated with illegal drugs, and given that substances obtained from illegal sources are known to contribute to organized crime, our government believes that exemptions to undertake activities with them should be granted only once rigorous criteria, identified in Bill C-2, have been addressed.

Under Bill C-2, the minister of health would continue to have responsibility for granting the exemptions. However, to provide clarity and transparency in the application process, the bill sets out the information requirements to inform these decisions.

I have looked at this very carefully through the lens of being both a former mayor of a small town and a health care practitioner. I believe that what the minister has created in the bill is a positive and appropriate framework for these decisions.

Bill C-2 specifically identifies the type of information the minister would need to support informed decision-making. It would ensure that the Minister of Health would have access to community perspectives from a broad range of relevant stakeholders so as to give consideration to the potential impact a site could have on a particular community. To take that local government perspective, they are often looking at zoning applications and uses for different pieces of property, and there are frequently very strong opinions on both sides. Again, it is the community that has the ability to express those opinions. The ability of people to express their opinions to help inform the decision-making is absolutely critical.

Applicants would have to provide a report on consultations with the licensing authorities for physicians and nurses as well as with local community groups. As well, letters of opinion would be required from, for example, provincial ministers of health and public safety, the head of the local police force, and the lead health professionals of the government of the province. These individuals would be consulted in their professional capacities so that the minister's decision could be informed by leading experts from the local area. These letters would contain their opinions on the proposed activities and any public health and public safety concerns they might have.

The applicant would need to provide a report outlining the views of these groups and describing how they would respond to any relevant concerns raised during the consultations. The applicant would also be required to describe proposed measures to address relevant concerns raised by the head of the local police force, the local government, and community groups.

Available information about crime and public nuisance, public use of illicit drugs, or inappropriately discarded drug-related litter, such as needles, would also have to be submitted, along with any law enforcement research or statistics on the subject.

In addition, to address the safety of individuals and communities, the applicants would need to provide a description of the potential impact of the proposed activities at the site on public safety. This would include available information on crime in the vicinity of the site and in the municipality and a description of measures to be taken to minimize the impacts.

Applicants would also be required to provide information on security measures, record keeping, and the establishment of procedures for the safe disposal of any controlled substances or the devices that facilitate their consumption. Criminal record checks for key employees would also need to be provided.

Members on the other side of the House have raised a variety of concerns regarding the proposed legislation and the information required to support an application for an exemption for activities conducted at a supervised consumption site.

I would like to point out that we need to balance the obligations being placed on applicants with the needs of the Canadian public, meaning the individuals, organizations, and businesses that would become the eventual neighbours of any supervised consumption site in their communities.

A typical and appropriate community process should happen at a local level. That is what this bill is about. It would set up clear parameters and would require a thorough consultation process to ensure that applications for these supervised drug-injection sites were thoroughly reviewed by local experts and community members as part of any decision.

Our government believes that it is important to give members of the public an opportunity to provide input into proposed activities that could impact their communities. That is why, under Bill C-2, the minister would also have the authority to post a notice of application for a 90-day public comment period to seek direct input from community members. It is not unlike a rezoning application, whereby a large sign is posted to inform everyone who is local that it will happen. It is part of the local community consultation process.

That is what I have found so surprising about the debate on this bill until now. The opposition members continue to delay and drag out the debate, when the single largest accomplishment of the bill is simply consultation with local communities. To be quite frank, to me it is incomprehensible. Members in this House need to pride themselves on local grassroots input, whether it is for an environmental assessment process or a rezoning, so I am surprised that there seems to be such resistance to providing what is normal due process in important decisions a community makes. I am pleased to see that we are making some progress on this today.

Consultations are not the only improvement contained in the bill. There are also important new clarifications that would be brought to the inspection regime to monitor these sites following their establishment. This would ensure that the government had the tools needed to monitor any injection site that may be established following the new consultation process.

One of Health Canada's responsibilities under the CDSA is to monitor the distribution of controlled substances and to inspect facilities, as needed, to verify compliance with the act, its regulations, and the terms and conditions of an exemption. This is done to minimize the risk of diversion and any negative impact on public safety. I do not think anyone should argue about the importance of having that measure in the bill. As someone who was responsible for a health centre, there were many different groups that had the ability to come in and monitor the work we were doing, whether it was on our work with controlled drugs and substances or the privacy commission. Again, these are appropriate and necessary safeguards.

The proposed legislation would amend the CDSA, which sets out the powers of inspectors. The amendments would provide authority for inspectors to enter supervised consumption sites for inspections to validate information on any exemption application received by Health Canada. These amendments would also authorize inspectors to enter a site for which an exemption was granted at any reasonable time to verify compliance with the terms and conditions of the exemption. Again, these are appropriate measures and safeguards that would be put in place. If the conditions of the exemption were not followed or the act or regulations were not complied with, there could be a danger to public health or safety, and an exemption could be revoked.

That brings us back to the real issue at play, which is the danger to public health and public safety. It is no secret that when illicit drug activities take root in neighbourhoods, the health and safety of individuals, families, and communities are put at risk. Illicit drugs that are bought and sold on the streets are inherently dangerous and present dangers in the communities in which they are found. For example, we know that the proceeds from the sale of illicit substances often contribute to organized crime, and the use of these substances can increase the risk of harm to health and safety, especially when these substances are unregulated and untested.

While a supervised consumption site aims to reduce the risk of illegal drug use, it is also important to keep in mind that no level of oversight can ever make illegal, untested street drugs completely safe.

That is why I also want to note that the bill will require applicants to provide information regarding the drug treatment facilities that may be associated with the injection site. I think all members of this House can agree that the true goal of the program designed to help those of us struggling with addictions is to end drug use in a safe way. That is what any of us would hope for family or friends fighting an addiction. It is only right to analyze the drug treatment facilities that are proposed and associated.

We often hear about safe injection sites being a pathway to treatment, to care. As someone involved in the health care business, I too frequently saw people who were desperate to have detox, to have rehabilitation, to have support with nothing being available to them. If this is to be a pathway to supporting people in their recovery, then it has to be associated with those pieces of the treatment puzzle.

Everyone in this House probably has family and friends who are aware of enormous dollars that have been spent to send their loved ones to treatment centres because there are no public options available as they were desperately struggling with recovery.

These changes are in line with our government's balanced approach to tackling illegal drug use in Canada. In 2007 we introduced a national anti-drug strategy. The strategy focuses on drug prevention and access to treatment for individuals who suffer from drug dependencies. It also focuses on combatting the production and distribution of illicit drugs by targeting drug dealers and producers who threaten the health and public safety of our communities, and more particularly important, of our youth.

One of the key components of the strategy is the enforcement action plan, which has increased the capacity of law enforcement to proactively target organized criminal activities. For example, under this plan, funding was provided to the RCMP to expand its dedicated anti-drug team to help locate, investigate and shut down organizations involved in the production and distribution of illicit drugs. Funding was also provided to enhance the capacity of the criminal justice system to investigate and prosecute offenders.

Through these and many other activities under the national anti-drug strategy, we have made great progress in helping to protect public health and safety.

To emphasize just how much the issues related to public health and public safety are intertwined, both the Minister of Health and the Minister of Public Safety appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security to address questions raised by members in their consideration of this bill.

During her testimony, the Minister of Health clearly stated that, “This legislation was not prepared overnight or on a whim”. It was “...drafted to specifically codify a detailed ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada in September 2011 on a supervised injection site”. As I have said, that ruling identified the specific factors the Minister of Health must consider when reviewing applications that grant exemptions from Canada's drug laws to allow such sites to be established.

There are many things I could say about the process. I know 20 minutes is a long time, but it can also be a short time. Most people in the House, I expect, have had families and friends who have struggled with addiction. We heard a very powerful statement yesterday from one of our colleagues. We are trying to create a balanced piece of legislation that will really, as I say, take care of the public safety issues, to look at the public health issues and respond to the Supreme Court of Canada decision.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Minister of State (Finance)]

moved that Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, be read the third time and passed.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I really must correct my friend in terms of government. We are on track to balance the budget. We have the lowest debt of any of the G7 countries as a share of our economy on a per capita basis. In fact, Canadians are very well off, particularly when compared with countries that have had socialist governments and that labour under much more severe long-term debt loads.

This afternoon we will continue debating Bill S-7, the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act, at second reading. As the House knows, this bill confirms that Canada's openness and generosity does not extend to early and forced marriage, polygamy or other similar practices. The debate will continue on Monday, March 23, when we return from the upcoming constituency week.

Tomorrow, before we go back to our ridings, we will complete third reading debate of Bill C-2, the respect for communities act. While the opposition steadfastly refuses to let ordinary Canadians have a say when drug injection sites are proposed in their communities, I am pleased to see our government's legislation to allow for that public input. I know the member was saying that he thinks he values public input, but that is from everybody except Canadians apparently. We will ensure that Canadians do have some input and some say when a request is made to put a drug injection site into their community.

On Tuesday, March 24, we shall have the seventh and final allotted day of the current supply cycle, when the House will debate an NDP motion. I would have been really happy if we could have continued the debate that the NDP brought on Tuesday, where they debated the economy, our family tax cut, and the things we were happy to talk about. Unfortunately the NDP House leader decided, pursuant to Standing Order 81(16)(b), that he wanted to cut off the debate after just a single day, once again time allocating a debate by the NDP far more severely than we have ever seen from the government. For 79 times the opposition has failed to allow more than a single day of debate, despite the fact the Standing Orders allow it. In fact, the opposition has taken advantage of the Standing Orders to limit those debates to a mere single day in every single case. That Tuesday the House will consider what will no doubt be yet another time allocated opposition motion, the 80th since the last election.

That evening, we will consider the necessary resolutions and bills to give effect to this winter’s supplementary estimates as well as interim supply for the incoming fiscal year.

On Wednesday, March 25, we will have the second day of third reading debate on Bill C-26, Tougher Penalties for Child Predators Act. This legislation, which builds on the government’s efforts to protect children from sexual exploitation and online crime, will strengthen penalties for child sexual offenders. Child sexual exploitation is unacceptable, and we are determined to do more to better protect our youth and our communities and to punish sexual offenders to the full extent of the law.

On Thursday, March 26, we will start report stage for Bill S-2, Incorporation by Reference in Regulations Act. After question period, we will resume third reading debate on Bill C-12, Drug-Free Prisons Act.

I will give priority on Friday, March 27, to any debates not completed earlier that week.

Health

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I was pleased yesterday to vote in favour of Bill C-2, the respect for communities act.

This would give law enforcement, municipal leaders and local residents a voice when injection sites want to open in their communities, and yet the Liberal leader could not resist furthering his ideological agenda for more injection sites to be built across Canada by voting against communities having their voices heard.

Can the Minister of Health please update the House on the latest developments regarding this legislation?

Respect for Communities Act

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at report stage of Bill C-2.

The question is on Motion No. 1. A vote on this motion also applies to Motions Nos. 2 to 8.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee.

Pipeline Safety Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak today to a bill that addresses the concerns of many of my constituents in Laval—Les Îles, Bill C-46, An Act to amend the National Energy Board Act and the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act. Although this bill is a first step toward a true polluter pays regime for Canadian oil companies—which is what the NDP wants—this is something the government should have done a long time ago.

The bill also amends the statutory liability regime for federally regulated pipelines in Canada. Bill C-46 includes absolute liability for all pipelines regulated by the National Energy Board. That means that oil companies will be liable for costs and damage, irrespective of fault, up to $1 billion for major pipelines, that is, pipelines with the capacity to transport at least 250,000 barrels of oil per day. That is definitely an improvement over existing laws. However, there are significant improvements to be made to this bill and grey areas that we feel need to be clarified, as is always the case with this government.

First of all, the bill before us does not include absolute liability, which I mentioned earlier, for natural gas companies and other operators of non-oil pipelines or for small oil pipeline companies. Under this bill, that will be determined by future regulations or by cabinet.

I am honoured to be a member of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations. My colleagues on the committee, including the members for Honoré-Mercier and Beauharnois—Salaberry, would be able to talk about how extremely slowly this government, like the Liberal governments before it, deals with certain regulations. The committee regularly scrutinizes regulations from 1980 and 1990. Believe it or not, we recently dealt with a regulation that has been pending since 1976. I am therefore very suspicious of this government's ability to manage a matter of such great importance and to act efficiently and quickly when it comes to regulations.

The Conservative government has a reputation for being slow to respond to urgent situations, unless they are politically advantageous and can be used to appease its political base, as we have seen many times, including with Bill C-2 and more recently with Bill C-51. Since the Conservative base does not consider defending the environment to be sexy, this government has taken years to act—and it has not done nearly enough, if you ask us—in order to solve the problem of liability in the event of an oil spill if a pipeline breaks.

Ian Miron, a lawyer with Ecojustice, sees the $1 billion liability limit as insufficient. According to him, no liability regime can truly be considered a polluter pays regime unless and until polluters are made absolutely liable for the full costs of environmental harm. While the $1 billion limit may be considered an important first step for some companies, just look at what happened in the case of the Kalamazoo River spill in Michigan. Cleanup costs can quickly add up to $1 billion in the case of a major spill, and that does not even include compensation for damage.

The bill for the Enbridge spill in the Kalamazoo river is $1.2 billion. That does not include any damages or losses. In that type of case, we realize that the liability limit set at $1 billion is hardly enough and that the taxpayer will likely have to cover the rest of the bill yet again.

It is therefore quite understandable why so many people from Laval in my riding and my colleagues in the region are so concerned about Enbridge wanting to go through the area. The consultation process is flawed and does not include any consultation or fulsome discussion with the public and various stakeholders. There is just as much concern over the idea that in the event of a spill, the companies' liability is limited.

I already hear my colleagues opposite saying that we are anti-oil and anti-pipeline. That is pure rhetoric. The NDP wants responsible and sustainable development. There is no doubt that the natural resources we have in Canada are a real boon.

The energy sector is an essential driver of our economy. However, our vision for enhancing these resources and creating wealth and prosperity must not come at the expense of the social and environmental sustainability of our economy. For far too long, the Liberals and the Conservatives have been telling Canadians that they must choose between the environment and the economy. That is not true. They do not have to choose.

A new vision is needed for the future of our energy resources. The NDP has such a vision, and it is based on three key principles. The first is sustainability. We must ensure that polluters pay for the pollution they create instead of leaving those financial and environmental costs to future generations.

The second is partnership. We must ensure that our communities, provinces and first nations all benefit from resource development and that we create value-added jobs for the middle class here in Canada.

The third is long-term prosperity. We need real long-term prosperity, not just meaningless words from the Conservatives. We need prosperity to leverage Canada’s natural wealth to invest in modern, clean energy technology that will keep Canada on the cutting edge of energy development and ensure affordable rates into the future.

Bill C-46 is a step in the right direction when it comes to companies' financial liability. It is important to note that the bill also has some serious shortcomings, which I mentioned earlier and which we truly hope that the government will consider and fix in committee, in the spirit of collegiality. One particular shortcoming is the exclusion of gas companies from the absolute liability process. These companies are absolved in the current version of the bill.

However, it is even more important that in the future—at third reading, we hope—the bill include provisions that are nowhere to be found in this version of the bill. This includes, for example, the need for oil and gas companies to hold extensive consultations with communities, like my own community of Laval. This would ensure that the public can have its say and that the company that wants to put a pipeline through a particular area is accountable to the public in the region with respect to the security of the facilities and environmental standards.

Unfortunately, under this government, the environmental assessment process has been literally gutted, as have so many other environmental regulations since 2011. We are still holding out hope that the Conservatives will finally listen to reason and that they will listen to the people who have concerns, as we are doing in the NDP.

In conclusion, the bill before us today is an extremely important one. It is crucial for all of us, no matter the party, to do things the right way. Over the past four years, this government has rushed vitally important bills through the House, without meaningful debate and without being open to amendments that would improve bills or even address potential flaws.

Unfortunately, Bill C-51 is very representative of this reality. Therefore, I hope that Bill C-46 will mark a new way of doing things for this government, because as parliamentarians we must work in the interest of those who elected us, not in the interest of those who contribute to the Conservatives' campaign fund.

Respect for Communities Act

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as Canadians we all have a great deal to be proud of. We live in a country where protection of public health and the maintenance of public safety are at the top of our government's priorities. Much of what we do and the decisions we make here in the chamber serve to ensure that all Canadians continue to enjoy a country with sound public safety and public health policies.

Whether it is supporting a strong response to the public health threat of the African Ebola outbreak, or taking action to protect all of us from the very real public safety threat represented by recent terrorist activities, I think Canadians are reassured that our government takes these public health and safety concerns very seriously.

We are also aware of the very real public safety risks that dangerous drugs like heroin represent for our communities. That is why I am pleased to rise today to speak in support of the respect for communities act, a bill that contributes to our efforts to protect public safety and health by ensuring that all perspectives are heard when it comes to the proposals for sites that would use dangerous drugs in our neighbourhoods.

The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act is Canada's federal drug control statute. Its purpose is to protect public health and maintain public safety. Under the CDSA, activities with controlled substances are prohibited unless these are specifically allowed under the act, its regulations, or are authorized under a section 56 exemption.

Section 56 of the CDSA allows the Minister of Health to grant exemptions from the provisions of the CDSA to provide access to controlled substances for unanticipated purposes. For example, in the past a section 56 was issued to enable individuals to provide humanitarian aid. Using this section of the bill for international humanitarian efforts is quite a different thing than the plans put forward for supervised injection sites.

I think we can all agree that improved consultations would be a positive step when the CDSA is being used to control an area that it is not intended to address in the first place. Bill C-2 before us today proposes to add a new section to the CDSA to specifically address supervised consumption sites. The new section would outline the specific area, which would have to be addressed by an applicant seeking exemption from the CDSA for activities involving illicit substances at a supervised consumption site.

There has been a lot of debate thus far, and we have heard a lot of criticism about these criteria. However, they are simply an expansion of the ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada in its 2011 decision regarding Insite, the supervised injection site in Vancouver. In its decision, the court said that the minister should take into consideration evidence, if any, of five factors when assessing future section 56 exemption applications for the operation of a supervised consumption site.

These five factors are, one, the impact of such a site on crime rates; two, local conditions indicating a need for such a site; three, the regulatory structure in place to support the site; four, resources available to support its maintenance; and, five, expressions of community support or opposition to the site.

In its decision, the court also emphasized the need to balance public health and safety with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Bill C-2 proposes to outline information to be provided in an exemption application to satisfy the Supreme Court of Canada's requirement to consider these factors. If we split the criteria up under public health and public safety headings, we would see that the proposed criteria are almost equally divided under each.

I would like to use the rest of my time to outline some of the public safety criteria in the bill, as well as to explain how these criteria will assist the minister into taking into account the factors outlined by the court when assessing section 56 exemption applications for supervised consumption sites.

One criterion suggests that the applicant provide a letter from the head of the police force responsible for policing the municipality in which the site would be located that outlines his or her opinion on the proposed activities at the site, including any concerns with respect to public safety or security. This criterion expands upon the Supreme Court of Canada's factor that outlines the need for “evidence of community support or opposition”.

It just makes sense to consult with the head of local police in the area where the site is proposed, to hear from the official who would be charged with securing the perimeters around the site and keeping the surrounding community and the people at the site safe.

This criterion is a small extension of the communication that would no doubt exist between the site applicant and the local law enforcement agency. The head of police might also be able to provide valuable insight into the exemption application itself, including measures that an applicant might wish to consider to address any potential security and public safety concerns. Dialogue with the head of the local police might also help the applicant obtain information to address other criteria, for example, a description of the potential impacts of the proposed activities at the site on public safety, including information, if any, on crime and public nuisance, information on drug consumption in the area, and law enforcement statistics on these facts, if they exist.

The Supreme Court of Canada said that the minister of health needs to consider the local conditions that indicate a need for a supervised consumption site in the area, if any exist. Given the serious risks to the public health, public safety, and communities associated with the use and production of illicit substances, exemptions to undertake activities with them should be granted only after rigorous criteria have been met.

This criterion is a part of the information used to assess these applications on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the unique circumstances surrounding any proposed site. To further expand on that, these substances are unsafe and can be the subject of criminal activity. It is in the minister's interest to know how the applicant plans to address the security of the substances at the site, as well as the safety of the staff, users of the site, and people in the vicinity. Therefore, the bill would require an applicant to provide a description of the measures that would be taken to minimize the diversion of controlled substances, and the precursors and risks to the health and safety and security of persons at the site or in the vicinity of the site, including staff members.

Again, given the serious harms of illicit substances and the criminality that is often associated with them, it is reasonable for the minister to be aware of the measures in place to protect those who work at the facility and those who use it. The Supreme Court of Canada asked the minister to consider the regulatory structure in place to support the facility, if any. How an applicant plans to minimize diversion and keep the staff and clients safe is a logical piece of information that the minister needs in order to address this Supreme Court factor before granting an exemption.

To summarize, the criteria included in Bill C-2 balance public health and public safety and are consistent with the factors identified by the Supreme Court of Canada. I urge all members of the House to vote in favour of these legislative changes, as the proposed approach will strengthen our laws and enable the government to continue to protect the health and safety of all of our communities.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-2. As we have said on this side of the House, this bill is ill-considered and a reaction, frankly, to the government's inability to address a serious problem. As we know, the Supreme Court has had to intervene to guide the government to do more than it has been doing.

However, it is more than that. If we look at the legislation, it tries to address a major void in the approach of the government in dealing with what is a health issue. I would like to underline that point at the start. This is about health, the health of our neighbours and the people we represent as members of Parliament. Too often, this issue has been dressed up as a drug issue, invoking the kind of images we see on TV. Somehow it has been torqued to the point where we forget that we are talking about human beings who are facing addictions.

Recently I met with people who were with the recovery movement in Ottawa. I sponsored a motion, which I would love to have the rest of my colleagues support, with respect to designating a recognized recovery month in September. One of the important topics they spoke of was the people who had taken on an addiction, gone down that brave road and, with the support of many people, been able to deal with it, whether it had been alcohol or drugs. Their point was that we need to take this out of the shadows when we are talking about addictions and celebrate when people have been successful with recovery. We need to talk about it and celebrate it, not hide it or be ashamed of it. That is something we have seen with mental health. We have come a long way when it comes to mental health. However, we need to do the same with addictions.

When people are addicted to drugs, we need to see that as a health issue. It could be my kids who could become addicted, or the kids of other members, our neighbours, or friends. We have seen that pattern.

Before my mother entered politics, her first job was as a public health nurse. One of the things she had to deal with in the 1970s was the kids who were getting addicted to hard drugs and had nowhere to go. She was their first point of contact in dealing with that issue. The problem then was acknowledging that it was a problem. People were hiding behind closed doors and suffering in silence. We have made some progress in that area by now. However, when I look at this bill and listen to the government side, I think we need to take back that approach that we thought we had learned and instead say this is a health issue and that we can solve it if we work together.

It just so happens that this is timely for me. I was very lucky this past week to meet with all the executive directors of all of the community health centres in Ottawa. They were not just community health centre executive directors from Ottawa Centre—I am lucky to have four community health centres in my riding—but also from other areas in Ottawa.

I met with the executive director of the community health centre in the south end of Ottawa, which is not in my area; and from the Queensway Carleton area, which is west of me; as well as Simone Thibault, executive director of the Centretown Community Health Centre, who coordinated it. I want to give her a special mention because she hosted the meeting. Jack McCarthy from the Somerset West Community Health Centre was also there, as was the executive director from Sandy Hill.

It was David Gibson who underlined the point that we have to get smarter when it comes to dealing with addictions, and hard drugs in particular. He laid out a convincing argument on why we need to take a different approach than what is laid out in Bill C-2. Essentially, he said that we have to acknowledge that we have harmful, powerful drugs being used by members of our community. Therefore, the first thing we need to do when dealing with any addiction is to recognize it. The second is that we have to understand what the drugs are, who is taking them, and where they are taking them. Therefore, we must do an analysis. The third is to come up with solutions. It is a fairly straightforward approach that he talked about.

However, he also added to the briefing that he sent me, which I thank him for, the legal piece here, because we know that the Supreme Court has been involved.

I will read some of that report into the record for the benefit of our debate. One of the things he says is the following:

I consider Bill C2 as an important reminder of the lessons of the 2011 Supreme Court's ruling: that governments, and all health and public health organizations, have a duty to act in ways that enhance the health of individuals and their communities.

I do not think anyone in this House would disagree with that statement.

He does go on to say how we can improve that response to achieve the goal he laid out. One of the things he has laid out was from that Supreme Court ruling:

The effect of denying the services of [safe injection sites] to the population it serves and the...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.

That was from Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin in her decision in 2011. It goes on to say:

These sites are evidence that health authorities are increasingly recognizing that health care for injection drug users cannot amount to a stark choice between abstinence and forgoing health services.

This is the key for me. We cannot take people who are hiding in the shadows with their addictions and using injection drugs and say that we do not have any role. They are people in our communities. They are people who need help.

We cannot just say get off the drugs. The ads are fine. I have seen them, and they can have some effect, but if an individual is addicted to hard drugs and is using injection drugs, that campaign will not help. It will not do the job.

The Supreme Court was saying that we cannot lay it out and say that abstinence or denial of health services is all that is left for an individual who is a drug user. We have to look at who this person is and how we can help, as I mentioned earlier.

The image I will now tell the House about is from the report I received from one of our community health centre executive directors. It is an actual story. I think it is important, because it lays out what some of the challenges are.

This story is about a person we will call Michael, to protect his privacy. In August 2012, at the age of 19, the same age as my eldest son, Michael visited the downtown City of Ottawa community health centre to exchange his used needles for clean needles. Having declined further support that day, Michael left the community health centre. There is an accompanying photo, which I cannot show the House.

What happened next was that just steps away from the community health centre, Michael was found in an overdosed state. He was found by one of the people in the community health centre, fortunately, because if he had not been found, he would have died of an overdose.

He woke up in the hospital emergency department and was told that he was clinically dead when the paramedics arrived. I will just underline the point that he was 25 metres from the community health centre, and they were able to be there to help him. However, what happened to his friend was not so lucky. A week later, one of his closest friends died of an overdose.

What I am trying to say is that this is preventable. When we have people, and they are in all of our communities, make no mistake, who are dying because of overdoses and the use and misuse of injection drugs, there is a model that is not one-size-fits-all. It is an opportunity for us to deal with it.

In closing, this is not about naming and shaming. This is about taking people out of the shadows and putting them in front of our health care services and providing the supports they need.

It is 2015. The evidence is out. The studies have been done. We know that supervised sites can work. It is not one-size-fits-all. Yes, I agree with the government that it has to have community support, but if we fail to provide that support, we are turning our backs on people.

This is about people's lives. This is about the fact that people are dying in our streets because we are not doing enough, and it would be an abject failure, not only of our duties as members of Parliament but our collective duties as a caring community.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, for anyone who is just tuning in now, before question period we were discussing Bill C-2, the respect for communities act, and I was raising the point in the debate that the health committee had heard extensively on these issues from a large number of expert witnesses.

The committee recently completed studies on both prescription drug abuse and the health risk of marijuana use. During these studies, a number of witnesses called for increased action by the government in order to raise awareness of the health problems associated with drug abuse. It is costing us an enormous amount in society in the form of non-productive citizens. People are developing increasing health complications and leading non-productive lives, and it is placing a real burden on the health care system. There is also the terrible destruction of their own lives and families and all of those who love and care for them.

Given the committee's work in this area, I was very pleased that in October of 2014, the Minister of Health launched a preventing drug abuse media campaign. That campaign's purpose was to equip parents with the information tools needed to talk with their teenagers about the harmful effects of prescription drug abuse and marijuana use.

That program is part of our prevention plan that we are working toward. Bill C-2 would provide a framework for communities to discuss so-called safe injection sites before they are implemented. It would give law enforcement, municipal leaders, and residents an opportunity to address the circumstances in the neighbourhood before such a program could be considered by the minister.

I thank the members for the opportunity to speak to this bill and I look forward to questions.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, as reported without amendment from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to be a part of the debate today about such an important bill, Bill C-2, the respect for communities act. I suspect that we all agree that illegal drugs have a terrible impact on our communities. There may be different opinions on how the challenges they pose should be addressed, but we all know that the worst drugs such as heroin have a terrible impact on our communities and destroy lives. These drugs also cause serious harm to public health and public safety.

Bill C-2 forms an important piece of our government's effort to protect public health from the serious and negative effects of drug abuse and to maintain public safety from the impacts associated with drug use and addictions.

It is always good to have the facts when we are debating important topics like this, so I would like to briefly mention a report from Justice Canada entitled, “The Cost of Crime in Canada”. The report estimated that the direct health care costs associated with illicit drug use in Canada totalled $1.3 billion in 2008. It is estimated that over $2 billion is spent annually on justice-related costs, such as law enforcement, courts, and correctional services as a result of illicit drug use. These are enormous expenditures and costs to society.

Even worse when we consider the terrible impact on individuals, communities, and Canadian society, where the costs are enormous. These are the direct costs to the health and justice systems only. The impact on the individuals who suffer and the negative consequences for their families is immeasurable. No parent should have to suffer as their child gets involved with drug abuse and end up worrying about the broken dreams and perilous, uncertain future that addiction brings.

This government is committed to preventing drug abuse and breaking the cycle of drug addiction so that our communities can be healthy and safe and that no family has to watch a loved one suffer from addiction. Part of our plan to address addiction is the national anti-drug strategy that was launched in 2007 as the federal government's comprehensive response to combat illicit drug use in Canada.

With its three key action plans, the strategy focuses on preventing illicit drug use, treating drug dependency, and combatting the production and trafficking of illicit drugs. Today I would like to elaborate on our government's commitment to preventing illicit drug use through the strategy's prevention action plan.

The prevention action plan contributes to reducing illicit drug use and prescription drug abuse in key target groups such as youth. It does this by funding the development and implementation of community-based interventions and initiatives to prevent illicit drug use and abuse of prescription drugs, especially among youth; discouraging illicit drug use and prescription drug abuse by providing information directly to youth, parents, and concerned adults; and supporting the development of awareness materials and the provision of awareness sessions to school-aged youth, parents, professionals, and other community members.

The government also supports prevention activities through the drug safety community initiatives fund. This funding program supports Canadian communities and their collective efforts at health promotion and prevention of illicit and prescription drug abuse. The projects supported through the fund focus on informing and educating Canadians on illicit drugs and prescription drug abuse and their adverse health and social effects; offering tools to foster resiliency and coping skills among youth to deal with peer pressure regarding illicit drug use; and promoting healthy behaviours and supportive environments that discourage drug use among young people.

Projects take place on the national, provincial, territorial, and local community levels and can include a wide range of activities, such as school-based and peer support programs and outreach. Project activities can also include the development and distribution of resource materials as well as the sharing of best practices.

Since 2007, Health Canada has provided $75 million to fund some 140 projects to discourage and prevent illicit drug use among youth. As part of our ongoing commitment to curbing drug abuse in Canada, the government is supporting projects across the country to address a wide range of illicit and prescription drug abuse issues, especially among vulnerable youth, who have a higher risk of substance abuse and dependence.

Many of the projects serve to equip young people with the knowledge and skills required to recognize and avoid situations where there may be peer pressure to use drugs. Others are designed to provide parents and those who work with youth with drug education and prevention strategies that will help families and communities deal with the growing problem of substance abuse.

In addition to providing financial support for prevention work, our government also completed a successful five-year, $30 million mass media campaign known as “DrugsNot4Me”, which was aimed at youth and their parents. A key part of the DrugsNot4Me campaign was developing awareness by providing prevention materials for use in elementary and secondary schools. We also provided facts and background information for parents to help prepare them to engage in conversations with their children about substance abuse and staying off drugs.

The campaign made a difference. There were over one million visits to the DrugsNot4Me website, and one in four parents reached out to the campaign and took action by engaging in discussions with their children about drugs. Even more importantly, there was an increase in the proportion of youth who said they knew about the potential effects of illicit drug use on relationships with family and friends, and they sought information on how to avoid drugs or to deal with drug-use issues.

However, despite these prevention efforts, the challenges are far from over. Illicit drug use in Canada is changing, with prescription drug abuse becoming a concern. In 2012-13, more than 80,000 Canadian kids admitted to using prescription drugs to get high. This is a very serious and alarming situation. The misuse and abuse of prescription drugs carries the same health and public safety concerns as illicit drugs do.

To combat the concern about prescription drug abuse, our government has committed an additional $44.9 million in funding over five years to expand the national anti-drug strategy to target prescription drug abuse.

The health committee has recently been studying these issues and heard from a large number of expert witnesses. In fact, the committee recently completed studies both on prescription drug abuse and the health risks of marijuana.

I know that my time is coming to an end and perhaps this is a good place for me to stop. I imagine I will have a little time left when the debate resumes after question period.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise once again to debate Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which was introduced by the Conservative government.

So much has been said about this bill on supervised injection sites. As a member of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, I was quite surprised to see that the government chose to send this bill to that committee even though the better part of the bill is directly related to health. It should have gone directly to the Standing Committee on Health. It is sad. I suspect that this is for partisan and political reasons, so I felt I needed to speak up about it.

We did study the bill, but not in quite as much detail as we would have liked. I will say more about that in my speech. After the speedy study that the Conservative majority forced the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security to do, we have no choice but to oppose Bill C-2 as written.

That being said, I would like to congratulate my colleague fromVancouver East for her excellent work on Bill C-2 and supervised injection sites in general. She represents the riding that is home to InSite, the supervised injection site that people often refer to in connection with this bill and that has the support of the majority of the community. I will say more about that later.

For the people watching at home right now, I will explain what Bill C-2 is all about. The bill, in fact, is a thinly veiled attempt by the Conservative majority to stop safe injection sites from operating, simply for partisan, political reasons. It runs directly counter to a ruling handed down by the Supreme Court of Canada regarding these sites.

We know that the Conservatives do not necessarily worry too much about abiding by Supreme Court decisions, but I consider the court an essential body when it comes to these decisions. We should not go against decisions made by the highest court in the land.

Bill C-2 sets out a lengthy and arduous list of criteria that supervised injection sites would need to meet before the minister would grant them an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The exemption already exists, but the bill makes the list of criteria extremely complicated. In addition, the bill puts discretionary powers directly into the hands of the minister. This is unacceptable when it comes to an issue as important as supervised injection sites and drug addiction in general.

The minister could therefore prevent a supervised injection site from opening its doors, even if all the criteria are met. This is just another arbitrary, partisan decision. We must not take this matter lightly and turn it into a partisan issue. That is what the Conservatives are doing with Bill C-2. Under the new criteria, it will be even more difficult for organizations to open supervised injection sites in Canada. City officials and the public have been increasingly calling for these kinds of supervised injection sites.

I am saying that the Conservative Party is making this a partisan issue because it had a major fundraising campaign called "keep heroin out of our backyards”.This bill will make it virtually impossible to open supervised injection sites. Furthermore, several addiction and legal experts told the committee that this bill would have the complete opposite effect and that it could make drugs even more accessible in neighbourhoods.

Instead of basing policies on an ideology that has nothing to do with the real facts associated with this problem, the NDP believes that policies must be based on evidence rather than ideology. Furthermore, we believe that harm reduction programs, including in this case supervised injection sites, must be exempt based on proof of their ability to improve the health of a community and to save human lives, and not on ideology.

The Conservatives have been trying to close supervised injection sites for years. They do not hide this and everyone knows it. They have spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on court proceedings that have come to the same conclusion. InSite and similar supervised injection sites must be allowed to provide services in Canada.

As I mentioned, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of supervised injection sites like InSite, but the Conservatives have decided that they will not listen to reason and will continue to defend their personal ideology in a bid to raise more money for their next campaign. That is utterly disappointing in this type of debate.

We examined this bill in committee. I was a member of the committee, along with my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca. We were also fortunate enough to have our wonderful colleague from Vancouver East help us examine this bill. Five committee meetings were held to study this massive bill. I want to point that out because over the past few days at meetings of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, we have been having a lot of discussions about the importance of bringing in a large number of witnesses to talk about various bills.

We had two four-hour meetings to hear from witnesses and discuss Bill C-2, which addresses such an important issue. Only two meetings were scheduled to hear from witnesses. That is not very many since a much larger number of meetings have been held to hear from witnesses on other bills. In this case, the Conservatives told us that they thought two meetings were enough to examine Bill C-2, even though we were against the idea of hearing from so few witnesses.

I can give my colleagues opposite an example. When they were not in government, a study was conducted of the same-sex marriage bill. A total of 32 meetings were held. Hearings on this important bill were held across the country. According to the Conservatives at the time, 32 meetings were not enough, so I hope they will not tell me that they really think that two meetings to hear from witnesses were enough to examine such an important bill.

It is often difficult to explain exactly how committees work. It can seem relatively complex if a person does not attend committee meetings regularly. I completely understand that. The fact is that the Conservatives limited debate on every part of the study of this bill in committee. For example, we were given a maximum amount of time to examine the bill clause by clause, propose amendments and discuss them. Once again, the Conservatives were trying to limit debate as much as possible in committee.

Sixty-two amendments were proposed by all the opposition parties. The official opposition, the NDP, and the Liberals proposed more than 20 each, while the Green Party proposed a dozen or so amendments. The Conservatives not only ignored the expert testimony, they also rejected the 62 amendments. That is sad. I will close my remarks on that. I would have liked to go into more detail. I hope my colleagues will ask questions about this.

Montreal is currently trying to open supervised injection sites. The city consulted the public, police services, communities and addiction experts in order to develop something like what Vancouver has right now. Everyone said that it was extremely important for Montreal to have a supervised injection site like InSite, to have our own, similar model to address the addiction problem. Unfortunately, Bill C-2 will delay the efforts of the Montreal community to achieve such a result. I find the Conservative approach with Bill C-2 regrettable, and that is why the official opposition will vote against the bill.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise today to support the proposed legislation, the respect for communities act, otherwise known as Bill C-2. I do not think that anyone can deny the enormous public health harms associated with illicit drug use. In some way, we have all seen the damage that illicit drug use can cause, not only to the health of the user, but to families, friends, and communities.

The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the CDSA for short, is the federal legislation that controls substances that can alter mental processes and may produce harm to health and society when diverted or misused. The CDSA has the dual purpose of protecting public health and maintaining public safety.

The substances covered by the CDSA have a risk of abuse and pose serious risks to individuals when they are misused or abused. Those risks are significant. They increase when the controlled substance is unregulated, untested, and obtained from illegal sources. That is an important point that often gets lost in this debate. The drugs that would be used at any proposed supervised injection drug site are bought on the black market. We are not talking about drugs that are prescribed by a doctor and have the needed medical oversight. These drugs are purchased on the street and then used by people suffering with addictions.

Our government takes safety very seriously, and we have a number of controls in place when it comes to prescribed drugs. In fact, this House recently passed Vanessa's law in order to strengthen the safety of prescription drugs. Given this, I think it is only appropriate that we give all Canadians an opportunity to comment on the measures which could be needed to protect health when a site is proposed to allow the injection of illegal street drugs.

Our government believes that exemptions from the CDSA for activities involving illegal substances at supervised consumption sites should only be granted once rigorous and relevant criteria have been addressed by the applicant. The criteria that are outlined in the bill stem directly from the five factors laid out in the 2011 Supreme Court of Canada decision on lnsite. The court's decision requires the Minister of Health to consider the following five factors when assessing an exemption application for a supervised consumption site: evidence, if any, on the impact of such a site on crime rates; local conditions indicating a need for such a site; the regulatory structure in place to support the site; resources available to support its maintenance; and, expressions of community support or opposition.

All of the criteria proposed in Bill C-2 relate to one of these factors that I just referred to. Much like the dual purpose of the CDSA, which is to protect public health and maintain public safety, the criteria in this bill balance both the public health and public safety considerations of the operation of a supervised consumption site. The criteria included in this bill are relevant to matters of public health or public safety, and some of the criteria address both.

Today I would like to focus on some of the public health criteria in the bill and discuss how each one relates to the factors set out by the Supreme Court of Canada. One criteria requires that an applicant provide a letter from the provincial minister responsible for health in the province in which the site would be located, which outlines his or her opinion on the proposed activities at the site and describes how those activities are integrated within the provincial health care system. I can guarantee that the health minister in my province of Alberta would want to be consulted on proposals for a site like this. It is only appropriate that provincial ministers be afforded an opportunity to have their views heard. This relates to the Supreme Court factor that requires that community expressions of support or opposition be considered.

These criteria allow the professional opinion of the respective provincial minister of health to be a part of what the federal minister would consider when assessing or assigning an application. Moreover, information about access to drug treatment services, if any, could help to understand how drug users would be supported within the provincial health care system.

Other public health-related criteria fulfill the court's directive to look at evidence, if any, on local conditions indicating a need for such a site. These criteria are asking for relevant information on things like the number of people who consume illicit substances or have infectious diseases in relation to illicit drug use in the area of the proposed site.

Another requirement for applicants which contributes to the minister's understanding of the local conditions is official reports, if any, that are relevant to the establishment of a supervised consumption site, including any coroners' reports. These reports, including those from a coroner, could be used to support evidence of illicit drug problems in the area, indicate important drug use patterns, and identify the demographic of the individuals who could benefit from the services provided by a supervised consumption site.

We all know that the best laid plans can sometimes run into local circumstances that present unexpected challenges to a plan, so it is critically important that the bill require that the facts on the ground be considered when any proposed site is being looked at.

Additionally, following an initial exemption, if an applicant wishes to continue activities at a supervised consumption site, subsequent exemption applications would have to inform the Minister of Health of evidence, if any, of any impacts of the site's activities on public health during the period that the site had been operating.

This information provides the minister with an understanding of public health impacts that the site has had and would potentially continue to experience with a future exemption. This criterion builds on the Supreme Court factor requiring the minister to consider local conditions in the area where a site would be located.

In its decision, the Supreme Court affirmed the discretion of the Minister of Health to grant or deny exemption applications and to request information for this purpose.

This proposed legislation clearly identifies information to be addressed in an exemption application to assist the minister in considering the information relevant to the Supreme Court factors. Her decision must balance the protection of public health and maintenance of public safety in accordance with the charter.

Moreover, the criteria serve to add clarity and transparency to the exemption application process. With this legislation, all persons wishing to open a supervised consumption site would know exactly what is expected as part of their application.

While the focus of my speech today has been related to public health, it is important to note that the proposed legislation balances both public health and public safety. Indeed, Bill C-2 would amend the CDSA to create a more robust legislative structure to balance protection of public health and maintenance of public safety with respect to supervised consumption sites.

It is imperative that there be strong controls around activities with these dangerous drugs, and I urge all members to vote in favour of the bill.

The House resumed from December 1, 2014 consideration of Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, as reported (without amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon this afternoon we will continue debating Bill C-46, the Pipeline Safety Act, at second reading. This bill updates our laws respecting pipelines to make our legislative framework a world leader. The debate will continue—and hopefully conclude—on Monday, March 9.

Tomorrow, before we start our constituency week, we will conclude report stage debate on Bill C-2, the respect for communities act. The bill would enshrine in law the requirement for communities to be consulted when there is an application made to open a drug injection site.

I know the opposition House leader will be very interested in this. Tuesday, March 10 will be an allotted day, and we will have the House debate a New Democratic proposal. I just heard my official opposition counterpart make some comments on time allocation of government bills. Of course, Tuesday will the 79th time allocated opposition day debate of Parliament. That will be the 79th time the NDP has imposed time allocation on a motion it has brought before the House.

Our government allows generous time for debates on bills. We allow considerable time at each stage, yet every time the NDP chooses a subject for debate, it limits the debate to the minimum the rules allow, one day. The rules expressly allow it to allocate a number of its allotted days to a single subject of debate, but on 79 occasions, the NDP has chosen time allocation to the bare minimum of one day. Seventy-nine times it has imposed time allocation on the House to limit debate when it gets to choose the subject. The rules let it choose more days. The rules let it apply more time to those subjects. It chooses not to do that. I invite the hon. member, who seems to have some skepticism, to check out Standing Order 81(16)(b), which gives him that power; so if we want a preview of what could come from the NDP, based on its conduct here, I think we can see it right there.

On that day, March 10, we will finish what I am sure will be the 79th occasion of the NDP imposing time allocation on our ability to debate its ideas. Then, that evening, we will conclude debate on the fourth report of the foreign affairs committee.

On Wednesday, March 11, we will have the third day of second reading debate on Bill S-6, the Yukon and Nunavut regulatory improvement act.

Thursday, March 12 will see the House resume consideration at second reading of Bill S-7, the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act. This is a bill that would demonstrate that Canada's openness and generosity will not extend to early and forced marriage, polygamy, and other similar practices.

We will have third reading of Bill C-2 on Friday, March 13. Finally, for the benefit of committees’ forward planning, I anticipate scheduling Tuesday, March 24, as the last allotted day of this supply period. I will confirm this during next week’s Thursday statement.

Bill C-2—Time Allocation Motion

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this is the 89th time that the government has put closure on debate on a bill. It really is a very shameful record. It is an historic but shameful record in the history of this Parliament.

This bill, Bill C-2, is a particularly grievous one and is fundamentally flawed. I find it very ironic that the government itself sat on this bill for months and months—in fact, the better part of a year—before it brought it forward for debate. Now, all of a sudden, it decides it wants to rush it through at report stage and third reading at the last minute.

I want to ask why it is cutting off debate, why it sat on this bill for so long, and why members of Parliament, who have the right to a thorough debate at report stage and third reading of this bill and to discuss all of the arguments that came out of committee, a legitimate process, are now being limited and foreclosed in the House.

Bill C-2—Notice of time allocation motion

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I must advise that an agreement has not been reached under the provisions of Standing Orders 78(1) or 78(2) concerning the proceedings at report stage and third reading of Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at those stages.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon we will continue debating Bill C-51, the anti-terrorism act, 2015, at second reading. These measures will keep Canada secure from evolving threats.

Of course it is important in the context that we live in today that these important measures to keep Canadians safe and combat terrorism do become law during this Parliament. In order to ensure that happens, the debate will continue on Monday, and thanks to an order of this House adopted earlier this day, we are able to have certainty that we will have a vote on it at that time.

Tomorrow we will have the 10th day of debate on Bill C-32, the victims bill of rights act. That afternoon we will wrap up the third reading debate of these measures, which will place victims at the heart of our justice system.

Tuesday shall be the fifth allotted day, which will see us debate a proposal from the Liberal Party. That evening, we will have a take note debate on the troubling rise of anti-Semitism around the world.

This important take-note debate will be on the disturbing rise of anti-Semitism around the world, and we are very much looking forward to seeing this topic discussed. I want to thank the Minister for Multiculturalism and the member for Mount Royal for their persistence in this initiative.

On Wednesday we will turn to Bill C-2, the respect for communities act, for another day of debate at report stage. It will be the 12th day that this bill has been considered by the House. With luck, the opposition will stop holding up this important proposal and let regular, ordinary Canadian citizens have a meaningful say when people want to come to their communities to set up a drug injection site operation.

Then, on Thursday, we will resume the second reading debate on Bill C-46, the Pipeline Safety Act, which aims to establish world-class safety standards for pipelines in Canada.

Motions in amendment

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-44, especially after my colleagues have been speaking very eloquently with respect to the concerns we have with the bill. As I was reading through the notes on the bill, it struck me that it is a similar pattern to one we experienced on Bill C-2, which was also before the public safety committee very recently, having to do with safe consumption sites.

The bill was only approved at second reading on November 18. Here we are in early December, and already we are at report stage. That means the bill was rushed through the House and it was then rushed through the committee. In fact, there were three committee meetings. Witness testimony happened over two days, and then there was clause-by-clause at the third meeting. We have to remember that committee hearings are only two hours. We basically had four hours of testimony from witnesses and one meeting of clause-by-clause consideration.

I want us to stop and think about that.

What has happened to the legislative process in Parliament is really quite shocking. I do remember the days when a bill would have adequate debate in the House. When a bill went to committee, it was considered a very serious proposition. We might hear witnesses for a couple of weeks, over several meetings.

I know that you, Mr. Speaker, would remember. You were part of the justice committee and a very able representative for the NDP. I know you dealt with umpteen bills. Even when you were dealing with them, they were being rushed through. However, prior to that, there was a sense that as parliamentarians, as legislators, we were doing our job and we were really examining a bill.

Now we have come to this place where the attitude and the pattern of operation is to basically rush everything through, and if we dare to criticize and say that something needs a little more time, then we are told we are holding something up, that we are doing it for political reasons.

However, these are very significant bills that we debate. This one in particular has to do with the powers of CSIS. This is an organization that Canadians read about from time to time when something might come forward in terms of a particular case or situation. However, basically Canadians have very little knowledge about CSIS and how it operates, other than individuals who may have had direct contact with the organization because they were being investigated in some way.

When we look at the modernization of CSIS, and we understand that is what the bill is meant to be about, that is certainly very important. After 30 years, there is no question that it needs to be modernized. However, it does require full scrutiny. It absolutely requires full scrutiny by members of Parliament, by a committee, and by the witnesses who are called to committee.

It is shocking that of all the amendments that were put forward—I believe the NDP put forward 12, the Liberals put forward 5, and the Green Party put forward 6—as was similar to Bill C-2, none were approved. Not one.

I think we have a very serious situation. We have a majority government that basically calls the shots and does not even pretend to be interested in a legislative process and examining a bill as to whether it might be improved upon, or whether there are legitimate criticisms, flaws in a bill. In fact, what is concerning about the bill is that, as we have heard with other bills that have been before the House, if it goes through in its current form, it too may end up in some kind of constitutional challenge. Again, it is a pattern that is emerging.

I did want to put that on the record because it worries me. We come to work here to represent our constituents. We come into the House to participate in a process in good faith, but we find out that the process has been completely jigged. There is no space, no room, no engagement, to have a constructive review of an important piece of legislation. That bothers me.

In my riding of Vancouver East, I was at a very important gathering of aboriginal people, who were speaking about the missing and murdered aboriginal women and the need for a national inquiry. We think of the impact of that issue in terms of public safety, and yet we see very little movement from the government on the issue. We see a bill being rushed through here that would also have an impact on public safety and an impact on the public interest, and we see virtually no debate. It is a very sad day.

As many of my colleagues have pointed out in the debate at report stage today, the NDP did support this bill at second reading. New Democrats actually agreed that it should go to committee, that we should take a look at it. We worked diligently at committee, and I certainly want to congratulate my colleagues on the committee who brought forward the amendments. It takes a lot of time to bring forward amendments. They heard the witnesses. The witnesses themselves made a number of suggestions to improve the modernization of CSIS. With any expansion of powers, the most critical thing is to ensure that there is proper oversight.

We can go back as far as the Maher Arar commission, which surely is one of the pivotal moments in Canadian political history in terms of security. I was in the House when that travesty took place, trying to understand what happened to Maher Arar and calling for a national inquiry. Of course, that finally did happen and the recommendations of the commission of inquiry came out in 2006. I wonder what happened to those recommendations. In fact, we know that the inquiry called for a number of recommendations and urgently pointed out that measures needed to be put in place to have oversight of Canada's intelligence agencies. That was eight years ago. No one can forget the Maher Arar inquiry. No one can forget what happened to that Canadian, and the hell that he went through. If we have learned anything, surely it is an examination of our own intelligence procedures and methodologies. We have to live up to the recommendations of the commission of inquiry, and yet they have not been implemented. How awful is that?

Here we are with another bill that would change the way that CSIS operates overseas, and yet we have not addressed the fundamental question with CSIS that has been pointed out to us again and again, which is the need for proper oversight. We hear this, as well, from the privacy and information commissions of Canada. These are folks who need to be paid attention to. These are folks who pay close attention to privacy and information in Canada, and they know the balance on what is required in terms of privacy and information. Yet at their annual meeting, they also brought forward the need to have effective oversight included in any legislation established for any additional powers for intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Where is it? Why are we dealing with this bill in isolation?

Now we are at report stage, and suffice it to say that New Democrats will be opposing this bill because the oversight has not been brought in. The Security Intelligence Review Committee, which has ended up being a part-time committee, is not adequate. We have seen that the position of inspector general of CSIS was eliminated in 2012, so even the internal monitoring of CSIS has greatly diminished. We are in a bad state of affairs.

We want to ensure that if there is any expansion of CSIS, that it be done by protecting civil liberties and it be be done with proper oversight. This bill would do neither, and therefore it deserves to be voted down. There should be a proper examination that takes place.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has hit it right on. That is the problem. Everyone outside of the House, and Liberals and the New Democrats within the House, recognize there is a great deal of value to what happens in Vancouver. We recognize that Bill C-2 is not healthy for us to pass.

We can only appeal to individuals like the parliamentary secretary who has visited the site to recognize the good that she saw, and maybe vote more independent of the Prime Minister's office.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I stand today to talk on Bill C-2. It is not my first opportunity, as I spoke on the bill earlier when it was in second reading and I had the opportunity then to share some thoughts.

I am disappointed that the government has not seen the merit of making a considerable number of amendments to attempt to improve the legislation. For me, this feeds into the script that comes out of the Prime Minister's Office in terms of why we actually have Bill C-2 before us today in the manner in which it has been designed.

I think that Canadians should be aware, if they are not already, that there very much is a hidden agenda with the current Conservative government. We see that in the naming of many of its bills and the manner in which it brings in legislation.

As has been pointed out, when the government introduced Bill C-2, it was just a matter of hours before we saw a press release go out from the government. The government was trying to capitalize on some notion that Canadians could anticipate a bunch of sites being planted all over Canada in all regions and that this was something the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party were going to ensure would take place, but it would be okay, because the Conservatives were in government, and if they were given money, they would make sure it would not happen. It was a propaganda machine that the Conservatives put into place literally an hour or so after they actually introduced Bill C-2.

So much for arriving at what is in the best interests of Canadians through using science and information to design good, solid, sound public health and safety policy. Bill C-2 has very little to do with that, and I am being generous when I say “very little”.

Let us be very clear that there is a need to make some changes because of a Supreme Court decision; however, we also need to be very clear that Bill C-2 goes well beyond what the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in terms of the factors to be considered when granting an exemption.

Section 56 of the CDSA gives the Minister of Health discretionary powers to grant exemptions from the act under one of three different categories: medical purposes, scientific purposes, or in the public interest.

The one site that Canada has is in Vancouver. It is known as InSite, and we have heard a lot of discussion about InSite. We need to recognize that it came into being as an experiment back in 2003. Back then, there was a great sense of co-operation. We used the term “co-operative federalism”, and I think that is an appropriate term to use in that situation, because in the lead-up to 2003 when this project came to the surface, we saw months of effort by a wide variety of stakeholders. They came to the table and said that we needed to do something. Ultimately, through consensus-building and working with the different stakeholders, this was the idea they came up with.

It was the Jean Chrétien government, working with Paul Martin and the minister of health, that came up with an idea of what and how the federal government would be able to contribute to the debate to realize something that the community itself wanted and that many other stakeholders felt there was a need for. We also had the provincial and municipal governments come to the table.

As I mentioned in my questions to government members, we saw other stakeholders such as police, nurses, other health care professionals and, most importantly, the community itself come to the table through non-profit groups, resident groups, and individuals who were having addiction issues themselves. All came to the conclusion that this was necessary.

I do not know to what degree the government of the day listens when it is told about some of the issues in our communities, especially in many of the larger communities. We need a government that understands that safe injection sites must be part of a broader evidence-based national drug policy that actually saves lives, reduces harm, and promotes public health. This is the type of government that I believe Canadians want. When it comes to action by the government in addressing that broad consensus, we find that Bill C-2 goes against what is in the public interest and the safety of Canadians.

I represent the wonderful riding of Winnipeg North, which has a great deal of culture and heritage. It has many positive things going for it. However, like other communities in Canada, it has some issues it needs to try to overcome. I do not see a government that is very sympathetic to that, because it is not looking for answers. It is not looking at ways to help communities.

A question I asked earlier today of a Conservative member was whether the member could tell us if he saw any value whatsoever in InSite in Vancouver. He skated about the question and did not provide an answer. If we listen to a number of members, whether it is today or previous days, in addressing this very important issue, we come to the conclusion that the government just does not care about dealing in a tangible way with many of the issues that are important to communities in our country. The InSite location in Vancouver is just one of them.

If we want to be able to deal with issues of addiction and crime in many communities, to look at the environments around some of the schools because of drug issues, needles, and so forth, and if we want to be able to deal with many of these constituency or types of issues, whether in Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg, or any other community, we at least need to approach the issue with an open mind. I do not see that on the Conservative benches because the government has ruled out any sort of science or other presentation that was made, whether by the police forces, health care providers, individuals having to deal with this addiction problem, or community activists who are trying not only to help those with addictions but also to turn communities around and make a positive difference among them.

I do not see a government that is sensitive to the needs of the community. I see a government that is more interested in getting re-elected and using legislation as a tool to attempt to scare Canadians into contributing to Conservative coffers.

The bill is more about that than dealing with the reality of the situation. I find that unacceptable, and Canadians will recognize that in 2015.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what we are talking about today is the consultative process. The Minister of Health has put the bill before Parliament and committee for the express purpose of determining, according to the direction she was provided by the Supreme Court of Canada, the standards by which a community should have input. This would ensure that they have the appropriate level of information they can provide to the minister as to whether or not they want that injection or consumption site in their neighbourhood. It affects businesses. It affects communities. It affects safety.

The member asked why it was put before Public Safety Canada. In my speech I spoke continuously about public health and public safety. Those are the key elements the bill is addressing. This is not about InSite. Bill C-2 is about the consultative process that would ensure there is lots of input for the minister to make an informed decision, given that level of input at a future date on application.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege today to speak on a matter that is very important to both this government and to Canadians at large. I am talking about respect for communities and about Bill C-2, the respect for communities act.

Over the course of the debate in the House, we have heard considerable detail about the purpose of the bill and the provisions within it. My intention in speaking before the House today is to focus on a particular aspect of the legislation, the ways in which Bill C-2 reinforces the respect our government has for Canadian individuals, families and communities.

We know that illicit drug use poses serious risks to public health at an individual level and at the broader community level. These dangerous and addictive drugs tear families apart, foster addictions and destroy lives. The serious impacts these substances have on those who abuse them are not only detrimental to the user, but also cause serious concern and fear for their loved ones, their friends and families, and those who live nearby, including neighbours and other community members.

Illicit drug use also poses serious threats to public safety and order. For instance, we know that criminal activity results and prospers from the use of illicit substances. They often help organized crime get a toehold into our communities, and the profits that flow from their purchase allow these criminal organizations to proliferate. It is for this very reason that Bill C-2 requires that rigorous criteria be addressed by applicants wishing to establish new supervised drug consumption sites.

Equally important, Bill C-2 gives the people of these neighbourhoods, our senior citizens, young families and business owners, an opportunity to have their say on a matter that has the potential to dramatically impact their community. Canadian families expect safe and healthy communities in which to raise their children, and the respect for communities act would give local law enforcement, municipal leaders and local residents a voice before a permit would be granted for a supervised injection site.

Bill C-2 establishes rigorous criteria that must be addressed when seeking an exemption for a supervised consumption site, and gives the community members a voice in this process. I congratulate the Minister of Health for putting such a responsive bill before us for consideration.

I also want to point out that the genesis of Bill C-2 is found in the 2011 Supreme Court decision in a case involving a supervised injection site. In that decision, the court affirmed the exercise of ministerial discretion to give exemptions under section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, or the CDSA. The court also said that the minister must balance public health and public safety concerns when exercising that discretion.

The Supreme Court of Canada outlined factors the minister must consider when assessing an application seeking an exemption from the CDSA to conduct activities at supervised consumption sites. These include evidence, if any, relating to the impact of such a site on crime rates; the local conditions indicating a need for such a site; the regulatory structure in place to support it; the resources available for its maintenance; and any expressions of community support or opposition. Those factors form the foundation of the criteria that are incorporated in Bill C-2.

I would like to bring to the attention of the House the last of these factors, which states that exemption applications consider “expressions of community support or opposition”.

As we have said many times here before, our government believes that input from the community is essential. Embracing the need for consultation is one of the major ways that we are demonstrating respect for Canadian communities, hence the title of this act.

The criteria set out in the bill would allow many different voices to be heard and to inform the minister's consideration of an application. The onus would be on the applicant to address all of the criteria. Letters would be sought from various individuals, and I will speak to that.

A letter would be required from the provincial health minister where the site would be located. The letter would need to outline his or her opinion on the proposed activities at the site, describe how those activities would be integrated within the provincial health care system and provide information about access to available drug treatment services for people who would use the site.

In a similar vein, a letter from the local municipal government would be needed, outlining its opinion on the proposed activities at the site, including any concerns with respect to public health or safety.

A letter from the head of the police force in that community would also be required, again outlining his or her opinion on the proposed activities at the site, including any concerns with respect to public safety and security.

Letters from the lead health professional, such as the chief public health officer, and the provincial minister responsible for public safety would be required.

This input from both officials and experts would facilitate the Minister of Health's ability to assess an exemption application. Also important would be the consultations that the applicant would undertake and report.

First, consultations would be required with the professional licensing authorities for physicians and nurses in their respective province.

Second, consultations would be required with a broad range of community groups in the area. The applicant would have to provide a summary of consultations and include copies of all written submissions received.

As previously stated, this is the type of input that is necessary and valuable to the Minister of Health. It does not replace the input that individuals may want to submit directly to the minister. That is why Bill C-2 serves to truly respect Canadian communities through a provision whereby the Minister of Health would give notice that an application had been received. If the minister posted such a notice of application, members of the public would then be invited to provide comments and views on the proposed site for a period of 90 days after posting directly for the minister's consideration.

One cannot overstate the dangers of illicit drugs, which are often purchased with the proceeds of crime and the sale of which often fuels organized crime. In cases where illicit drugs would be used at a supervised consumption site, our government believes that every measure must be taken to protect public health and public safety. That is why Bill C-2 proposes putting in place rigorous criteria that must be addressed before the Minister of Health can consider an application for a supervised consumption site where illicit drugs will be used.

This brings me to the six principles that would be embedded into the CDSA if Bill C-2 were to come into force. The minister would take these principles into account in balancing public health and public safety when deciding whether to grant an exemption for activities at a supervised consumption site. These principles are statements about what is known to be true about illicit drugs, including the fact that illicit substances may have serious health effects.

Adulterated controlled substances may pose health risks and risks of overdose are inherent to the use of certain illicit substances. Strict controls are required, given the inherent health risks that controlled substances may alter mental processes. Use of illicit substances presents a range of health effects for the individual user, from the risk of overdose to negatively impacting dental health to increasing the risk of devastating infectious diseases such as hepatitis C and HIV-AIDS. Malnutrition, life on the street and dependence on drugs like heroin contribute to poor health and a decreased resistance to disease. Drugs that are purchased on the black market have a high chance of being adulterated. There is no way to regulate their purity, their content or their potency. This amplifies the undeniable health risks posed by illicit drugs.

It is essential to take these principles be taken into account as part of the decision- making process for any CDSA exemption for a supervised consumption site. That is why it is so important that Canadian communities be granted a say before any injection site where these dangerous and addictive drugs are to be used opens in a neighbourhood. A supervised drug injection site would not be created in a residential neighbourhood without consultation.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this House to speak to this important piece of legislation. I recall speaking to it at a previous stage, and sadly, I continue to be dismayed by the points raised by government members and the ongoing desire of the government to stifle what is important policy. It continues to disrespect the decision made by the Supreme Court, and more fundamentally, to actively remove some of the safeguards that would allow people, to put it as simply as possible, to stay alive.

This is an issue of life and death. Sadly, some of the rhetoric we are hearing from the government side, rhetoric that is not evidence based, does not take into account the difference safe injection sites make, whether it is here in Canada on the Vancouver east side or around the world. It is truly ideological rather than in the best interest of people living with addictions or in the best interest of people in our communities across the country.

We in the NDP have supported amendments to this bill, amendments that were not supported by the government. We oppose the main motion at report stage. The amendments proposed by the member for Vancouver East were to delete every clause of this bill.

We know that this is a thinly veiled effort to stop supervised injection sites from operating, which is in direct defiance of a Supreme Court ruling on these sites.

This legislation sets out a lengthy and arduous list of criteria that supervised injection sites would need to meet before the minister would grant them an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. These criteria would make it much harder for organizations to open safe injection sites in Canada.

We in the NDP believe that decisions about programs that may benefit public health must be based on facts, not ideology. In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that InSite provided lifesaving services and should remain open with a section 56 exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The court ruled that it was within InSite users' charter rights to access the service and that similar services should also be allowed to operate with an exemption.

Over 30 peer-reviewed studies, published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and the British Medical Journal, have described the beneficial impacts of InSite.

Furthermore, studies on over 70 injection sites in Europe and Australia have shown similar benefits. InSite is one of the greatest public health achievements in our country, and we believe that it and similarly beneficial sites should be allowed to operate under proper supervision.

We want to outline that this is a deeply flawed bill based on an anti-drug ideology and false fears for public safety. This is another attempt to rally the Conservative base, as evidenced by the “Keep heroin out of our backyards” fundraising drive that started hours after Bill C-2 was introduced in Parliament. This bill, which will make it almost impossible to open safe injection sites, will actually put heroin back into our neighbourhoods.

We would also point out that Bill C-2 directly defies the 2011 Supreme Court ruling, which called on the minister to consider exemptions for safe injection sites based on a balance between public health and safety. It called on the minister to consider all the evidence on the benefits of safe injection sites, rather than setting out a lengthy list of principles by which to apply judgments.

The NDP believes that any further legislation on supervised injection sites should respect the spirit of the Supreme Court's decision, which is not the case with this bill. We believe that harm reduction programs, including safe injection sites, should be granted exemptions based on evidence of their ability to improve a community's health and to preserve human life rather than on ideology.

Along with my colleagues, many of us have pointed out that since InSite opened on Vancouver's east side, we have seen a 35% decrease in overdose deaths. Furthermore, InSite has been shown to decrease crime, communicable disease infection rates, and relapse rates for drug users.

It is not missed by me, and I am sure many others, that today, on International AIDS Day, we are recognizing the importance of supporting public policy and public health strategies that save lives instead of endangering them. Sadly, what we are seeing is the government use ideological arguments and fearmongering to both disrespect the Supreme Court and to come up with policies that put people at greater risk.

Throughout my years of being a member of Parliament, I have travelled and have spent a lot of time visiting in my constituency. I have met many people who suffer from addictions. Many people can trace that disease back to the trauma they have gone through, whether it be because they were residential school survivors or the children of residential school survivors or whether it be the trauma related to intense physical or sexual abuse or the ongoing trauma that comes with living in poverty and in a state of hopelessness.

One of the recurring messages I get is how much people want and need help. We know that not all people living with addictions are in a place where they can get help, but the reality is that many people, through the support of friends and maybe family, get to that point, and maybe more than once in their lives. We need to make sure that they have somewhere to turn once they have made that decision, once they know that they can no longer keep going down the path they are going, a path that will almost certainly lead to destruction, or even death. We need to make sure that there are institutions and services where people can get help.

As I hear these compelling stories from people who need help and want help, I see too many examples in my constituency of there being nowhere to turn.

I think of the medicine lodge in Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation that has struggled to secure federal funding year after year to provide healing and addiction services to indigenous people who go there to get help, not just from our area but from across the country. It has had to fight to secure funding for programming that works, for culturally appropriate programming, and for support for indigenous people across Canada.

I think of Whiskey Jack, an incredible program for young people in our constituency, located in the PCN. It is a program that works with many underage youth who are suffering addictions, some of them at risk of falling through the cracks in their communities and in our society. This service that is run by committed people in our north is there to help them. Sadly, support from the federal government has always been an ongoing issue.

We need more services. In Thompson we were very excited to hear about the new detox beds in our local centre, yet all of that money came from the provincial government rather than from any partnership with the federal government.

The reality is that the current government is not just pulling away from InSite and from supporting people with addictions; it is pulling away from people who live on the margins of our society and have so much to lose, including their own lives.

I take seriously the need for us to take on our duty as leaders, as legislators, to make decisions based on evidence, based on fact, and based on respecting humanity rather than on ideology, as we see from the current government.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of Bill C-2, the respect for communities act. This is a very important piece of legislation, and one that will further strengthen Canada's drug control statute, known as the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

The legislation before us today proposes to entrench this belief in the law with regard to supervised injection sites, and is guided by a ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada, in 2011. In this ruling, the court affirmed that it remains the Minister of Health's authority to exercise discretion in granting section 56 exemptions, which can allow supervised injection sites to operate. However, notably telling is that its decision was not an invitation for anyone who choses to open a facility for drug use under the banner of a safe injection facility.

It is interesting to hear members of the opposition saying that it must be either no sites, or that every site that one might want to have can go ahead. The Supreme Court of Canada gave parameters around what might be involved, and ultimately said that it would be within the discretion of the minister, having due regard for the criteria that the court set out.

As all members in this House know, our government is committed to helping keep Canadian families and communities healthy and safe. I want to begin my remarks by telling this House about some of the ways that we are living up to this commitment.

Earlier in the year, our government announced $100,000 in funding for a project that will train front-line community workers and criminal justice personnel in New Brunswick on effective, efficient, and timely substance abuse treatment strategies for youth involved in the criminal justice system. The funding was part of a national anti-drug strategy, which focuses on preventing illegal drug use and providing treatment services for those with drug dependencies.

There is also some talk about the fact that we need to provide treatment services and that we need to look at preventing illicit drugs. Members have to keep that in the background when looking at this particular piece of legislation.

The national anti-drug strategy also allows this government to get tough on drug dealers and producers who threaten the health and safety of our youth and the viability of our communities.

In 2012, our government introduced the Safe Streets and Communities Act, which is making Canadian communities safer while extending greater protection to the most vulnerable members of society. As part of this act, the government implemented mandatory minimum penalties for serious drug offences carried out for organized crime purposes or that specifically targeted youth. In doing so, our government has further enhanced the ability of Canada's justice system to hold offenders accountable for their actions.

Another piece of legislation that is vital to the government's focus on safeguarding Canadians is the one we have been talking about throughout the debate here tonight on Bill C-2, which is the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, or the CDSA, for short. It controls substances that can alter mental processes and that may produce harm to health or society when diverted or misused. Again, it is in this context that this proposed legislation must be considered.

The act also includes measures to protect public health, by prohibiting activities with controlled substances unless they are authorized for specific legitimate purposes. The act also serves to maintain public safety by prohibiting the possession, trafficking, importing, exporting, and production of those substances unless otherwise authorized.

The act is a prohibitive piece of legislation. That is, it sets out all of the things that cannot be done with a controlled substance, along with identifying which substances are controlled. However, there are times when exceptions to the rules need to be made, and they are made. This is generally accomplished through the making of regulations, and it is also where section 56 of the act comes into play.

Section 56 of the act authorizes a minister of health to grant exemptions from the provisions of the act. While the act gives the minister discretion in determining whether or not to grant an exemption, any decision must strike a balance between public health and public safety. Therefore, it is not an either/or, but must be something that takes into account all of the factors, which the minister has to weigh and then make a decision.

For the most part, the exemptions granted under the act are routine. For example, an exemption may be granted for medical purposes or for scientific ones, such as university-based research or clinical trials, which goes without saying.

The bill we are debating today has no impact on these types of exemptions. The type of exemption that would be impacted by Bill C-2 is one with controlled substances that had been obtained through illicit sources or, as we might say, accessed on the street. They are illegal substances obtained on the street, and, again, that must be part of the context within which we review this legislation.

Currently there are two types of exemptions of this nature that are entrenched in the statute. The first is for law enforcement purposes, for example, to train sniffer dogs used in seizing drugs, and the second is for InSite, as ordered by the Supreme Court of Canada. Throughout the debate, we have heard reference to the Supreme Court of Canada decision concerning InSite. In that decision, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the act's prohibition on possession and trafficking of controlled substances, and affirmed the minister's right to exercise discretion in granting an exemption under the act. It is not in every case that there will be an exemption. It must be exercised as a discretion based on a number of factors.

Bill C-2 was developed further to the Supreme Court of Canada decision, and the criteria included in it codified the five factors that the minister must and should consider when assessing an application as set out by the Supreme Court of Canada. The opposition has said that we should not go into these factors. The Supreme Court said that these are the very factors that must be taken into consideration before a decision is made one way or another. Therefore, I think it is absolutely appropriate to codify those in the amended legislation that we have proposed.

In the respect for communities act, this government is putting in place a regime that would provide further clarity and transparency to the way in which an application would be made for exemptions to conduct activities with illicit substances in a supervised drug consumption site. It would also ensure that the Minister of Health is provided with the information that she needs to make an informed decision on supervised injection sites on a case-by-case basis, as mandated by the Supreme Court of Canada.

The respect for communities act outlines the criteria that the applicant must address when seeking an exemption to undertake activities with illicit substances at a supervised consumption site before the Minister of Health could consider the application. What is wrong with that? There are certain criteria that would have to be met, and the applicant must indeed attempt to meet them.

As I have mentioned, the criteria included in the bill are consistent with the factors set out by the Supreme Court of Canada. They include, among other things, scientific evidence showing that there is a medical benefit to the proposed activities, letters of opinion from key stakeholders, and a demonstration of the financial sustainability of the site. Simply put, the respect for communities act would give local law enforcement, municipal leaders, and local residents a voice before a permit is granted for a supervised injection site. That seems very reasonable to me.

It is our government's belief that communities deserve to have a say if someone would like to build a drug injection site where illegal drugs are used in his or her neighbourhood. Our government is concerned about the potential risks that supervised drug consumption sites could pose for the surrounding communities and the families who live in them. That is only reasonable. For this reason, Bill C-2 would make it mandatory for applicants to solicit the opinions of surrounding communities and relevant stakeholders, including letters of opinion from law enforcement, public health, and municipal leaders.

Further, the applicant would have to consult with a broad spectrum of local community groups and provide a report on those consultations. The applicant would also have to provide an indication of what measures would be taken to address any relevant concerns that are identified in the process. Again, I would say that is very reasonable.

The minister would also be authorized to publicly post a notice of application to seek broad community input for any proposed supervised drug consumption site. A supervised drug injection site should not be created in a residential community without consultation, and that gives the community an opportunity to pose any concerns and have input. It is also an opportunity for those applying for the licence to address any potential concerns. If they have gone through those steps that have been set in advance, then the minister may issue a licence, if she chooses, based on the evidence before her.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I commend the hon. member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie for doing such a fine job explaining all the benefits of our InSite program in Vancouver. She presented evidence showing that the program has saved lives, reduced the spread of disease and saved money. Giving drug addicts access to a safe site results in lower costs to society. They are given help to stay off the streets and to live healthier lives.

The government claims that this bill will allow more sites like the one in Vancouver to open and it talks about a number of commitments. However, the Conservative member who just spoke clearly said that it would be better not to have another site, rather than having a site where illegal drugs are consumed.

In the hon. member's view, which of the two is the real objective of the Conservative government when it comes to Bill C-2?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to support Bill C-2, the respect for communities act. As I do this, I reflect on the Governor General's words in the Speech from the Throne that opened the second session of the 41st Parliament of Canada, where he spoke of parliamentarians' abiding concern for the common good of our neighbours in each community. It is this abiding concern that is the driving force behind the respect for communities act. Put simply, Canadian families expect safe and healthy communities in which to raise their children.

The respect for communities act would give local law enforcement, municipal leaders, and local residents a voice before a permit is granted for a supervised injection site. A key priority of our government is the protection of public health and maintenance of public safety, and I am very proud of the many measures that we have already put in place and will continue to put in place to improve the health and well-being of all Canadians.

Today I want to highlight the government's specific actions against illicit drug use in Canada and describe how the respect for communities act is a vital component in achieving these objectives. Most importantly, I want to drive home that communities deserve to have a say if someone would like to have a drug injection site where illegal drugs are used in their neighbourhood.

The national anti-drug strategy, as many of us in the House know, guides the government's actions against illicit drugs. Through this comprehensive strategy the government continues to support and protect Canadians, their families, and their communities by implementing measures that reduce or prevent the use, production, and distribution of illicit drugs.

Since its launch in October of 2007, the federal government departments of justice, public safety, and health have been working collaboratively to achieve the three main objectives set out in the strategy, which include contributing to safer and healthier communities by reducing and contributing to the elimination of illicit drug use in Canada, reducing the supply of and demand for illicit drugs, and addressing the crime associated with illicit drugs.

Our government has since invested over half a billion dollars implementing activities under this strategy in three priority areas: prevention, treatment and enforcement. This represents an unprecedented level of funding for anti-drug initiatives and reflects our government's commitment to addressing the issue of illicit drug use in Canada.

In a moment I will share some of our success stories to date, but first I would like to highlight how the national anti-drug strategy continues to evolve in response to emerging trends and changing needs.

In the Speech from the Throne, our government committed to expanding the national anti-drug strategy to address the growing problem of prescription drug abuse. This commitment was reaffirmed in economic action plan 2014, which allocated almost $45 million over five years to expand the focus of the strategy to also address prescription drug abuse in Canada.

As we move forward, we can build on the success of our past activities in prevention, treatment, and enforcement. Take for example our accomplishments to date with preventing drug use. When the strategy's prevention action plan was established in 2007, our government was responding to some disturbing trends, particularly among young Canadians. We were seeing an increased level of drug crime and increased substance abuse issues at earlier ages. Drug use among our youth was clearly identified as a real concern, and for many Canadian communities it still is. These dangerous and addictive drugs tear families apart, foster addiction, and destroy lives.

It has long been recognized that prevention is best achieved by the coordinated efforts of multiple players. With this in mind, the government invested over $70 million in community based prevention initiatives under the drug strategy community initiatives fund. This contribution fund program directly supports community-based programs aimed at preventing illicit drug use. I am proud to say that under this program, the government has launched over 130 such projects across Canada. Going forward, these projects will also respond to the issue of prescription drug abuse.

Just last December, the Minister of Health announced $11.5 million in funding over five years for a health promotion and drug prevention strategy for Canada's youth. This is a national project led by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse as part of the national anti-drug strategy. The goal of this project is to prevent drug abuse among Canadians between the age of 10 and 24, through education, national prevention standards, and the building of sustainable partnerships.

We are now a couple years further into the strategy, but even by 2012 an evaluation indicated that it was increasing awareness of illicit drug use and its consequences. It enhances supports for at-risk populations and improves community knowledge. In particular, the mass media campaign, DrugsNot4Me, and the RCMP's organized crime awareness services showed a major impact in increasing awareness about and understanding of illicit drug issues.

A second key priority has been treatment. Back in 2007, the strategy's treatment action plan under the national anti-drug strategy was established to address the lack of treatment capacity for those in need of support, and the need for innovative and relevant approaches to drug treatment. As part of that action plan, this government invested in the drug treatment funding program to support provincial and territorial governments and other key stakeholders in their treatment efforts.

The strategy has provided over $145 million to the drug treatment fund. Evaluation findings from 2007 to 2012 show progress in a number of areas, including increasing the accessibility and availability of early intervention treatment services for at-risk youth. I am pleased to say that the scope of the drug treatment funding program has been expanded to address the issue of prescription drug abuse.

The third and final priority I want to highlight is this government's enforcement capacity. In 2007, the enforcement action plan was established to address the illicit production and distribution of marijuana and synthetic drugs, as well as the diversion of precursor chemicals. Efforts were made to target organized criminals and others who profit from the manufacturing and distribution of drugs that endanger Canadian youth and communities.

When the national anti-drug strategy was evaluated in 2012, it showed that the enforcement action plan had increased the capacity of drug enforcement and prosecutors to gather and share intelligence, to analyze evidence, and to control and monitor controlled substances. In addition, the enforcement action plan has raised awareness of illicit drugs and precursor chemical issues among enforcement officers in Canada and abroad through workshops, training, and information sessions, as well as joint law enforcement efforts.

The enforcement action plan has also contributed to increased safety in dismantling illicit drug operations. It should be noted that addressing the manufacturing and production of illicit drugs will require a long-term concerted effort, and this government will sustain its efforts on this important work.

The bill that we are debating here in the House today, the respect for communities act, is aligned with and strengthens the government's approach to addressing illicit drug use as initially set out in the national anti-drug strategy. This government is addressing the causes of drug addiction by implementing measures that seek to prevent Canadians from using dangerous and addictive drugs in the first place, and by supporting efforts that provide treatment options to those who have developed addictions. In addition to this, our government will be working to reduce the drug-related issues that organized crime seeks to perpetuate in our communities.

By supporting Bill C-2 we are demonstrating our abiding concern for the common good of our neighbours across Canada. I encourage all members to vote in favour of this bill.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me the opportunity today to talk about Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

I would like to begin by thanking my colleague from Vancouver East for her speech and her work on this file. The member's rigour, and especially her compassion, are a real inspiration to me, and I wanted the House to know that.

Personally, I think this bill is not only a thinly veiled attempt by the Conservative government to put an end to supervised injection services in Canada, but also a direct attack on this country's institutions and a blatant lack of respect for them too. Driven by their regressive and sanctimonious ideology, the Conservatives are utterly incapable of relying on simple facts to make the important decisions they have to make as a government.

Like many of my constituents in the Montreal community of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, I am deeply concerned about drug addiction and its negative repercussions. As such, this bill is obviously of great interest to me.

It should be understood that I rise here today not only to argue against passing the bill in its current form, but also to set the record straight, since the Conservatives have been deliberately denying the facts and doing everything in their power to twist them.

The facts, which I am going to talk about in the House today, have been studied by numerous researchers; the Supreme Court of Canada relied on these facts to render its important 2011 decision stipulating that the supervised injection services offered by InSite in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside could legally and legitimately be offered to injection drug users.

Bill C-2 is based on the Conservatives' presumption that the services offered by organizations like InSite pose a risk to public safety. However, in its 2011 decision, which the Conservatives decided to violate by means of this bill, the Supreme Court of Canada clearly ruled that it was not simply a question of public safety. Indeed, that decision called on the government to consider exemptions to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act in an effort to reconcile health and public safety considerations.

Once again, the Conservatives decided to do things their way and draft their bill by putting their ideology ahead of the principles established by the Supreme Court. They are making the process for obtaining an exemption from the law so complex that it will create a disincentive to opening new centres. By way of evidence, they decided to send the bill to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, where they brought in a series of police officers, whose work is obviously to fight drug trafficking, and representatives of groups with ties to the Conservative Party. In so doing, they deliberately disregarded the entire public health aspect of this issue. If that is not a rejection of the Supreme Court and its rulings and proof that the Conservatives are blinded by their ideology, then it can only be contempt, in my opinion.

The comments by the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness alone are enough to show that all of their decisions are based on this ideology. In fact, in response to my questions at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, he said:

Basically, opening a supervised injection site leads to an increase in criminality, an increase in police resources and an increase in social disorder. That has been proven and that is reality.

I did not really understand why he was talking about that, because I explained to him and to another minister who was there that some people from a low-income housing unit in my riding organize a clean-up every spring. I participate in the clean-up with my team. We clean up the area, which includes removing needles from a nearby park. A supervised injection site could help make this less of a problem. At least this helps back up what I am saying.

If the government truly wanted to make this a public safety issue, I would suggest that a supervised injection site in a neighbourhood like Hochelaga-Maisonneuve would help reduce harm.

I want to take this opportunity to invite the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and the Minister of Health to come take a walk in a park in Hochelaga with their children, so they can understand why some parents back home are afraid of letting their children play outside and why some groups go through the parks in the morning to ensure that there are no needles lying around.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court ordered the government to take public health into account when making decisions about services similar to those offered by InSite. Accordingly, we must recognize that the health of intravenous drug users is cause for alarm.

In Montreal, 68% of users have hepatitis C and 18% are living with HIV. Not only are these serious life-threatening diseases, but they also represent an enormous social cost in terms of health care alone.

According to the statistics, when specialized addiction prevention services can prevent even just one case of hepatitis C or HIV infection, they automatically make their annual budget cost effective. That says a lot. Furthermore, we cannot ignore the fact that between 2006 and 2009, 72 injection drug users died of overdoses in Montreal.

Just like the mayor of Montreal, SPVM police officers, the public health branch and several community groups in my riding and across Montreal, and in light of scientific studies—which rely on facts to reach conclusions—I believe that supervised injection sites are a vital means of tackling the problem in the interest of both public health and harm reduction.

Contrary to what the Conservatives think—since they have such a hard time acknowledging scientifically proven facts—this is not an opinion. There are many well-documented scientific arguments that weigh in favour of supervised injection sites. Centres in Barcelona, Sydney and Vancouver, which have existed for years, are good examples. The list of benefits is impressive: harm levels have been reduced or have remained the same, the number of intoxicated people wandering the streets has dropped sharply, the number of users has stabilized and so on.

It would take a fairly regressive ideology to keep someone from seeing the fact that safe injection sites are an effective and affordable health care service. Some of those in blind opposition to this include the witnesses invited by the Conservatives to appear before the Standing Committee on Health. What a circus.

On one hand, the government refused to invite important witnesses who made it known that they were interested in appearing before the committee and who could have explained to us the public health aspects of injection sites and the benefits they provide from a harm reduction standpoint. Those witnesses include the Canadian Association of Nurses in AIDS Care and the Canadian Bar Association, which represents 37,000 members across the country. This is what that association had to say in its submission:

However, other parts of the Preamble reflect a continued emphasis on prohibiting illicit drugs. This approach ignores overwhelming historical and current evidence that prohibition drives the drug supply underground and increases violence and deaths associated with drug activity and overdoses. Not only dangerous, this approach has proven expensive and ineffective, even after decades and endless public funds to allow it to succeed. The CBA and many others have argued for a harm reduction approach to instead be used in dealing with illegal drugs and addiction.

That is exactly the opposite of what the Conservatives are saying.

Worse still, they invited organizations espousing an unabashedly Conservative ideology to appear, such as Real Women of Canada, an organization I definitely wish to dissociate myself from even though I consider myself to be a real woman. That organization was obviously invited for the purpose of discrediting studies that recognize the benefits of InSite and supervised injection services in general.

Not only did the witness attempt to discredit the studies, but she went so far as to accuse the researchers of professional misconduct. She was lucky to be given immunity during her testimony. That immunity is obviously not intended to give witnesses a chance to say whatever they want.

What does it say about the credibility of an organization that has appeared before the Supreme Court more than once to plead that a fetus is a person and has the right to life, but is unable to see that an addict is also a person with the right to life?

In its ruling, the Supreme Court recognizes that addiction is an illness and that drug addicts are citizens who have the right, like everyone else, to life, health and security, which are constitutional rights guaranteed under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Our role as a society is not to lecture people, but rather to show them compassion and help them in order to give them the best possible options.

When it comes to supervised injection services, the days of Conservative bigotry are over. It is time for our country to show compassion toward injection drug users and give them the health care they are entitled to.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to add my perspective, as the member of Parliament from the great city of Toronto, to today's debate on Bill C-2, the respect for communities act, and to stress the importance of passing this proposed piece of legislation.

It is important to note that this bill is in essence, as its long title implies, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, or CDSA, for short, is Canada's drug control statute. The CDSA has two purposes: to protect public health and maintain public safety.

Today, I want to highlight the aspects of the bill that relate to public health, and to most especially reinforce the comments made by my Conservative colleagues on the importance of community consultations. Before I do so, I want to speak for a few moments about the threat that illicit drug use poses to the individuals using them, to the families and loved ones of those who use them, and to broader communities across Canada.

I will start by talking about the impact of illicit drugs on individual users.

Illicit drug use can pose a great risk to a person's physical health, both immediately and over the long term. Drugs like these tear families apart, foster life-threatening addictions, and destroy lives.

Obviously the greatest immediate risk is the potential for a fatal overdose. We know that illicit drug use also presents an increased risk of infectious and communicable diseases, such as HIV-AIDS and hepatitis C, which are associated with major morbidity, mortality, and health care costs.

The issues associated with illicit drug use reach far beyond the individual user, and often have very serious impacts on families and communities. Just ask any parent or loved one of a person with a drug or substance abuse problem about the devastating impact that these addictions have had on their lives. I am sure that many members in this House today are aware of very personal stories about how illicit drugs are negatively impacting the life of a community member, or perhaps even a friend or family member.

Rest assured that our government is steadfast in its commitment to protecting the public health of Canadians. It is vital that we work first and foremost to prevent illicit drug use, especially among our young people who are particularly vulnerable.

Where addictions exist, it is imperative that measures are put in place to make treatment available, which is why our government put in place the national anti-drug strategy. This strategy is contributing to safer and healthier communities through coordinated efforts to prevent illicit drug use, to treat dependency, and to reduce the production and distribution of illicit drugs.

Our government has invested over half a billion dollars in prevention, treatment, and enforcement activities under this strategy. This represents an unprecedented level of funding for anti-drug initiatives, and this strategy continues to evolve in response to the increased pressures being felt by Canadians and their respective communities.

Most recently, prescription drug abuse was added as a priority issue to be addressed under the national anti-drug strategy. In economic action plan 2014, our government announced almost $45 million in new funding over five years, to address prescription drug abuse.

This funding will be used for educating people on the safe use, storage, and disposal of prescription medications; enhancing prevention and treatment services in first nations communities; increasing inspections to minimize the diversion of prescription drugs from pharmacies for illegal sale; and improving surveillance data on prescription drug abuse.

Our government recognizes that prescription drug abuse is a serious public health and safety issue that is having a significant impact on communities across Canada. Addressing this issue under the framework of the national anti-drug strategy keeps Canada's focus where it needs to be: on prevention and treatment.

I also want to point out that last year alone, our government committed over $95 million through the federal initiative to address HIV-AIDS in Canada, and the Canadian HIV vaccine initiative. This investment supports research and prevention, and facilitates access to diagnosis and treatment, particularly among vulnerable populations. It also supports Canadian researchers who are working to prevent infections, improve treatment, and ultimately find a cure for HIV and AIDS.

In Canada, this means preventing new infections and making a difference in the lives of more than 71,000 Canadians who are living with HIV and AIDS.

This government takes the responsibility to protect the health of Canadians very seriously. The bill we are debating in the House today, the respect for communities act, is consistent with our government's approach to addressing illicit drug use in the national anti-drug strategy. That is why passing Bill C-2 is important.

Bill C-2 relates to section 56 of the CDSA, which permits the Minister of Health to exempt a party from the application of the CDSA for certain activities. Bill C-2 proposes two separate exemption regimes. The first would be for licit substances, and the second would be for illicit substances, including a specific regime to undertake activities with illicit drugs at a supervised consumption site. Such an exemption would be necessary to protect the staff and clients at the site from charges of possession under the CDSA.

It is imperative that the Minister of Health give careful consideration to any application for such an exemption. It is also an important principle that the minister be provided with all of the information needed to make an informed decision, on a case-by-case basis, for each application that comes across her or his desk. The substances covered under this act can pose serious risk to the health and safety of individuals and communities if they are abused or misused. We know that the risk is amplified when the substances are accessed illegally, as may be the case at a supervised consumption site.

Such an exemption would only be granted once rigorous criteria have been addressed by the applicant, which includes the perspectives of all relevant stakeholders, such as local residents and businesses. Only then would the Minister of Health be able to verify that adequate measures are in place to protect the health and safety of staff and clients, as well as community members in the vicinity of the proposed site.

Many of the criteria included in the bill are for the protection of public health. For example, an applicant for such an exemption would have to provide scientific evidence to demonstrate the medical benefit to individual or public health associated with access to activities at a proposed supervised consumption site. The applicant would also have to provide a letter from the highest-ranking public health official in the province or territory, outlining their opinion on the proposed supervised consumption site. The applicant would also have to provide a letter from the provincial minister responsible for health, indicating how the proposed activities of the site would be integrated within the provincial health care system.

Every one of the criteria included in this legislation is meant to capture information that is relevant to the minister in exercising her or his duty to protect public health and public safety.

I urge all members of the House to vote in favour of the respect for communities act. As I mentioned earlier, illicit drugs can have far-reaching and devastating impacts on individuals and communities. The respect for communities act would further strengthen our government's ability to protect the public health and public safety of Canadians. Most importantly, Canadian families expect safe and healthy communities in which to raise their children.

This bill would give local law enforcement, municipal leaders, and local residents a voice before a permit is granted for a supervised consumption site. Communities deserve to have a say if someone would like to build a drug consumption site where illegal drugs are used in their neighbourhood. Canadian families have a right to this input.

The minister needs to have the information that she or he needs to exercise her duties as mandated by the Supreme Court, and our government will continue to keep our streets safe.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things my colleague, the member for Vancouver East, was just saying is that this particular piece of legislation far oversteps what the Supreme Court of Canada ruled.

The Supreme Court of Canada gave five very clear factors that the government must look at if it is ever to approve another safe consumption site in any particular place that applies for one. It is not imposing it on anyone. It is any place that applies for a safe consumption site. That is the first thing.

What we feel, and what many witnesses have said, is that this so oversteps that directive that it intrudes into provincial jurisdiction, into municipal jurisdiction, into the jurisdiction of the local police forces, into the work of that region's public health officer, and into whatever the public health officer is doing based on criteria set by the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

What we see is that when the government is asked a question about health, it continues to say that we should not talk about it because delivery of services is a provincial jurisdiction. Then all of a sudden the government posts 26 very specific pieces on its legislation, factors that are going to intrude so much on the jurisdictions of other levels of government and on other police forces and on physicians that it is unbelievable.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the right to life, liberty, and security of the person under section 7 of the charter overshadows any decision based on the Food and Drugs Act. That was noted.

I was there. I was in fact the designated minister to look after this issue when we were in government. What we found was that when the Downtown Eastside, during the Vancouver agreement, asked for the safe consumption site to be put in place, it was put forward by the province and by the mayor of the city. The police agreed to have a bubble zone whereby people could use an illicit substance only in that particular area. Everything was taken into consideration.

Let me give some facts.

Prior to the safe injection site being put up in Vancouver, there were about 234 overdose deaths per year in the prior two years. There were 234. After the safe injection site was set up in 2010, there were 2,395 overdoses, and not a single one of them resulted in death. That is why the Supreme Court of Canada said that this safe injection site actually saves lives.

When I listen to what is said around here, I realize that this particular government seems to think that somebody who is using substances and who is going to die is probably disposable, but obviously these people are human beings. They are Canadians. Their lives are worthwhile.

As a physician, I can say that every single life is worthwhile when we look after our patients. People stand here in this House and talk about the fact that this is not wanted in their particular region, but as the member for Vancouver East has said, nobody is inflicting or imposing anything on anybody's town or village or city.

There was a situation in which 234 people were dying from overdose deaths. The rates of HIV and hepatitis C in that little place called Vancouver East were up to extraordinary levels. There were 2,100 new cases of HIV prior to the setting up of this safe injection site in Vancouver. Today there are 30. That change from 2,100 to 30 means this form of harm reduction works.

However, the idea of the 26 pieces in the legislation that the government brought forward is so intrusive that it is going to make it absolutely impossible for any city to ask for a safe injection site, for any police to okay it, for any public health officer to give the details and the data for why it is needed, and for any province that wishes one to be able to say so.

We brought in amendments. Between the New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party, there were 60 amendments brought to this particular bill, Bill C-2, but not one comma was changed. Not one. This is what happens in most parliamentary committees right now under that particular government: no one listens.

We pay extraordinary amounts of money for people to come as witnesses, and they are expert witnesses. They come to present to Parliament, but so much for consultation. We listen to what they suggest, and when the majority suggest particular amendments, the government just says no.

The government runs a parliamentary committee, which is made up of parliamentarians from all parties. It is not an arm of the government but an institution of Parliament, and therefore should be completely non-partisan in what it delivers. It should listen to experts and factor in what they say. That is what consultation is about. It is not about listening to a whole bunch of people and then telling them, “Thank you very much, but I do not think I care about what you said. I do not like it and I am not going to do it.”

The government's ideology opposes harm reduction. Harm reduction is a term that has been expunged from every single piece of language the government brings about. It does not like the idea of harm reduction.

As a physician, I will tell the House what harm reduction means. When someone is suffering from a disease that can threaten their lives, harm reduction is an intervention that brings down the harm so that the person does not die as a result of that particular illness and is able to continue on until a cure or some other way to help them live properly is found. We have seen exactly that in the safe consumption site in Vancouver.

In Australia, Spain, and Portugal there are safe consumption sites. It is as a result of what was done in Europe that we decided to do this particular pilot project in Vancouver. “Evidence-based” is a term that is thrown around by the government. “Evidence-based” means that when one does something, one looks at the outcomes to see what the evidence shows. What is the rate of mortality? What is the rate of morbidity? What is the harm done? How is that harm alleviated? That is the meaning of “evidence-based”, and it is very clear that the safe injection site in Vancouver showed that evidence of success.

The fact that the government has put up all these barriers means there is never going to be another safe injection site in this country. The one in Vancouver has been extended for a year; I see that as a really obvious ploy to wait until this bill passes so that the government can stop the safe injection site in Vancouver from even existing.

These are people's lives. For me as a physician, it is untenable that a government would stand in the way of saving lives. It is also untenable that within an hour of the time this bill was tabled in the House by the Minister of Health, a letter went from the Conservative Party of Canada to all its members and donors that said the Conservatives had just put forward a bill that was going to stop junkies from shooting up in their neighbourhoods.

When that comes from a government, it is extraordinary. As far as I am concerned, it is absolutely disgusting that people's lives should be so meaningless to the government that it would send out such an absolutely callous letter asking for money.

All I have to say is simply this: the word “consultation” is a joke. Parliamentary committees are a joke, currently, under this government. People can come to say whatever they like; the government never listens.

When we hear people say that this bill has been brought back exactly as it went to committee, with not even a comma changed, I think that tells us the state of Parliament at the moment in this country: it is no longer a democracy.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the health critic and member for Vancouver East, for her speech. Every time I hear her speak to Bill C-2, I always learn a bit more.

With this being the final stage, I would like her to talk a little more about the vocation and mission of the InSite centre specifically, as well as the way it has helped the people in the surrounding area in the neighbourhood she represents and how it has made the Vancouver East communities safer. The member also alluded to the government's response to the Supreme Court ruling.

Would she like to elaborate on those issues?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I feel so disgusted by the parliamentary secretary's completely misleading comments in the House in regard to Bill C-2. We would not be opposing the bill if it actually lived up to the decision that was made by the Supreme Court of Canada. We would welcome the bill if it lived up to that decision, but Bill C-2, now at report stage, is an absolute travesty.

As I will point out in my remarks, this is so far away from what the Supreme Court of Canada said on safe consumption sites and the right, under the charter, for people to have access to those medical services that were provided in the safe injection sites. It is really quite shocking that the Conservatives have gone to such lengths in Bill C-2 to stack the deck and make it virtually impossible for any applicant, in good faith, who does all the work required to get an application in, to ever be approved by a minister as it is laid out in this bill.

I wish I was not speaking today at report stage on this bill, but I am afraid we have to because it has come back from the committee. It really bothers me that we have moved so far away from an evidence-based public policy and that this political mantra from the Conservative Party has now taken over.

As I pointed out, when the Conservatives first introduced this bill, within hours they set up a website called “No heroin in our backyards“ to raise money. It is the politics of fear. It is the politics of division. It is the politics of exploiting people's concerns instead of dealing with something in a rational way and looking at serious issues in various communities across Canada, not all communities, where they feel it is warranted to have a safe consumption site for injection-drug users so they can uphold good public health and stop the spread of HIV-AIDS, stop people from dying and get people into treatment. That is what safe consumption sites do.

The Canadian Nurses Association summed it up for me, when it 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...A government truly committed to public health and safety would work to enhance access to prevention and treatment services — instead of building more barriers.

I would wholeheartedly agree with that.

When the bill was at committee, we were only allowed two meetings to hear witnesses on a bill that was so important. The boom was lowered. Censure was brought in and two meetings were held to hear from witnesses. We heard from maybe 13 witnesses overall.

The NDP brought forward 23 amendments to this bill. These amendments were reasonable, based on trying to ensure that the bill actually did meet the terms set out by the Supreme Court of Canada. Many of our amendments, for example, responded to concerns that had been put forward by provincial and territorial officials and were designed to ensure that during the application process, as laid out in the bill, when officials brought forward information about an application, it would be based on evidence and research and not opinions, as is laid out in the bill.

Imagine any other health facility being approved in Canada, first with such an incredible number of people who have to weigh in on the matter. I do not know of any other health facility that would require that. However, in this case, not only is there a lengthy list of officials who have to weigh in on it, they are only required to give their opinion, so it is not actually based on evidence or research.

The other thing we are very concerned about, as has been pointed out earlier in the debate, is that the so-called public process in this bill is absolutely absurd. It is proper to do public consultation. Again, the parliamentary secretary in his comments just now was entirely misleading and incorrect when he said that the opposition did not believe there should be public consultation. Of course we do, but we believe that public consultation should be done in the community where the application intends the site to be.

Yes, in the little town about which he spoke, of course there should be public consultation. As an MP, he can weigh in on it and say whatever he thinks, but in this bill the public consultation can be right across Canada. It can take place for 90 days. There is absolutely no suggestion in the criteria as to how the minister should weigh that so-called public consultation. If there was an application in Toronto, she could take public consultation or opinions from people who live in Calgary or northern Alberta and say that people are opposed to this, so she had better turn it down. It is an absurdity and a travesty of process.

I would like to put on the record some of the key witnesses who appeared before the committee.

For example, Adrienne Smith with Pivot Legal Society, the Health and Drug Policy staff lawyer, said in her testimony that she believed:

It will likely not withstand constitutional scrutiny, and it invites an expensive and pointless charter challenge.

As a representative of the Pivot Legal Society, an organization that uses the law to address the root causes of poverty and marginalization... this bill will restrict access to a proven health care service, which will result in needless human suffering for some of the most vulnerable Canadians.

What a waste. This bill has come all this way. It is now at report stage, it is going to be approved, it is going to go to the Senate, and it is likely going to then go through another expensive course of litigation. Maybe it will go back to the Supreme Court of Canada because it is so flawed. I find that a travesty.

Donald MacPherson, executive director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, said in his testimony:

We are very sorry that this legislation is not coming before the Standing Committee on Health. After all, the primary purpose of supervised consumption services is to intervene in urgent public health contexts where vulnerable citizens are at high risk of serious and sometimes deadly consequences of injection drug use. Consumption services can mitigate this risk, including improving the health and safety of the communities where they might appropriately be located.

I know that commentary from Mr. MacPherson is based on his extensive experience as the city of Vancouver's drug policy coordinator. I know it is based on his review of probably more than 70 studies worldwide now, but at least over 30 in Canada about InSite in Vancouver's downtown eastside. He is entirely correct that these consumption services are about a very urgent public health intervention to save lives and improve the health and safety of the communities in which the facilities are located. In fact, that has very much been the evidence about InSite.

A third witness who I would like to quote for the record is Dr. David McKeown, Toronto Board of Health, medical health officer. He said:

My perspective is somewhat different from that of my law enforcement colleagues, because I come at it from a public health point of view. Toronto is one of several cities in Canada looking to implement supervised injection services as part of an evidenced-based, comprehensive approach to health services for people who inject drugs.

He went on to say that the Toronto Board of Health:

—also feels that the proposed bill is not consistent with the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada... If Bill C-2 is passed...it will be a significant barrier for any community...

The New Democrats put in amendments at report stage to delete all sections of the bill. We had no other choice. We tried to bring in amendments at committee to improve the bill so it would meet the test of the Supreme Court of Canada. I hope members of the House will oppose this bill. It needs to be shut down, rewritten and it needs to uphold the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and for Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise on the debate on Bill C-2, especially after the previous member spoke.

We saw that the amendments provided by the Green Party followed the same basic line of debate it has shown on other bills in this House. If we do not agree with the Green Party members, then we must be wrong. Those Canadians who disagree with the opposition must all be wrong.

Not to shift too far off topic, but we saw that very same approach in a recent debate about the Rouge Park, in my riding. Farmers, who had land expropriated from them by the Liberal government 40 years ago, asked for their land to be protected so that they could farm forever. That is what the people in my community wanted. That is what the farmers wanted. That was what they all asked for. What did the Green Party members want? They did not care what farmers wanted or what the people in my community wanted. They actually wanted to listen to someone else. They wanted to listen to outside influences and those environmentalists who want to throw these farmers off of their land.

That is why I find the comments of the leader of the Green Party so troubling. My word. In this bill, we are asking people to consult with the community before they put something in their community. Imagine that. What did the leader of the Green Party say? It was that consultations are just a way of finding objections. That is all they would do. They would just find objections.

Let me get this straight. We are not supposed to consult, because people might be opposed to what is being forced on them in their community. This is obviously not something we are going to do on this side of the House. I am sure she would agree, and members of the opposition would agree, that if what they are talking about is supported throughout Canada in communities across this country, including in my own small-town community of Stouffville and Markham, then really, there should not be a lot of objections.

Honestly, we have to take in the opinions of the people who actually live, work, play, and pay taxes. We have to take in the opinions of the business owners, the people who create jobs and create economic activity and opportunity. We have to put them in the line of consulting on something like this. That is why we brought forward this legislation, which, of course, respects those aspects that were brought forward by the Supreme Court.

The member said that we had to add a letter to the alphabet. It went from a to z, and then we had to add z.1. Yes, absolutely. It is because we want to make sure that the people who are proposing these sites and the places they are proposing to put these sites meet certain minimum standards.

The member talked about having to provide resumes of the people who would be working there. Of course we are going to want to make sure, as this legislation would, that the people who work in a proposed facility have the ability to do what they say they are going to do. If we are going to bring illicit drugs into small towns, villages, and communities across this country, then I think the people who live in those small towns have the right to know that this is what is coming to their Main Street and that these are the people who would be working there. Do they have the ability to do what they say they can do or what they are being hired to do? Do they have criminal records?

I think it is just common sense that if we are going to bring this type of facility into small towns and communities across this country that we know the people who are sponsoring this and that the people who will be working within the facility have the ability to do what they say they are going to do in a professional manner and can protect the communities in which they apply to do this. I think most Canadians would agree with that.

The member took exception to the fact that the bill would also ask that the proponents seek comments from the local police chief. Far be it from me to suggest it, but obviously the local police chief and the local police know the community. In my town of Stouffville, in York Region, Chief Eric Jolliffe and the local superintendent of No.5 District actually know what is happening in communities.

When a proposal for a development is brought forward in my community, I know it is done by the town. However, I often go to the police and ask what they think about what these people have brought forward in terms of development, safety, and how police, fire, and ambulance would work.

When we talk about bringing controlled substances like heroin into a community, people might want to ask police if it is the right spot to do it. What are the things the community needs to be worried about? I do not know of any Canadians who would suggest otherwise. Actually, I do. Opposition members would, because they are afraid that there might be instances when the community does not agree, local police do not agree, the people who live in the community do not agree, and business owners who hire young people do not agree. Opposition members are afraid there might be objections. In fact, the leader of the Green Party suggested that this is the reason there should be no consultations whatsoever and that Canadians should be completely left out of the process. Clearly, that is not something we are going to do. We are going to involve Canadians in these decisions.

As part of this legislation, we must also provide information on security measures and record keeping. If a community accepts a facility like this, I think it stands to reason that it is going to want to know what security measures will be put in place so the community can be assured that it is safe for the people who live in the community and safe for the people who will use the facility. That is obviously an important part of the process of making sure that communities are involved.

As I said earlier, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands talked about criminal record checks being too onerous and that it is impossible to find out who is going to be working in a facility. I suggest that if people are going to be hired in a facility like this, it is probably a good idea to get criminal record checks to make sure that the people can work in that facility. That is a common-sense addition. I think most Canadians would agree with that, with the exception of the opposition.

The bill would also allow the minister to put a notice of application on a proposed site. In Ontario, as in all jurisdictions across this country, when someone applies for a liquor licence, a notice goes on the window so that the community knows and can comment. It is common sense. People need to know what is going on in their communities.

Apparently the opposition does not agree that when someone is proposing a heroin injection site, there should be a notice for the community. Imagine the surprise of people in the community when all of a sudden the site opened up. People would ask why they were not told what was going on. Imagine the people who would then try to use this facility in an area where people in the community were not consulted. They would have to face the fact that people might be protesting because they were upset by the process that went on.

Obviously, keeping people informed of the process from start to end is a good idea. Letting municipal politicians, those elected municipally, know what is going on and having the opportunity to comment, I think Canadians would agree, is a good idea.

The bill would allow for inspections. Once a facility like this opened, if it was doing good work, people would want to make sure it continued to do good work. Again, that is a very common-sense addition.

The things that have been brought forward in this bill would strengthen the ability of communities across this country to participate in something like this if that is what they wanted. It would allow them to have a say. It would not push things on communities they did not want.

It has been the hallmark of this government, since we were elected in 2006, to listen to the people who pay our bills. When Canadians send almost 50¢ of every $1 they make to politicians at all levels, and thankfully, under our government, I think tax freedom day is now 28 days earlier than it was before, all they ask for is a say in the things we are doing.

When something like this is going to be put in a community, if it actually helps, if it makes a big difference, it should be the proponents who are prepared to stand by what they are doing. They should be the ones to bring the community onside. It should not be forced on any community.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

, seconded by the hon. member for Thunder Bay—Superior North, moved:

Motion No. 1

That Bill C-2 be amended by deleting the long title.

Motion No. 2

That Bill C-2 be amended by deleting the preamble.

Motion No. 3

That Bill C-2 be amended by deleting the short title.

Motion No. 4

That Bill C-2 be amended by deleting Clause 2.

Motion No. 5

That Bill C-2 be amended by deleting Clause 3.

Motion No. 6

That Bill C-2 be amended by deleting Clause 4.

Motion No. 7

Bill C-2 be amended by deleting Clause 5.

Motion No. 8

That Bill C-2 be amended by deleting Clause 6.

She said: Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak to the abuse of process and contempt for Parliament that is embedded in this bill. Bill C-2 does nothing less than take a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada and treat it with contempt, and in doing so treats Parliament and Canadian citizens with contempt.

How we arrived at this issue was a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, which is now well known, relating to the Pivot Legal Society and its attempts to defend what is called the InSite harm reduction centre in Vancouver. Abundant evidence shows that this harm reduction facility is saving lives. It is important with respect to public health. The Supreme Court of Canada gave the current administration very clear guidance as to how a bill should be constructed that would not violate the charter.

I will just revisit for a moment what the Supreme Court said. Members will recall that the minister was refusing to provide an extended exemption that would allow this facility to use otherwise prohibited narcotics and drugs in order to prevent the threat of death and further illness of people who are suffering from addictions and living on the streets.

The InSite facility works, and the Supreme Court found that. It looked at the minister's refusal and stated this in its judgment:

...the Minister must exercise that discretion within the constraints imposed by the law and the Charter, aiming to strike the appropriate balance between achieving public health and public safety. In accordance with the Charter, the Minister must consider whether denying an exemption would cause deprivations of life and security of the person that are not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

The Supreme Court's ruling was clear, but it is equally clear that the current administration's response, the so-called safe communities act, was designed to do indirectly what the Supreme Court had said the administration could not do directly. In other words, it has created a law that is designed not to meet the purposes of the law for which it was being drafted. This was supposedly a law in response to the Supreme Court of Canada's decision, which would create opportunities for harm reduction facilities such as the one in Vancouver called InSite, and in other communities as well.

There are other communities that would benefit from having a harm reduction facility like this. However, this piece of legislation is so contemptuous of due process that it offends Parliament itself. Unfortunately, this is part of a trend with bills that are being drafted and promulgated in this place, and pushed through with time allocation, primarily for public relations benefit in a future election. Surely, the government has been warned by Justice department lawyers that this bill is susceptible to the same Supreme Court challenge as the one that gave rise to the decision of the Supreme Court in the Pivot case.

How is the government doing indirectly what it cannot do directly? This bill sets out such an onerous series of requirements for any person, organization, or charity considering opening an InSite facility that it makes it a joke to imagine anyone could possibly meet all these requirements.

I will provide an example. The list of requirements exhausts the alphabet. They go (a) through (z) and then there is the addition of a (z.1), et cetera. They require that anyone who wishes to open such a facility provide in advance, per requirement (w):

the name, title and resumé, including relevant education and training, of the proposed responsible person in charge, of each of their proposed alternate responsible persons, and of each of the other proposed key staff members;

I do not know if the drafters of this legislation have ever tried to open anything, but one cannot open a community day care centre and know the names of all the staff who will be hired before one can even get a permit or put a shovel on the ground. It simply does not work that way.

They also want to invite anyone who wants to open a harm reduction facility to conduct consultations that are clearly aimed at finding people who might object to such a facility, and giving them the obligation to prepare letters to tell the minister responsible if there is a reason for an exemption or whether the community would rather not deal with people on the streets who have addictions. It does not provide any proportionality about the kind of evidence it seeks. It seeks to direct fair-minded people who are concerned about public health. In the interests of public health, as found by the Supreme Court of Canada, it would force them to go out and try to seek evidence from people who will oppose these facilities' purposes and ends.

I want to speak about the following for a moment, because there are so few opportunities to explain to Canadians what is happening in this place. The legislative process has become an exercise in farce. The bills are drafted in the Prime Minister's Office. I cannot believe they come from any kind of evidence-based public policy in the various departments. They come forward with titles of legislation that are clearly designed for public relations purposes and future pamphlets for use by the Conservative Party, such as this one on the respect for communities act. This is supposed to be legislation about public health and harm reduction, but it is called “respect for communities act” and has been designed not to function as legislation to allow harm reduction.

We could name any one of a number of absurd acts. One of my favourites they titled the “safeguarding our seas and skies act”. It made it sound like it might be something to do with the environment. I read it avidly. The “safeguarding the skies” part dealt with forensic investigations of airplane crashes. It really was not something we could call “safeguarding our skies”. The “safeguarding the seas” part dealt with existing treaties we had already accepted for marine liability regimes in the event of disasters at sea, such as oil spills and chemical spills and so on. These examples are the daily fare of this place.

Then they go to committees. Thanks to the hon. member for Edmonton—St. Albert, we now know that what I inferred from watching the behaviour of Conservative members of Parliament at committee is actually how it functions. The hon. member for Edmonton—St. Albert has written a book called Irresponsible Government, in which he describes how he as a Conservative member of Parliament was given talking points and told how to vote in parliamentary committees.

I worked in this place from 1986 to 1988 in the Mulroney administration. I was not a member of that party nor at the time was I enamoured of the moves of the Prime Minister. I have to say in retrospect that they hold up quite well. However, the parliamentary committees actually functioned in the interests of public policy at achieving consensus and the very best-possible legislation for the greatest number of Canadians. Members of Parliament from all parties were not scripted. They rolled up their sleeves and worked together, made amendments to many acts, and took their time with witnesses. I never saw a witness' credentials or good-faith effort to show up at a committee denigrated until the current administration.

This is one of those bills that cries out for this place to say enough; to say enough with time allocations, enough with ignoring the clear directions of the Supreme Court of Canada, and with putting forward legislation that is simply intended to thumb its nose at the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Supreme Court, and Parliament itself.

I have tried to bring forward these amendments to the committee responsible. As members will know, 20 different committees simultaneously passed identical motions by Conservative members of Parliament to circumscribe my opportunities to present real, substantive amendments here at report stage. It has probably doubled my workload, which I did not think was possible. On top of that, of course, it means that I run from committee to committee for the ritual slaughter of my amendments.

I know you have ruled, Mr. Speaker, that this opportunity means that I no longer have rights at report stage for substantive amendments. I have to repeat for your benefit, Mr. Speaker, that I am afraid it is not working as an opportunity for me; it is working out as a coerced additional workload that I do not welcome.

This is an opportunity for the current Parliament to do the right thing, to vote down this monstrosity of a bill, reread what the Supreme Court said, and look at the medical evidence, that harm reduction at InSite works and that we need to create a legislative framework that lets it function in the interests of our society. Do not let this bill pass.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

There are eight motions in amendment standing on the notice paper for the report stage of Bill C-2.

Motions Nos. 1 to 8 will be grouped for debate and voted upon according to the voting pattern available at the table.

I will now put Motions Nos. 1 to 8 to the House.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, as reported (without amendment) from the committee.

World AIDS Day

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, on the occasion of World AIDS Day, we remember the countless victims of the AIDS epidemic, while paying tribute to the many who have devoted their professional work to advancement in treating HIV-AIDS, like Dr. Julio Montaner, whose groundbreaking “treatment as prevention” method has helped turn the tide on the global fight against HIV-AIDS.

As we celebrate the many medical advances in combatting AIDS worldwide, it is strangely ironic that on this day, Bill C-2 also comes back to the House. This is the government's anti-safe injection site bill. If passed as written, this bill has the potential to undo a decade's worth of stemming the spread of HIV and hep C among injection drug users. Research has clearly demonstrated that harm reduction prevents the spread of HIV-AIDS, and we in the NDP will continue to uphold the rights of individuals to health and well-being.

On this World AIDS Day, we salute the many organizations and advocates who work tirelessly for a world free of AIDS, both in Canada and globally.

Business of the House

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding the fact that the comments on our commitment to veterans made by all of my colleagues opposite are completely untrue, our commitment to our veterans in this country in terms of the level of funding we have given them has been unprecedented. Frankly, there has not been one nickel that we have clawed back from veterans. In fact, we have spent over $5 billion more on veterans since taking office than the previous government.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind all members, once again, on the eve of this year's Grey Cup, that the Saskatchewan Roughriders are the defending Grey Cup champions. They are known not only as Saskatchewan's team but also Canada's team. I ask all members to once again applaud the efforts of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, as they are the backbone of the CFL, our great football institution in this country. I see that my colleagues share my enthusiasm.

It is a pleasure to rise this afternoon on behalf of the government House leader to give the weekly business statement to my colleague opposite. This afternoon, we will continue with the NDP opposition day debate. Tomorrow, we will return to second reading debate on Bill C-35, the justice for animals in service act, also known as Quanto's law.

On Monday, before question period, we will start the second reading debate on Bill S-6, the Yukon and Nunavut regulatory improvement act. This bill is the final step toward completing the legislative portion of Canada's action plan to improve northern regulatory regimes. After question period, we will start the report stage of Bill C-2, the respect for communities act, which was recently reported back from the public safety committee. This bill will ensure that our communities, and especially parents, will have a say before drug injection sites are opened.

On Tuesday, we will start the report stage debate on Bill C-43, the economic action plan 2014 act, No. 2, which has been considered by the hardworking finance committee and several other committees this autumn. Bill C-43 would implement measures from this year's federal budget and other newer measures that would support jobs, economic growth, families, and communities, as well as improve the fairness and integrity of the tax system as the government returns to a balanced budget in 2015.

On Wednesday, we will have yet another NDP opposition day, as confirmed yesterday by the government House leader. That will be our last supply day of the autumn, so we will consider the supplementary estimates and an appropriations bill that evening.

Thursday will see us resume debate on Bill C-40, the Rouge national urban park act, at third reading. My colleagues from the greater Toronto area will be keen to see progress on this legislation, which would create Canada's first urban national park.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to all the witnesses. Thank you for coming.

The first question I have is related to supervised consumption sites. How would Bill C-2, the respect for communities act, change the process for exemptions related to supervised consumption sites?

Bill C-44—Time Allocation Motion

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

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to the minister, I think there are a couple of things in his statement that may inadvertently mislead the public. One is that the government likes to talk about six hours of debate. How many people does that actually accommodate in the House of Commons? It is 16. Sixteen people means that about 5% of the members of the House of Commons have actually been able to debate the bill. Six hours sounds long until we actually look at the number of people participating.

The second way I think he might inadvertently mislead the public is the question of committees being the masters of their own houses. His parliamentary secretary came to the public safety committee on Bill C-2 the last time with very severe limits on the debate, limiting the opposition to four witnesses and actually limiting the time we could spend debating each clause of the bill to one and a half minutes per member. This was obviously a travesty of a debate in committee.

Again, I am asking the minister for a commitment from the government that it will not use its majority on the committee to restrict debate in the committee on this important bill.

Public Safety and National Security

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour today to present, in both official languages, the sixth report of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security in relation to Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The committee has studied the bill and has decided to report the bill back to the House without amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

We're back in a public session. We will now refer to the position we were in, where we almost had Bill C-2 through. We had one more simple little clause. Of course, the floor is open for debate. This could be rather lengthy or it could be very short. Of course, the chair leaves that up to the good members on this committee.

Very simply, the chair has a statement to make, and of course, I would love to see how it's received.

Shall the chair report the bill?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Chair, I would like to remove that motion and replace it with another.

I move that Bill C-2 in clause 5 be amended by replacing lines 1 to 4 on page 9 with the following:

would be located that provides the rationale for and endorses the application for the exemption;

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Chair, I will not be moving that amendment. I would like to move another amendment from the floor.

Thank you. The amendment would read that Bill C-2 in clause 5—

I'm sorry. I haven't moved my page from Ms. May's last—

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

We're speaking just briefly to this amendment. We think this is a key amendment because, as you can see in the sections that follow, Bill C-2 speaks repeatedly to the opinions of various officials. Originally we were thinking that each one should be amended, but what we came up with was an amendment that says:

For the purpose of this section, any opinion must be evidence-based.

This is certainly a very strong underpinning of the whole debate we're having. I don't think we should be interested in people's opinions. Certainly, public consultation concerns people's opinions, but when we're talking about public health officials, police, provincial authorities, and so on, we believe very strongly that we should be focusing on evidence as opposed to someone's “opinion”.

What does that mean? This particular amendment, if it were approved, would make it clear that in the following clauses where the bill speaks about opinions, we're saying that the definition would be “opinion [that] must be evidence-based”. It's really a clarification.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

With regard to this amendment, these sections of Bill C-2 are consistent with information that is required under regulations currently under the CDSA, for example, the narcotic control regulations or the benzodiazepines and other targeted substances regulations. This type of information is required, given the risks associated with illicit substances. The supervised injection site currently operating with an exemption from the CDSA has provided this information for a number of years. The bill does not preclude a person with a criminal record from working at a supervised consumption site, only from being a responsible person in charge. That being the case, I would oppose the amendment.

[Bruce Hyer, Green, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Chair, I'll do a short preamble, if I may, and then I'll be short on the amendment.

Ms. May would have liked to be here today, but given the ruling, as you know, we have short opportunities to present amendments, and she is doing amendments at the public safety committee right now on Bill C-2, the Insite bill.

I'm happy to present these amendments on behalf of the Green Party. I'd also like to preface this, should any questions be thrown my way, by saying that I am a terrestrial ecologist. I'm a former land use planner. I taught park planning at Lakehead University for several years, and I was quite involved in the creation of dozens of provincial parks of all kinds across Ontario.

I'll start with the first amendment here, on clause 2.

Mr. Chair, I have comments on each of them. Would you like me to read the amendments?

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Colleagues, we will call the 37th meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security to order. The meeting will be televised today. Pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, June 19, 2014, we will be dealing with Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. We will be doing clause-by-clause consideration today.

Pursuant to Standing Order 75(1), consideration of the preamble and clause 1, the short title, is postponed. Therefore, we will carry on with our clauses and the subsequent amendments the chair has before him at this time. Of course, there is the possibility, for those who wish, to make an amendment off the floor, and these can and will be accepted in due course.

It's my understanding that the amendments have also been presented to our analysts, so they have an idea of where these would fall in line with the orderly structure of the clauses to be studied. Should there be any doubt as to where they are placed, the chair will suspend briefly until I get clarification from the analysts as to which position these would be in, if they appear to be out of position in your order. But I'm very confident that our analysts are very capable, quite frankly, and have them properly structured.

Mr. Garrison.

Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Alfred-Pellan for her remarks and for the work she does as the NDP deputy public safety critic. She is a vigilant and hard-working member of our committee and of the NDP team.

She makes an important point. Right now, in the public safety committee, we are dealing with Bill C-2, the safe injection sites bill, which of course really belongs in the health committee, but it is in our committee. We were presented with a very tight timeframe, including a limit, which the Conservatives passed in committee, of five minutes for the discussion of each clause. One of those clauses we are dealing with puts 27 different conditions on the opening of a safe injection site, and we are supposed to have five minutes of debate on that clause.

When it comes to getting this bill to committee, I am urging the government that we not be presented with such narrow and unreasonable time limits so that we can have a full discussion of what is a very important bill.

[Donald MacPherson]

What Bill C-2 doesn't take into account is the tremendous amount of consultation that goes on at the city level through Development Permit Board hearings, and the notification of residents of any new use, whether it be a detox centre, an injection site, or a police department. The community is consulted on all of these things. It's a tremendous amount of work at the local level.

[Tom Stamatakis, President, Canadian Police Association]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation to address you this afternoon as part of your continued study on Bill C-2.

As you mentioned, and as most of you know from my previous appearances before this committee, I have the privilege of currently serving as president of the Canadian Police Association, an organization that represents over 54,000 front-line police personnel, both civilian and sworn officers across Canada.

My opening remarks today will be brief. However, I have been closely following the testimony given by other witnesses before this committee. The term “evidence-based” seems to be used quite often, so I'd like to offer you the following today, which should give you an idea of my experience in the area and why I particularly appreciate having the opportunity to present to you today.

I served for 25 years as a constable with the Vancouver Police Department. Currently, along with my duties at the CPA, I am president of the Vancouver Police Union, where Canada's only supervised drug consumption site operates. I believe I can provide you today with an important and first-hand view around why public safety should be an important consideration when discussing supervised consumption sites.

From a front-line policing perspective, Bill C-2 is an important piece of legislation which our association wholeheartedly supports. We believe it strikes an appropriate balance between the needs of protecting community health while taking into account the very real concerns that have been raised by all levels of law enforcement and members of the community regarding supervised drug consumption sites.

I know that your committee has heard concerns raised by opponents to this legislation that the conditions imposed by the bill are onerous and will be difficult to meet for the organizations seeking to open new sites. As a police officer, I am somewhat sympathetic to concerns that paperwork and regulatory frameworks can be difficult and at times even next to impossible to work within. However, I can say that this is the environment that law enforcement professionals work within every day. We don't have the option to cut corners and take the easy way out. Our efforts must be meticulous to pass muster by judges, crown and defence attorneys, community stakeholders, as well as the myriad of oversight bodies that constantly police the police. I don't think it's asking too much of those who wish to work with illicit and dangerous drugs to meet that same standard.

I don't particularly want to use my appearance here today as a platform to re-litigate the merits or drawbacks of supervised consumption sites, but while I will certainly concede that proponents of these sites are passionate advocates who are sincere in their beliefs, I can say that as a police officer who has patrolled and worked in the downtown eastside, there is a significant public safety cost that absolutely must be considered when thoughts are given to opening new sites.

The simple fact is that drugs that are consumed at these sites are illegal substances. An individual doesn't walk to their local pharmacist to obtain their drug of choice. A criminal act takes place with the procurement of their drug. With the grey area that has been created around Insite in the downtown eastside, our officers are asked to exercise incredible discretion in their policing efforts, but the drug dealers are ready and particularly eager to exploit this discretion to the fullest extent possible.

Another unfortunate truth is that those who are using these drugs are not cashing in their RRSPs, selling their stock options, or using their discretionary income to buy their illicit drugs. They're resorting to often desperate, and most often, criminal behaviour in order to obtain the resources necessary to purchase the drugs. This leads to an increase in theft, assault, and prostitution in the immediate area around the site, and sometimes an attempt to inject drugs.

All of this comes at a cost. Very few unbiased observers would walk the downtown eastside of Vancouver and claim using only the eye test that Insite is an overwhelming success. I certainly wouldn't claim that everything in the neighbourhood would be rainbows and unicorns without the presence of Insite; it is an unfortunate and unavoidable byproduct of its continued operation.

This isn't to suggest that we should turn our backs on those who have fallen victim to addiction. It would be impossible for me to list all of the initiatives taken by police services and other agencies across this country to deal with drug consumption. I firmly believe we can build on those programs that have been found to be successful, but while drug initiatives vary widely in scope and in operation, the one constant is that public safety is never jeopardized and the protection of our communities' most vulnerable is always paramount.

Unfortunately, the debate around Insite and any other proposed consumption site has become extremely charged, and in a number of cases very personal. I have witnessed and been targeted by those who don't appreciate my advocacy on behalf of my members in opposition to these sites. While I do try to see the debate from their perspective, I hope today they might try to see it from mine. I have walked the downtown eastside. I've spoken regularly with police officers who are given the difficult and dangerous task of patrolling this area on a regular basis. I can say without a doubt that while studies may trumpet the health benefits of supervised drug consumption, those same studies always underestimate the public safety cost that comes as a result.

In our estimation, Bill C-2 is a reasonable response to the Supreme Court of Canada decision that allows Insite to continue operations.

This proposed legislation doesn't close the door on new consumption sites, but does set an appropriately high standard that needs to be met before these sites can open. It asks for input to be sought from a number of stakeholders, including law enforcement, and our association appreciates the steps taken by the government in this regard.

I would like to conclude by offering one suggestion for amendment within the legislation. Proposed subsection 56.1(3) specifies the consultation conditions that need to be met before the minister authorizes any new supervised drug consumption sites. Proposed paragraph 56.1(3)(e) says that a letter must be obtained from the head of the police force that is responsible for providing police services in the municipality in which the site seeks to operate.

While this is a good first step, I believe the legislation should go further. For instance, the act itself should also specifically designate the president of the local police association union or the staff relations representative as a key stakeholder in the process.

While police executives must have a role in determining conditions for any drug site, the reality is that many executive positions within the police service are determined by a police board that can often be beholden to local politics, whatever they might be. In many jurisdictions across Canada, a police chief's employment is determined by the police board, which is dominated by provincial and municipal political appointments. The president of the local association, however, is elected solely by the front-line civilian and sworn members that make up the police service. His or her views would be shaped by those he or she represents and they would be free to make those views known to the minister.

Aside from that small change, the Canadian Police Association is happy to offer our support for Bill C-2, as we believe that public safety concerns do need to be put on a par with community health concerns when it comes to supervised drug consumption sites.

Once again, I thank you for the opportunity to appear today and, as well, I thank you on behalf of my colleagues who were able to appear last week on this proposed legislation. I look forward to any questions you might have.

[Donald MacPherson, Executive Director, Canadian Drug Policy Coalition]

Thank you for inviting me to speak to this committee today on such an important issue for Canadians, especially those experiencing severe addiction and mental health issues.

In our brief, which is a collaboration with the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, we have outlined many of the benefits of supervised consumption services around the world and our concerns with Bill C-2 as it is currently drafted. We, along with others appearing before you, have made the point that the services that Bill C-2 is focused on are evidence-based, have been around for close to 30 years in various jurisdictions, and are a part of a comprehensive approach to developing systems of care for people with severe addictions at the margins of society.

I have worked for many years in the field of drug policy and have been a participant in the broad public discussion that has been taking place in Vancouver, B.C. over the past 20 years focused on building a more effective response to drug problems in our country. As a staff person with the City of Vancouver for 22 years, 10 of those working as the city's drug policy coordinator, I know only too well the challenges for municipalities and local health authorities attempting to do the right thing, which is to put in place a comprehensive system of care for people with drug problems in the community. This includes drug treatment facilities, detox units, scaled-up methadone programs, supportive housing projects for people with addictions and mental health issues, needle exchange projects, other types of social development programs, and yes, supervised consumption services.

Because of the stigma of illegal drug use, each one these services is a challenge for municipalities and health authorities to implement at the local level. It requires a great deal of time, energy, commitment, and resources to get these services up and running and provide much-needed help to people. Believe me, there is a great deal of public process at the local municipal level to situate any of the services that I have mentioned.

Bill C-2 will add an extremely onerous extra layer of work for those at the local level that will most certainly have the effect of preventing the scaling up of supervised consumption services across the country where they may be needed. The 26 different pieces of information required before an application can even be considered would not be required of any other type of health service. At the very least, Bill C-2 will cause a significant delay for localities to implement a timely response to what are often the urgent realities of the unregulated illegal drug scene. An example of this urgency is the recent spate, mentioned by my colleague, of overdoses due to fentanyl in Vancouver, when the Vancouver police, to their credit, urged people to use Insite in an effort to prevent overdose deaths. Thirty-one overdoses took place at Insite over Thanksgiving weekend, none of them fatal. This is a tool that other localities do not have access to at this time.

We are very sorry that this legislation is not coming before the Standing Committee on Health. After all, the primary purpose of supervised consumption services is to intervene in urgent public health contexts where vulnerable citizens are at high risk of serious and sometimes deadly consequences of injection drug use. Consumption services can mitigate this risk, including improving the health and safety of the communities where they might appropriately be located. A hearing only before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security does not seem adequate to consider the complexity of the health and social issues engaged by these kinds of services. Indeed, supervised consumption services are themselves a balanced approach in that they address both public health and public order issues in communities.

Another contextual comment I wish to make is to note the great divide in the testimony of our health and enforcement colleagues. The divide between the leadership of these two fields of work in our communities is of concern to us and seems to be vast, with virtually all professional health associations that have provided expert advice, including the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Vancouver Coastal Health, and the Toronto public health department finding Bill C-2 significantly problematic on a number of grounds.

On the enforcement side of things, for the most part, in spite of all the evidence from existing supervised consumption services projects, it seems that there is not even a willingness to consider a trial or pilot project to see what the experience of different models in different localities might be. In the face of all the evidence of 30 years of positive experience of integrated consumption services into the systems of care in Europe, in Vancouver, and in Sydney, Australia, there seems to be a firm position against any such trials on behalf of our police leadership.

We think that the divide between these two critical fields of public service is unfortunate, as we are certain that the health and enforcement institutions in this country share the goals of healthy, safe communities for all Canadian citizens, including those who use drugs.

As we have written in our brief, by advocating a focus on public safety at the expense of public health, the context of these hearings being a prime example, the bill runs counter to the court's emphasis on striking a balance between public safety and public health.

By making it even more difficult to implement supervised consumption services, Bill C-2 ignores the Supreme Court of Canada's assertion that these services are vital for the most vulnerable groups of people who use drugs, and that preventing access to these services violates human rights.

In the words of the chief medical health officer of Vancouver Coastal Health, Bill C-2 as currently configured will “effectively act to block exemptions” and “the provision of life-saving medical services to some of our most marginalized citizens and result in deaths and serious illnesses that are entirely preventable”. If this is the case, it is our judgment that this clearly contradicts the spirit of the Supreme Court decision on Insite.

Making it more difficult to open consumption services in Canada is clearly out of step with the commitment that this government has expressed to address Canada's serious mental health situation as well. Consumption services aim to engage marginalized people who use drugs. In Canada the percentage of homeless people who have either a mental illness or a substance abuse diagnosis is 86%, and the percentage of homeless people with a mental illness who also have a substance abuse problem is 75%. Many of those who inject drugs would benefit greatly from the engagement with health, social workers, and drug treatment professionals through their participation in a comprehensive supervised consumption service program.

At Vancouver's Insite, 65% of participants have had a previous diagnosis of mental illness. Given these numbers, putting barriers in the way of implementing supervised consumption services seems at odds with this government's stated commitment towards the mentally ill in Canada. One would like to think that the government would want to facilitate the development of one more evidence-based tool in the tool box to help address mental health and addictions in this country.

A recent systematic review of injection sites released last week, conducted by four researchers from France and one from Switzerland, reviewed 75 relevant articles. The findings of the systematic review were as follows. All studies converged to find that supervised injection services were efficacious in attracting the most marginalized people who inject drugs, promoting safer injection conditions, enhancing access to primary health care, and reducing the overdose frequency. Supervised injection services were not found to increase drug injecting, drug trafficking, or crime in the surrounding environments. Supervised injection services were found to be associated with reduced levels of public drug injections and dropped syringes.

I will close by reminding the committee that the issue of supervised consumption services came to the fore after a decade-long public health and public safety disaster in Vancouver, and indeed British Columbia, during the 1990s. Thousands of people died and many more became ill during that period. The epidemics of overdose, HIV, hepatitis C, and injection drug use overwhelmed Vancouver's inner city. At the time, Michael O'Shaughnessy, the director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, coined the phrase “deadly public policy” to refer to the mix of municipal, provincial, and federal policies in the areas of social assistance, housing, mental health and addictions, and lack of funding for health and social programs, and enforcement practices, etc., that contributed to inadvertently creating the conditions for an HIV epidemic among injection drug users to flourish in Vancouver.

In British Columbia much time has been spent trying to undo those deadly public policies with some good successes. If Bill C-2 is implemented in its current form, our organizations would certainly consider it to be a step backward, creating yet another deadly public policy as it clearly will have the impact of denying marginalized and often seriously ill Canadian citizens and their communities access to proven life-saving health services.

I thank you very much.

[Adrienne Smith, Health and Drug Policy Staff Lawyer, Pivot Legal Society]

Thank you, Chairperson and honourable members.

I'd like to begin by saying that this is a bad bill. From a legal perspective, the bill is a hyperbolic response to a subtle point of law. It will likely not withstand constitutional scrutiny, and it invites an expensive and pointless charter challenge.

As a representative of the Pivot Legal Society, an organization that uses the law to address the root causes of poverty and marginalization in Canada, this bill will restrict access to a proven health care service, which will result in needless human suffering for some of the most vulnerable Canadians.

I would like to use some of my time to correct something that the Minister of Health said in her remarks on Monday. She spoke about the necessity of this bill, and she said that Bill C-2 was required because of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision. With respect, the minister is mistaken.

I propose to briefly outline what the Supreme Court of Canada said to show that Bill C-2 is a significant departure from the guidance of the court and to outline some of the consequences of this bill coming into force.

I don't believe that this committee needs background about the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, but I should say that it is a blanket criminal law. Exemptions under section 56 suspend the action of that law for certain purposes, and it's in this exemption that Insite currently exists. In a section 56 exemption, the law is suspended.

The Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness talked last week about the 101 places where drug users could act illegally. But, contrary to what he said, in technical terms, the act is suspended, not broken.

In the Supreme Court of Canada case PHS v. Canada, which is the court case about this section, there were a number of very clear findings: that a supervised injection service is a health service; that people who inject drugs are exposed to a number of harms as a result of their illness, to the extent that their charter rights are engaged; and that the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, as we've heard many times, has a dual purpose: one is to protect public health and the other is to protect public safety. Also, the minister's discretion must be exercised within the parameters of the charter, and she must balance this dual purpose.

In the context of Insite—and significantly, this is the point of the PHS decision—when there is not evidence of a public safety threat, exemptions must generally be granted. They're presumptive, nearly, and to ensure that the minister's discretion in balancing did not lead to arbitrary decision-making, there were five permissive factors, which are very narrow, and the minister must consider them if they're available. That is all that is required.

What Bill C-2 does is a significant departure from that. It answers the requirement that exemptions generally be granted, which the court directed, with a presumption in the bill that exemptions will generally be withheld. It ignores the requirement that the CDSA is a balancing bill that requires aspects of public health and public safety by framing the question of supervised injection service as a narrow public safety issue, and only in a negative way. It also expands the court's five permissive factors into 26 impossible criteria, which will lead to a limiting of the availability of this necessary health service.

With respect, Bill C-2 is more about this federal government's distaste for this kind of health service than it is about anything the court said. The results of this are problematic and unconstitutional. The effect of Bill C-2 will be to frustrate the application process for health care providers and restrict access to supervised injection services and approvals for future centres.

For the reasons that are set out in my brief which is before you and for those following at home can be downloaded from the parliamentary website, the bill perpetrates a number of head-on assaults to other constitutional provisions that are the legal backbone of this nation.

This is important for two reasons. There are two sets of consequences that will flow from this bill, and the first is legal. Bill C-2 will not withstand constitutional scrutiny. It will invite an extensive and pointless charter challenge and a long series of litigation on a point of law that is already settled, under a legislative framework that is arguably worse than the one the Supreme Court of Canada condemned. If the Insite decision was a question about how the charter rights of drug users were violated by an initiative to prevent access to supervised injection services, it is difficult to see how this is not exactly the same thing.

The second public health outcome of Bill C-2 is arguably more important. Passing Bill C-2 will have devastating and unconscionable consequences for the most vulnerable of Canadians who are members of our community. The barriers the bill presents to accessing life-saving health care will allow a heartbreaking public health emergency to continue under a law and order agenda and expose patients and communities to infection, to suffering, and to death.

I live three blocks away from Insite in Vancouver's downtown eastside. On Thanksgiving weekend, when healthier Canadians were sitting down and eating their turkey suppers, a narcotic opioid drug called fentanyl was being passed off by street dealers as heroin. It is indistinguishable to users, but it is an order of magnitude more powerful than heroin.

As a result, on Thanksgiving Monday there were 10 overdoses; on the Sunday before, there were 16, and there were five the following day, all of these at Insite. Nobody who overdosed at Insite died. Unfortunately, some people did die. I understood that it was two. One was a young woman. One was a man named Tony Snakeskin. I hear from my colleague Mr. Wilson that there were in fact four. These people died because they were alone and they did not have access to medical care.

This is a question not just for Vancouver but for all of our communities. In the summer of 2014, the Agence de la santé et des services sociaux de Montréal investigated 83 cases of overdoses. Twenty-five of them were fatal. In other neighbourhoods across the country, thousands of people have died, and countless more will die if they do not have the access to supervised injection services that the court said was required.

To conclude, I will say that Bill C-2 is contrary to what the court ordered. It is unconstitutional, and it will allow people to die.

As I just mentioned in English, the Minister of Health told you the the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Canada (Attorney General) v. PHS Community Services Society requires you to pass this bill. With respect, I must tell you that she is wrong.

What the decision indicates is that the rights of drug users are protected by the Charter and the minister must grant an exemption to allow supervised injection sites.

Bill C-2 could result in useless legal proceedings because the government cannot tolerate the existence of this kind of care. While we wait, our neighbours will die. It is unconstitutional and we cannot countenance anything of the kind.

The bill says quietly that the federal government does not value the lives of people who use drugs and people whose lives would be saved by this service.

Subject to your questions, those are my submissions.

[Dean Wilson]

I'm going to reiterate what Inspector Scott Thompson just said. It's raising the bar so high that it will never get done. If you read the judgment of the Supreme Court, they again framed it. They said that our right to health has to be balanced with the laws of Canada. If you went to the downtown eastside and saw those 4,000 to 12,000 addicts, whatever the number is, you would say, “My goodness, we need the supervised injection site, because this health is bad and it's deteriorating daily.” As Scott says, with the law, they're working with us there.

I just think that new Bill C-2 will put the bar so high that we'll never be able to have other communities try to use this. It's not the answer in every city, but in some places it is. I know a place in Toronto where it's needed. I know a place in Montreal where it could be used. Those are just two cities I've been to. I don't know if Abbotsford needs one right at the moment, but I think for places like Toronto and Montreal where there are certain neighbourhoods, I'm sure the community there would say, “Yes, let's try something, because everything else hasn't worked.”

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

I'd like to ask you a question. Because Bill C-2 focuses so much on the consultative process around community input into whether a consumption site, an injection site, should be located in a community, in your opinion should community views be considered in the application process of these injection sites?

[Dean Wilson]

Well, I find it really interesting. I just want to say that a week ago I was out at this dinner-date thing and who arrived out of the blue but Judge Pitfield, from the very first decision at the B.C. Supreme Court. He's the most conservative judge in British Columbia. He sat down beside me. I said, “Judge”, and he laughed and said, “Mr. Wilson.” I put it to him and asked him, “When did you decide that this was going to be a legit thing?” He asked me if I remembered the first hour of the trial when he asked the opposition if this was a medical issue, and they hemmed and hawed. He asked again, “Is this a medical issue?” They said yes. He said that he decided right then that the next two days did not matter.

I believe that Bill C-2 will put too many fingers in the pie, or whatever, and too many people that can stop it on nothing but a whim of a moral judgment. I don't think that's right. Nine Supreme Court justices—it was nine to nothing—stated that this was a medical issue and should be treated as such. It was framed within Canada's laws.

The people inside that building are not breaking any Canadian law. If we allow everybody and anybody to have a say and they don't have an actual participation within it.... If you go to any city where there are a lot of drug addicts around, you're going to see those people want a solution. I'm saying that I believe supervised injection sites are a beginning solution to the problem. It's not the be-all and end-all. In fact, it's probably only the first 20 or 30 minutes of the change in my life, that injection. There's a lot after that, but if we don't give those people that first 20 minutes, where are they going to go?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I do think that Mr. Falk is correct in one point, and that is we are here debating Bill C-2 and whether or not this bill meets the test of the Supreme Court of Canada.

I remember that you were at the Supreme Court of Canada the day the decision came down. You've been involved in this for a very long time. One question I have, because you have followed it so closely.... Never mind all the studies. As you say, there are overwhelming studies that support Insite, but obviously some people will never ever believe the evidence before them. At the end of the day, you're someone who has direct experience, and not only in the process. You know how much we went through in Vancouver. There was a lot of public consultation, and sometimes it was really tough going—

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Okay. So I don't see anywhere in the Scriptures that would support your statement. Anyway, I'm going to read something for you.

First I want to make a general statement. I'm a little disappointed in a couple of the presentations I heard today, because they're defending or arguing against the merits of Insite. I don't think that's what we're doing here today. We're talking about Bill C-2, which is about respecting and protecting communities.

The Supreme Court rendered a decision about Insite as a supervised injection site. The court affirmed the discretionary power of the minister to grant exemptions but stated that decisions must be made in accordance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and balance public health and safety concerns. The court specified factors that the minister must consider when assessing an application for a supervised injection site. These included any evidence related to “the impact of such a facility on crime rates, the local conditions indicating a need for such a...site, the regulatory structure in place to support the facility, the resources available to support its maintenance, and expressions of community support or opposition.”

My question for you, Mr. Wilson, is this. Is it reasonable for the government to require community input on proposals to establish injection sites, especially given the Supreme Court's ruling that the minister must consider such views?

[David Berner, Executive Director, Drug Prevention Network of Canada]

Honourable members, the Drug Prevention Network of Canada is pleased to support Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, known as the respect for communities act.

So-called safe injection sites, which are hubs for illegal and anti-social behaviours, will not be welcomed by neighbourhoods if these operations are simply thrust upon them. Asking the promoters of this failed and woollen-headed experiment to answer some serious questions before building their empire at the expense of local integrities is the very least we can do as a democracy. We applaud the current administration for this initiative.

Let's look at pieces of the bill and at the real evidence, not the questionable studies presented by the very people who built Insite.

A report by the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS on harm reduction programs and Insite released last summer, for example, is not science; it's public relations. Authors Julio Montaner, Thomas Kerr, and Evan Wood have produced nearly two dozen papers on the use of Insite. They have been awarded more than $18 million of taxpayer money in recent years. Predictably, they boast of good results in connecting addicts to treatment, but convincing evidence is not only lacking, it's non-existing.

The current campaign reports significant reductions in drug overdoses, yet the Government of British Columbia selected vital statistics and health status indicators show that the number of deaths from drug overdose in Vancouver's downtown eastside has increased every year, with one exception, since the site opened in 2003.

In addition, the federal government's own advisory committee on drug injection sites report only 5% of drug addicts use the injection site and 3% were referred for treatment. I believe that's terribly high. There is no indication the crime rate has decreased as well as no indication of decrease in AIDS and hepatitis C since the injection site was opened.

Claims of success for Insite made in The Lancet, the famous British medical journal, in 2011 were challenged vigorously in a 15-page heavily documented response and by addiction specialists from Australia, the U.S., and Canada and by a former Vancouver Police Department officer who worked the downtown eastside for years.

In “A Critical Evaluation of the Effects of Safe Injection Facilities” for the Institute on Global Drug Policy, Dr. Garth Davies who is a Simon Fraser University associate professor wrote:

However, the methodological and analytic approaches used in these studies have not been scrutinized to any significant degree. Previous studies are compromised by an array of deficiencies, including a lack of baseline data, insufficient conceptual and operational clarity, inadequate evaluation criteria, absent statistical controls, dearth of longitudinal designs, and inattention to intrasite variation. [...[ In truth, none of the impacts attributed to SIFs can be unambiguously verified.

Ladies and gentlemen, here is exactly what happened. The three good doctors were originally working on HIV/AIDS, and they did something curious because it had an unintended consequence. They resolved the problem of HIV/AIDS in a wonderful way, and their work is magnificent, but they put themselves out of work, so they turned their attention to addictions using the same template to get money and to support what they believe and so on. It's the old journalistic story of follow the money.

I had dinner a few months ago with somebody who used to work at Insite, and he said that he had to quit because he thought the place was evil. I said we agreed on that but why did he think it was evil? He told me it was because he had seen the so-called researchers counting one addict five times. He'd seen this several times. He has also seen so-called researchers interviewing an addict moments after the addict has just shot up. Now I ask you all when you leave this committee meeting, please go to the local hospital and go in a room where somebody is in a coma and try to interview them and see what that's like, because that's what you will get when you talk to someone who has just shot up.

Dr. Colin Mangham, who is on the board of directors of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, has been a researcher in this field since 1979. He said:

The proposal for Insite was written by the same people who are evaluating it – a clear conflict of interest. Any serious evaluation must be independent. All external critiques or reviews [of the Insite evaluations], there are four of them — found profound overstatements and evidence of interpretation bias. All of the evidence — on public disorder, overdose deaths, entry into treatment, containment of serum borne viruses, and so on — is weak or [entirely] non-existent and certainly does not support the claims of success. There is every appearance of the setting of an agenda before Insite ever started, then a pursuit of that agenda, bending or overstating results wherever necessary.

Let's look at the bill itself. Under proposed new subsection 56.1(3), the minister “may consider an application...after the following priorities have been established”, and I will just refer to two of them: “(a) scientific evidence demonstrating...medical benefit...”. Well, we submit to you that there is no such legitimate clear, clean, and independent evidence. Quite the contrary, nothing has changed. The very idea that giving addicts a place to shoot up will help them in any manner shows an extraordinary lack of understanding of the issue of addiction.

Let me make this very simple and very clear. What do addicts want? Addicts want more. The don't want more tickets to ball games. They don't want more children. They don't want more bicycles. They don't want more violin lessons. They want more drugs. That's what they want, so an addicted man or woman may inject under a nurse’s supervision, but two hours later, that same addict is back in the alley doing what he or she knows how to do. Why? The addict's life is not about a quarter of a gram of inert white powder; it is about a culture and a way of living.

Going back to the criteria, “The Minister may consider an application...”, proposed new paragraph 56.1(b)(iii) says “provides information about access to drug treatment” centres. Oh, that this were so. I happen to know every treatment centre in British Columbia and most in Canada because of the work I do, and in spite of Mr. Wilson's passionate testimony, let me give you my passionate testimony. I have yet to hear of one addict—one—being referred to a treatment centre. I haven't met him. I haven't heard of her. I don't know their names because it doesn't happen. I know all the people who run treatment centres and they will all tell you that they've never had an addict being referred from Insite.

You see, Insite is not about recovery. The good doctors who built it actually don’t believe in recovery. They think that abstinence is a fantasy. The provincial health authorities don’t support abstinence-based recovery, and these are the very people who whisper in the ear of the provincial health minister. All of these people want to give addicts free needles, free crack pipe kits, free heroin, methadone, lessons on wine making for alcoholics, and comfy places to shoot up. Insite, you have to understand, is the tip of the iceberg. It is the flagship for a very dark philosophy that says, “You, my boy, are hopeless, so we're going to keep you pacified and pray that you will not break into our condos and cars”. You can see how this arrogant and misguided approach is working, how elegantly it fails to enhance the lives of either addicts or communities.

The sad truth, ladies and gentlemen, is this. In my province, the poor get methadone and the rich get private treatment clinics. I happen to work at one of those rich private treatment clinics.

On proposed new paragraph 56.1(3)(i), item (iii), “the presence of inappropriately discarded drug-related litter”, I have a friend who owns a building in the downtown eastside. She's trying to run a business there, and she has been fighting with the City of Vancouver for two years asking if it would please remove those damned blue boxes from the back alley, and the City said, no, that's where the addicts are going to throw their needles.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but I don't know of any addicts who are up for good housekeeping awards, so my friend who owns this building and is trying to conduct a regular business down there regularly has needles all over the place and human body waste. You ask communities if they are ready for that and if they are prepared to host that kind of lunacy, and ask the good doctors who promoted this madness to establish one of their projects next to their homes.

Finally, I want to make a comment about two opponents' responses in the House. The Honourable Judy Sgro, a Liberal from York West, said when this was being debated in the House, “The only success I have seen so far, which is limited, is the safe injection site in Vancouver.” Well, the good member is right. Her views are extremely limited. All she has to do is go to any city in Canada, and there are hundreds and hundreds of wonderful prevention or treatment programs operating—not as many as we could have, but there are many of them, so if that's the only thing she has seen, that's the only thing she has seen.

The Honourable Libby Davies, the NDP member for Vancouver East—

[Dean Wilson, Prior Plaintiff, As an Individual]

Thank you. I'm a little nervous. The last time I was dressed like this in front of people like you, the last thing I heard was “guilty as charged”.

I appreciate the chance to give testimony regarding Bill C-2, but I'm also confused. I thought the Supreme Court of Canada's decision of September 30, 2011, finalized the issue of supervised injection sites. The court decided that supervised injection sites were legal and constitutional. I guess the present government feels it can sidestep the highest court's decision, and because the legal route has now closed, it will regulate supervised injection sites out of business.

One only has to read the three judgements, those of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the appellate court of British Columbia, and the Supreme Court of Canada, to feel the spirit in which the courts framed the supervised injection site issue within the laws of Canada. What those judgements specify is that supervised injection sites are a medical issue and should be treated as such.

I know the decisions do not sit well with the Conservative government, and it wishes to shut down supervised injection sites, stating it supports the treatment of drug addicts over harm reduction initiatives. This is incredibly misleading, as the government does not support treatment either. The Auditor General's report of 2002 showed 95¢ of every dollar the government spends on the illicit drug issue goes to enforcement, leaving only 5¢ for everything else, including treatment. This does not sound like support to me. In fact, it makes me feel the federal government doesn't care about the most downtrodden of its citizens.

I realize drug addicts seem to be the new pariahs and the only outcome is jail or the cemetery, but I believe from personal experience that everyone counts.

I'm a 58-year-old man who presently has five years of sobriety. Before that, I was a street-entrenched polydrug addict using heroin and cocaine, which very few people supported even though I was a noted advocate for the rationalization around the drug issue, which was documented in the Genie Award-winning documentary Fix: The Story of an Addicted City.

I know the following seems counterintuitive, but it was the building of relationships with the medical staff at Insite that allowed me to take the first step, that being detox. I relapsed the first few times, but through perseverance by the staff at Insite and myself, I now live a straight life. It proves that anyone can change.

This change is what everyone in the downtown eastside really wants. This is not a party drug consumption place where people smoke a couple of joints on a Friday night. These streets are filled with people who have experienced incredible trauma in their lives and are just trying to cope.

I recall the story of a 19-year-old girl I met at Insite. She said it was her birthday. I said happy birthday to her, but she indicated that birthdays were incredibly sad to her. I asked why. She bluntly stated that on her 10th birthday, her father passed her around sexually to her three uncles. I was left speechless. How does anyone cope or recover from something so horrible? This is just one of many stories in the downtown eastside of Vancouver. I do not care what anyone says: that girl deserves whatever treatment is needed, including supervised injection.

Sometimes I wonder if those opposed to our centre actually know the full extent of the work we do there. I think we do a disservice in Canada and Europe by the names we call our sites. “Drug consumption rooms” in Europe and “supervised injection sites” in Canada are very descriptive phrases, but only describe a very small part of the services we offer.

In Canada at Insite our model is similar to the “drogenhaus” treatment centres in Germany. These are multiple-floor treatment centres where the higher up you go, the more involved is your treatment.

On the first floor at Insite we have the supervised injection room, but also a chill room where we can observe people both before and after injection, a health room where nurses on site can triage, and also two staff members who circulate among the users and try to hook them up with whatever services might be needed.

I have seen these staff members get housing for people, get them to health care, and in one case go so far as to get a person a bus ticket home, which we know had a very good outcome.

On the second floor is the detoxification centre. It is ironic that for a government that only believes in treatment, it took Insite, the supervised injection site, to open the first new detox in Vancouver in decades that I'm aware of.

It is the third floor that is critical. It is the transitional housing unit. Let me explain.

Most people can detox from a drug they are using in 7 to 10 days, but most long-term treatment centres require 30 days clean before they will admit someone. This left us with a 20-day gap, where the person leaving detox typically had to go back to the same environment that caused them to seek detox in the first place. The transitional housing unit therefore allows the person to stay in a treatment environment until they can get into long-term treatment centres. Bridging this three-week gap has been the most important service that I have seen, second only to the critical initial intervention that is the supervised injection. The results of all this have been documented in many scientific journals.

As for the science behind supervised injection sites, I can quote ad nauseam the scientific and medical published papers in support of Insite. In fact, there are over 60 published papers in support of Insite and I have yet to see one that does not support the work being done there.

In Bill C-2, Canadian Police Association president Tom Stamatakis is quoted as saying that in his experience, supervised injection sites “lead to an increase in criminal behaviour”. This is not backed up by science. Papers in both Canada and Europe suggest the exact opposite. Again, it seems counterintuitive, but again I believe the relationships between the drug users and the staff at Insite have a lot to do with this. While purely anecdotal, I have seen a great resurgence in those who visit Insite. It's like they have realized that somebody actually cares about them, and therefore, they want to care about themselves. This is certainly the first step to reclaiming their lives.

I think the government should be assisting, not putting up roadblocks, when helping communities with problems surrounding the drug issue. Supervised injection sites are not the only answer, but they certainly have a part to play with the street-entrenched drug user. Supervised injection sites hold out the first line of treatment and we should be doing everything possible to replicate the successes of Insite.

We do not support putting up supervised injection sites if all the supports are not in place. We also strongly believe that this is a medical issue and has to be treated as such. While enforcement is part of every discussion on the drug issue, it should not be weighed more heavily than any other part. We should also use this discussion to talk about more traditional treatment protocols. More detox centres are needed, as well as transitional housing units and long-term treatment centres.

This brings me to another dilemma. Why is the government tossing aside the law and the science regarding this issue? Is it based purely on the moral aspect of this issue? If this is, they are again wrong. There have been over two million injections at Insite, with 4,000 medically intervened overdoses, yet not one life has been lost. This goes in the face of Bill C-2's assertion that only one life per year is saved.

This brings me to the fact that I surely hold the higher moral ground. I choose to help the most disenfranchised in our communities. The only comparison I can think of is the lepers of biblical times. Their communities also shunned them. But as now, so was it then, and there are some who have chosen to help. I will close with this: If Jesus were alive today, he certainly, most certainly, would support supervised injections sites.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Colleagues, I will call to order the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. This is meeting number 36, and we're continuing our study on Bill C-2 today.

We have two hours of witness testimony today. For the first hour, we have with us Dean Wilson, prior plaintiff. By video conference from Vancouver we have from the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, David Berner, executive director, and from the Vancouver Police Department, Inspector Scott Thompson, district 1 commander, operations division.

Gentlemen, on behalf of the committee, I welcome you.

Colleagues, the second hour of testimony and questioning today will be cut a little short due to the bells. I'll give you notice now so that you can be prepared for that.

We will now proceed with the first hour of business today.

Gentlemen, I will call you to the table here and inform you that you have up to 10 minutes for an opening statement. Since time is rather tight, the chair will keep you to that. If you can make it a little bit shorter, that would be much appreciated.

Mr. Dean Wilson, you have the floor, sir.

[Chief Bryan Larkin]

Well, yes, the Canadian chiefs are supportive of Bill C-2 if it meets the 27—

[Gwendolyn Landolt]

The Supreme Court of Canada said there has to be a balance between public safety and public health. It seems to me that Bill C-2 is desperately trying to create that balance. The court ordered a proliferation of drug injection sites to go forward, providing there was that balance. I find that Bill C-2, within the margins that the court gave the government to bring in legislation, has attempted to do that very important job of balancing the two aspects of drug addiction.

[Gwendolyn Landolt]

—that Bill C-2 is essential to try to moderate the terrible tragedies that are taking place in Canada with regard to the drug injection site in Vancouver.

We have done a brief where all this and the police statement are referenced for you to read, and all the studies backing up what I said are in our brief, if you care to read it.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[Gwendolyn Landolt, National Vice-President, REAL Women of Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I very much appreciate being invited to come here to speak.

REAL Women of Canada was an intervenor in the Supreme Court of Canada case on the drug injection site in Vancouver. Our organization was the only one of 15 intervenors that did not have a financial, personal, or professional interest in the outcome of that case. Our concern was entirely based on the addicted individual and the implications for his or her family and society.

lt is essential that any discussion on Bill C-2 and drug injection sites to which Bill C-2 relates is based on factual evidence. Evidence indicates that InSite, which is the only drug injection site in North America, has given rise to very serious problems, which Bill C-2 is trying to address.

During the debate in the House of Commons on Bill C-2, reference has repeatedly been made in the debate that over 30 peer-reviewed studies indicated that InSite was purported to have curtailed crime and disease, and led to a 35% reduction in deaths caused by drug overdose.

The crucial point that was not disclosed during the debate in the House of Commons was that these 30 studies on lnSite were all carried out by the same individuals from the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, located at UBC, who were one and the same activists who had lobbied for the establishment of the drug injection site in the first place. As a result, they had a personal interest, as well as a conflict of interest, in ensuring that InSite be deemed successful. That is, their research was carried out for the purpose only of supporting the political objective of continuing the operation of InSite.

According to information obtained under the Access to Information Act, between 2003 and 2011 these same researchers from the B.C. centre at UBC, who had previously lobbied for the injection site, have received over $18 million from the Canadian lnstitutes of Health Research to carry out their research on lnSite. All their studies were peer-reviewed only by supporters of the drug injection facility. Also, these researchers, contrary to standard scientific procedures, have refused to share their data with other researchers so that their studies can be replicated. Without exception, these advocates and researchers concluded that the injection site was reducing harm and death rates for addicts.

One such study on lnSite was published in a British medical journal in April of 2011. The study erroneously claimed that there was a 35% reduction in overdoses in the 500 metres surrounding lnSite, while in the rest of Vancouver, the rate decreased by only 9%. However, an international team consisting of three Australian medical doctors, a Canadian academic, and an American psychiatrist found serious and grave errors in the study, which entirely invalidated its findings. Also, a B.C. coroner's report has shown that overdoses actually increased in the area by 14%, or 11% if population were adjusted, between 2002, before the site opened, and 2005, when the study was carried out. Other evidence further contradicts the claims of these advocates and researchers from the centre at UBC that this InSite has been successful and that Bill C-2 is redundant.

One study that is never, ever reported is in fact the government's own expert advisory committee on drug injection sites. The federal government established an expert review committee to determine whether the claims of those supporting InSite were legitimate. The findings of the expert committee were released on March 31, 2008. The expert committee found as follows. Only 5% of the drug addicts in the area used the drug injection site, and of these, only 10% used the facility exclusively for their injections.

In other words, 90% of the drug addicts continued to inject their drugs on back streets, alleyways, etc., leaving their contaminated needles behind.

Two, there is no proof that the site has decreased the instance of AIDS and hepatitis in drug addicts.

Three, there is no indication that the crime rate has decreased.

Four, only 3% of InSite clients are referred to treatment.

According to Inspector John McKay, responsible for policing the drug injection site, 65 police officers from the Vancouver Police Department are required to patrol the five-block area surrounding InSite in order to control the crime. The police officers are prohibited from charging addicts with possession, and instead are obliged to escort them to the injection site.

The drug addict or casual observer obtains illicit drugs of questionable purity from a drug trafficker in the area, which he or she then brings into the site for drug injection purposes. The drug injection site, in fact, becomes a honeypot, a meeting point for drug traffickers.

According to the government's expert committee, it is estimated that each addict causes $350,000 worth of crime each year in order to purchase drugs from a trafficker to feed his or her addiction. It is not surprising, therefore, that in 2006 Vancouver had the second-highest rate of violent and property crime of any major city in the United States or Canada.

These are some of the reasons why more than two dozen major European cities have signed the 1994 European Cities Against Drugs declaration, opposing drug injection sites and free distribution of drugs. Officials from Berlin, Stockholm, London, Paris, Moscow, Oslo, etc., have embraced the principle that the answer to a drug problem does not lie in drug injection sites.

Another problem has arisen with the Vancouver drug injection site. In November 2013, an audit was undertaken of InSite, which is operated by the Portland Hotel Society. The audit revealed that the directors and executives used much of the approximately $21 million per year that it received from the federal and provincial governments for their own personal use. The examples include wining, dining, travelling, staying in luxury hotels, flower arrangements, hair salons, spas, and limousines, all being placed on the business card of the association administering InSite. The co-executives and the board have been dismissed, but it indicates that keeping the drug addicts on drugs only enhances those who are supposed to be helping them. It only helps mainly those who are operating InSite.

Well-off individuals such as doctors, lawyers, airline pilots, can afford to obtain treatment for their addiction. It is the addicts without money or support who are shuffled off to InSite, where they inject themselves continuously with street drugs, which only deepens their addiction. This results, eventually, in the addict having further degradation and often a terrifying death. The problem of drug abuse is not solved by enabling drug addicts to use more and more drugs, or assisting them in using a drug injection site.

The real question we must address is whether addicts should continue to be marginalized and manipulated—or should they be helped with treatment, so as to return them to healing, and to a normal life with their families? It is obvious that a compassionate society should not kill addicts by furthering their addiction, but rather should reach out to them by way of treatment.

Bill C-2, which seeks to provide a moderating influence on the problems that have arisen with the InSite drug injection site in Vancouver, has shown how necessary it is to curb the abuses that have taken place. Moreover, there are better and more competent ways of dealing with drug addiction than the proliferation of drug injection sites.

The criminal justice system today serves as a major engine that gets addicts into treatment and recovery. The drug courts make recovery possible for thousands of offenders each year. In fact, according to experts in the field in the United States, 50% of people in treatment are there because of referral by the criminal justice system.

International research indicates that treatment of drug addiction actually increases when drug enforcement occurs. That is, positive results flow from drug enforcement in that one of the aftermaths of police operations is that there is a marked increase in the proportion of drug users seeking treatment. This is because drug courts allow the conviction to be suspended if the offender agrees to take treatment and be monitored through regular urinalysis and counselling. Those who complete the drug-free program receive a suspended sentence or conditional discharge. Those who fail are required to return to the regular court system for sentencing. When offered a choice between drug conviction or treatment, the addict invariably chooses treatment.

[Chief Bryan Larkin, Chief of Police, Waterloo Regional Police Service, Member of the Drug Advisory Committee, Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, everyone. I appreciate this opportunity to appear before you today.

It's a pleasure to be here.

By way of introduction, my name is Bryan Larkin. I'm the serving chief of the Waterloo Regional Police Service. I've been a police officer for 24 years. I sit as a member of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police drug abuse committee. As well, as a community builder, I've had the opportunity to serve as the chair of the board of directors of the Stonehenge Therapeutic Community, which is a residential drug treatment centre that provides a full spectrum of addiction services, including supported housing, for Waterloo and Wellington counties. This opportunity, coupled with my policing experience, has provided me tremendous insight into the social challenges and the impact of substance abuse in our communities.

CACP president Clive Weighill of the Saskatoon Police Service and I would like to express our sincere appreciation to this committee for allowing us the opportunity to contribute to this important community safety and well-being discussion, which ensures local community input into decision-making on potential safe injection sites within our communities. On behalf of Chief Weighill, I'd just like to make a quick statement.

As law enforcement leaders, we always focus on ensuring the safety of our communities. Our officers are the most vulnerable among us. We are dedicated to the protection and security of the people of Canada. Likewise, our colleagues in the Canadian Armed Forces proudly serve Canadians by defending our values, interests, and sovereignty, both at home and abroad, and we'd like to join in mourning their loss.

We've all been shaken by the recent tragedies in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and here in Ottawa. It was truly an unprecedented week for all first responders, but, as is typical with Canadians, such tragedies bring out the best in our people, our leadership, and our collective resiliency. Parliamentarians and staffers from all political parties are to be commended. Through a moment of terror to uniting in resolve, you each provided incredible leadership and have demonstrated that we will not be deterred, nor will we continue to stand still. We will move on as Canadians do.

We'd also like to recognize the House and Senate security staff, including one of our own CACP members, Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers. We'd like to make that statement before getting into this important discussion.

As many of you are aware, the CACP, through its 20 committees related to public safety and justice, contributes extensively to the House and Senate committees. For your own background, the CACP represents in excess of 90% of the policing community in Canada, which includes federal, first nations, provincial, regional, and municipal police leaders and services. Our mandate is clear: it is the safety and security of all Canadians through innovative police leadership.

In 2007 the CACP adopted a drug policy that was developed through our drug abuse committee. This policy sets out the position of our CACP members on this very important national issue that has a direct impact on Canadians and our communities on a day-to-day basis.

I'll give you a brief overview of the CACP drug policy. Our strategy is balanced. We believe in a balanced approach to the issue of substance abuse and abuse within Canada. It consists of prevention, education, enforcement, counselling, treatment, rehabilitation, and, where appropriate, alternative measures as well as judicial diversion of offenders in order to ensure appropriate support as well as to counter Canada's drug problems.

Our mission is very clear. Our goal is to transition to a healthy lifestyle in order to provide a second chance at life. We believe in a balanced continuum of practice distributed across each component. In addition, the policy components must be fundamentally lawful and ethical, must consider the interests of all, and must strive to achieve a balance between societal and individual interests. We believe that, to the greatest extent possible, initiatives must be and should be evidence-based.

The CACP supports the principles being established as a part of this bill, in particular the need to balance public safety with public health. In fact, that is the future of community well-being. The future of community safety is more collaboration and enhanced integration.

The CACP is not making a specific statement with regard to supervised consumption sites. Our position is that the decision to support or not support supervised consumption sites is a local community issue. It must be localized.

We are pleased to see a clear process that will provide criteria for community consultation prior to a decision being made by the Minister of Health. As all of you know, there are 90 safe consumption sites across the world, two of them in Canada, and we would concur that there's no one unique or cookie-cutter approach. The needs, the demands, and the impacts vary from community to community.

Bill C-2 establishes 27 criteria that an applicant must meet before a supervised consumption site is granted by the Minister of Health. One of these criteria requires that the applicant make contact with and obtain the input of local police services, as noted in proposed paragraph 56.1(3)(e):

a letter from the head of the police force that is responsible for providing policing services to the municipality in which the site would be located that outlines his or her opinion on the proposed activities at the site, including any concerns with respect to public safety and security.

I want to thank and acknowledge and applaud the inclusion of such.

Again, the CACP maintains a neutral position on the actual merits of safe consumption sites. Our focus is on public safety and security. This is why we believe that while law enforcement is an integral part of the decision-making process, we are simply one stakeholder. We are one partner. It is the greater community response that is required. It is the collaboration that is the spirit that builds healthy and strong communities in Canada.

We want to reiterate that every community is unique, and that is reflected, we believe, in the spirit of the bill.

Thank you very much. Merci .

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

I just want to begin by saying that when the process for InSite in Vancouver began 11 years ago, there was a great fear from many of us—it was a controversial discussion, and a lot of consultation took place—that InSite would become this lightning rod, that it would be held up as a panacea for solving everything, and that everything would revolve around that. Of course, that's not the case. A safe injection site is really part of a solution. It's really part of an overall health strategy for dealing with injection drug users and drug overdoses and health and treatment and so on.

It's very interesting, because I saw the debate that happened in Vancouver and that eventually settled down. Now the facility is very well accepted. I see the same debate taking place here today. It is the fear that somehow InSite is responsible for every problem that we have with drug use. I think we should remember that the purpose of a supervised injection facility is primarily to prevent people from dying from drug overdoses and to help people connect to treatment options. There is a very well-used saying in the downtown eastside that a dead drug user can't get treatment. It's certainly a place to begin.

So it's very disappointing to me today to hear a representative from a police association pose the question “Which neighbourhood will be sacrificed?” It's very, very disappointing for me to hear that, because it makes me realize really just how much fear there is and how little understanding there is about what a supervised injection site means and what it actually does.

To just give one quick example, earlier in the summer this year there was a spate of bad drugs on the street in Vancouver. There were public warnings issued by the police department. There was a number of overdoses. In fact the police department issued statements and e-mails urging drug users to be extremely cautious and told them to go to InSite. It was a public health advisory from the police department who were seeing what was taking place on the street.

To Dr. McKeown from the Toronto Board of Health, thank you very much for the excellent brief that you sent in. One of the concerns that I saw in your written submission, and I think was echoed in a brief from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, is that in effect Bill C-2, and I would like to focus on the bill, doesn't ever indicate what level of information, research, opposition or support would actually result in an application being accepted or denied. So in effect there is never a threshold that is given.

I would like to ask you whether or not there is any other service you provide where you might have to meet criteria where that would be the case, that you are actually going into a unknown situation where you have no idea what it is you actually have to meet. It seems to me with this bill that the criteria are so open-ended, with no threshold established, how would you ever know that you'd collected enough information or enough opinions?

[Dr. David McKeown, Medical Officer of Health, Toronto Board of Health]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to thank the chair and the members of the committee for the opportunity to speak with you today.

My name is Dr. David McKeown. I'm the Medical Officer of Health for the City of Toronto and the executive officer of the Toronto Board of Health. My remarks today are presented on behalf of the board of health.

You should a have a copy of our full written submission.

My perspective is somewhat different from that of my law enforcement colleagues, because I come at it from a public health point of view. Toronto is one of several cities in Canada looking to implement supervised injection services as part of an evidenced-based, comprehensive approach to health services for people who inject drugs. As you know, potential operators of these services require an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act in order to legally operate, and Bill C-2 sets out the proposed requirements for this exemption process.

The Toronto board of health considers the requirements in the act to be excessive and quite disproportionate when compared with processes for making decisions about other kinds of health services, and we urge the development of a more appropriate exemption application process.

The board also feels that the proposed bill is not consistent with the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada ruling on supervised injection. If Bill C-2 is passed as written, we believe it will be a significant barrier for any community or any health system in any province that has come to the decision that these services would serve both the public health and public safety interests of local residents.

Injection drug use, as we know, is associated with significant public health risks, including the transmission of blood-borne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis and, of course, overdose. The risk of overdose, in fact, is twice as high for injecting illicit drugs as for other forms of consumption. This risk increases when people inject alone, as no one is available to intervene or seek medical assistance in an emergency. Without a safe place to inject, some people turn to public spaces such as washrooms, alleyways, or the street.

Public injecting is not only an issue for people who are homeless. People living in shared accommodation, in shelters and temporary housing, or rooming houses may fear losing their housing if they're found to be injecting, and so will turn to public spaces.

Based on these and other risk factors, the Toronto and Ottawa supervised consumption assessment study, a research study, concluded that Toronto, with its pattern of drug use, would benefit from multiple small supervised injection services integrated into existing health services, which are already serving people who inject illicit drugs. This is a different model from the Vancouver InSite service. The Toronto board of health supports this model and this approach to expand a continuum of health services for the needs of this particularly at-risk population in our city.

As you know, in 2011 the Supreme Court ruled that the Minister of Health's decision not to extend the section 56 exemption for Vancouver's InSite service was not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice, and violated section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Supreme Court also ruled that for future exemption applications, the minister must exercise discretion within the constraints imposed by the charter and aim to strike an appropriate balance between achieving public health and public safety goals, and both are important in this issue.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court said that the minister should generally grant an exemption where the evidence indicates that a supervised injection service will decrease the risk of death and disease—that's the health interest—and where there is little or no evidence of a negative impact on public safety.

The requirements set out in Bill C-2, we feel, rather than striking this appropriate balance are focused much more on public safety concerns without recognizing significant public health benefits. If we are truly to have respect for communities, we must recognize that harm reduction services such as supervised injection not only provide better health outcomes for people who use drugs but they may also help to improve public safety in local communities. For example, as we read the research, it is shown that supervised injection services can help reduce public drug use and the discarding of needles, and certainly do not increase crime.

People who inject drugs are, from a public health practitioner's point of view, among the most vulnerable members of our community, and they often struggle with complex health and mental health issues. They are much more likely to be victims than perpetrators of crime, and the profound stigma and discrimination they experience create barriers to their accessing mainstream health and social services that the rest of the community would use.

Broadly, harm reduction services tend to be effective because they're designed to be welcoming and non-judgmental, and they focus very specifically on the health needs of people who use drugs.

The board of health has a number of specific concerns about the requirements set out in Bill C-2, and I'm going to mention each of these briefly.

Demonstrating local need for a health service is a very reasonable requirement for an organization seeking to implement supervised injection services, whether making that case to the provincial government or for an exemption. However, producing scientific evidence on the medical benefits of these services should not be necessary at this point.

The evidence has been reviewed over and over again. The Supreme Court and many other health organizations have already recognized that these services are an evidence-based health intervention based on a wealth of peer-reviewed national and international research.

The exemption application process laid out in Bill C-2 requires letters from a broad range of officials outlining their opinions about the proposed service and identifying any related concerns, along with details of how the applicant will address those concerns. There really is no other health service that is required to obtain a consensus of opinion from a wide range of sector leaders in order to operate.

Bill C-2 also requires consultation with professional medical associations and a broad range of community groups. This breadth of consultation is likely to be beyond the capacity of most health service organizations or health systems seeking to implement these services. Furthermore, there's already widespread agreement among health professional organizations—the CMA, the CNA, and so forth—that supervised injection services should be available as a part of a comprehensive range of interventions in health facilities that serve people who use drugs.

The proposed bill also does not specify what would constitute an acceptable community consultation process, including the range and type of community groups to be consulted. Some community engagement is prudent, and in fact good practice, in order to inform local residents and businesses about the service, how it will operate, and to establish mechanisms for addressing any issues that might arise.

I think this process is part of being a good neighbour for any health service, and it benefits everybody involved. However, it is not reasonable to expect organizations to consult with individuals and groups in the community who are not expected to be affected in any way by the service.

Bill C-2 also requires police checks for all staff who will work in the program for the previous 10-year period, including noting any drug offence convictions. Further, police check documentation is required from people whose country of origin is not Canada, if the staff member resided outside the country during the previous 10 years.

On a practical note, applicants can't really conduct police checks in advance of submitting an exemption, because they're not likely to be recruiting or retaining or hiring staff until they've secured the exemption and are ready to open. Furthermore, the need for police reports from countries outside Canada clearly discriminates against anyone who has emigrated from an area of the world that is war-torn or has an oppressive regime where the information is not likely to be available.

It also discriminates against workers who have past drug offence convictions but are now law-abiding and suitable for employment. Workers with that kind of first-hand knowledge of the issues facing drug users play a critical role in the delivery of harm reduction services, as they're often able to connect better with at-risk individuals because of their shared experience. Given that a key goal of these programs is to engage with at-risk individuals, to link them with health services, including treatment services, strategies such as employing peer workers who have past experience with drugs should not be impeded by the legislation.

Bill C-2 also allows the Minister of Health to request any other information deemed relevant. This is a very open-ended provision in the legislation, and depending on the inclination of the minister and the nature of the request there could be significant further barriers.

The bill allows the minister to give public notice of an exemption application, and the general public would have 90 days to comment, regardless of whether they have any relationship to the application or the proposed service at all. Both of these requirements could lead to cumbersome delays or impediments to implementing supervised injection services.

Legislation generally should provide clarity and certainty in public policy on whatever issue it concerns. An overarching concern with Bill C-2 is that there's really no indication as to whose opinions of support or opposition or what level and what type of information submitted would result in an application being accepted or denied. It has been the experience of other cities that once a supervised injection service is up and running, community concerns tend to either be addressed or not materialize at the level in which they might have been predicted.

This certainly has been the case in Vancouver, where both InSite and, perhaps more significantly because it's relevant to the model that looks more appropriate for Toronto, the Dr. Peter Centre have secured broad community support. The emphasis in Bill C-2 in demonstrating widespread support from many different stakeholders does not recognize the challenge of the poor level of understanding of the nature and benefits of supervised injection services in the general community.

Bill C-2 imposes an onerous and complex process on the approval of supervised injection services, which is unlike that for any other health service. There's no indication that provincial governments, which have constitutional responsibility for health services, were consulted in developing the legislation, nor is there any indication that health professionals or other organizations with expertise in supervised injection were involved.

Given this lack of process and the onerous requirements laid out in the legislation, we encourage the federal government to take the time to go back and develop a more appropriate, practical, and well-informed process for CDSA exemption; and further, that the application process be developed in consultation with the appropriate provincial public health, public safety, and community stakeholders.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[Michael McCormack, President, Toronto Police Association]

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Michael McCormack. I'm the president of the Toronto Police Association. Here in Toronto I represent one of the most diverse communities in all of Canada. I also represent over 8,000 members.

First of all, I want to thank the standing committee for giving me this opportunity to speak to some of our association's concerns regarding amendments to Bill C-2.

I'd like to start off by stating that our association does not support the current configuration of supervised safe injection sites. I'm not here to argue the medical evidence, whether or not they reduce the number of deaths from overdoses or prevent the spread of infectious disease. I'm here to speak about our public safety concerns from a policing perspective.

The goal in policing is to improve the quality of life in the community by reducing crime and disorder and the fear of crime and disorder, and enhancing public safety, which is something that we do in the policing community. We believe supervised injection sites contribute to social and economic deterioration and further victimization where they are located. They do little to achieve our goal in policing, which is public safety.

I've worked—again, this is from a policing perspective—in 51 Division in downtown Toronto, which is a unique division. It has the second-highest density of government housing in North America; almost 90% of all the halfway houses and stationary homes in Toronto are located within the boundaries of 51 Division. I've worked there for almost 15 years, in major crime, street crime, dealing with all types and different levels of crime. What we found was that in a division like this, 90% of the crimes we dealt with were either drug or alcohol related. This is a big concern to us in the policing community.

When we talked about where we go, when we looked at all the anecdotal and other evidence around safe injection sites, and when we reviewed the evaluations of these sites, we were very critical of their methodology and the findings. We found that the public safety issues have been downplayed or not considered, or even poorly measured in a lot of this research.

For example, one study used only three crime types for benchmarks: drug trafficking, assault, and robbery and vehicle theft. Notably absent were the other crimes that from practical experience we found were missing in the indicators linked to drug use, such as break and enter, shoplifting, theft from auto, fraud, prostitution, panhandling, selling of stolen property—not to mention the countless provincial offences.

What we find too is that it's really hard to measure these offences, because given the way.... We just looked at the report on unreported crime that the federal government puts out every year. We find that people who are using drugs—we consider them victims of drug abuse or addiction—are very reluctant to come forward and report when they are, in fact, the victims of crime, whether of theft, sexual assaults, or involvement in prostitution. That's something that really concerns us.

But overall, when I look at policing somewhere in Toronto, with such diverse and widespread communities in different pockets throughout this city, when we're dealing with people who are looking to use intravenous drugs—it's not only heroin, it's also MDMA and other types of chemicals that they inject—they call it jonesing, or needing a fix, for a reason. We have all these communities throughout Toronto, as I described, and we have different pockets where you have a concentration of drug users. It's not one area where all your intravenous drug users will be congregating or hanging out. We found in working in the projects that the drug users will go get their fix, and we will find needles and syringes in schoolyards, elevators, corridors, and stairwells. The drug addicts get their drugs, they need their fix, and they go to the nearest location where they can have a little bit of privacy. They'll inject and then move on from there.

The whole premise of having a centralized injection site really baffles us in the policing community, because you're taking a heck of a leap of faith to think that a person who's addicted to drugs is going to, for instance, go to wherever the drug dealer is, buy their drugs, get their syringes, jump on the subway or take a taxicab or ride their bike to go to a safe injection site, and then inject—and go through that process four or five times a day, which is what we find with intravenous drug users. It's not a once-a-day event and then they move on and their day is normal. They inject up to four to six times a day.

So the logistics escape us. There needs to be some dialogue around how this would actually work. How do people see that as being effective? We're very puzzled about how that would be applied to somewhere like the city of Toronto.

As I said earlier, most of the drug addicts that I've ever dealt with as a practical matter were forced into criminality to support their habit. Where are they going to get $100 to $200 a day, which is what it requires to support this addiction? They do it by supporting their habit with theft from autos, break and enters, and other types of crimes. With that addiction they're victims, but they're victimizing the community as well.

Again, when we're talking about safe injection sites or supervised injection services, you go where the market is. Drug dealers are, for lack of a better word, business people, and they're going to go where the market is. So if you have a safe injection site—this is some of the experience we've found from the Vancouver experience as well—drug dealers will go where the market is. They'll go where people are going to use.

If they're going to traffick, they'll congregate in the areas where they can sell to the users. When we have a safe injection site, we have people who are going to be using. The drug dealers are going to go there, which is further going to facilitate and increase the amount of crime and that type of activity in those neighbourhoods. So we're very concerned about the drug dealers going there and about further victimization of the addicts.

When I worked in 51 Division, I could look out the back gate of 51 Division and see a methadone clinic. That's quite a different premise: people are getting treatment, the product is on site, and it's managed. This is a very different concept. So we're very concerned about the practical basis for this and how this would work.

The other concern we have from a policing perspective is that we are the ones expected to police those areas and increase enforcement and our presence. When we looked at it, we found in Vancouver that there was a dip in crime around the supervised injection site, but there were, I think, an additional 83 police officers who were put into that area to police. We found in Toronto that whenever we increase policing into a community, there is a significant dip. Police presence does have an impact on crime. For us, the police, we're going to be left mopping it up and it's going to be a demand on police resources. Police need to be consulted and have more dialogue and evidence on how this is going to impact our already taxed police resources.

We have some real concerns about the practical basis of this. Again, I'm not talking from the health perspective. That's not what I'm here to do. I'm talking from a public safety basis. From the Vancouver experience, when the 81 police officers were surveyed, in I think 2008, the individual officers who worked in that area said that their perception and feeling was that there was no actual decrease in the indicators of that type of illegal activity, whether it was public injection of drugs—they were still cleaning up syringes and needles from all over that community—or the congregation of people in that area, including prostitution, and street-level crimes. We're obviously very concerned about that, and that's something the policing community is going to be left to deal with. So we need to have more dialogue and see more evidence-based discussions, as Matt referred to, around what the outcome is going to be and how this is going to work with these communities.

I'll conclude my remarks by saying that we feel there needs to be more independent research to provide a more balanced and inclusive review of the impacts of these injection services on public safety. We need to improve the body of research in this area with objective studies, evaluations, and measurables that all stakeholders can agree on. We feel that the measurables would include crime rates, disorder indicators, property values, other economic indicators, social indicators, and data gathered through the community, law enforcement, and multi-sector consultation.

We also need to explore other strategies, including education and prevention strategies, and judicial enforcement strategies—

[Diane Labelle, General Counsel, Legal Services (Health Canada), Department of Justice]

Briefly, it's to bring about the very purpose of Bill C-2, which is to provide the legislative framework for the minister to exercise her exempting powers in keeping with the direction given by the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada didn't take issue with the discretion exercised by the minister but, rather, the manner in which the discretion is exercised. Therefore, under the proposed bill the information would be provided in support of a request for, or information obtained in relation to, an exemption to conduct activities with illicit substances at a supervised consumption site. This would inform the minister's assessment. The minister understood that she must make an assessment of the public health considerations as well as the public safety considerations that arise in a particular case. This would assist her in balancing these considerations in accordance with the section 7 rights to life, liberty, and security of the person guaranteed by the charter and in the manner described by the Supreme Court of Canada.

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Edmonton—Spruce Grove, AB]

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, our government firmly believes that supervised injection sites should not be built without community consultation. We've embraced the need for consultation as one of the major ways that we are demonstrating respect for Canadians and for their communities on an issue like this.

The community opinions both for and against are one solid criterion that the Supreme Court has said that I, as Minister of Health, or any future minister of health must consider when looking at an application. My message to the committee is to allow me and future health ministers the ability to do just that. That's a big part of what this legislation does. These consultations will point to broad-based support, opposition, or perhaps even measured comments from either viewpoint. But the principle of having these discussions remains paramount. We obviously take very seriously the harm caused by dangerous and addictive drugs. We know serious concerns are raised by communities about what an injection site would bring to their neighbourhood.

It's for this reason and in support of the Supreme Court's requirement that Bill C-2 would require that rigorous criteria be addressed in advance of an application for a supervised injection site to be considered. It's also the reason why it's so important for all Canadians to have an opportunity to provide views before any site opens. As you've mentioned, the criteria that are set out in the bill would allow many different voices to be heard and inform the Minister of Health's consideration of an application. Applicants seeking to open a supervised injection site will have to seek input from local perspectives in the form of a letter outlining their opinion on the proposed activities from numerous groups.

For example, a letter would be required from the provincial health minister who is responsible for where the site would be located. The letter would outline his or her opinion on the proposed activities at the site, describe how these activities are integrated within the provincial health care system, and provide information about access to available drug treatment services for persons who would also use the site. Not only would this allow for the relevant provincial authority to have a say in the process, but it would also serve to further inform a federal health minister during the approval process.

The support of a provincial health minister in the application of a supervised injection site is certainly something worth considering.

In a similar vein we would expect letters from the municipal government as well and the head of the police force in the community to state their opinion on the record whether or not the proposed activities at the site are safe, including any concerns around public health, so of course public safety.

Lastly, we would hope to see letters from the head or the lead health professional such as the chief public health officer for the province and the provincial minister responsible for public safety to make sure their opinions are on the record. Applicants will also be required to hold consultations with relevant professional licensing authorities in the province and a broad range of community groups in the municipality. They'll need to provide reports of these consultations, including summaries of the opinions heard, copies of any written submissions received, and a description of any steps taken to address any relevant concerns that were raised during consultations.

The bottom line here is that the voices of the local community need to be represented clearly. They need to be provided with the opportunity to make their views known. This is an issue that affects people in their community. Whether or not someone is applying to put a site in a residential neighbourhood I think it's just common sense that we would involve all stakeholders in the process and that their views would be sought before we move to an application.

When we go through consultation processes, whether it's other controversial projects proceeding, we see time and again relevant stakeholders and stakeholders directly impacted by that project wanting to have a voice in the process. That's what this does.

I think it's absolutely necessary that it happen.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for having me here this afternoon at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. I look forward to coming back here to discuss Bill C-44, The Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act, which was just tabled in the House and aims to protect Canada against terrorism.

As Minister of Public Safety I strongly believe that we must do everything in our power to keep our streets and communities safe for us and for our children. That is why I would like to thank my colleague Minister Ambrose for her leadership on this vital piece of legislation, and more specifically for involving communities in a decision that could so dramatically transform their neighbourhoods.

Bill C-2 proposes new requirements for organizations that seek an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act in order to set up supervised consumption sites.

The bill you will be examining guarantees that those who could be affected by the creation of these centres will be consulted before such a centre is built in their community.

In other words, ordinary Canadians, civic-minded community groups, and front-line law enforcement will be able to have their voice heard as to whether or not these drug consumption sites belong in their backyards.

Canadians expect that the decision to allow for a designated area where laws can be broken and illicit drugs can be consumed by addicts will not be taken lightly. But shockingly not a single Canadian would be consulted if one of these drug consumption sites were to open today in any one of your constituencies. What I find shocking is the deputy leader of the NDP, Ms. Davies, announced that they oppose allowing members of their community to add their voices on this decision. For me consulting is a key principle of a democratic decision process, and that's why I am so grateful to stand by Minister Ambrose, Minister of Health, and also to bring my full support to this bill so people involved, people impacted, or consulted can have a say.

On a public safety issue we saw the New Democrats call for a plan to give needles to convicted criminals so that they could continue their drug habits while behind bars. I don't agree. I don't think this is part of rehabilitation where we want our inmates to go on with their lives when they are free. Instead we brought forward the drug-free prisons act. On the other side we have the Liberals' stand. Mr. Trudeau's signature policy is to legalize the sale of marijuana, which would make it easier for our children to access. He has made clear that his vision of legalization would make smoking marijuana a normal everyday activity. I don't agree. I think we can do more for our children. I think we can offer them more as a protective society.

That's why I totally reject this radical pro-narcotic ideology. Let's take a look at what the bill before us today actually does.

First and foremost, this bill guarantees that requests to allow the consumption of controlled substances in our communities will be carefully reviewed.

Proposals to set up such sites raise important public safety concerns on the part of the staff in those sites, families and local police services.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the viewpoint of local enforcement organizations should be taken into consideration.

Substances obtained from illegal sources have a nefarious and devastating effect on public safety and could favour organized crime.

This summer I saw first-hand some of the challenges police officers face while safeguarding our communities, including in areas where drug use is prevalent. I walked the streets of the downtown eastside with the Vancouver Police Department. These are certainly not the types of criminal activities I would want occurring near a school, or near any community. Front-line police officers tend to agree.

Tom Stamatakis, President of the Vancouver Police Union and the Canadian Police Association said:

...my experience in Vancouver is that these sites also lead to an increase in criminal behaviour and disorder in the surrounding community and have significant impact on police resources.

Is it the kind of Canada we want, Mr. Chair?

For these reasons, I support Minister Ambrose's bill. Not only does it give a voice to Canadians who are directly affected by the decision to build a supervised consumption site, but it adds to other rigorous measures taken by our government to counter drug consumption.

As I mentioned, the Drug-Free Prisons Act is another important bill being examined by Parliament. That bill will guarantee that the Parole Board of Canada has additional legal power when it makes decisions on the conditional release of offenders who have obtained parole, but whose tests have come back positive, or who refuse to submit to a drug test before being released from an institution into a community.

This bill will also guarantee that the Parole Board of Canada pays particular attention to whether or not the obligation to abstain from consuming drugs or alcohol should be made a condition of the offender's parole.

Our Conservative government is proud of our efforts to support communities and keep them safe, including through tackling the problem of illicit drug use.

Thank you for your time today to discuss this very important issue.

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Minister of Health]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm very pleased to be here with all of you, with Minister Blaney and our officials, to discuss the government's respect for communities act, a bill that protects and ensures public health and public safety in our communities.

Before I begin in earnest, I want to say that our thoughts and prayers remain with the family and friends of Corporal Nathan Cirillo of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada. Likewise, of course, our thoughts and prayers remain with the family and friends of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, who was killed by an ISIL-inspired terrorist.

Last week's events, which unfolded in parts of these very halls, were a grim reminder that Canada is not immune to these types of attacks that we've seen elsewhere around the world. I've been very moved to see Canadians pulling together with the kind of firm solidarity that has seen our country through many challenges. Together, I know we will remain vigilant against those at home or abroad who would wish to harm us.

Mr. Chair, I'll turn to the business before us today, which is the respect for communities act. It strengthens Canada's drug control framework, codifying the factors laid out by the Supreme Court of Canada. Our government takes very seriously the harm caused by dangerous and addictive drugs. These drugs tear families apart, they promote criminal behaviour, and they destroy lives. They make our streets less safe, and have harmful impacts on our communities. Indeed, the level of drug use in Canada remains concerning. Amongst youth it is still far too common. The ripple effects of drug abuse are being felt throughout our society.

Our government is taking action to address these problems, through the respect for communities act, to protect the health and safety of Canadians and the communities in which they live. This legislation was not prepared overnight or on a whim. This bill was drafted to specifically codify a detailed ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada in September 2011 on a supervised injection site. In this ruling, the Supreme Court was crystal clear. They ordered that I, in my capacity as Minister of Health, must consider specific factors when reviewing applications that grant exemptions from Canada's drug laws allowing for such sites.

I do not have an option to ignore these factors. Those factors are included in this legislation, and are as follows:

...evidence, if any, on the impact of such a facility on crime rates, the local conditions indicating a need for such a...site, the regulatory structure in place to support the facility, the resources available to support its maintenance, and expressions of community support or opposition.

I feel, Mr. Chair, that the last point is particularly important. Our government sincerely believes, and the Supreme Court agrees, that communities deserve a say when there is a proposal to build a supervised injection site.

The court wrote that their ruling was:

...not a licence for injection drug users to possess drugs wherever and whenever they wish. Nor is it an invitation for anyone who so chooses to open a facility for drug use under the banner of a “safe [consumption] facility”.

Our government respects this ruling by the highest court in the land. It with that in mind we are moving forward with the respect for communities act. This bill amends the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which is Canada's federal drug control statute. It has a dual purpose: the protection of public health and the protection of public safety.

While prohibitive in nature, it also provides for exemptions for the legitimate use of controlled substances and their precursors. Exemptions are currently prescribed as being for medical or scientific purposes or otherwise in the public interest. It's one of my roles to sign off on these exemptions as Minister of Health. Exemptions that I see most often are for use in clinical trials, research in universities involving controlled substances, or for delivering aid in other countries. In all of those examples, the activities being exempted from the provisions of the act involve controlled substances accessed through a legal source. Exemptions of this sort, involving activities where controlled substances are accessed through a legal source, account for almost all of the exemptions that are being granted.

This bill's provisions begin where we see requests for exemptions of a different sort—to allow for activities with controlled substances that have been obtained through illegal sources. The serious risks associated with these substances are amplified when they are obtained from an illicit source, as all of us agree that these substances are dangerous and produced in uncontrolled environments. Given the severity of these risks, any application to undertake activities with these illicit substances needs to be assessed using rigorous criteria that include the factors directed by the Supreme Court that I mentioned earlier.

It's for this reason that the respect for communities act proposes to add a new section to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. This new section will deal specifically with applications for activities involving illicit substances, and includes a portion that is specific to supervised injection sites.

This bill sets out the information that an applicant seeking an exemption for activities involving illicit substances at a supervised injection site would be required to submit in advance to be considered for their application. Until all of the information required is provided, their application for an exemption relating to a supervised injection site would not be considered. This requirement ensures that I, as Minister of Health, can effectively carry out my responsibilities in weighing the merits of an application to establish a supervised injection site as ordered by the Supreme Court. The criteria included in this bill are based upon those factors dictated by the court.

One of the more important elements included, and the one that has led to the most debate, has been the Supreme Court requirement that expressions of community support or opposition should be considered. With this new legislation, applicants will have to seek input and local perspectives from provincial ministers responsible for health and public safety, the heads of local police forces, and the lead public health professionals in the province or territory, in the form of a letter outlining their opinion on the proposed activity. They will also be required to hold consultations with relevant professional licensing authorities in the province, and a broad range of community groups in the municipality. They will need to provide reports on these consultations, including summaries of the opinions that they heard, copies of any written submissions they received, and a description of any steps taken to address any relevant concerns that were raised during the consultation.

Our government recognizes the importance of consulting with relevant community groups about a proposed supervised injection site, and is pleased to follow through on a Supreme Court ruling in this regard. As I mentioned earlier, one of the main purposes of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act is the maintenance of public safety. This is achieved largely through minimizing the risk of diversion of controlled substances to illicit markets for use. This is being further enhanced through the respect for communities act's proposal for pre-inspection authority to allow Health Canada to verify that the information provided in the application is accurate and that all required measures are in place. In the event that an exemption of this nature is granted, the site would have to comply with clearly established terms and conditions, and would be subject to compliance inspections.

Given the inherent dangers of these substances, it's paramount that Health Canada be given the tools it needs to ensure the safety of these sites for both its staff and the community at large. As with any other exemption granted under this act, if the terms and conditions of an exemption are not being met, or if there are issues of non-compliance, the exemption can be revoked. By the same token, when exemptions granted under the provisions of the bill are set to expire, applications for extensions are provided for and criteria are set out. For the renewal of any exemption, the applicant would have to provide further information dating from the time of the first exemption, when the first exemption was granted, to the time of the most recent application. This information would then include details of any change in crime rates in the vicinity where the site is located, and information on any impacts that the activities at the site have had on individual or public health.

Given what we know about the risks associated with possession, use, and production of illicit substances, it's just common sense that exemptions to undertake activities with dangerous drugs should only be granted in exceptional circumstances once rigorous criteria have been addressed. This makes for good public policy that provides for the maintenance of public health, ensures public safety, and most of all respects our communities.

The Supreme Court has directed that I must consider those five factors as set out in its decision. This bill sets out the way in which we will accomplish that. Our government is taking action to ensure that the proper tools are available to do just that. This new approach will bring greater clarity and transparency to the way in which I, and future ministers of health, assess applications to establish supervised injection sites. The proposed approach also provides the legislative structure needed to properly address public health and safety concerns, but most importantly it allows the public and the community to have a voice in the process.

Just to wrap up, Mr. Chair, the respect for communities act is an important and necessary element in our government's commitment to address dangerous and illicit drug use. It complements our government's national anti-drug strategy, and provides for an application process that respects our communities. I encourage members of this committee to consider carefully the provisions of the respect for communities act and its genesis in the Supreme Court's 2011 ruling.

The Supreme Court has been very clear in what my responsibilities as Minister of Health are. I believe that the respect for communities act provides the tools necessary so that our government can comply with these rulings.

Just on a final note, Mr. Chair, we believe the communities deserve to have their voices heard in these considerations and these consultations and that public health must remain a priority so that our streets are kept safe.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Colleagues, we will call to order the 34th meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. Today we'll be dealing with Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

For the first hour of witnesses, we will have two of our ministers appearing. They are the Honourable Rona Ambrose, Minister of Health, and the Honourable Steven Blaney, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. They will be here for the first hour.

Accompanying them and staying for the duration will be a number of other officials: from the Department of Health, Hilary Geller, assistant deputy minister, healthy environments and consumer safety branch; from the Department of Justice, Diane Labelle, general counsel for legal services, Health Canada; from the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Kathy Thompson, assistant deputy minister, community safety and countering crime branch; and, closing it out, from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Chief Superintendent Eric Slinn, director general, support services, federal policing.

For the next hour, from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., we will have an additional departmental official from the Department of Health appearing as a witness. That will be Suzy McDonald, associate director general, controlled substances and tobacco directorate, healthy environments and consumer safety branch.

That's the list of our witnesses today.

Colleagues, without further delay we will go to statements from our ministers. First up is Minister Ambrose.

Minister, you have the floor.

Motions in Amendment

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in opposition to Bill C-13, and I think that is unfortunate.

Like many MPs, I had high hopes when the issue of cyberbullying first came before the House. I had high hopes that we would recognize the urgency with which we needed to respond to cyberbullying and the risk of suicides, especially when we were faced with the unfortunate examples of Rehtaeh Parsons in Nova Scotia and Amanda Todd in B.C. taking their own lives.

In fact, we did respond relatively quickly. The member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour introduced a private member's bill in June 2013. It was a simple bill that did not include a lot of extraneous material. It was a simple bill that would have made it an offence to produce or distribute intimate images of an individual without that person's consent.

Unfortunately, despite attempts to get unanimous consent to move the bill forward, the government said that it had to do a lot more study and think a lot more about what it wanted to present in a government bill. When that bill finally got before us in November 2013, nearly a year ago, as usual with the Conservative government we found a far broader bill than was necessary. It is a bill that includes many issues that have little or nothing to do with cyberbullying, including restrictions on telemarketing, theft of telecommunication services, provisions on terrorist financing, and bank financial disclosures.

What we have before us now is a bill with a much broader scope and one that includes bringing back many aspects of the Conservatives' previous Bill C-30, which was widely rejected by public opinion and especially by privacy advocates.

As someone who worked closely with the criminal justice system for more than two decades before coming here, I have some very serious concerns about the government's attempt to expand access to personal information, both with and without a warrant, that remains in Bill C-13

I am very concerned about the new and low bar for grounds for getting a warrant to get personal information. I see no justification for lowering the grounds for a warrant from “reasonable grounds to believe”, to this new category of reasonable suspicion. For that reason, of course, we proposed an amendment to delete this clause entirely from the bill.

In fact, I believe, despite the speeches we have heard from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, that the Spencer case this summer brings into question the constitutionality of many provisions of Bill C-13. This was an important ruling banning Internet service providers from disclosing names, addresses, and phone numbers of customers voluntarily to the authorities.

The bill would also create a worrying new category of those entitled to our personal information. It has expanded from the well-defined, in law, concept of peace officers, and we know who they are, to this unclear new concept of “public officers”. Does this mean tax officials? Who does this mean are public officers?

In committee we proposed 37 different amendments to try to narrow the scope of the bill. As my colleague for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour so eloquently put it a few moments ago, we were trying to make sure that this bill did not spend the rest of its life being challenged in court. Unfortunately, we did not see any of those amendments adopted, and I do not think we will see our amendments adopted at report stage.

I want to return to one surprising inclusion in Bill C-13 that I was happy to see there. For whatever reason, the government decided to reopen the hate crime section of the Criminal Code in clause 12 of Bill C-13. There is some connection there with cyberbullying and cyberbullying's relation to an escalation into hate crimes.

I think perhaps there was a justification, but I was very surprised to see that when the government listed the new identifiable groups to receive protection, it added national origin, sex, age, and mental or physical disability. Yet what was left out was gender identity.

The House of Commons had already agreed, in a vote on my private member's bill, Bill C-279, on March 20, 2013, by a margin of 149 to 137, with support from all parties, to include protection on the basis of gender identity. Therefore, there was a deliberate omission from this list of new protected grounds of something that we had already decided in the full House.

This is why earlier today I proposed an amendment to clause 12, which I had already placed in the justice committee. I was optimistic that we would be allowed to debate this bill again. I proposed this amendment in committee to try to correct what I felt was an error in the drafting of Bill C-13. It should have included gender identity, precisely for the reason I cited: we had already voted on this provision here in the full House of Commons.

I was very optimistic in committee. After all, two of the five government members in the justice committee had voted for my private member's bill. Therefore, I expected when I proposed the amendment it would pass in committee by a vote of 6 to 3 in favour, because that is how those members had previously voted on the very same provision in Bill C-279. However, at the last minute, one Conservative changed his vote and one member was substituted out of committee. Hence, my amendment was defeated 5 to 4.

This is why I placed my amendment on the order paper again and asked the Speaker to take the unusual step of allowing it to be put before the full House again. The Speaker ruled that my amendment did not meet the test set out in our rules, which would have allowed it to come before the House today as part of this debate.

The problem, of course, is not the Speaker's ruling. It is instead that the government, which always posed as neutral on the provisions of my private member's bill, has found a way of using a government bill to undo the decision that had already been taken in the House on Bill C-279 to provide protection against hate crimes to transgender Canadians. This shows a fundamental disrespect for the will of the majority as already expressed in the House. Therefore, when it comes to respecting the rights of transgender Canadians, it turns out the government is not as neutral as it was pretending to be. This perhaps explains what has happened to the same provision we could have been talking about today, over in the Senate in Bill C-279.

The second problem we have in achieving protection against hate crimes for transgender Canadians is, of course, the Senate. The bill has been before the Senate two different times. The first time was in the spring of 2011. It was approved by the House of Commons and sent to the Senate, which failed to act at all before the election was called. Therefore, that provision died before the Senate.

As I mentioned earlier, Bill C-279 passed the House of Commons on March 20, 2013, a year and a half ago. It has been in the Senate for a year and a half. I know they only meet three days a week, but there are still plenty of sitting days for them to deal with this. In fact, in 2013, it did pass second reading. In other words, it received approval in principle. Now we have the House of Commons saying that what we were supposed to be dealing with in the bill to be true and the Senate, in principle, agreeing. It was sent to the human rights committee, which held hearings and approved Bill C-279 without amendment and returned it to the full floor of the Senate, where a third reading and final vote was not called. The House prorogued and that bill started over.

Here again is where the supposed neutrality of the government on protecting transgender Canadians against hate crimes comes into question. The bill could have been expedited through the Senate, as it had already been through all the stages there. Even simpler, the bill could have been sent back to the human rights committee, and since it had already held hearings and dealt with the bill, it could have been returned quickly to the floor of the Senate. Instead, the government leadership in the Senate sent the bill to a different committee, the legal and constitutional affairs committee. This is an interesting choice. This not only meant that the committee would have to hold new hearings, but it is the busiest committee in the Senate, with the government's crime agenda. It means this committee will have to deal with bills like the one we have before us today, Bill C-13; Bill C-36, dealing with sex work; and Bill C-2, dealing with safe injection sites. It will have to deal with all of those before it ever gets to a private member's bill.

Again, the fig leaf of neutrality claimed by the government is looking a little withered, since decisions on where the bill is going and its timing are made by the government leadership in the Senate. It is beginning to look a lot like the government intends to let Bill C-279 die in the Senate once again.

The final obstacle to achieving protection for transgender Canadians against hate crimes, and I think the real reason gender identity was omitted from the new groups protected in the hate crimes section 12 of Bill C-13, is the failure to recognize not just the fundamental justice of providing equal rights to transgender Canadians, but the failure to recognize both the urgency and the inevitability of doing so.

Transgender Canadians remain the group most discriminated against in Canada. They remain the group most likely to be subject to hate crimes and most disturbingly, they remain the group most likely to be subject to violence when it comes to hate crimes. All transgender Canadians are looking for is the recognition of the same rights that other Canadians already enjoy. We are missing a chance here in Bill C-13 to provide equal protection against hate crimes to transgender Canadians.

There was a time when other Canadians did not enjoy the equality they do today. There were provisions in our law that seem incredible now. There was a time when Asian Canadians could not vote or practise the professions. There was a time when I, as a gay man, could have been jailed for my sexual orientation, fired from my job, or evicted from my housing. Now, fortunately, that time has passed.

I am disappointed, then, that we are missing a chance today to move forward to the time when we look back and cannot imagine that transgendered Canadians did not enjoy the same rights and protections as all other Canadians. I know that day will come, and I will continue to work to make sure it is sooner rather than later.

Time Allocation Motion

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on this question of privilege about closure.

I am rising at my first opportunity on this question of privilege, given that between the Speech from the Throne in October and when we adjourned June 20, there had been 21 occasions on which closure of debate occurred, and I maintain that the exercise of my rights and the rights of my colleagues in this place have been obstructed, undermined and impeded by the unprecedented use of time allocations in the second session of the 41st Parliament.

Mr. Speaker, in presenting this fairly legal argument to you, I propose to leave out page numbers and citations because I have prepared a written version of this for your office and I hope that will be acceptable to you, that I skip page numbers in this presentation. Hansard may not have the numbers of the debates, but I hope there is enough context so people can find them.

I belive this excessive use of what is often called “guillotine measures” is a violation of the rights of all members of Parliament, but I would like to stress that there is a disproportionate impact on members such as me who are within either smaller parties, that is less than 12 members, or who sit actually as independents, because in the roster of recognizing people in their speaker slot, quite often those of us in the smaller parties or independents simply never get to speak to the bills at all.

My question, Mr. Speaker, bears directly on what your predecessor said in this place on April 27, 2010. He said, “...the fundamental right of the House of Commons to hold the government to account for its actions is an indisputable privilege and in fact an obligation”.

In the autumn of 2011, in a ruling concerning the member for Mount Royal, Mr. Speaker, you yourself said that to constitute a prima facie case in regard to matters of obstruction, interference, molestation or intimidation, you need to “...assess whether or not the member's ability to fulfill his parliamentary [activities] has been undermined”. At that moment in the same Debates, you had the occasion to reflect on “...the Chair's primordial concern for the preservation of the privileges of all members,...” and you added, “As your Speaker, one of my principal responsibilities is to ensure that the rights and privileges of members are safeguarded, and this is a responsibility I take very seriously”.

I now have occasion to turn to other words that will guide us in this matter. From the Supreme Court of Canada in the Vaid decision, in the words of Mr. Justice Binnie, speaking for the court, he outlined the scope of parliamentary responsibility and parliamentary privilege for the management of employees and said, “Parliamentary privilege is defined by the degree of autonomy necessary to perform Parliament’s constitutional function”. He went on to say at paragraph 41 of that Supreme Court of Canada judgment:

Similarly, Maingot defines privilege in part as “the necessary immunity that the law provides for Members of Parliament, and for Members of the legislatures of each of the ten provinces and two territories, in order for these legislators to do their legislative work”.

I would repeat and emphasize that, because although the Vaid decision was on a different fact set, Mr. Justice Binnie spoke to our core responsibility as parliamentarians when he said that we must be able, as legislators, to do our legislative work.

Mr. Justice Binnie continued in the Vaid decision to say:

To the question “necessary in relation to what?”, therefore, the answer is necessary to protect legislators in the discharge of their legislative and deliberative functions, and the legislative assembly’s work in holding the government to account for the conduct of the country’s business. To the same effect, see R. Marleau and C. Montpetit...where privilege is defined as “the rights and immunities that are deemed necessary for the House of Commons, as an institution, and its Members, as representatives of the electorate, to fulfill their functions”.

Mr. Justice Binnie went on to find further references in support of these principles from Bourinot's Parliamentary Procedure and Practice in the Dominion of Canada.

These are fundamental points. The purpose of us being here as parliamentarians is to hold the government to account. It is obvious that no legislative assembly would be able to discharge its duties with efficiency or to assure its independence and dignity unless it had adequate powers to protect itself, its members, and its officials in the exercise of these functions.

Finally, Mr. Justice Binnie—again, for the court—said at paragraph 62, on the subject of parliamentary functions in ruling that some employees would be covered by privilege, that coverage existed only if a connection were established between the category of employees and the exercise by the House of its functions as a legislative and deliberative body, including its role in holding the government to account.

As I said earlier, this approach was supported by your immediate predecessor. In a December 10, 2009 ruling, the Speaker of the House, the Hon. Peter Milliken, said that one of his principle duties was to safeguard the rights and privileges of members, and of the House, including the fundamental right of the House of Commons to hold the government to account for its actions, which is an indisputable privilege, and in fact an obligation.

It is therefore a fundamental principle of Westminster parliamentary democracy that the most important role of members of Parliament, and in fact a constitutional right and responsibility for us as members, is to hold the government to account.

The events in this House that we witnessed before we adjourned on June 20, 2014, clearly demonstrate that the House and its members have been deprived of fulfilling constitutional rights, our privilege, and our obligation to hold the government to account, because of the imposition of intemperate and unrestrained guillotine measures in reference to a number of bills. Over 21 times, closure has been used.

It is only in the interest of time that I am going to read out the numbers of the bills and not their full description. Bill C-2, Bill C-4, Bill C-6, Bill C-7, Bill C-13, Bill C-18, Bill C-20, Bill C-22, Bill C-23, Bill C-24, Bill C-25, Bill C-27, Bill C-31, Bill C-32, Bill C-33, and Bill C-36 were all instances where closure of debate was used.

In many of the instances I just read out, and in the written argument I have presented, closure of debate occurred at second reading, again at report stage, and again at third reading. The limitation of debate was extreme.

A close examination of the guillotine measures imposed by the government demonstrate that the citizens of Canada have been unable to have their elected representatives adequately debate the various and complex issues central to these bills in order to hold the government to account. Members of Parliament have been deprived and prevented from adequately debating these measures, through 21 separate motions for time allocation in this session alone. It undermines our ability to perform our parliamentary duties.

In particular, I want to again highlight the effect that the guillotine motions have on my ability as a representative of a smaller party, the Green Party. We do not have 12 seats in the House as yet, and as a result we are in the last roster to be recognized once all other parties have spoken numerous times. Quite often, there is not an opportunity for members in my position, nor for independent members of Parliament, to be able to properly represent our constituents.

Again, I should not have to repeat this. Certainly you, Mr. Speaker, are aware that in protecting our rights, as you must as Speaker, that in this place we are all equals, regardless of how large our parties are. As voters in Canada are all equal, so too do I, as a member of Parliament, have an equal right and responsibility to represent the concerns of my constituents in this place, which are equal to any other member in this place.

As speaking time that is allotted to members of small parties and independents is placed late in the debates, we quite often are not able to address these measures in the House. This would be fair if we always reached the point in the debate where independents were recognized, but that does not happen with closure of debates. My constituents are deprived of their right to have their concerns adequately voiced in the House.

Political parties are not even referenced in our constitution, and I regard the excessive power of political parties over processes in this place, in general, to deprive constituents of equal representation in the House of Commons. However, under the circumstances, the additional closure on debate particularly disadvantages those constituents whose members of Parliament are not with one of the larger parties.

Mr. Speaker, in the autumn of 2011, in your ruling considering the member for Mount Royal and his question of privilege, you said that one of your responsibilities that you take very seriously is to ensure that the rights and privileges of members are safeguarded. The principal right of the House and its members, and their privilege, is to hold the government to account. In fact, it is an obligation, according to your immediate predecessor.

In order to hold the government to account, we require the ability and the freedom to speak in the House without being trammelled and without measures that undermine the member's ability to fulfill his or her parliamentary function. As a British joint committee report pointed out, without this protection, members would be handicapped in performing their parliamentary duty, and the authority of Parliament itself in confronting the executive and as a forum for expressing the anxieties of citizens would be correspondingly diminished.

To hold the government to account is the raison d'être of Parliament. It is not only a right and privilege of members and of this House, but a duty of Parliament and its members to hold the government to account for the conduct of the nation's business. Holding the government to account is the essence of why we are here. It is a constitutional function. In the words of the marketers, it is “job one”.

Our constitutional duty requires us to exercise our right and privilege, to study legislation, and to hold the government to account by means of raising a question of privilege. This privilege has been denied to us because of the consistent and immoderate use of the guillotine in regard to 21 instances of time allocation, in this session alone.

This use of time allocation, as you know, Mr. Speaker, is unprecedented in the history of Canada, and infringes on your duty as Speaker to protect our rights and privileges as members. As you have said many times, that is your responsibility and you take it very seriously. However, these closure motions undermine your role and your duty to protect us. Therefore, it diminishes the role of Speaker, as honoured from time immemorial.

In fact, you expressed it, Mr. Speaker, in debates in the autumn of 2011, at page 4396, when you had occasion to reflect on “the Chair's primordial concern for the preservation of the privileges of all members..”, and when you added, “As your Speaker, one of my principal responsibilities is to ensure that the rights and privileges of members are safeguarded, and this is a responsibility I take very seriously”.

Denying the members' rights and privileges to hold the government to account is an unacceptable and unparliamentary diminishment of both the raison d'être of Parliament and of the Speaker's function and role in protecting the privileges of all members of this House.

In conclusion, I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that the intemperate and unrestrained use of time allocation by this government constitutes a prima facie breach of privilege of all members of this House, especially those who are independents or, such as myself, representatives of one of the parties with fewer than 12 members.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your consideration in this matter. I hope you will find in favour of this question of privilege, that this is a prima facie breach of the privileges and rights of all members.

Red Tape Reduction Act

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be supporting the bill too because lots of the individuals and businesses in my riding complain about red tape. However, there are also groups that are not small businesses that have to cope with a lot of red tape issues.

For example, an organization in my riding called Ateliers bon débarras does social reintegration work with young people. They used to apply for funding from the skills link program every year. Now they have decided to stop applying because the red tape got to be overwhelming. It got too complicated. It was a very good program though.

Plenty of other community organizations do not always have the time to apply to programs because they do not have enough people to do it. Just like small businesses, many groups could benefit from this kind of bill.

We saw a great example of increased red tape recently. Bill C-2 on supervised injection sites uses red tape to make sure that this kind of service is not offered. It contains so many criteria that it will be impossible for anyone to create such a centre.

What does my colleague think of all this?

Respect for Communities Act

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Pursuant to an order made on Tuesday, May 27, the House will now proceeding to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at the second reading stage of Bill C-2.

Call in the members.

The vote is on the motion.

The House resumed from June 18 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.

Bill C-32—Time Allocation Motion

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, to be clear, all parties will speak to this, and all parties have spoken to this. We have had five days dedicated to the debate so far.

Yesterday we used time allocation on Bill C-2, which had over 97 speakers and over 26 hours of debate. When I was minister of defence, we had a bill that had been presented over three successive Parliaments, and it had been debated endlessly.

The members of the NDP continue to put up speakers time after time, reading the same speech, using the same specious arguments, somehow to prevent the bill from becoming law. We are saying enough is enough.

There has been debate on this important issue. Some major consultations took place to put the bill before Parliament. Some 500 individuals and groups were given the opportunity, from every province and territory, to speak about the bill. Canadians have had a lot of input on the bill already, and they will have more opportunity at committee. It is time for the members of the NDP to put victims first.

Respect for Communities Act

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Pursuant to an order made on Tuesday, May 27, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the previous question at the second reading stage of Bill C-2. The question is on the previous question at the second reading stage of Bill C-2.

The House resumed from June 17 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.

Drug-Free Prisons Act

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

Mr. Speaker, first, I want to thank my colleagues for the sudden interest in what I was talking about. It is very kind of them.

I want to talk about the member's question, which pertains to the war on drugs. There is a way to do it and a dumb way to do it, which is to ignore the treatment part of it and just go after the traffickers and the people who buy the drugs. Yes, the penalties have to be stiff to act as a deterrent, and there is nothing wrong with that, but the treatment part of it is completely ignored.

The member brought up Bill C-2 earlier. Evidence proves that what happens at an injection site actually works. It is improving the situation. It is not perfect, but it certainly is working. With the reduction of 35% in drug abuse in that area, it shows that treatment for harm reduction has positive effects. Yet, it seems we overlook this because we want to go after that headline to be tough on crime, which is unfortunate.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to what my colleague had to say a moment ago regarding the InSite project.

When reading Bill C-12—which seeks to address the drug problem in our prisons—I cannot help but compare it to Bill C-2, which was the subject of discussion just a few short hours ago.

I would like to ask my honourable colleague from the third party what he thinks about the war that the Conservatives are currently waging against all things drug-related. Does he think that their approach is working, or that they are way off track at this point?

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we have changed topics, but this is a sensitive issue as well. I am pleased to speak to Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, on behalf of the people of Sherbrooke. The short title of the bill is the Drug-Free Prisons Act. I am sure the members noticed how my tone changed as I read out the short title.

If only that were truly the case and this bill contained meaningful measures to tackle the issue of drugs in prisons. However, upon reading the bill, it is clear that the only part of the bill that talks about drug-free prisons is the title. Like my colleague from St. John's South—Mount Pearl said, it is just a flashy title that panders to a certain group of people that love the bill's title. In reality, this bill will do nothing to eliminate drugs in prisons.

I will explain in more detail why I say that there is no real substance behind that title.

We will support the bill at second reading. It is an interesting measure, even though it simply confirms that the parole board can take into account the fact that the offender tested positive in a urinalysis or refused to provide a urine sample for a drug test when deciding whether someone is eligible for parole. This is already a long-standing practice for parole assessments. The bill serves only to make it official by enshrining it in law.

I want to take a moment to say hello to everyone who works for Correctional Service Canada in Sherbrooke. I had the chance to visit their wonderful King Street office about a year and half ago. I believe they manage all the parole cases in the Sherbrooke and Eastern Townships areas.

Passionate people work hard every day to ensure that our communities are safe and that people released from the federal correctional system are well equipped to resume their lives as honest, law-abiding citizens. These people help former federal inmates. I would like to acknowledge them today and congratulate them for the work they do and will continue to do every day.

In one sense, Bill C-12 goes in the right direction even though it does not do a lot. To really address the drug problems in federal prisons, many things should have been done, including investing in the resources required for the rehabilitation of inmates. All this bill does is enshrine in law what is already being done in practice.

The NDP has always supported measures to make our prisons safer, whereas the Conservative government continues to ignore the recommendations of correctional staff and the Correctional Investigator of Canada, which would reduce violence, gang activity and drug use in our prisons.

Several measures were proposed and were discussed by experts and the people who work in this area every day. However, they were not included in the bill. Why? The Conservatives will have to tell us. I hope that one of my government colleagues will rise in the next few minutes to defend Bill C-12. As we know, the Conservatives have missed 145 speaking slots. That is their choice. They asked to extend sitting hours to midnight, but they do not seem interested in the debates in the House, except when they ask some questions now and again. Otherwise, parliamentary debates do not seem to be a priority for the government or for the members of the second opposition party.

I am pleased to participate in the debate, but I am sad that it is a one-sided one. The NDP is the only party participating. It is too bad that they claim to want to work, but all they do is listen. I hope that they will ask some questions. There seems to be a sudden interest from members on the other side of the House, so it will be interesting to debate the bill.

This bill addresses drug use in prison. The government is using this bill to kowtow to the wishes of its voter base, without proposing any real solutions to the drug and gang problems in prisons.

I said something similar in my speech on Bill C-2: the government is using Parliament for partisan purposes. This bill is called the Drug-Free Prisons Act, but it does nothing to eradicate drugs in prison, because all the bill does is confirm a practice already established by the Parole Board of Canada. It is easy for the Conservatives to write an email saying that they will eradicate drugs in prison and that people should support them by sending money. That is how the Conservatives work. That is what they did with Bill C-2 and that is what they are doing with Bill C-12. It is funny that they have not yet sent out an email. I subscribe to my adversaries' email lists to see what they have to say.

They sent out an email just a few hours after Bill C-2 came out. However, I do not remember seeing anything on Bill C-12. Perhaps the Conservatives will correct me and say that they use these emails for political purposes to raise funds. I hope that they will confirm that later on. It appears as though they are using the bills before Parliament to raise funds.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned in another speech, the legislator should not act in such a politically motivated way. The legislator should act responsibly instead of just reacting by way of a bill to the news of the day published in the newspapers. The legislator should conduct comprehensive studies before tackling such complex problems.

As I already said, several provisions could have been included in the bill, but they were not. It is a window dressing bill. On the other hand, let us hope that the work done in committee will allow us to improve the bill by adding some beneficial measures to it. It will be up to the members of the committee to do that. I am not a member of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, but I am sure that the Conservatives will act in good faith in order to improve the bill and try to turn it into something that will really eradicate drugs in prisons. It is certainly not the case with the present version of the bill, and I am not just making that up tonight.

Various experts in the field have said so. They recognize that, in the end, the title is nice, but the practice was in fact already in place. The bill just confirms it by making it a little clearer and more precise than in the current law.

It will be a pleasure for me to debate the issue with my colleagues across the way.

Respect for Communities Act

[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.

[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.

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 motion that this question be now put.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand and speak to Bill C-2. It is an example of a trend in the government. I will explain myself throughout my speech.

I am concerned about the way in which we go about making laws in this country. This legislation is an example of the Conservative government's leadership when it comes to drafting legislation and bringing it to the House. How the government acts in public really flies in the face of the Canada that I grew up in and the Canada I am proud to be a part of. Now when I stand in the House I feel very sad for our legislative process.

To begin, I want to talk a bit about what the bill is really about. It is not really about respecting communities, again a trend in some of the bills that we see, for example, safe communities and so on. This legislation is not at all about communities. It is about marginalizing those who are already marginalized. It is about putting further violence in the lives of those who already live with so much violence. It is about putting in danger those who are already in danger.

Essentially, this entire legislation is about InSite. For those who may not be familiar with InSite, it is a place in the Vancouver area where those who are addicted to drugs can go for safe injection. We all understand what addiction is, at least those of us on this side of the House, and that there are ways to make it safer for individuals to break a habit so they can escape the cycle of drug abuse. If they cannot break the cycle, and that can be the case for some, at least they would not be put in a more vulnerable position.

Following an increase in the number of overdose deaths in Vancouver between 1987 and 1993, Vancouver Coastal Health and community partners set up InSite. Since then there has been a huge decrease in diseases such as Hep A, B, C, and HIV/AIDS.

InSite was originally exempt under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. In 2008, the exemption under Section 56 in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act expired. That has caused us to be in the situation we are in now. The minister of health at that time denied its renewal and that resulted in subsequent court cases. It was brought up to the Supreme Court of Canada.

In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that the minister's decision to close InSite, to not renew the exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, was a violation of the charter rights of those who were part of the program. The minister's decision was “...arbitrary, undermining the very purposes of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which include public health and safety”.

That is an overview of why we are here. We are here now because the Conservatives are not in agreement ideologically with the Supreme Court's ruling. This legislation would impose extremely stringent conditions on places like InSite and would really dissuade any other communities that have the need for such programs from participating in them.

In a sense this legislation is only about InSite. In a sense the bill exemplifies a trend in the Conservative government.

The Conservatives have such profound disrespect for any Supreme Court ruling that comes forward and that goes against their ideology. They have a complete disrespect for the judicial branch in this country and the fact that when a decision is made by the Supreme Court, if they do not like it, then too bad. They are not the defenders of rights and freedoms in this country, the courts are. That is why we have a separate judicial process. Unfortunately, the Conservatives keep finding ways of going around any of those decisions that are made by bringing forward legislation that flies in the face of it, sort of goes around it so that it fits their ideology.

For instance, the court in this case based its decision on section 7 of the charter, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of a person and the right not be deprived thereof, except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice”.

This is extremely common. We are seeing the Conservatives disagree with fundamentally, ideologically, in Supreme Court rulings things that have to do with people's security, people's health, people's right to life. That is what is so scary about this trend. The Supreme Court did rule that InSite and other supervised injection sites must be granted a section 56 exemption when they decrease the risk of death and disease and there is little or no evidence that they have a negative impact on the community. InSite does not have a negative impact on the community, quite the opposite, it has a very positive impact on the community. The Conservatives now have to go through this bill to try to create stringent conditions for InSite.

This is blatant disrespect and disregard for the InSite ruling. it completely flies in the face of it. This is in the context of a government that has challenged the Supreme Court over and over again through these backward ways of bringing in legislation to the House that flies in the face of a ruling.

For instance, we are thinking of a very close case in my opinion, the same type of situation. Bill C-36 was recently put down. It really flies in the face of the Bedford decision, which was very clear that given the dangerous conditions of sex work, those who are engaged in it need to be able to take the steps to protect themselves. Now we have a bill that is so disempowering. It is not an exaggeration to say that lives would be put at risk due to this legislation.

We also have Bill C-24, which is the immigration bill that creates dual citizenship. Dual citizens are treated as second-class citizens who potentially would be deported and put in danger in countries they may never have even known.

This is also in the context of several crime bills that have been returned due to their unconstitutionality. We see over and over that the Conservatives are marginalizing at-risk Canadians and further marginalizing already marginalized groups.

The many justice bills of the Conservatives, as I mentioned, follow the same model. They ostracize, isolate, and divide people. Instead of trying to address the root issue, the Conservatives tackle symptoms without even looking for the source of the problem. They throw people in jail without helping them reintegrate into society, and that does not solve the problem.

Let us not forget the unelected and unaccountable Senate blocking my colleague's bill on gender identity, creating rights for trans Canadians who are so marginalized and are put in situations of violence. I do not think I have time to get into the difference between an unelected, unaccountable Senate going against the elected thoughts of the House, and the judicial process, which is to protect the rights of Canadians despite the democratic processes that happen in this House.

The Senate works against that process, but over and over, the government is choosing ideology over facts. In these cases, every time the government is going to outrageous lengths, really, to subvert the courts, and these bills. I am not exaggerating, I know am out of time but I really want to get this out. These bills are putting people in danger--

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member across has a lot to contribute, and I welcome him to take a whole speaking spot to explain to Canadians what he thinks the bill is about. I am sad to say that window dressing of that kind is not what the bill is about.

We know from the rhetoric we have heard from the government that the bill has everything to do with preventing the opening of InSite harm reduction centres and denying opportunities to Canadians who need help to combat their addiction from getting that help.

Canadians can see through this and are increasingly seeing through the government's agenda. They will continue to see through it, as they will on Bill C-2.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in this House to speak on this important bill, Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

I will begin by commenting on the sad state of affairs of our democracy. I was here last night, when I spoke to a similarly empty House, following numerous speakers from the NDP on legislation that has everything to do with the well-being of Canadians, the best use of our tax dollars, and the creation of the best possible public policy. At one speaking opportunity after another, it was members of the NDP who stood up and represented Canadians on these critical issues. Once again, here we are tonight.

We heard the rhetoric from the government that it cares deeply about the legislation it is putting forward. We heard the rhetoric that it cares about public safety, Canadians, and all sorts of things, yet when there is the opportunity for the Conservatives to defend their own legislation, we hear nothing but silence. There may be some heckling from time to time and maybe the odd question, but at every single opportunity they have to speak up and defend their legislation, as we have seen today and yesterday, they have chosen to sit down.

I think this is problematic for any Canadian, and certainly for those tuned in to CPAC. They will see the New Democrats working hard and representing their constituents and Canadians, but they will wonder what the government members are doing at this time.

On an issue like this one, I think it matters even more that the Conservatives are saying nothing. The bill we are discussing here today has everything to do with the most vulnerable people in our country. These are people who have fallen through the cracks of society, who are ill and struggling with addiction. Many of these people live in abject poverty and are homeless. Some live with the trauma of abuse. Certainly in my part of the country, many are still suffering from the impact of residential schools and the horrific sexual and physical abuse they experienced, which has led them to a life of addiction, self-harm, and struggle.

When these people, their families, or their communities tune in to find out what their parliamentarians are doing to try to help them or to help people who so often want to help themselves, all they hear is silence on one more piece of indefensible legislation that is not founded on evidence, on science, or on public health policy that makes sense. It has everything to do with a narrow, ignorant, ideological agenda.

This is not the first time we have seen a bill that has everything to do with ideology and nothing to do with evidence come to this House. Sadly, we see it every day, but I am deeply disturbed when it comes to this legislation. As my colleague alluded to, this piece of legislation is being used to divide Canadians. These people who need help, people whose lives we cannot play with, are being taken advantage of so that the government can score political points. It is unconscionable.

In my own political experience, sadly, I have numerous examples to point to as to how the Conservative government uses this kind of agenda in constituencies like mine.

One example is the way in which the government tries to score points at the expense of trans people and tries to foil the efforts of so many Canadians—including, I am very proud to say, our NDP—who are fighting for trans rights.

Why am I saying this? It is because I remember the calls we started getting in our campaign office a couple of days before the last election. People were concerned and distraught and upset that they were getting voice blasts telling them that their NDP candidate—me, in this case—was supportive of grown men going into girls' washrooms. One of the people who called us was the father of an eight-year-old girl who answered the phone and heard this message.

This message did not talk about what kind of policy this was about, or about parliamentary debate or legislation. It went to the lowest common denominator of electoral politics, something that the Conservative government has learned from its Republican cousins in the States. It knew exactly what it wanted to do. It wanted to drive a wedge into families, into communities, into where I come from, by saying basically that I was in support of human rights, including trans rights, and by saying how horrifying this was. The Conservatives did this by hiding the facts, by using cryptic language, and then by not fessing up until the last moment that it was actually connected to a very concerted Conservative campaign.

This is yet one more example of an ideological agenda being put forward by the government to score political points.

Another example is how the government targets first nations people. Instead of coming to the table and working in partnership with first nations people, whether it is on education, on health care, on ensuring that treaty rights are being implemented, or on economic development, sadly, the government has been too quick to put first nations down and to actually put obstacles in their way when they are trying to make a difference.

I remember that in one of the communities in my constituency, again leading into the previous election, an urban centre received mail-outs referring to the lack of accountability among first nations leaders. The mail-outs included rhetoric around corruption and associated corruption to first nations leaders and chiefs.

It is pretty rich when we hear that from a government that we know has done everything to suit its own friends, whether in the Senate or through various nefarious appointments or through various commitments it has made. We know that what was very much part of that agenda was the way in which it sought to divide Canadians, in this case non-aboriginal people versus aboriginal people, and build a kind of animosity toward people who are often on the margins of our society.

Bill C-2 is no exception. It falls exactly into that same pattern, and in this case, as I said, it plays with the lives of some of the most vulnerable people and communities across our country. It plays with the lives of people in our own families. In some cases it would be people who have gone through this House who have been touched by addiction, people who know what it means and how important help is.

The government has not listened to health care professionals or read the over 30 peer-reviewed studies that have been published in journals. It does not recognize the facts, such as the fact that the rate of overdose deaths in east Vancouver has dropped by 35% since InSite opened or the fact that the reduction of HIV and AIDS rates has been significant as a result of InSite in Vancouver. Instead of looking at these facts and applying evidence and the principle of care, the Conservative government is seeking to score political points.

We have heard from my colleagues about how this bill contravenes the Supreme Court decision and how it could certainly be challenged. We have heard about how the government does not have a leg to stand on with this legislation.

I want to finish by saying how proud I am to be part of the NDP. The NDP stands with Canadians who want to see us make a difference in our communities, who want to see care for the most vulnerable in our communities, who want to see a government take leadership. Canadians deserve far better than a government that is merely playing with the lives of people who need help and doing it all merely to score political points.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise in the House today, at about 9:00 p.m., to work for the people of Drummond. The Conservatives had opportunities to speak this evening, but they decided not to rise. They are in the process of beating their record for the number of time allocation motions. This is the 74th time allocation motion that has been imposed, which is unbelievable. The Conservatives are also beating their record for staying seated and not working for the people of their ridings.

Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, will no doubt end up before the Supreme Court after it is passed because this bill will probably be unconstitutional. The Conservatives are becoming champions of thumbing their noses at the Supreme Court and its rulings. Their attitude is truly disappointing. It is arrogant of them not to respect the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution, of which we are very proud. That is why the NDP will oppose the bill at second reading.

This bill is a thinly veiled attempt to shut down safe injection sites. The Conservatives do not have the courage to say what they want to do. They are addressing this issue in an underhanded way, as they do with others. This bill once again represents an ideological Conservative approach. The Conservatives are opposed to safe injection sites, which is too bad, because these sites have been proven to be successful. Since the Vancouver site opened, the figures have been speaking for themselves and have been quite convincing.

Between 1987 and 1993, the number of deaths by overdose in Vancouver rose from 16 to 200 a year. The Supreme Court of Canada said that this situation was very serious. In Vancouver East, however, since InSite opened, the rate of drug overdose deaths has fallen by 35%. That shows that this approach works well. Over a one-year period, 2,171 users of InSite's services were referred to addiction counselling or other support services. That is proof that these sites are beneficial to the public. The mandate of these sites is not to encourage people to use drugs, but rather to supervise them in order to keep them healthy and safe. These people meet nurses and social workers who are willing to support them. When they are ready to ask for help, they can find it on site. It is important to have these types of sites because they can support these people.

Those who use InSite at least once a week have been shown to be 1.7 times more likely to enrol in detox programs than those who visit infrequently. Therefore, it is possible to see the beneficial impact of this site. The more the users visit this site, the more they care about their health and safety, because they do not use hard drugs for fun. These people are vulnerable and sick, and they need help.

That is why these sick people must be supported while they are using drugs and must be able to quickly access help when they are ready to get off drugs.

The number of discarded needles and injection paraphernalia and the number of people injecting drugs in the street dropped dramatically one year after InSite opened. There was a significant drop in the number of needles and injection paraphernalia in the streets around parks and public places one year after InSite opened, and that is very important.

This allows us to make areas safer for the general public, youth and communities who live near more vulnerable people. That is why it is important to have an approach based on science and not on ideology. These facts are pointing us towards the science.

Let us continue in the same vein and say that this bill is unfortunately based on the Conservatives anti-drug ideology. This is another attempt to rally the Conservative base, as demonstrated by the famous “Keep heroin out of our backyards” campaign, which was purely ideological and simplistic.

No one wants heroin in their backyard. Using that slogan is to give in to simplistic rhetoric. Anyone can use it to raise money, but that is not how we are going to educate and serve the people we must serve. That is not how we are going to look after the health and safety of Canadians. It is not by engaging in such simplistic inflammatory campaigns that we should be doing politics.

We must be much more serious than that and run campaign to promote better health. This should be a health issue and not a public safety issue. This bill should be based on facts and deal with public health benefits.

The problem is that this bill will make it almost impossible to open safe injection sites. Unfortunately, it will promote the opposite, that is the return of heroine to our neighbourhoods.

Bill C-2 flies in the face of the Supreme Court's 2011 ruling calling on the minister to consider granting exemptions for supervised injection sites in order to strike a balance between public safety and public health. The decision called on the minister to examine all of the evidence in light of the benefits of supervised injection sites rather than draw up a long list of principles like the one we have here.

Lastly, any new legislation regarding supervised injection sites must honour the spirit of the Supreme Court ruling, which this bill does not do. The NDP believes that harm reduction programs, including supervised injection sites, should be granted exemptions based on evidence that they will improve community health and save human lives. That is what the Supreme Court asked for in its ruling.

Unfortunately, once again, the Conservatives have introduced a bill that will be challenged because it does not abide by either the spirit or the letter of the Supreme Court ruling. This bill is, without a shadow of a doubt, unconstitutional. It does not respect the charter and will not protect the health and safety of our fellow citizens. That is the main thing we have to think of when we make a decision.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Actually, Mr. Speaker, Bill C-2 is an attempt to put safe injection sites out of business. The Conservative member is being disingenuous. I have here a list of criteria that new applicants will need to meet. The purpose of the bill is to dissuade people from opening new safe injection sites. The rules are much too strict. In fact, departmental officials have told us that if an applicant mistakenly forgets to include something, the application could be automatically denied without further review. Even if the applicant has all of the documents needed for the application and the community's full support—which the member opposite mentioned—the department will still have the option of denying it.

InSite had garnered the support of most of the people in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

My colleague is right, Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives have indeed been playing petty politics with Bill C-2.

They had the chance to send out pamphlets in their ridings before the bill was called. They were able to organize a fundraiser called “Keep heroin out of our backyards”.

It is plain to see the Conservatives are fearmongering. They are using scare tactics in order to raise more funds.

The irony in all this is that the government's Bill C-2 will make it nearly impossible to open safe injection sites, which will push heroin back out into the streets.

This is the irony with the Conservative campaign. If Bill C-2 passes, it will put lives in danger and greatly compromise community safety.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, tonight I am pleased to be speaking to Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

This bill addresses safe injection sites. I will be opposing this bill at second reading for many reasons, which have already been outlined by my hon. colleagues tonight.

The main reason I am opposing it is because safe injection sites have had many documented, positive effects on communities and on people who are dealing with addictions to certain substances. We have seen that in Vancouver, where there is already a safe injection site known as InSite. We have also seen that other parts of the country are interested in opening other safe injection sites and in doing something else to help those dealing with addiction and to protect our children and our communities.

I am opposing this bill because it goes against the Supreme Court ruling concerning these sites. I would like to provide a bit of background.

We need to go back to 2011, when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that InSite, in Vancouver, was providing essential services and should remain open under the exemption provided in section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The court ruled that the charter authorized users to have access to InSite's services and that similar services should be authorized under an exemption.

I imagine that many Canadians who are watching the debate at home are wondering what a safe injection site is, how it works and what it looks like, so I will talk about how the safe injection site in Vancouver, InSite, works.

It is highly regulated. There are many medical professionals on site who can provide medical assistance, if necessary. To access InSite's services, users must meet certain requirements. They must be at least 16, sign a user agreement and comply with a code of conduct. Of course, they cannot be accompanied by children.

InSite is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. seven days a week. The facility provides services every day of the week. Users bring their own drugs to InSite, and staff members provide clean injection supplies. This is important when it comes to prevention, because people who use intravenous drugs often use syringes that are used, and therefore unsterilized.

Often, when people do not have a place to inject their drug, they will leave the blood-stained or contaminated supplies in public areas, such as parks where children play, as my colleague mentioned earlier. It is very important for these supplies to be available at supervised injection sites so that users have access to them and so that we can prevent the spread of disease.

Nurses and paramedics who supervise the centre provide emergency medical assistance if necessary. Once users have injected their drugs, their condition is assessed by the staff and they are sent to a post-injection room or treated by a nurse in the treatment room for illnesses associated with the injection.

InSite also does some important prevention work by helping people recover from their drug addiction. InSite employees provide information on health care and advice, and they refer patients to health care and social services.

InSite also houses the OnSite centre. OnSite provides detox and rehabilitation services. OnSite is managed by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and the PHS Community Services Society, with the support of local law enforcement agencies, provincial and municipal governments, provincial and federal government representatives, health care providers, and members of the community. People are united behind this initiative, and it has the support of community members who are already seeing the benefits.

I would like to share some figures to show that supervised injection sites have positive effects. Between 1973 and 1987, the number of overdose-related deaths in Vancouver went from 16 to 200 per year. That is a high number. However, the rate of overdose deaths in east Vancouver has dropped by 35% since InSite opened.

The reason why it is important to ensure that InSite remains open and to study this model in order to apply it elsewhere is that it saves lives. It contributes to prevention and rehabilitation rather than punishing people with addictions. These people are vulnerable and do have a lot of problems, but they also have a right to safety and life.

As an aside, I will speak to the Conservative government's bill on prostitution, because it is a crosscutting and current issue. I am drawing a parallel with Bill C-2 because this is another way for the Conservatives to show their contempt for Supreme Court rulings. They endanger the lives of vulnerable individuals and of women working in the prostitution business.

The Conservative government's bill on prostitution can put lives at risk. It punishes the clients of sex workers, which puts their lives at risk. This bill was introduced in the House of Commons after a Supreme Court decision announced in December struck down a number of key provisions in Canada's prostitution laws.

A number of people and members in the House have said that this new bill introduced by the Conservative government was also unlikely to pass the test of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms imposed by the Supreme Court. In this case, the Conservative government does not respect the right of vulnerable individuals to safety and to life. I am therefore proud to rise in the House to oppose the bill on prostitution as well.

I will use the short time I have left to sum up my position on Bill C-2. The InSite model has a part to play in public health and community safety. Members need to oppose this bill in order to protect vulnerable InSite users' right to safety.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. I know that he cares very much about public safety. I also know that he has young children and that he would not want them to walk around a park where they could find dangerous used needles.

Thanks to the success of these supervised injection sites, used needles are kept out of our communities. Nevertheless, the Conservative campaign is “Keep heroin out of our backyards”, and they just did exactly the opposite with the bill preventing the opening of supervised injection sites, which keep various dangers out of our communities.

This is a missed opportunity by the Conservative government. It could have strengthened public safety, and I thought that was paramount to the government. However, it turns out that this does not seem to be its priority. The Conservatives do exactly the opposite of what they claim they will do.

I am disappointed with Bill C-2 and I will vote against it at second reading.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-2 is in fact not an isolated case. It is consistent with a trend that we have observed since the Conservatives have been in office. The Liberals were no better. However, I have a rather short memory when it comes to everything the Liberals did.

This is an unfortunate trend because the lawmakers who draft and amend laws must assume their responsibilities and work for the common good of all Canadians, not simply impose their own ideology within their political group.

It is no secret that in our parliamentary system, the government, the executive branch, sits in the House alongside the legislative branch. Unfortunately, the executive branch will sometimes use certain bills and issues for electoral purposes to advance its political agenda, since the legislative and the executive go hand in hand.

Of course we cannot dissociate the Conservative party from the Government of Canada. They are one and the same. The government of the day introduces bills to advance its own ideology. It solicits funds a few hours after tabling a bill in the House of Commons. In my view this is unacceptable behaviour on the part of a legislator.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a model that is beneficial to the public and local communities. In fact, it has the near total support of the east Vancouver community. Many surveys have shown public support for the safe injection site in east Vancouver.

Many studies have explicitly shown the benefits of InSite for public health and safety. Some of my colleagues have explained in more detail how this site is good for public health and safety. People grappling with drug addictions are in very difficult situations, but if they had access to a safe injection site like the one in east Vancouver, they would be much safer. However, it is worth noting here that the ultimate goal is to get all illegal drugs off our streets.

It is safer for these people to have access to supervised injection sites, like the one in Vancouver, that make resources available to help them get off drugs. That is the goal of safe injection sites. They do more than just tell people to come and get a fix before asking them to leave. They look after them and try to help them get off drugs.

The main point I want to make today is that safe injection sites are more than just a safe haven where addicts get a fix and then leave without having access to resources. These sites make resources available to addicts who want to get off drugs.

Unfortunately, the government used that issue as a campaign tool to raise money from its supporters. I remember that, just hours after the government introduced Bill C-65—the first version of this Bill C-2—in the House, we received a fundraising email asking for political donations.

We therefore have to ask ourselves the following question: is that how a good legislator works? The role of the legislator in the House of Commons and in Parliament is to review and improve laws. Is it appropriate for a government or a legislator to use an issue and change laws for political purposes? The government's top priority should be ensuring that Canadians are safe. However, the Conservative's priority is asking for political donations and introducing partisan bills. That is not how a competent legislator should work.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise this evening to speak to this rather sensitive bill. I happen to be very familiar with it as I have heard a great deal about it and have spoken about it with members from all parties. The issue is near and dear to me. I am referring to Bill C-2, also known as Bill C-65 before prorogation. No one will be surprised to hear that we will oppose the bill at second reading.

We already debated the issue back in January. Since then, nothing has happened. For reasons unknown to me, the government did not introduce the bill earlier. It certainly seems to be an urgent matter today, however. We are now in June, faced with a time allocation motion to ensure its speedy passage. It seems to have taken six months for the government to realize the urgency of the situation; after five hours of debate, it has decided to set things in motion.

The bill has been gathering dust on the desk of the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons for months now; he did not seem the least bit interested in putting the bill on the agenda. I am nevertheless happy that the government has finally decided to get moving. Of course, the fact that it had to do so on Bill C-2 is a real shame. The government could have been made to see the light and amend the bill in order to change its content.

That is not the case, and the bill we are debating today is yet another direct affront to the Supreme Court, as a number of experts have said. We are all aware of the strained relationship the government has with the Supreme Court these days. Once again, the government has no problem defying the Supreme Court, which ruled on this issue in September 2011.

Bill C-2 could very likely violate the Supreme Court's ruling. The government itself asked the Supreme Court to rule on the case in British Columbia.

The government had asked the Supreme Court to review the B.C. court's ruling, since the government was hot happy with it. It was not happy with the Supreme Court's ruling either, but that is the highest court. The government therefore decided to introduce a bill that would directly challenge the Supreme Court of Canada's 2011 ruling. That is pretty brazen for the government to move forward like this. As I said, we oppose this bill.

I want to thank the member for Vancouver East, who has been working on this issue for many years. This situation has been dragging on for years. If memory serves me right, it was in 2008 or even earlier that the federal government's health minister at the time refused to grant an exemption to InSite, the supervised injection site in east Vancouver. The reasons the federal government refused to grant an exemption were probably ideological. It seemed to be against the idea of a supervised injection site.

Today, the Conservatives have asked questions, but they have unfortunately not made any speeches. We have only gotten bits and pieces of information from the other side about their position on the issue. Based on what I have heard in the debate today, they seem to be ideologically opposed to the idea of safe injection sites. There is only one in Canada right now, but steps are underway to open others. In fact, some groups in Quebec City, Montreal and Toronto are working to open such sites.

Many groups have noted the benefits of this type of site. Many studies done in Vancouver have shown the same results. More than 30 peer-reviewed studies— it is important to note this—published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal have described the benefits of InSite. Organizations that work on solving the problem of drug use in our communities have noted the beneficial impact of InSite, in east Vancouver. They are trying to replicate Vancouver's positive experience.

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

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

With every passing day, drugs are becoming an increasingly pressing problem in our big cities, which are less and less humane places. The bill before us today forces us to face what has become, under this Conservative government, an undeniable fact. This bill has an intensely ideological flavour, and completely disregards both fact and reality. This is nothing new in the wonderland inhabited by the Conservatives, who are increasingly out of touch with the needs of Canadians.

Bill C-2 is nothing but a poorly veiled attempt to put an end to supervised injection sites. It became obvious some time ago that this government does not shy away from introducing legislation that flies in the face of recent decisions made by the highest court in the country, the Supreme Court of Canada, which the government seems to consider a threat to its ideology.

In fact, in 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that InSite provided essential services and had to remain open under the exemption set out in section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The court also ruled that the charter authorized users to access InSite services, and that the provision of similar services should also be authorized under the same exemption.

In addition, a number of studies published in the renowned New England Journal of Medicine, and the British Medical Journal, describe the benefits of the InSite supervised injection site. These are experts in the field, which is why the Conservatives surely will not listen to them.

Over the past three years, it has become apparent that the Conservatives do not take kindly to opinionated scientists, particularly when the opinions of those scientists do not suit them or go against their ideology.

The purpose of a government is not to muzzle scientists or members of the House of Commons and, yet, this has occurred a record number of times in Canadian history under the Conservative government. The government's responsibility is to take stock of the facts and to make the best decisions for Canadians.

With Bill C-2, the government is once again falling into the embarrassing trap of grandstanding and ignoring facts that clearly prove that supervised injection facilities like InSite have a wide range of benefits for the general public.

Indeed, just a few hours after Bill C-2 was introduced, the Conservatives made a big show of announcing their “Keep heroin out of our backyards” campaign, which was designed to rally grassroots support and to, once again, fuel the public's unfounded fears about safety.

Let us take a few moments to think about this seriously. Are the Conservatives so keen on magical thinking that they believe that, if InSite closed, heroin use would automatically disappear in just a few hours? I hope that their cognitive reasoning is a little more advance than that, but I have my doubts.

The reality is that, after the closure of supervised injection facilities, heroin use would not disappear but would once again be widespread in neighbourhoods and could, at that point, become a real danger for the general public. That is exactly the opposite of what the Conservatives are claiming.

Let us forget the Conservatives' ideological inflexibility that results in exactly the opposite of what they claim, and talk about the real facts about InSite and the positive benefits of supervised injection facilities.

The InSite project was set up as part of a public health initiative by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and a number of other community partners following a 12-fold increase in the number of overdose-related deaths in Vancouver between 1987 and 1993. Over that seven-year period, the Vancouver area also saw a disturbing increase in the rate of blood-borne diseases, such as hepatitis A, B and C and HIV/AIDS, among injection drug users.

In 2003, InSite secured an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act for activities with medical and scientific applications, in order to provide services and conduct research into the effectiveness of supervised injection facilities.

In 2007, the Onsite Detox Centre was added at the same location. In 2008, InSite's exemption expired.

The Minister of Health denied InSite's application to renew this exemption, a portent of the introduction of Bill C-2, which is before us today.

The Minister of Health's decision triggered a series of court cases, following which the British Columbia Supreme Court found that InSite should be given a further exemption. The Conservative government appealed that decision, but lost. The British Columbia Court of Appeal also found that InSite should remain open.

Finally, in 2011, The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the minister's decision to close InSite violated its clients' charter rights, was arbitrary, and was contrary to the purpose of the act, particularly with respect to public health and safety.

The NDP feels that government decisions should be made with Canadians' best interests in mind and be based on fact rather than on an ideological stance. Evidence has shown that safe injection sites effectively reduce the risk of contracting and spreading blood-borne diseases and reduce deaths from overdoses. Evidence has also shown that they do not adversely affect public safety. In some cases, they actually promote it by reducing injection drug use in public and violence, as well as reducing the waste associated with drug use. These sites strike a balance between public health and public safety goals, while connecting the users of these sites with the health services and addiction treatment they need to escape the hell of drug use.

In this case, the facts are clear and unequivocal. Between 1987 and 1993, before InSite was established, the number of overdose deaths in Vancouver increased from 16 to 200 deaths per year. Since InSite opened in 2003, the rate of overdose deaths in east Vancouver has fallen by 35%.

I have some other facts for our Conservative friends who believe that InSite is dangerous and poses a threat to the public.

Over one year, 2,171 InSite users were referred to addiction counselling or other support services. Those who use InSite services at least once a week are 1.7 times more likely to enrol in a detox program than those who visit infrequently. There has been a significant drop in the number of discarded needles, injection-related waste materials, and people injecting themselves with drugs on the street. One year after InSite opened, 80% of respondents living or working in Vancouver's downtown east side supported InSite.

A number of studies have examined the possible negative impact of InSite, but not one single study produced any evidence of harm to the community.

The facts are clear. An initiative like InSite is a step in the right direction in terms of public health and public safety. In contrast to what the Conservatives claim, such an initiative gets drugs off our streets and moves them to supervised sites where people are attended to and strongly encouraged to explore the possibilities for drug treatment and social reintegration.

That is why Bill C-2—which is based on wishful thinking rather than facts, as is often the case on the other side of this House—is simply unacceptable.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her excellent, heartfelt speech on this issue.

Does she agree with me that this is a hidden, sneaky, disguised attempt by the government to prevent other safe injection sites like the one in Vancouver from opening in other Canadian communities? That is my impression.

Does my colleague get the same impression after reading Bill C-2?

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to make a brief but important comment. It is curious that none of my Conservative colleagues decided to rise to debate Bill C-2. Is it because they realized their position is indefensible?

I wonder why they decided to remain silent. From time to time they read a question written on a piece of paper, but none of them have risen to bring any substance to the debate. I hope one of my colleagues on the other side of the House will be able to answer this question. However, I have my doubts about that, because they do not have many arguments to use to defend their position.

That being said, the issue of public safety must go much further. We must ask ourselves some questions here. What is a government for? What is the purpose of the Parliament we are part of right now? Its primary purpose is to serve Canadians. Its purpose is to help vulnerable populations who, unfortunately, have not been as lucky as we have been. What is a government for? Its purpose is to help people who, unfortunately, have fallen into the vicious cycle of drugs at some point in their life.

It is not up to us to judge how or why a person ended up in a situation like this. That is not Parliament's role. The government members should be ashamed for judging people, because we are not here to regulate what they are doing. We are here to help them and to pass laws in order to assist the most vulnerable members of our society.

We can try to explain their plight and to blame it on a number of things, but the fact is that this situation exists in our communities. This situation must be resolved. It is through initiatives like InSite that the most vulnerable members of our society are able to overcome their addictions. The InSite initiative will make our communities safer. That is clear.

Many members have been in this House longer than I have. I would have hoped for much better from them and from the government. Why did we become members of Parliament? It is because deep down we thought that we could reach out to people in dreadful situations, help them and do something to improve their lives.

I am sorry. Far be it from me to try to teach my colleagues a lesson, but I believe that the onus is on this government to differentiate between the common good, its ideology, and its personal opinions. Every member of Parliament has his or her own personal opinions. That is a fact. Take abortion, for example. Everyone knows this, and there is no need to belabour the point. The same is true when it comes to drug use. Differences of opinion are normal. That is what makes us human beings. Everybody here expresses their opinions, relates their experiences, and engages in debate in this Parliament. Here, in this Parliament, in this House of Commons, we are representatives of the public. I remind members that the House of Commons is the chamber of the common people, the chamber of the Canadian public. We are not here to peddle our political agendas, personal opinions, or ideology. We are here to represent Canadians. Our values and personal opinions are not more important than the common good, the well-being of vulnerable Canadians, the welfare of our communities.

It is all well and good for the government to stand up and try and defend the indefensible. However, everybody is clear on one point: supervised injection sites work. They help make our children, women and families safer. They also help people to escape terrible situations.

Why does this government refuse to shoulder its fundamental responsibility? Indeed, is it not the government's primary purpose to ensure the safety of Canadians, and to assist Canadians in extremely dangerous situations? I cannot emphasize just how disappointed I am, today, to have to give this speech in an attempt to make the government understand that Canadians’ safety is more important than political ideology.

The Conservatives would have us believe that supervised injection sites, recognized worldwide as being beneficial to public safety, and for driving down mortality rates, are not a good initiative. This is about saving lives, Canadians’ lives. If only a single life were to be saved because of the existence of a supervised injection site, then the initiative would be a good one. Were we to help just a single Canadian to pull themselves up, it would be a good initiative.

The government cannot come to this House and pedal its right wing discourse. We are talking about the lives of human beings. We are talking about people who may die, and we want to help them. It is beyond belief that this government cannot understand the simple fact that Canadians need its help. The Conservatives do not care one iota. They are right here, and they are not even bothering to get up out of their seats, or to argue their point of view. I would like to see a government member get up and explain why saving Canadians’ lives is neither the government’s fundamental duty, nor an important consideration for the member himself.

These sites lower crime rates. They are known to save lives, stem the tide of crime and make our streets and communities safer.

Moreover, what strikes me as passing strange is that the minister has already issued an exemption. He has done this once before. Why? For the purpose of impact studies to determine whether the sites worked. The findings of the studies were unambiguous: supervised injection sites drive down crime and mortality rates, and make our streets safer. Why then is the government standing in the way of a second exemption?

I will say it again. The inherent role of Parliament is to help the most vulnerable. People who used InSite were twice as likely to enrol in a detox program and seek help than those who were left out in the street.

I know that the government does not really like the Supreme Court's decisions and that it does not always comply with them. The Supreme Court was clear:

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.

I talked about fundamental justice at the beginning of my speech. Members of Parliament have the vital role of ensuring that people get help. In 2008, Health Canada published a report indicating that, since 2006, InSite had intervened in 306 overdoses and that there had not been any deaths. Canadians' lives were saved. I cannot believe that a Conservative member can stand here today and say that this kind of site has no purpose. The government cannot argue that this is not in the interest of Canadians.

A comparison of the situation six weeks before and 12 weeks after InSite opened indicated that the number of people injecting drugs in public had decreased. All municipalities agree that this kind of site reduces crime in their communities. Even the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction has shown that supervised injection sites reach out to the most vulnerable groups, are accepted by communities, help improve the health of drug users and reduce drug use among frequent users. According to the Health Canada report, people who used InSite services were twice as likely to seek help and enrol in a detox program.

In conclusion, I would like to say that this is about saving Canadians' lives. The government cannot say that it is not in Parliament's interest to pass legislation that will save lives.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, whether it is this evening, back in January, or whenever it was that the government last brought this legislation before the House, I have heard a number of the Conservative members stand in their place and pose questions like “Do members oppose consultation?” and “What's wrong with consulting with others before any form of decision is made?” because that, after all, is incorporated in the legislation.

It is important for us to recognize that Canada has one InSite location, in Vancouver. I can assure all Conservative members that there was, in fact, a great deal of consultation. In the questions and statements they put forward, they try to give the impression that, without this legislation, there would not be any sort of community consultation. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have seen a great deal not only of consultation but of individuals within our community who truly care about what is happening in our communities and who believe that the particular site we are always making reference to has actually given a great deal of value in being able to change the reality in many different ways.

I would ask the government to recognize that, at the end of the day, when we come to the House of Commons, we are trying to improve the conditions of our communities. If done appropriately—and that also includes consultations and working with the different stakeholders—we will make a more significant difference, in a positive way, in the communities we represent.

I represent a wonderful constituency. I am very proud of all regions of my constituency. There are some areas that have different types of challenges and different issues from other areas. In the areas around Main Street and Selkirk Avenue, for example, there is a lot more drug addiction and drug abuse. There is perhaps a higher degree of exploitation. We need to be thinking outside the box on how we might assist our communities, in whatever ways we can help develop and ultimately promote. I am not suggesting there has to be an injection site located there. However, if the argument were made from the different stakeholders, as it was done in Vancouver, then it would be wrong of me not to acknowledge the potential that would ultimately benefit the broader community. I for one want to make a difference.

When the government brought forward this legislation, within an hour or an hour and a half of the legislation first being introduced what did the government do? It issued a very crass and misleading fundraising letter that went out to its supporters, stating that Liberals and New Democrats want addicts to shoot up heroin in the backyards in communities across the country. There is absolutely no merit to that press release. However, I can understand from that release what the real agenda of the Conservative Party is. What we need to see more of from our government is a caring attitude, some compassion, and a real desire to make a difference in the different types of communities we all represent.

The issues that face our communities vary, not only within regions of our country but even within municipalities. I would ask the government to look at what it can be doing to play a more significant role in making a positive difference in those communities.

If we look at Bill C-2, it is about injection sites and the Supreme Court ruling and how the government has responded to the ruling. I was provided some fairly extensive notes in regard to the ruling. As opposed to reading that into the record, suffice to say that the Supreme Court ordered that the minister grant an exemption to InSite under section 56 of the CDSA. However, this would not affect the minister's power to withdraw the exemption should the operation at InSite change such that the exemption would no longer be appropriate.

There is a fairly long, convoluted argument as to why it ended up in our court system and why the government responded as it did.

We have found the government wanting in the area of demonstrating compassion and recognizing a very important community.

What I would like to emphasize is that this did not just occur overnight. The injection site we have today actually came into being through an immense amount of consultation and co-operation with a wide variety of stakeholders and individuals who had a vested interest in advancing what has been a very successful project.

The government, and in particular the minister responsible, has never been out to the safe injection site we are referring to. How does the minister responsible for legislation that is going to have such a profound impact on injection sites, if in fact there are going to be any additional injection sites, not check out the one injection site we have? Unless the minister has visited the site in Vancouver recently, I believe that is an accurate statement. I would ask the government to correct it if it is not accurate.

What is it we are suggesting? When we talk about the important role Ottawa plays in our communities, part of that is the work done with stakeholders. What have we had in regard to this injection site in Vancouver? We have had the municipal government, the provincial government, and the national government all working together to try to bring into existence what was initially a pilot project.

Many different stakeholders that had an interest were brought in, including law enforcement officers, health care professionals, social workers, and other advocacy groups that understood that there was a need to try to make a difference. All came together with the idea, and it was launched.

In the years that followed, InSite received accolades from many of the same stakeholders who helped make it a reality. The evidence is there.

If the government would only spend some time and check out the site and look at the evidence, I believe we would have a government that would see a lot more value in demonstrating more compassion.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to speak to Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. I want to be clear from the outset that New Democrats oppose the bill at second reading.

Bill C-2 is a deeply flawed bill based on a deeply flawed premise. This premise, advanced by Conservatives, takes the position that I think goes back to the Reagan years in the United States. Members may remember Nancy Reagan's “just say no to drugs” position. It is a very simplistic appealing approach, but it has been proven in the United States that this anti-drug and abstinence approach on the issue of addiction has been a colossal failure.

The approach of New Democrats is one of promoting health and safety for those who, sadly, are suffering from addiction, but also promoting the safety of communities and neighbourhoods. Our approach is one of harm reduction. In other words, it would promote healthy outcomes and hopefully reduce the harm that those who suffer from addictions are exposed to.

The bill, in fact, is a thinly veiled attempt to stop safe injection sites from operating. At present, in Canada, there is only one safe injection site, InSite, which is operating in Vancouver. However, since the Conservatives took the provision of harm reduction out of the national drug strategy in 2007, they have been opposed to the operation of InSite. Finally, this issue was taken to court and there was a Supreme Court decision on this. I will get to that in more detail in a few minutes.

In essence, Bill C-2 is an attempt to lay out conditions that are so extensive, so arduous, with benchmarks so high that InSite or other potential sites would be unable to surmount these obstacles and thus unable to operate. We believe that, in fact, is the goal behind the proposed legislation. Thus, the “do no harm” approach or “harm reduction” approach would be thrown out the window.

Our belief on this side of the House among New Democrats is that decisions about programs must be based on whether or not there are benefits, which must be based on facts rather than ideology. However, we believe that those on the other side of the House are driven by ideology on the bill and are wilfully ignoring the facts in this case.

I mentioned the Supreme Court. In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that InSite, this facility in Vancouver that provides a safe injection site for people with addictions, provided life-saving services and in fact should remain open. To do that, it required an exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act under section 56. This is an exemption under which InSite has been operating for a number of years. The court ruled that it was within the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for InSite users to access this service, not only in Vancouver, but at sites that operate elsewhere.

What is this scientific proof that I am talking about based on?

In fact, there have been over 30 peer-reviewed studies published in reputable, distinguished journals, such as The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and the British Medical Journal, which have described the beneficial impacts of InSite.

Furthermore, studies of more than 70 safe injection sites in other countries, in Europe and Australia, have shown similar benefits. InSite has been extremely beneficial for those who use it and should be allowed to continue to operate, but we would argue that it has been beneficial not only for those who use InSite but for the community in which it is located.

The Conservatives, with the launch of this bill, also immediately tried to rally their base and launched a campaign called “Keep heroin out of our backyards”. I am sure they raised a lot of money with that campaign and generated a lot of data in preparation for the next federal election, but in fact, it is based on a false premise. This bill would actually put heroin back into people's backyards, because if there are no safe injection sites, people who are hopelessly addicted will resort increasingly to crime and to injecting in communities, on our streets, and in our neighbourhoods rather than in a safe injection site. Therefore, not only will people who have a serious health issue due to an addiction put themselves at greater risk, but they will also be putting communities at risk.

I come from a community that is, I believe, one of the finest communities anywhere. My riding of Parkdale—High Park is a very diverse community. There are people from all different socio-economic levels, and in spite of one of the local city councillors attacking the Parkdale community and trying to label, stigmatize, and stereotype people in the community, the people who live there do not feel that way. They believe that society as a whole includes people who have imperfect lives, people who have mental health challenges, family problems, and yes, sometimes suffer from addictions, regardless of what income level they happen to be in. There are certainly people at very high income levels who suffer from addictions and sometimes spend a lot of money supporting those addictions.

Therefore, my community includes a wide cross-section of people, but whether it is community agencies, neighbourhood organizations, police, or community helpers, people have come together with political representatives and said our goal has to be one of harm reduction. They say if people are suffering from poor mental health or addictions or whatever challenges they are facing, we should find a way to help them through this in as safe a way as possible and, hopefully, help them to recover and lead normal lives. One of the big advantages of a facility like InSite is that the people who use that facility can access health professionals, counselling, and support and, hopefully, transition through their addictions and come out the other end to lead normal lives. There are certainly many instances of that.

In conclusion, I want to say this is a deeply flawed bill. New Democrats believe it is in defiance of the Supreme Court ruling and, once again, pits the government against the judicial system. It will do far more harm than good and should be rejected by the House.

[Marie-Claude Morin, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank you for giving me opportunity to speak to this bill, which seeks to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Before I begin, I would like to commend my colleague for Vancouver East for her excellent work on this file. She has worked tirelessly, and I believe we should recognize that her efforts have contributed to the progress our country has made in this regard.

This bill is an attempt to close down supervised injection sites. This would go against a Supreme Court ruling that recognized Vancouver's InSite, currently the only site in Canada, as a key player in this field, an indispensable stakeholder when it comes to public health and safety.

Decisions of this kind that have such a direct impact on public health and safety must not be taken lightly. They must be based on fact, not driven by ideological positions that stem solely from the belief that there should not be any drugs in Canada. I understand the principle here and there is something to be said for it, but that is not how things work. There are many things that we would gladly dispense with but that are still around. At some point what we need to do is deal with the situation. We need to set up sites where these individuals will receive support and maybe even find solutions to overcome their addiction and mitigate its harmful effects.

I used to be a social worker. I worked not with addicts but with young people. I can therefore say that the solution does not lie with repressive measures or scare tactics about drug use. I really do not agree with the Conservative government’s ideology.

The benefits of a safe injection site have been borne out by the facts. There are benefits to operating this type of facility. Studies on more than 70 injection sites in Europe and Australia have shown that these sites have a positive impact on people, communities and drug addicts.

I mentioned harm mitigation. It is impossible to eliminate all the harmful effects but, by adopting this type of philosophy, harm can be mitigated. I cannot speak for my colleagues, but I for one believe that this is a sensible approach.

Vancouver’s InSite is currently the only facility of its kind in Canada. However, other cities have plans for sites that they want to set up.

Earlier, in response to certain members opposite who asked whether we wanted to see injection sites in our own ridings, my colleague from Hochelaga stated that she would welcome such a site in her Montreal riding. The need for such sites is overwhelming. The health and safety of Canadians and communities depend on it.

Safe injection sites save lives and it would be highly irresponsible of the government to take steps to prevent such facilities from opening in the future.

Bill C-2 is seriously flawed. It is based on an unrealistic anti-drug ideology and on false concerns over public safety. In my view, it is another attempt to rally the Conservative base, as evidenced by the Conservatives' “Keep heroin out of our backyards” campaign. However, when heroin has already found its way into our community, it is rather difficult to eradicate it unless this type of recourse is available.

The bill will make it almost impossible to open safe injection sites and will have the adverse effect of promoting the return of heroin to our neighbourhoods. Drugs are illegal, and we are well aware of it. I know that I do not have the right to walk around with heroin, but a lot of people will do it, just the same. If we only had to legislate on an issue for it never to happen again, life would be very easy. However, this is not the way things work.

Basically, Bill C-2 goes directly against the Supreme Court’s 2011 decision that called on the minister to consider exemptions for safe injection sites, in an effort to reconcile health and public safety considerations. In its ruling, the court urged the minister to consider all of the evidence in light of the benefits of supervised injection sites, rather than devise a long list of principles on which to base his decisions.

There is no safe injection site in my riding. However, there is one agency, the Centre d'intervention jeunesse des Maskoutains—it does not work just with young people—which does a lot of work on harm reduction, primarily through needle exchanges and awareness programs. It does not take them into care. The workers meet with people who have a drug problem and give them a helping hand. In my view, safe injection sites can also play this role.

As I said earlier, at the moment, no injection sites are open in Canada with the exception of InSite, in Vancouver, which has been running since 2003. Since it opened, there has been a 35% decrease in overdose deaths. That is quite significant. It is also been noted that InSite has led to a decrease in crime, communicable disease infection rates and relapse rates for drug users. It also gives drug users a helping hand toward recovery. It is not a place where people go to inject drugs and to party. It is not anything like that. It is a place where people who want help can go. This also helps make our communities a safer place. I do not think these are elements that can be ignored.

As I said earlier, supervised injection sites reduce the risk of contracting and spreading communicable diseases such as HIV and hepatitis. They also help prevent overdose-related deaths. It has also been shown that they pose no threat to public safety. On the contrary, they promote public safety by reducing the injection of drugs in public, the violence associated with such behaviour and drug-related waste. Personally, I would rather have an injection facility in my neighbourhood than see my child going off to play in the park and getting pricked accidentally by a syringe. Injection sites do not reduce the risk to zero but do reduce it significantly.

I would like to explain what a supervised injection site is all about and provide some information about how InSite operates.

In order to use the services of InSite, users must be at least 16. They must sign a user agreement and comply with a code of conduct. They cannot be accompanied by children. InSite is open seven days a week and has 12 injection bays. Users bring their own drugs and staff provide them with clean injection equipment. Nurses and staff supervise the centre and provide emergency medical assistance if necessary. Users who have completed an injection are assessed by staff and taken to a post-injection lounge or treated by a nurse in the treatment room for injection-related conditions.

As members can see, this type of facility is a serious initiative. In my view, these facilities are essential to the well-being of our communities.

[Annick Papillon, NDP, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. It is important to say it again and again: Bill C-2 is a thinly veiled attempt to shut down safe injection sites.

This legislation is in direct opposition to a 2011 ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada that called on the minister to consider exemptions for safe injection sites as a way to reconcile public health and safety issues.

I would like to spend a few minutes talking about the only supervised injection site we have in Canada, in Vancouver’s sadly infamous Downtown Eastside. InSite was developed as part of a public health project by the City of Vancouver, and its community partners, of course, in response to a twelve-fold increase in overdose-related deaths in Vancouver between 1987 and 1993. It took years for InSite to be up and running, and it went under incredible local and national scrutiny.

In Vancouver, not only do the police support the safe injection site, which is already quite something, but so do local businesses, the business district, the board of trade and municipal politicians. The project has been the focus of over 30 scientific reports and studies that have described the benefits of InSite. These findings have been peer-reviewed and published in journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine and the British Medical Journal. As well, studies of more than 70 supervised injection sites in Europe and Australia have reported similar benefits.

InSite first received an exemption in 2003 for conducting activities for a medical and scientific purpose, under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Since then, InSite has seen good results. This is important. It helps save lives, prevents accidental overdoses and makes the neighbourhood safer for everyone.

However, in 2008, InSite’s exemption under the legislation expired, and the Conservative government rejected InSite’s renewal request. The debate went as far as the Supreme Court, which decided that InSite was a very important health facility. The ruling urged the minister to examine all of the evidence in light of the benefits of safe injection sites, not to devise a long list of principles on which to base his decisions.

I would like to quote a critically important excerpt from the Supreme Court of Canada's decision, since the bill now before us is supposedly based on this ruling. Here is what the Supreme Court had to say in its decision:

On future applications, the Minister must exercise that discretion within the constraints imposed by the law and the Charter, aiming to strike the appropriate balance between achieving public health and public safety. In accordance with the Charter, the Minister must consider whether denying an exemption would cause deprivations of life and security of the person that are not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. Where, as here, a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

I think that the ruling is quite clear. In my riding of Québec, I have had the opportunity to meet several times with stakeholders and volunteers, including those from an organization called Point de repères. That organization's mission consists of health promotion, prevention and the delivery of care and services, especially for people dealing with addiction. It is important to understand this difference: an organization like Point de repères does not encourage drug use, but, rather, it advocates a harm reduction approach.

As the Point de repères website indicates:

The harm reduction approach is a community-based approach to health that focuses on helping people with addictions develop ways to mitigate the negative consequences of their behaviour, rather than on eliminating the use of psychotropic drugs.

I think it is important to understand the fine points of this often sensitive subject. As explained on the Point de repères website:

Drug use has a significant impact on both the user and the community. Often, lack of knowledge, misconceptions and prejudices about people who use drugs lead to a series of inappropriate actions that cause additional harm to the user and the community.

I had the opportunity to watch a documentary made in Quebec City by people from Quebec City entitled Pas de piquerie dans mon quartier. They realized the effects that drugs were having on the people using them. They wanted to make sure that they would not find syringes in the streets or in the parks where children played. We do not want a shooting gallery in our neighbourhood, but at the same time, we have to help these people.

The documentary sheds light on the addiction issue in Quebec City. Let me quote the opening sequence, which reflects the glaring truth:

The war on drugs is often turned into a war on drug users. It is a bit like the war on poverty—we have to be careful not to turn it into a war on the poor.

It is full of common sense. It is a way of entering into that world, which we do not know very well at all, in an attempt to finally come up with good solutions.

We must ask ourselves why the government is so lacking in objectivity when it comes to this issue. Why are the Conservatives refusing to recognize the facts laid out before them?

The NDP believes that decisions about programs that could enhance public health should be based on facts, not ideological stances. We are not alone in thinking that. According to the Canadian Medical Association, supervised injection programs are an important harm reduction strategy. Harm reduction is a central pillar in a comprehensive public health approach to disease prevention and health promotion.

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

Evidence has shown that supervised injection sites effectively reduce the risk of contracting and spreading blood-borne diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C, and reduce deaths from overdoses. Evidence has also shown that these sites do not adversely affect public safety and that, in certain cases, they actually promote it by reducing the injection of drugs in public, the violence associated with such behaviour, and waste related to drug use.

Safe injection sites strike a balance between public health and public safety goals. They also connect people in urgent need of health care with the services they need, such as primary health care and addiction treatment.

The NDP believes that any new legislation concerning safe injection sites must respect the spirit of the Supreme Court ruling, which this bill does not do.

As my colleague from Vancouver East has said, Bill C-2 contains as many criteria as there are letters in the alphabet, and those 26 criteria are so restrictive and biased that they are practically impossible to comply with.

The NDP believes that harm-reduction programs, including safe injection sites, should benefit from exemptions based on evidence that they improve community health and save people's lives, not on ideological beliefs.

To conclude, I would once again like to highlight the exceptional work that my colleague from Vancouver East has done on this. She has moved it forward step by step. We will not give up. We believe in working on this issue, because the lines are too vague, and the Supreme Court ruling is not being honoured.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I did not think I was speaking, but I will just go on the record as saying this about Bill C-2.

I was on the council for the city of Burlington for about 12 years. As a former councillor, it is important to have community input on where these injection sites can operate. Bill C-2 provides the opportunity for public and community input. Where these sites should be located is a community decision because they know better than we do in Ottawa.

Therefore, I am supportive of Bill C-2.

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 motion that this question be now put.

Second reading

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the last time this bill was brought up for debate was in January, and I did not get a chance to speak to it then. Since the government has waited six months to bring it back as an important issue it would like to have discussed, I am happy I have the opportunity to speak to it.

I also have a question for the government. What is the hurry? The last time the government wanted to talk about Bill C-2 was January 30, when it called it up for debate. Today, on June 17, there seems to be a huge hurry, because the government needs to stop debate again. It needs to curtail the debate that happens in this House, again. The government wants to make sure that it limits the debate in this House by moving yet another time allocation motion.

I just do not understand. If this is so important for the government, why did it not bring it up sooner? Why did the government wait six months? Now it is so important that it needs to stop debate and push it through the House. That just goes to show, once again, the lack of respect for Parliament.

I will come back to Bill C-2 now. This is a deeply flawed bill based on an anti-drug ideology and false fears for public safety. The government continues to talk about public safety concerns and how Bill C-2 would actually protect our communities and make them safer. In reality, that is not the truth. It really should be a health bill, not a public safety bill. Looking at the details and the actionable items that would come out of the bill, it should actually be a health-related bill.

This is yet another attempt by the Conservative government to rally its base. We witnessed its “Keep heroin out of our backyards” fundraising it did on its website just moments after the bill was introduced in the House. It just goes to show that the Conservatives are trying to continue fearmongering and rallying their base, raising money from their ideological standpoint.

The NDP feels that sound public policy should not be based on ideology but on facts and evidence. That is what we are pushing for.

I would like to talk a little about the background of Bill C-2, if I may, because my constituents who are listening at home may not know what Bill C-2 is all about or what safe injections sites are.

Canada only has one safe injection site in the country, and it is located in Vancouver. Since the opening of InSite in 2003, I believe, Vancouver has actually seen a 35% decrease in overdose deaths and has also had a decrease in crime, communicable disease infection rates, and relapse rates for drug users in the community around the safe injection site called InSite.

This bill is about the section 56 exemption InSite receives and that other drug injection sites would receive. InSite was originally granted the exemption in 2003 to operate under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act for medical and scientific purposes to provide services and to do research on the effectiveness of supervised injection facilities.

Section 56 is the section of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that grants the minister the authority to approve operations using drugs for medical, scientific, or law enforcement purposes.

In 2008, the section 56 exemption granted by the minister had expired, and the minister of health at that time denied InSite's renewal of the section 56 exemption, which of course triggered a series of court cases in which the B.C. Supreme Court ruled that InSite should be granted the exemption. We then had the Federal Court appeal to the B.C. Court of Appeal, which also ruled that InSite should stay open.

I do not want to talk too much more about the background, but I want to make sure that people at home in Scarborough know what I am talking about.

The Supreme Court ruling said that InSite and other supervised injection sites must be granted the section 56 exemption where they decrease the risk of death and disease and where there is little or no evidence that they would have a negative impact on public safety. Even the Supreme Court decision showed that there was no decrease in public safety but rather that it could help the community. The Supreme Court decision in 2011 refused the government's argument. The Conservatives had tried for four years to force the closure of InSite.

I mentioned some of the statistics, but I have more. For example, between 1987 and 1993, the rates of overdose deaths in Vancouver had increased from 16 deaths per annum to 200 deaths per annum. That is from evidence provided to the Supreme Court. However, the rate of overdose deaths in east Vancouver had dropped 35% since InSite had opened. That is just from the one site. This information was from Marshall, Milloy, Wood, Montaner, and Kerr and published in The Lancet in 2011.

Over a one-year period, 2,171 referrals were made for InSite users. They did not just use the services of the safe injection site under the supervision of health care professionals but actually took it one step further. More than 2,000 people sought addiction counselling or were able to receive other types of support services.

There was a significant improvement in the lives of the people who live in the Vancouver area near InSite and a significant improvement in the safety of the community, because there was also a significant drop in the number of discarded syringes, injection-related litter, and people injecting on the streets one year after InSite opened.

Injection drug users who use InSite are 70% less likely to share needles. This statistic came from Kerr et al, who I mentioned earlier, in 2005. The internationally known best practice to reduce the rate of HIV-AIDS is to reduce the sharing of needles. This has been proven to be what is happening in the Vancouver area around InSite.

Going back to the Supreme Court decision, it refused the arguments made by the government. The Supreme Court said that if it supported the closure of InSite, it would actually be violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, because it would prohibit Canadians from having access to health care services that were making them healthier. To stop the provision of these services would increase the danger to their lives.

We are supposed to be prudent law-makers. We have a fiduciary responsibility to the constituents we represent and to all Canadians to make sure that we are doing the due diligence needed to put forth laws that make our country better and make communities safer and healthier. The bill before us would not do that. The Supreme Court's ruling was quite clear in making that argument.

The Conservative government likes to talk about NIMBYism, “not in my backyard”, or “we do not want heroine in our backyards, do we?”

[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 lifesaving 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.

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.

Bill C-2—Time Allocation Motion

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, some drug traffickers in Montreal are getting very greedy and are trying to increase profits by selling low quality drugs. This caused a massive increase in deaths associated with these bad drugs.

I am pleased to support the government's desire to punish these drug traffickers and put them in prison, and especially those greedy ones. However, Bill C-2 also deals with public health.

The minister said that he was proud that we had adopted 10 other Supreme Court recommendations, but that is the problem: it turns a public health issue into a punishment issue.

The NDP wants to combat this dangerous aspect of illegal drug use by making this a public health issue. When the government puts an end to debate like this, it is maintaining this confusion between public health and punishment.

Why is it so important to turn a public health issue into a punishment issue?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to see how the government House leader acts in sort of a flippant and dismissive way when he reads this motion. It is no wonder, as this is the 74th time since 2011 that the government has introduced closure on a piece of legislation before the House. That means that most of its legislation has been rammed through, forced through by closure, because it cannot bear to have a proper comprehensive debate in the House of Commons by members of Parliament from all parties on any government legislation. It is bent on the idea that it has to ram it through.

Bill C-2, which is an amendment to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, is a particularly important bill because it follows a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada concerning safer injection sites in this country. As we have seen with other legislation, most notably Bill C-36 recently, which also has to do with a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada concerning laws pertaining to prostitution in this country, this is yet another bill in this House that basically does not stand the test of the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada.

I would ask the minister why the government has decreed that this bill will not go to the health committee where it should go, because it is a matter pertaining to the health and well-being of Canadians who are very much at risk and who have been marginalized, rather than going to the public safety committee. That demonstrates the conclusion that the government sees this as just another law and order measure, as opposed to a measure that is affecting the health of people. Why were people not properly consulted on this bill, such as front-line service workers, so that we would have the benefit of that in terms of debating the bill? Why will it now go to the public safety committee instead of where it should be going, which is for a thorough examination at the Standing Committee on Health?

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have another opportunity to respond to the Thursday question from the hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster.

I know how proud he claims to be about showing up to work. In fact, though, the New Democrats seem to have a spotty record on that. Last evening, that very member rose to speak to our government's bill to protect our communities and exploited persons—that is Bill C-36—and after one whole minute he moved to adjourn the House. He said we should all go home. Maybe that is the parliamentary equivalent of taking one's ball and wanting to go home when one is unhappy with how things are going in another meeting.

In any event, we did all dutifully troop into the House to vote on that at 6 p.m. However, what was very revealing was that only 61 of those 98 New Democrats stood in their places to vote. A few of them were missing their shifts, oddly. We did not find that on the Conservative side. In fact, we just had two votes in the House, and the number of New Democrats who were not standing in their places was very similar to that.

Therefore, when I ask myself who is not showing up for work, I can say it is not the Conservatives not showing up; it is, in fact, the New Democrats.

However, following the popular acclaim of last week's Thursday statement, I would like to recap what we have actually accomplished in the House since last week in terms of the legislative agenda.

Bill C-37, the riding name change act, 2014, which was compiled and assembled through the input of all parties, was introduced and adopted at all stages.

Bill C-31, the economic action plan, act no. 1, was adopted at both report stage and, just moments ago, at third reading.

Bill C-24, the strengthening Canadian citizenship act, was concurred in at report stage.

Bill C-20, the Canada-Honduras economic growth and prosperity act, was passed at third reading. Of course, the NDP tried to slow down its passage, but Conservatives were able to get around those efforts, as I am sure the 50 New Democrats on vigil in the House last night fondly appreciate, and we were able to extend our hours because there were, again, not even 50 New Democrats here in the House to stand in their places to block that debate as they wanted to. So we did finish the Canada-Honduras bill that night, and were able to vote on it.

The government's spending proposals for the year were adopted by the House, and two bills to give these plans effect, Bill C-38 and BillC-39, were each passed at all stages.

Bill C-22, the energy safety and security act, was reported back from committee, and several other reports from committees were also tabled. As I understand, we will see Bill C-17, the protecting Canadians from unsafe drugs act, reported back from the health committee in short order.

Finally, this morning we virtually unanimously passed a motion to reappoint Mary Dawson as our Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner.

Sadly, though, the New Democrats did not heed my call last week to let Bill C-32, the victims bill of rights act, pass at second reading. We were treated, sadly, to only more words and no deeds from the NDP.

Turning to the business ahead, I am currently anticipating the following debates. This afternoon and tonight, we will finish the debate on Bill C-36, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, at second reading. That will be followed by third reading of Bill C-24 and second reading of Bill C-35, Justice for Animals in Service Act (Quanto's Law).

Tomorrow morning, we will debate Bill C-24, if necessary, and Bill C-18, Agricultural Growth Act, at second reading. After question period, we will get back to Bill C-32, and give the NDP one more chance to send the victims bill of rights to committee.

The highlight of Monday is going to be the report stage of Bill C-6, the Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act. Tuesday’s feature debate will be Bill C-2, the Respect for Communities Act, at second reading. Wednesday will see us finish third reading, I hope, of Bill C-6. During the additional time available those days—in addition to Thursday and Friday of next week—I will schedule any unfinished debates on Bill C-18, Bill C-32 and Bill C-35.

I will also try to schedule debates on Bill C-22 and Bill C-17, as well as other bills, such as Bill C-3, the Safeguarding Canada’s Seas and Skies Act, at third reading; Bill C-8, the Combating Counterfeit Products Act, at third reading; Bill C-12, the Drug-free Prisons Act, at second reading; Bill C-21, Red Tape Reduction Act, at second reading; Bill C-26, Tougher Penalties for Child Predators Act, at second reading; Bill S-2, Incorporation by Reference in Regulations Act, at second reading; Bill S-3, the Port State Measures Agreement Implementation Act, at second reading; and Bill S-4, the Digital Privacy Act—which I understand we will receive shortly from the other place—at second reading.

Extension of Sitting Hours

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will give a few very interesting examples. I talked about Bill C-32 earlier. The last time we studied it was on April 9. Three people spoke to this bill, which the government claims is fundamental and extremely important.

I cannot wait to see which of these bills will get more time than the others. Obviously it will be their pet projects, the ones they can get a lot of mileage out of.

There are other bills that we have not seen since January, such as Bill C-2. Three people spoke to Bill C-3 on May 8. No one has spoken to Bill C-6 yet. Three people spoke to Bill C-8 and no one has spoken to Bill C-10. However, they were approved in committee a very long time ago.

If the government believed in the fight against contraband tobacco, the bill would have been sent back to the House as soon as it left the committee. Since the bill was approved in committee, it could have been passed quickly by the House. We are going to have to pass it at the same time as a bunch of other bills.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, what an odd debate. I listened with interest to the speech by the hon. member for Burlington. He is the chair of the committee and I am the vice-chair.

I found some of his statements peculiar. The fundamental problem with the motion presently before the House is not the fact of staying until midnight. The NDP team has a reputation for hard work. Anyone who wants to entertain themselves by visiting my Facebook page would see that the people of Gatineau are actually advising me to slow down because they are worried about my health. Perhaps they are right, considering the flu I have at the moment. We in the NDP work very hard. A number of bills, for example, are before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, so that they can be debated in the House or in committee. It is not the work we are afraid of.

The cat is out of the bag. There are issues that our Conservative friends want to talk about, and they want to speak about them at length. Had I been asked, I would have said—before they even rose to speak—that I expected to see a great many Conservatives rise to speak in the House about Bill C-32. Why? Because it is an opportunity for the Conservatives to give Canadians the impression that they have been dealing with this issue—and this issue alone—for weeks, months and even years. They are the ones who stand up for victims. We are all deadbeats and have washed our hands of the problem. That is not true, though. Now, when workers’ rights were at stake, the Conservatives wanted to cut debate short.

The member said that nine bills had been passed and that he is embarrassed to return to Burlington. What I would say to him is that he is absolutely right to be embarrassed; the Conservatives did nothing with their majority aside from getting nine bills passed, and they had to resort to time allocation motions to ram the bills through. There is something not quite right with this government. The Conservatives are averse to debate. They do not like hearing opinions that do not coincide with their own. When the Conservatives too often hear something they disagree with, a red light suddenly goes on. We have had to debate many a time allocation motion. I do not know how many times I have taken part in debates in the House or how many speeches I have made expressing my dissatisfaction with the fact that we have been stripped of our right to speak.

The Conservatives made mention of Bill C-13. I am fortunate to be the NDP justice critic and to have had the opportunity to voice my opinion regarding this omnibus bill, right after the minister spoke. This is no small bill; on the contrary, it is approximately 50 pages long and has an impact on numerous other pieces of legislation. It does address the issue of cyberbullying, as the government likes to point out, but it goes much farther, so far that the committee is being flooded with requests for meetings. We hear all manner of experts warning us to be careful. That is what is missing in the House.

The Senate is referred to as a chamber of sober second thought, but we were not elected to this place in order to abdicate our duty to think. Members have a responsibility to be present in the House to voice and stand up for the opinions of their constituents. Canadians expect us to go about our work in an intelligent and thoughtful manner, to take the time to properly analyze bills. I am in favour of debating this bill in the House and referring it to committee for further consideration. More often than not, bills are analyzed at lightening speed.

The Conservatives will say that the House was given an opportunity to debate Bill C-13, the bill on cyberbullying, and thank God, especially given the time allocation motion that was foisted upon us so as to ram the bill through to committee.

Suddenly, things became urgent. Why urgent after the death of Rehtaeh Parsons, and yet not after the death of Amanda Todd? That was a question a witness asked us. The notion that the government would somehow need to act urgently does not really cut it with me; these things are more politically driven than they are concrete. It is a bit worrisome.

Bill C-13 is large and contains a number of disturbing provisions. When considered alongside the remarks made by the Conservative committee members, it leads me to believe that the Conservatives will not be very receptive to the many amendments proposed by expert witnesses. If past events are any indication, I am not very optimistic. Still, I am an optimistic woman by nature.

In light of this, I have trouble believing it when the government tells us, hand on heart, that its goal is to work harder. Working harder, for a Conservative, does not necessarily mean working more effectively and harder. It simply means that members end up working until midnight in order to discuss all the bills before the House, including those bills that have not been studied for an eternity.

For example, there is Bill C-2 on safe injection sites; Bill C-3 on marine transportation; Bill C-6, which implements the Convention on Cluster Munitions; Bill C-8 on counterfeit products; and Bill C-10 on contraband tobacco, which we finished studying in committee such a long time ago that I will have to reread all my material. Indeed, since then, we have studied so many other topics that I have almost had enough time to forget all about it. We will resume studying this bill at report stage. We could have covered it a long time ago. I have been waiting for some time for this stage to be completed in the House. Everything will have to be done over. It is a colossal waste of time for everyone concerned. There is also Bill C-11 on the hiring of injured veterans. If there is a category of people in our society who have huge needs, it certainly is our veterans.

Suddenly, the Conservatives are going to try and push all this through at once. The member for Burlington has done the math when it comes to the number of hours, and the government is going to try and give us a few hours for each bill. Then the government turns around and calls itself a champion of hard work. Well done, champion.

There is also Bill C-17, Vanessa’s law, about drug safety, an extremely important bill that must be debated; Bill C-18, concerning farm regulations; and Bill C-20, concerning the Canada-Honduras agreement, which is at report stage. I no longer even remember when I gave my last speech on that subject. It has already been a heck of a long time. The Conservatives have been in no rush, but all of a sudden, they are in a rush.

We will examine Bill C-21, concerning red tape for small businesses. The junior Minister of Tourism is travelling all over Canada to talk about the importance of eliminating red tape everywhere, while this bill is stuck in some office or other. It could have been debated a long time ago.

There is Bill C-22, concerning oil, gas and nuclear liability, and Bill C-24, concerning the Citizenship Act. These are bills that are announced to us with great fanfare at big press conferences, but then they stagnate and we do not see them again.

There is Bill C-26, about sexual predators. I expected that one would move quickly, because the Conservatives told us we had to work on this issue quickly. There is also Bill C-27, about hiring veterans in the public service. It is extremely important, I repeat, because it concerns a category of people in our society who have needs that are just as important.

Then there is Bill C-32, about the victims bill of rights. I think it is the reason why this government’s Motion No. 10 has no credibility at all. For a full year, I was treated to one press conference after another. If it was not the Prime Minister, it was the Minister of Justice with his senator from the other side. They told us they were going to work very hard, listen, set up panels and do everything we could wish for, and then they brought forth a charter that was denounced by many people, starting with victims, because they expected a lot more. That may be why the Conservatives kept their charter hidden for some time.

Apart from the minister, one Liberal and myself, no one has yet spoken on this subject. I am going to make a wager with my colleagues in the House. I expect there will be a time allocation motion on this. The Conservatives are going to rend their garments and plead that it is urgent, that it is extremely important and that it must be passed immediately, or the opposite will happen, because they will want to talk to us about it for hours on end. It becomes part of their narrative.

Every Conservative member wants to go back to their riding and have their householder and the excerpt from their speech in the House, which they made to show that they are protecting victims’ rights.

In the NDP, we want to talk about important issues and show that we could do even better than Bill C-32, specifically by amending it. We want to talk about the proposals made by the federal ombudsman for victims of crime. In fact, Bill C-32 does not contain a large percentage of her recommendations. A balance has to be struck. For every Conservative who speaks, the New Democrats will also speak.

When we want to talk about something, it is not important. That is the message we constantly get in the House, and, perhaps because we are approaching the end of the session, it is becoming extremely annoying, to put it mildly and stay within the bounds of parliamentary language.

It is appalling to see that people who are elected to represent the residents of their riding are silenced as often as we are by this government. We get told they are not interested. I have also heard the member for Burlington say—and I am going to talk to him about it again, in fact, at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights—that sometimes we just need to go and read because members all read pretty much the same thing.

If the people of Gatineau think the same thing as the people of Laval, I think it is important that this be pointed out. Who has more right than whom to speak in the House on a particular bill? There is something indecent about wanting to constantly silence people.

Sometimes, I tell the members opposite that they should stop imposing time allocation motions and motions to get things done, as they like to say. I very much liked the expression my colleague used yesterday, when he talked about motions that are “a licence for laziness”.

This is unpleasant. If they had taken the time spent on debating those motions and instead used the time to finish the debate on the bill that they were trying to stop from being debated, we would probably have finished. The fact is that not all members in the NDP caucus or the Liberal Party or the Green Party or whatever colour you like necessarily wish to speak.

However, if the government limits the speaking time of a single member who wishes to speak, we cannot claim to be living in a democratic system. That is what is known as the tyranny of the majority. I believe we have to stand up against that, loud and clear. Every time that happens here, we are going to speak out against it, in every way possible.

We are told that we could perhaps go faster. I listened to the Minister of Foreign Affairs say that, and what he said made sense, in some respects. The way that Manitoba and the NDP government operate makes sense. Those consensus-based approaches make sense.

Quebec managed to pass a bill on a very sensitive issue, end-of-life care, with the agreement of all parties. There was an election, and the members all agreed to reinstate the bill once the election was over. That is being discussed.

The problem here is that the people on the Conservative benches are not talking to the opposition parties. All they talk about is strategies. We keep wondering who is going to pull a fast one on us. They use roundabout tactics such as counting how many MPs are in the House, catching them off guard, and forcing a party leader to go testify before a committee. This is unprecedented—and they say they are democratic.

Then the Conservatives get all offended when we say that Motion No. 10 is total nonsense. This is not about giving us more time. This is about taking all of the bills—there are more on the agenda than have already been passed, and that took much longer than the amount of time we have between now and June 20—and making us think they are giving us more time. They are not giving us a thing. I do not believe in Conservative gifts, and nobody in Canada should believe in any Conservative gift whatsoever.

The truth is that the Conservatives are going to shove their agenda down our throats because they could not get through it in a mature, parliamentary, by-the-rules way. They could have said that the House leaders would discuss it and try to see if some of the bills were more palatable or if we could agree to pass some of them more quickly. Then the real committee work could have started.

It is true, for Bill C-13, we had a lot of witnesses. However, I am not yet ready to give a seal of approval to the government in power, indicating that the bill has been studied in depth, because we still have the entire amendment stage. I believe that what the other side wants to accept is under so much remote control that the committee is not really doing the work. Instead, the higher-ups are dictating to our colleagues opposite what they have to do, while at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, we are trying to bring out the best in the bill.

I have not even mentioned the upcoming Bill C-35, dealing with service animals. Bill S-2 deals with statutory instruments and may not seem like much. However, it is a very significant bill that is going to change an entire way of doing things in terms of regulations. We know that regulations have an impact on the everyday lives of our fellow Canadians in all kinds of areas: the environment, transportation, health and what have you. This is a real concern. I bet that we will analyze it very quickly. That concerns me.

The fact that we are extending our hours until midnight does not encourage any belief on my part that we will be having constructive debates followed by more productive work in committee. That is why the Conservatives have this problem with credibility. We are not the only ones saying so. When their measures are challenged in court, the Conservatives get slammed.

I will take a deep breath and take a little time to say that perhaps we should review our way of doing things. Our friends in the House may not know this, but the bill on prostitution may well be coming our way next week. We hear whispering in the corridors that the government wants the bill passed. It is huge, though, since it comes as a response to a Supreme Court of Canada decision. Everyone in the House knows that passing the bill will not be easy because there are people on all sides of that issue. I would bet that we are going to have just a few hours of debate before they pitch it—to put it very nicely—to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. We can expect a hot and heavy summer on that one.

Extending the sitting hours until midnight just to work harder is one more tactic that is just like their time allocation motions, closure motions and any other kind of motion they can think of. It is part of the Conservatives' bag of undemocratic tricks. They will force these tricks on the House, but not on themselves, as ministers. Based on how the motion is written, I think it will be quite humourous. It will be interesting to see how many of them will be here in the House to happily participate in the debates on all the topics I mentioned, instead of at a cocktail party. That is why it is extremely important that we amend this motion.

Seconded by the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard, I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “place” and substituting the following:

(b) when a recorded division is demanded in respect of a debatable motion, including any division arising as a consequence of the application of Standing Order 61(2), but not including any division in relation to the Business of Supply, Private Members’ Business, or arising as a consequence of an order made pursuant to Standing Order 57,

(i) before 5:30 p.m. on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, it shall stand deferred until the time immediately before the time provided for Private Members’ Business at that day’s sitting,

(ii) after 5:30 p.m. on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, it shall stand deferred until the time immediately before the time provided for Private Members’ Business at the next day’s sitting,

(iii) after 5:30 p.m. on a Thursday, or at any time on a Friday, it shall stand deferred until 6:30 p.m. on the following Monday.

Bill C-2--Notice of time allocation motion

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to advise that agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Order 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the second reading stage of C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the Crown will propose, at the next sitting, a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at the said stage.

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to speak to budget 2014 and outline some of our government's key points from our economic action plan.

Six years ago, Canada and the world faced an economic crisis unlike any seen in generations, perhaps the worst we had seen since the Great Depression. Rather than hope that the crisis would resolve itself, rather than make glib statements about how budgets balance themselves, we chose to act. We chose to assess the problem, develop a concrete action plan, and take strong action.

We chose to invest in much-needed infrastructure as a time-limited stimulus. This action plan put our neighbours to work. It built for our community, certainly in the GTA, roads, bridges, water pipes, and community centres. I was young and determined and led my community, the sixth-largest city in our country, to match the Prime Minister's leadership and undertake an ambitious building plan.

Today the GTA stands as the beneficiary of that much-needed infrastructure. This past weekend, in fact, a neighbour of mine who used a swimming pool that generously carries my name on a bronze plaque at the front entrance shared with me how her family has used that pool each and every week for years. Results speak for themselves, and Canada has led the world in pulling out of the recession and rebuilding prosperity.

However, back then there were many naysayers. There were quite a few so-called experts, some advocating that we should hoard money and take it out of the money supply. We understood that was not the prudent course. We chose to show leadership and make time-limited investments immediately, investments that would be needed to be built anyway. Those investments would be accelerated by a few years, and we could plow the money back into the Canadian economy and put our neighbours to work. In fact, we could save dollars, because we would not be competing at some future date with the private sector and ramping up the costs for steel and concrete. We could instead choose to invest the money immediately and potentially save taxpayers some money.

Canada's economic action plan invested billions of dollars into local communities to strengthen Canada's infrastructure and promote local business investment. These investments were necessary to position Canada to strengthen and weather the storm. However, even during those challenging economic days of 2008, even as our government stood firm on its commitment to returning Canada's finances back to balance by 2015, even then there were many skeptics who doubted it was possible—yet look at where we are today.

Today I am proud to stand before all members of the House to indicate that we expect to be back to balance on time, as promised by our great Minister of Finance. In fact, under economic action plan 2014, our government's deficit will be eliminated, and a surplus of over $6 billion is anticipated.

It is important to put this into perspective. Thanks to the stewardship of our Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, our government made some challenging but responsible choices. We have reduced wasteful and redundant government and we have reduced spending by some $9 billion through prudent fiscal management and administrative efficiencies.

Balanced budgets promote stability, business investment, confidence, and lower taxes. Most importantly, they protect families. Unlike what happened under the Liberal government of the 1990s, the fiscal recovery in Canada has not been, and will not be, borne on the backs of hard-working families and future generations. To be clear, we have not cut health transfers to the provinces. In fact, what we have done through these most challenging economic times is honoured our word and increased transfers to the provinces. By the end of the decade, they will reach an historic $40 billion. My family, my mother, and my children rely on our health care system, as do all Canadians, and Conservatives are firm and committed to the priorities of average middle-class Canadians.

Economic action plan 2014 continues to build upon our government's strong record of supporting everyday Canadians. Budget 2014 will further improve the quality of life for Canadian families by expanding access to vital services, increasing consumer protection, reducing taxes, and, most importantly, promoting job growth.

For example, we will further enhance employment insurance sickness benefits for parental benefit claimants. Beginning this year, people who receive benefits to care for critically ill parents will receive enhanced access to sickness benefits.

Disproportionately, the challenge of taking care of family members seems to fall to women, so I am very proud of our government's initiative on this front.

Similarly, economic action plan 2014 will continue supporting families who seek to grow through adoption. In recognition of the many expenses related to the adoption process, our budget will enhance the adoption expense tax credit up to $15,000 per child.

These measures outlined in our budget build upon our record of putting families first, and since 2006, our Conservative government has taken many steps to improve the quality of life for Canadians of all ages. For example, in 2006 and since then, we have reduced the GST from 7% to 6% to 5%. That saves Canadians money every single day, every time they make a purchase.

Our government also established the tax-free savings account, strengthening Canadians' ability to save for their future.

We have introduced dozens of new tax credits to help stretch the family budget even further, initiatives like the universal child care benefit, the family caregiver tax credit, the textbook tax credit, and the public transit tax credit.

As I indicated earlier today, I am the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, and we are vitally focused on the health and safety of all Canadians. I am pleased to report that this budget will invest more in Canada's world-class health care system while keeping Canadians safe and well.

Canada has one of the finest health care systems in the world. We expect the best from our health care professionals and they expect the best from us. That is why our government is sending more health transfers back to the provinces than any government before. These investments will ensure that the provinces and territories have the necessary capacity to deliver vital medical services to Canadians when they need it the most.

Another area of prime importance is Canada's food supply system. This budget will invest almost $400 million in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to further enhance food safety. We all have a shared goal of ensuring that the food we purchase from grocery shelves and place before our families at the kitchen table is safe. We will invest $153 million to strengthen the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's food safety information programs. We will provide funding to hire 200 new food inspectors, and we will invest almost $31 million to establish a food safety information network so that we can link provincial bodies together to increase safety and our knowledge of hazardous events.

The health and safety of Canadians is not limited to the food we eat; it includes the communities in which we live. I am proud that this budget has considered the important work of my committee and will invest almost $45 million to combat prescription drug abuse across Canada.

Sadly, prescription drug abuse is a growing danger in Canadians' lives and sometimes targets the most vulnerable in our society. Prescription drug abuse has effects on all segments, all ages, from seniors to adults to teens and even very young children, and many families are forced to suffer in silence without adequate resources to support them or their loved ones. As a government and as a society, it is our responsibility to ensure that these individuals and their families are protected and have access to programs to help them cope with these very difficult challenges.

By investing in and expanding the national anti-drug strategy, we will ensure that Canadians and their families are properly supported.

It is not only dangers from prescription drug abuse that I am concerned about. A growing number of individuals are becoming addicted and are dependent on illicit drugs such as heroin. Our government has taken concrete, strong action to ensure that we do not continue their addictions, but instead, that we intervene and try to help these people back to a drug-free life.

I am pleased that our Minister of Health and our Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness have taken decisive action to keep our streets safe from dangerous narcotics. Through the introduction of Bill C-2 respect for communities act, which I spoke to earlier this session, we will help protect Canadians from the dangers of illegal drugs, including those who struggle with drug addiction.

In a nutshell, I believe that economic action plan 2014 strikes a much needed balance between balancing our books, paying down the debt, and making the crucial investments that average hard-working Canadians have come to expect from our government.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This committee has only been discussing Bill C-525 for an hour, and I think we can already conclude that it could be described as amateurish, and was written on the back of a napkin. As we have heard, no one was consulted. Even the experts were not asked for their opinion.

I would like to point out that the author of the bill himself took off when we had only one hour to hear from people who know about labour relations. He did not want to hear what they had to say. That in itself is quite extraordinary.

It is our opinion that there should have been a serious process, that both the employer side and the union side should have been consulted. We should also have the time, in committee, to hear from people who know about labour relations.

This is why Ms. Sims asked last week for five hours to hear from witnesses. As things stand, we will not be able to hear from the people we should be hearing from, including Unifor, the largest private sector union, the USW, Quebec unions, such as the FTQ and the CSN, as well as labour relations experts from Quebec. None of those people will be able to express their point of view.

I would nonetheless like to ask Mrs. Picard her opinion on one point.

Bill C-525 introduces rules for decertifying a union, which is used to get rid of it or destroy it. According to the rules as they are currently drafted, the union would be thrown out even if 54% of workers voted to keep the union and no one voted in favor of its elimination.

I do not know if these are democratic rules coming from North Korea or some other country called “Absurdistan“, but I would like to know what repercussions this may have on the members that you represent.

[Hassan Yussuff, Secretary-Treasurer, Canadian Labour Congress]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

On behalf of the Canadian Labour Congress and its 3.3 million members, we want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to present our views regarding the private member's bill, Bill C-525.

The CLC brings together Canada's national and international unions, along with our provincial and territorial federations of labour and our 130 labour councils across the country. Our members work in virtually all sectors of the Canadian economy within occupations including workers under federal jurisdiction.

Bill C-525 makes three significant changes to the current certification process in Canada: one, it adds an unfair, redundant, mandatory vote, giving employers time to interfere with the workers' choice for collective representation; two, it imposes a threshold of 45% to access a certification vote, a threshold that a committee of experts from the International Labour Organization, the ILO, has found to be excessive; three, it proposes that the voting rules require a majority of workers—not voters—to form and retain a union, which is undemocratic. It considers workers who don't vote as casting a “no” vote ballot on the question of having a union. This gives those who don't vote power over those who do.

The CLC is of the opinion that the proposed Bill C-525 will make it virtually impossible to form a new union in the federal jurisdiction. It will thus restrict workers' freedom of association and collective bargaining rights protected by section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The bill politicizes labour relations and starts a dangerous pendulum swing in the federal labour relations regime. It disturbs labour peace in the workplace and will promote confrontation instead of cooperation. It will reduce productivity and increase intimidation from employers while costing business and the federal government. It will give an undemocratic right to a minority of workers to dissolve a union in a workplace and will contradict fundamental principles of our democracy. It will continue the deterioration of working conditions and increase income inequality in Canada.

For all these reasons we call on members of Parliament to defeat this bill.

In support of this bill, MP Calkins makes several claims that members of this committee should examine more closely.

First, Calkins claims that the federal legislation has lagged behind that of our provincial counterparts. This is false. The majority of jurisdictions in Canada use a card-based certification process, with many moving back and forth between card, check, and mandatory vote over many years. This pendulum swing politicizes labour relations between employers and workers and creates instability. We echo the finding of Andrew Sims in the 1995 report examining potential reform to the Canada Labour Code. Sims stated that swings in the labour relations pendulum with successive changes in government will, over time, adversely impact a labour relations system that is working rather well.

Second, MP Calkins claims that the current certification and decertification process has to be changed because it leaves open the opportunity for employees to be intimidated. He refers to a mountain of complaints from workers being intimidated during a certification process. The current federal certification law protects workers against intimidation from other employees, a union, or their employer. A search of CIRB decisions shows no evidence of a mountain of complaints from workers being intimidated during the certification process. In actual fact, most cases of intimidation and unfair labour practice during the certification process involved the employer. Here are two simple but well-publicized examples: retail giant Target showing anti-union videos to employees, and Couche-Tard's CEO video threatening employees with closure and layoffs should they consider unionizing. Amending the certification process will increase the opportunity for intimidation mainly coming from employers.

Third, MP Calkins claims that Bill C-525 will strike a balance in the certification and the decertification process. How does the MP know that these proposed changes in Bill C-525 will achieve the right balance in labour relations? The sponsor of the bill lacks relevant experience in labour relations. Labour relations between employers and workers are very complex in nature.

To be effective, labour relations laws have to reach a balance between the interests of all stakeholders, and this balance is best reached when all parties are involved. Neither employer nor worker groups has called for changes to the certification and revocation process. They have not been consulted by MP Calkins for these proposed changes.

The current federal labour regime works relatively well. Since 2005-06, 85% of certification processes mandated by the CIRB, Canada Industrial Relations Board, were conducted without a secret ballot vote.

Finally, MP Calkins called for more democracy, but the bill does not respect two elements of our democratic system: the principle of political equality, by giving people who don't vote the power of those who do, and the principle that the greatest number of votes is required to win the election.

The fact that the voting rules proposed under Bill C-525 require the majority of workers, not voters, as a threshold for having a union is unfair, hypocritical, and undemocratic. If it passes, the outrageous part of this bill is it will require a union to gain more than the majority of votes. It will do this because it will consider workers who don't bother to vote as casting a "no" ballot on whether to have a union. This will arbitrarily assign a position to those who don't vote, giving them power over those who do.

Furthermore, if the proposed bill passes, an employer could simply find ways to convince employees not to attend the vote. It would then be safe to assume that all those who attended the vote support the union. Such a process defeats the entire rationale for a secret ballot and encourages employers to intimidate and commit unfair labour relations against workers.

Even worse and more hypocritical, the proposed section 96 of the Public Service Labour Relations Act will decertify a union if only 45% of employees in a bargaining unit have not voted in favour of continued representation. Again this rejects the general principle favoured by our democratic society that winning the most votes is required to win an election.

In conclusion, we urge the federal government to stop the introduction of one-off changes to the Canada Labour Code. Amendments should not be made through private members' bills. They should be made with concerted, pre-legislative consultation that engages employers, unions, and government. Bill C-525 is tampering with the labour relations system that has worked very well for many decades in the federal jurisdiction.

Thank you so much.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon we will continue to the second of our four days of second reading debate on Bill C-23. I do want to draw attention that debate is on the fair elections act because that is significantly more than the five hours that the NDP critic yesterday proposed that the House should have as a debate at this stage.

We think that four days is better than five hours. We want more debate. Unfortunately, we did lose the debate this morning because of the delay and obstruction tactics from the opposition. However, we are optimistic that we will be able to proceed and have further debate today.

In fact, we would hope to have it also tomorrow and on Monday. The fair elections act, as we have all heard, will ensure that everyday citizens, everyday Canadians, remain in charge of Canadian democracy. Of course, it has had strong reviews, including an A minus from a former chief electoral officer for Canada.

Tuesday morning will see the ninth day of consideration of Bill C-2, Respect for Communities Act. It has now become painfully clear that the opposition will not agree to these common-sense rules that allow communities to have a say in whether a drug-injection site should be opened in their midst.

Mr. Speaker, the highlight of next week will be the budget presentation, with the hon. Minister of Finance delivering that in this chamber at 4 p.m. on Tuesday.

Wednesday and Friday of next week will be the first and second days of debate on the budget in the House.

I understand that Bill C-15, Northwest Territories devolution act, will be reported back from committee shortly. We will see that it gets considered at report stage, and hopefully third reading. At the moment, I am setting next Thursday aside for that purpose.

Respect for Communities Act

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

We just called orders of the day. We are starting on Bill C-2. Between myself and the table, we are trying to get situated in terms of which party was next on the list on resuming debate.

Indeed, at this point on resuming debate, the next slot up is a Conservative slot, so we will resume debate with the next Conservative speaker.

This is Bill C-2 on the previous question. Accordingly, when we first recognized the hon. member for Winnipeg North, he had already spoken at this stage of the bill, so we will go to the next speaking slot, which is the Conservatives. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Kootenay—Columbia.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to get the opportunity to speak to Bill C-2. We are somewhat surprised that the bill has actually been called at this time, as we had anticipated that we would be into a recess. I understand if it is the will of the chamber to pass the bill.

I am not quite sure if I have already spoken to the bill at this stage. Would you get confirmation from the table, Mr. Speaker? I would not want to be speaking twice on this particular bill.

The House resumed from January 27 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 the question be now put.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, first let me wish you and everybody else a happy new year.

This afternoon, we will continue the NDP's opposition day. Tomorrow, we will consider Bill C-8, the Combating Contraband Products Act, at report stage and third reading. Should we need to call a second bill, we will resume debate on Bill C-2, the Respect for Communities Act, which went through its seventh day of debate on Monday.

Monday and Tuesday shall be the third and fourth allotted days. Wednesday and Thursday, we plan to continue the second reading debate on Bill C-20, the Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act.

As for the invitation from my friend, I certain would not want to tread upon the very important responsibilities of the whips, and I am sure they will carry out those discussions among themselves.

Respect for Communities Act

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his speech and for reminding us to choose our words wisely. We must think things through before making decisions for the common good.

I would like to point out that InSite is innovative. It meets the needs of the community and it came out of the Vancouver community. When it comes to health, we have to be more and more innovative. I think that Canada is a country that could be innovative and play a leadership role. What is more, we are not alone. This type of site has been set up in a number of cities in Europe and Australia. These sites have been recognized as helping vulnerable groups. They are accepted by the community because they improve the health of their clients, reduce the numbers of overdose deaths, and reduce drug use in public, open spaces.

I would like my colleague to elaborate on the innovativeness of a centre like InSite and the importance of it being community-based. It is too bad that a bill like C-2 would eliminate a good initiative.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, since we are here for the first time this year, allow me to wish a happy new year to you, to my colleagues, to the staff of the House of Commons and to the people at home.

At the beginning of the year, we make resolutions. Mr. Speaker, you inspire us with good resolutions every day when you begin with the prayer asking the Almighty to give us the wisdom to make good laws, if I am not mistaken.

This is what should guide us in this debate and in the debates on every bill. We are only here for a while. What will history remember of our Parliament? How will we have conducted our debates? What legislative legacy will we leave? I would not want people to remember that confusion prevailed, or that we did not act in the best interests of all Canadians. The fact is that everyone wants our society to thrive, to prosper and to be happy. I do not think we wish anything else.

This brings us to an important question. How do we define public interest in a bill, and in this one in particular? I want to quote American journalist Walter Lippmann, when he spoke about public interest, because the definition of that expression is very subjective. Here is a taste:

The public interest may be presumed to be what [people] would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally and acted disinterestedly and benevolently.

We could add to that the ability to see the long-term results of action taken. Clearly, this is a little utopian and unrealistic. However, that is the direction we should be pursuing when considering a bill like this one.

This bill clearly shows the tectonic plates that are grinding against one another, in other words, people's values, which are not necessarily the same, and the law, which the Supreme Court clearly defined, when we are talking about the right to life, liberty or security, and the desired result or what we understand of an action, bill or institution.

Beyond everything else we could say, the real question we should be asking ourselves is this: are we going in the right direction? Will this bill, as it is currently written, allow us to improve the plight of our communities? That is the important question. If we vote for this bill, are we improving the plight of our diverse communities?

Here on this side of the House, we believe that things can be done differently. It is always a little strange to see such conflicting actions. This government boasts about eliminating red tape, but this bill introduces more red tape. The government is not very consistent. I do not know where it is going with this.

Is the government using red tape as a smoke screen, to hide its real intentions? I do not know. However, is creating red tape on an issue of public health really the best way to serve Canadians and our communities?

However, we have a lot of tools at our disposal here in the 21st century. We have knowledge that our ancestors did not have. We have a professional, coherent and non-partisan public administration to help us in our decision-making. I have the impression that we are taking a step backward, rather than moving forward, when it comes to putting public policy together.

Let me give you some examples where I think the government is not necessarily moving in the right direction to illustrate what I mean by that because public interest really is at the heart of this bill.

We have a beautiful bridge in my riding, the Quebec Bridge, that is being left to rust. Is it in the public interest to reduce the lifespan of a metal bridge that is also an image on postcards in my region? Some would say that it is in the public interest to do so, but I do not think it is. Public interest is preserving, maintaining, and taking care of our infrastructure, not being involved in legal wrangling.

Take funding post-secondary studies for example. We say we want to live in a knowledge society. Are we doing what it takes to make post-secondary education accessible to anyone who wants it, regardless of financial capabilities? The question can be asked now. I would like to know that we are contributing to a society where everyone has the opportunity to grow.

Here is where I make the link to Bill C-2. We have constituents who have a serious problem with hard drugs. The current solutions are helping those people to get off the drugs. What does the government do? It chooses to forget that, look away, play partisan politics , withdraw into certain values and not accept reality and see what it could do better. I find that fundamentally deplorable.

Beyond everything we want to do and everything we want, the wisdom to pass legislation in the public interest every day is characterized by the sincere desire to sometimes set aside our own personal perspectives.

We all have opinions on anything and everything, and our values influence our decisions. However, we are not here to promote our values. We are here to serve the public and to look beyond our own individual thoughts to make suggestions that would improve the life for the Canadians we each represent, in each of our different ridings. The public interest is what should guide our actions here.

I have serious doubts that we are headed in the right direction in this case, especially since the government is not respecting the spirit of the Supreme Court decision with Bill C-2. I would have liked the government to find a solution within the parameters set by the Supreme Court. However, that is not the case. Did the Supreme Court go against public interest? Is that truly what my colleagues think? I do not think so. I believe that the Supreme Court set parameters in order to determine the direction we should take. Unfortunately, this bill does not contribute to the public interest.

I would like to be able to say that this bill may improve public safety, but I am not convinced, since needles will end up all over the place. I would like to be able to say that this bill would contribute to public safety, but the government is throwing people whose only desire is to satisfy a temporary, urgent need out onto the street. I would like to be able to say that this bill is full of wisdom, but is it wise to want to go backwards and to refuse to listen to experts? Is it wise to not do something that is already considered around the world to be a good practice? Unfortunately, I think that the Conservative government got it wrong.

I thank the public for listening to my speech. I hope that everyone will have the wisdom to vote for good legislation in 2014.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is my first opportunity in 2014 to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-2, which is an important bill.

I would also like to take this opportunity to wish you a happy new year, Mr. Speaker. Happy new year to all the members of the House of Commons and all Quebeckers and Canadians.

What do people wish for in the new year? They wish for good health.

The government's most important role is to look after the health and safety of its people. We are talking about public health and safety. Here we are again dealing with a Conservative government that has taken an extremely ideological position, a position that may well do away with centres or prevent the creation of more centres that improve public health and safety.

Instead of moving forward, the Conservative government is backtracking. Why? Because science, reality, facts and research are not important for this government. Indeed, we have seen this with employment insurance. No impact studies were done. The government is gutting everything. We have also seen it with the tax credit for labour-sponsored funds. No impact studies were done. In addition, no rational and logical arguments could explain that decision.

Once again, when it comes to justice and public safety, the Conservatives are more inclined to rely on fear, on the prejudices and fears of some people, rather than on real results and documented experiments. That is what we are seeing with Bill C-2.

This is the second time I have had an opportunity to address my colleagues on this bill. I am going to repeat the same arguments and hope that I can hammer them in, like a nail. Basically, Bill C-2 is a thinly veiled and almost crass attempt to put an end to the work and practices of supervised injection sites. Right now, there is only one site in Canada: the site in Vancouver known as InSite.

The bill would allow the minister to come up with a list of criteria that is so long, detailed and onerous that in the end it would practically prohibit the sites.

It is odd because this goes completely against the spirit and the letter of the Supreme Court ruling. According to the Supreme Court, under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the government was to uphold the exception under the law for maintaining the supervised injection sites, so that people with addictions can get this type of help. It is their right to have access to it. The law must not ban this in any way.

The government is trying to circumvent the Supreme Court ruling by putting up obstacles to ensure that similar sites are not set up in Toronto, Montreal or other cities, even though public health authorities want to have the opportunity of copying what is being done in Vancouver. Why? Because it is working. Most importantly, it saves lives. We are looking at legislation that might prevent us from saving lives in Toronto, Montreal or other major urban centres in Canada.

The NDP thinks that facts and studies should be the foundation for public policy making. We cannot play with people's lives by fearmongering. More than 30 studies published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal have described the benefits of InSite in Vancouver.

I have no idea what it is going to take to convince the government. Thirty studies published in the top international medical journals in the world is not enough. Doctors are unanimous and the Canadian Nurses Association is unanimous. However, the government does not want to hear it and is incapable of listening or seeing reality when it does not fall in line with its regressive Conservative ideology.

What is more, studies on more than 70 injection sites in Europe or Australia have observed similar benefits to the ones we see at InSite. It is therefore not an exception.

The NDP believes that other centres can provide similar services. Appropriate supervision would help our constituents.

The Conservatives say that it makes no sense to help people to inject themselves with drugs. However, we know where those people are going to do it if they do not do it at a supervised injection site. They are not going to stop doing it. They will go into back alleys and parks. Then our children will be in danger of coming across contaminated syringes, pricking themselves with them and becoming ill, when it all could have been avoided with something quite simple.

Sometimes, things happen in ways that do not seem to be purely coincidental. For example, last month, the day after the session of Parliament came to an end, Canada Post was announcing all its cuts to services for Canadians. An hour later, the Minister of Transport had already sent out her media release saying that she was in agreement. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but it seems as though a lot of information is being exchanged with a public institution that is supposed to be independent of government.

What happened after Bill C-2 was introduced as a way to rally the Conservative base? We saw a Conservative campaign called “Keep heroin out of our backyards”. It was launched on their website. It was important to support Bill C-2 because it was going to keep heroin away from our children. However, the opposite is true. The opposite has been proven and documented. We are going to say it over and over again in the hope that the Conservatives will finally listen to reason.

What exactly has happened in Vancouver since the site opened? We have seen deaths by overdose drop by 35%. That is a direct effect. Why did the authorities in Vancouver decide to open the injection site? They did so because there had been a huge increase in the number of deaths by overdose between 1987 and 1992, a twelve-fold increase. At the time, the Vancouver area was also seeing a dramatic rise in the rates of communicable diseases, such as hepatitis A, B and C, and HIV/AIDS, among injection drug users.

The centre was opened and we started seeing a tangible change very quickly. The centre has helped reverse the trend of overdose deaths, which had been on the rise. The number is now going down. This is socially accepted in the community, in the area, and by police officers, more than 80% of whom support the existence of InSite. The site does not simply meet the needs of a drug addict. It also tries to help that individual recover from their addiction.

In 2007, the OnSite detox centre was added to the facility. People who go to the InSite supervised injection centre are nearly twice as likely to enrol in a detox program than someone who uses drugs in the street, alley or park.

In 2008, InSite's exemption under section 54 expired, and the Minister of Health asked InSite to renew the exemption. This decision triggered a series of trials that must have cost taxpayers a lot of money. The B.C. Supreme Court ruled that InSite should receive another exemption. The federal government took the case to the Court of Appeal, then, in 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that the minister's decision to close InSite violated its clients' rights, as guaranteed by the charter. It also declared that the minister's decision was, “arbitrary...because it undermines the very purposes of the CDSA — the protection of health and public safety.”

The Supreme Court of Canada based its decision on section 7 of the charter, which states that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person. The court stated:

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

After the court rendered its decision, public health authorities and organizations in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal made plans and asked to open safe injection sites. They know that. Public health authorities in those municipalities are saying that the sites fulfill a need, that they will improve the social fabric and the ties people have with one another, that they will reduce the risk for children and that they will save lives.

I have a hard time understanding why the Conservative government keeps going when it is clearly moving in the wrong direction with Bill C-2.

The Canadian Medical Association said the following:

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 NDP believes that peoples' lives and public safety should be our main concern. That is why we must fight Bill C-2, which is a step in the wrong direction.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert for her speech.

The Canadian Medical Association is opposed to Bill C-2 and therefore supports the NDP's position. The Canadian Nurses Association also supports the NDP's position. I would like my colleague, who has plenty of experience in the health field, to tell us why it is important to oppose this bill in order to defend public health.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is the second time I have risen in this chamber to debate Bill C-2, which was introduced as Bill C-65 at the end of the parliamentary session.

I am still very disappointed with Bill C-2, which I think once again represents what the Conservative government is all about. It governs the country according to its own ideology and not for the benefit of Canadians.

This Conservative government is ignoring the scientific evidence around the ruling of the highest court in our country. It is absurd. This bill is another thinly veiled attempt to put an end to supervised injection sites, as the government has already tried to do with InSite in Vancouver.

This government is not hesitating to use taxpayers' money to appeal rulings that do not tally with its ideologies, as it did in 2008. I have a lot of questions. The Supreme Court of Canada recognized the positive impact that a supervised injection site has had in Vancouver East, and its ruling was unequivocal:

InSite has saved lives and improved health. And it did those things without increasing the incidence of drug use and crime in the surrounding area.

I would like to repeat that last sentence again: “And it did those things without increasing the incidence of drug use and crime in the surrounding area.”

The Canadian Nurses Association holds a similar view:

In Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where the Insite safe injection site is located, business owners, service providers and residents in the neighbourhood agree that the clinic has had a positive impact on the health of the people who use it and on the health of the community.

That is a fundamental issue in this debate. The Supreme Court ruling was based on section 7 of the charter and on the constraints imposed by the law, aiming to strike a balance between public health and public safety.

As a health care professional, I find this bill mind-boggling. I want to add my voice to those of people in the field who have criticized Bill C-2, including the Canadian Medical Association, which fully endorses the existence of harm reduction tools, including supervised injection sites, and believes they should be included in a comprehensive national drug strategy.

The CMA's position is founded upon clinical evidence and not upon ideology, unlike Bill C-2. The CMA, which represents all of the doctors in the country, is very critical of Bill C-2:

The unanimous decision was grounded in evidence, not ideology. The overwhelming clinical evidence is that centres like Insite save lives when it comes to some of our most vulnerable patient populations. In its ruling, the Supreme Court stated that “…the evidence indicates that a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.” What we have seen today seems to contradict the essence of the ruling.

Harm reduction works. This method has proven to be effective. In Australia, a report on supervised injection sites found that one site had reduced the number of overdoses, reduced the spread of HIV and hepatitis C and alleviated safety concerns related to users shooting up in public places and needle disposal. The report even indicated that the site served as a gateway to addiction treatment.

If that is not improving safety in the community, I do not know what is.

Many countries now have supervised injection sites: Australia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Spain and Switzerland, just to name a few. These sites work.

It is no wonder Montreal's director of public health recommended, in December 2011, that the city establish such a site in the greater Montreal area. He gave a number of reasons similar to the ones I just quoted concerning Australia's experience. Why? Because they are based on conclusive data that the Conservatives and the Minister of Health have patently decided to ignore.

I would like to quote Montreal's director of public health:

The reasons that justify implementing SIS in Montréal are very succinct: the epidemic of infections caused by HIV and HCV, and the excess mortality among IDU. Cocaine use, the drug most often injected in Montréal, is a major determinant of HIV transmission, as is sharing used needles. HCV infection is also having devastating effects: 7 in 10 IDU have been exposed to the virus and its transmission does not appear to be slowing. As for excess mortality among IDU, the data on hand indicate that the problem in Montréal is alarming.

I urge the government to do its job for once in the health field. Since the Conservatives took power, we have seen the federal government disengage from files where Canadians expect it to play a role. This includes the government's refusal to negotiate a new health accord with the provinces, the shortage of prescription drugs, and diluted chemotherapy treatments.

It is unbelievable and completely unacceptable for a bill such as this, which flies in the face of the Supreme Court ruling, to be introduced.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague from Laurentides—Labelle for his observation. I think it is very, if the expression can be excused, insightful.

I think the reason it is insightful is that the government seems to want to pick a fight with the Supreme Court of Canada. Imagine dropping something into an omnibus budget bill to deal with the appointment of a Supreme Court judge. Why? I do not understand that.

I was on the finance committee when I had to deal with this position. From watching on CPAC the arguments in the Supreme Court of Canada, it certainly looks like the government deliberately provoked a fight with the court. Of course, as my colleague rightly noted, we are going to see more of that in the future.

If Bill C-2 is enacted, we will be right back where we started. It is going to cost us millions of dollars in lawyers, and more people are going to die. That is what is going to happen as a consequence of this. The lawyers are all predicting it.

As I said earlier, colleagues who do constitutional law tell me that they just do not understand how this passed muster with the Department of Justice.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to first commend my neighbour and friend from Victoria for an excellent speech.

This is what has been bothering me about Bill C-2 from the beginning. It is that it is, by stealth, an effort to pretend and feign respect for the Supreme Court decision while, through every aspect of the bill, making it impossible to live up to what the Supreme Court has told Parliament we must do, which is respect charter rights and the evidence that says that InSite facilities are working.

I have been here for the debate all day. Every comment from a Conservative member of Parliament has not been for defending Bill C-2 for what it pretends to be, a protection of communities act, a consultation with communities, but for what it really is: an effort to defeat the purposes of InSite. Every question from Conservatives has gone to the question of how we can possibly have a facility like InSite without encouraging and participating in the illegal drug trade.

The questions from Conservatives throughout the day have been honest. They have been from people who really do not want to see InSite facilities operate. They go to the real purpose of and motivation for Bill C-2, which is to defeat the existence of valuable facilities for harm reduction.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

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

I remain very concerned about the government's motivation in introducing the bill in the face of a unanimous loss. The Supreme Court of Canada in 2011 unanimously defeated the government's position on this matter. To read the bill, it would almost suggest that the government has not read the judgment or is flying in the face of that judgment.

It also causes me great concern that the Minister of Justice would see fit to introduce the bill in the face of his obligation under subsection 4.1(1) of the Department of Justice Act, wherein advice from his officials on the constitutionality of legislation is required. However, we know that the standards of the Department of Justice these days are very low in that regard, having had the benefit of a whistleblower who told us that instructions had been sent to departmental lawyers saying that if there was even a 5% chance of a provision or law passing muster under the charter, then it would be fine to recommend it going ahead as constitutional and to introduce the law.

I say this by way of preamble, because as a reformed lawyer, I have many friends who were involved in this litigation. Colleagues have told me that this is simply a bad-faith effort, or at least a patently unconstitutional response to the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. They cannot wait to get this in the courts again, not believing that it could possibly pass muster, for reasons I will try to outline in my remarks.

The Downtown Eastside of Vancouver has disproportionately high levels of illegal drug use, poverty, and homelessness and high rates of HIV and hepatitis C infections. InSite came to the rescue with the approval of the City of Vancouver, the police department, and stakeholders in that troubled community. It succeeded in reducing blood-borne illnesses and in providing access to counselling, detox, and other services that simply were not being accessed by this high-risk population.

As colleagues have pointed out, studies have shown that InSite contributed to a 35% reduction in deaths by overdose in that troubled area of Vancouver as compared to nearby neighbourhoods. The reduction was only 9% in other neighbourhoods compared to 35% in the Downtown Eastside.

This is not the report of merely an academic who looked at statistics. This report was co-authored by the world-famous expert Dr. Julio Montaner, director of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. In a moment, I will contrast this success rate for the safe injection site with what is happening in my community of Victoria. There is a very troubling difference between the two communities.

There is a worldwide trend that InSite was part of. It is a trend that was outlined in June 2012 in a report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy. The title of its annual report, “The War on Drugs and HIV/AIDS: How the Criminalization of Drug Use Fuels the Global Pandemic”, I think is provocative. It is a report from world-famous scientists and other public policy experts.

I found it interesting that in their analysis of places such as the InSite facility, which was referred to in their study, they concluded that criminalization actually encourages unsafe injection procedures, like sharing needles, as addicts hasten to inject in order to avoid detection and law enforcement. That global commission supported InSite and other safe injection facilities.

As my colleagues have pointed out, this initiative was undertaken, long before it was in Canada, in places like the Netherlands, Germany, all over Europe, and Australia. It seems that the current government simply does not get that the Supreme Court of Canada was looking certainly at public safety and also at public health concerns. The Conservatives do not seem to get that part of the judgment.

That is not just me speaking. A number of colleagues, such as Professor Elaine Hyshka, in a 2012 edition of the Canadian Journal of Public Health, concluded that the Conservatives' approach to drug use is “motivated by ideological principles of punishment and retribution towards drug users”.

It is that part of the Supreme Court of Canada's judgment that I must go back to, because it seems that it has been ignored by the government in enacting Bill C-2 in response to the Supreme Court's unanimous decision:

The Minister's failure to grant a [section] 56 exemption to Insite engaged the claimants [section] 7 [charter] rights and contravened the principles of fundamental justice...[It is also] grossly disproportionate.... [during its eight years of operation, Insite has been proven to save lives with] no discernible negative impact on the public safety and health objectives of Canada....

Where, as here, a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

Where are we with Bill C-2? How did the government respond to the Supreme Court of Canada's unanimous decision? I say it responded either in bad faith without reading the decision or by ignoring what no doubt was the advice given by lawyers on the constitutionality of this initiative. I say that because of three or four things.

First, the preamble to Bill C-2 says that an exemption “should only be granted in exceptional circumstances and after the applicant has addressed rigorous criteria”. What are the criteria? Section 56.1, a new section this legislation would introduce, has some 26 conditions that must be met. Actually, there are 30, because of some subsections; they go from (a) to (z). These are conditions the minister must consider when approving an exemption for medical purposes.

I am not saying that these are illegitimate conditions, but the number of hurdles in the way of a community ever getting a safe injection site are so enormous that it is hard to believe that this is a good faith effort to apply the Supreme Court of Canada's decision. The minister then sent it to the Public Safety Commission rather than to the health committee, again an indication that the public health aspects may not have been taken as seriously as one would have expected.

All of this information would have to be provided in prescribed form. There is requirement after requirement, and it has to be done in the prescribed form. There is no time limit as to when the application would have to be considered by the relevant minister. It goes on and on. One wonders again whether there really was an effort to allow a safe injection site as per the spirit of this legislation.

In the time available, I want to contrast the record in Vancouver, with Insite, and what is going on in my community of Victoria. I am finding the following quote from the coroner a shocking one. Last year, the B.C. coroner reported that there were 44 deaths from illicit drug use on Vancouver Island in 2011. Sixteen of those deaths occurred in the greater Victoria area. He noted that Vancouver Island is the region with the highest rate of deaths related to illicit drug use in the entire province of British Columbia.

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

By way of conclusion, this legislation does not address the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in a meaningful and good faith fashion. It will simply provide obstacle after obstacle to achieving the public health benefits that the Supreme Court of Canada found, on the facts, to exist in InSite.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard for reminding us that a whole range of people and organizations are opposed to Bill C-2.

She rightly mentioned the Canadian Nurses Association. It is important to look at this also from the perspective of health and consider the impact it can have in our communities.

As I mentioned earlier, all those who are working hard for a supervised injection site or service on the island of Montreal are opposed to a bill like Bill C-2, which could derail all their efforts. We are talking about people in the field of public safety, meaning police officers in Montreal. We are also talking about community organizations, doctors and health care services. That is a lot of people.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her speech and for all the points she raised.

She mentioned that a number of voices have been raised against this bill, including the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Nurses Association and many other experts.

Last summer, an editorial in the Globe and Mail came out strongly against this approach and the content of Bill C-2. Specifically, it said that, in the clauses and the preamble, there was not one mention of the fact that the supervised injection site was saving Canadian lives. That has been made abundantly clear in a number of ways.

Could the hon. member elaborate a little more on the opposition to Bill C-2 that has come from various sources?

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, like the hon. member for Trois-Rivières, this is the second time I speak to Bill C-2. I made a speech before the holidays and, today, I am pleased to voice my opposition to the bill once again.

To begin, Mr. Speaker, I would like to welcome you to the start of the spring session. I would also like to extend my best wishes for a good parliamentary session to your entire team—the House clerks, translators, pages, security personnel and all of the members, regardless of political stripe.

Today, there are many topics I would like to discuss in relation to Bill C-2. For example, I would like to talk about health and public safety, the Conservatives' fear-mongering campaign surrounding the InSite safe injection site and the Supreme Court decision in 2011.

I would like to begin by talking about health and public safety. A safe injection site is a sanitary, hygienic location where intravenous drug users can shoot up under the watchful eye of trained staff, such as psychologists and nurses.

Drugs are not sold there, despite what some might think. It is often the place where support personnel make first contact with a user. InSite in east Vancouver was the first of its kind to open in 2003. Since then, more than 70 cities in Europe and Australia have set up similar services.

Since InSite opened, Vancouver has seen a 35% decrease in overdose deaths. Furthermore, InSite has been shown to decrease crime, infection rates of communicable diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C, and relapse rates for drug users.

Before InSite was set up, the rates of communicable diseases among injection drug users skyrocketed in Vancouver. There was also a 12-fold increase in overdose deaths between 1987 and 1993.

As a result, community partners and the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority decided to set up the InSite project. In addition to a 35% drop in the rate of overdose deaths, InSite had a positive impact on a number of other levels, in public health and safety alike.

According to a 2004 study by Wood et al, there was a significant drop in the number of discarded needles and injection paraphernalia and in the number of people injecting drugs on the street, just in the year after the site opened.

In addition, 80% of respondents living or working in Vancouver's downtown east side support InSite. Over 30 studies have shown the benefits of InSite as a supervised injection site. Not one study produced evidence of a possible negative impact of a place like InSite.

I would also like to briefly speak from experience. As a mother of a young daughter, I am increasingly aware of the potential dangers in our communities. I am seeing public safety in a new light.

I have already said this in my first speech on Bill C-2, but I think it is worth repeating. Montreal has no injection sites. When I was little, my mom and I used to walk around Montreal. Whenever we walked through a park, my mother would tell me to look on the ground. Whether we were walking on grass or gravel, we had to look down on the ground in case there were syringes or things like that. We had seen syringes before when we were walking in the parks or on the street. I was struck by that. Unfortunately, that is what many people have to do to avoid stepping on a needle, especially in the summer when they are wearing sandals. It is unfortunate and sad, but that is the way it is.

I am the deputy critic for public safety. I did research on InSite to see whether a site like that actually had a positive impact.

Looking at the studies and personal experiences of people, especially those living and working in east Vancouver, there is no doubt that InSite has had a positive impact on people's quality of life and that it has made communities safer, especially in an area like east Vancouver, which, as most members in this House know, is unfortunately a place that is home to a large population of injection drug users. It is a unique little pocket of Vancouver. It is important to be aware of this when talking about InSite.

I believe in the importance of safe communities and to achieve that, it takes work. As legislators, we have a responsibility to not be complacent when drafting bills and to take action in the best interest of Canadians. This brings me to my second point, which was mentioned in the last couple of speeches, right before I rose to address the House. It has to do with the fearmongering and fundraising the Conservatives are doing in relation to Bill C-2. There is a campaign on the Conservative website called “Keep heroin out of our backyards”. I would like to quote from the text written on that page. It reads:

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

I don’t want one anywhere near my home.

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

We've had enough—that’s why I am pleased the [Conservative] government is acting to put the safety of our communities first.

It goes on to say:

The...Liberals and...[the] NDP are against us. They want to repeat the experiment of Vancouver’s Insite facility across the country — maybe even in your community.

This is fearmongering, as my colleague from Chicoutimi—Le Fjord pointed out. It is absolutely unbelievable that they are fearmongering and spreading misinformation about what a supervised injection site like InSite actually does. What bothers me even more is that the Conservatives are using Bill C-2 to raise money. The more they talk about it, the more they create fear among the public, the more they raise money to fund their next election campaign. It is absolutely unbelievable. It is disgusting. I cannot believe that they are using a topic as important as supervised injection sites to try to raise money. This takes the cake. If you do not have good arguments and resort to fearmongering, as the Conservatives are doing with this, I think it means that you have already lost the battle. Not us, but them. This is even worse than electioneering. There are so many adjectives I could use, but I will leave it at that.

As my colleague from Trois-Rivières pointed out, what happens is that people either start to fear the unknown or are unable to properly explain a subject, or maybe they simply do not understand exactly what a supervised injection site does. They are playing politics here. They are not able to explain why these supervised injection sites are in the best interests of Canadians, in terms of both health and public safety. The Conservatives are trying to convince the public that they are the champions of public safety because of the measures in Bill C-2, but that is not the case. The Conservatives are using these measures to try to win votes. They are also trying to mislead Canadians, and that is sad.

I would like to take a few minutes to talk about the Supreme Court's 2011 ruling. This bill is contrary to that decision, which called on the minister to consider exemptions for safe injection sites as a way to reconcile public health and public safety issues. The ruling urged the minister to examine all of the evidence in light of the benefits of safe injection sites, not to devise a long list of principles on which to base his decisions. The NDP believes that any new legislation about safe injection sites should respect the spirit of the Supreme Court ruling.

That is not what is happening with Bill C-2. The NDP believes that harm reduction programs, including safe injection sites, should benefit from exemptions based on evidence that they improve community health and save human lives, not on ideological beliefs.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if I led anyone to believe that I agree with Bill C-2 through anything I may have said, I would like to set the record straight right now: Bill C-2 is a bad bill. I decided to instead talk about empathy.

My colleague wants to know how the Point de Rue organization works. The organization has street workers who are the point of first contact with vulnerable individuals. That is essential.

However, the problem is not solved in the streets. Solutions are found when we convince people living in the streets to visit an organization such as Point de Rue. Point de Rue is not an injection site, but rather an organization that helps the less fortunate. Once these people are persuaded to come in, we can help them regain their humanity and tell them that we will support them in their decision to overcome their addiction. There is much to be done.

Time and space are required to build relationships with these individuals. It is important to provide a physical location where they can feel that they belong, that someone is listening to them and that they have a network of people to help them overcome the feelings of isolation that are unfortunately often associated with drug use.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this will be my second time taking part in our debate today on Bill C-2. This allows me to make an initial comment about the very concept of the debate. I have been in the House since early this morning and, from the moment when we began this debate on Bill C-2, it seems to me—unless I slipped away for a few moments—that I have not heard one Conservative member make a single remark about the validity of their own bill. This clearly raises questions as to the very concept of the debate. In a chamber where we should be sharing ideas and finding solutions, I get the impression that the members of the NDP have been on the same wavelength for hours but the other members are not even listening.

In my first speech on the same issue, just before the holidays, I relied extensively on facts, statistics, studies and scientific articles published in newspapers or medical journals to show the facts. Unfortunately, there seems to be a tendency in Canadian, Quebec and even municipal politics—at every level—to have debates that are based more on opinions than on actual facts. I believe that science and objective facts should still be the basis of our discussions. This does not mean that, because the facts are specific, we must necessarily share the same view at the end of the debate. However, it seems to me that we should at least agree on the basic facts.

For my second speech, I intend to use a more empathetic approach. Let us set aside statistics and studies and try, for a few short minutes, to put ourselves in the shoes of an individual—one of our constituents—who, for one reason or another, has tried hard drugs and is now struggling with a severe addiction.

It seems quite inappropriate to paint society as black and white, or as good and bad, as several Conservative bills try to do, and say that an individual who is addicted to hard drugs is living with the consequences of his behaviour, that it is his fault and that he has only himself to blame. Even if it were true that this individual has only himself to blame—and I do not agree with that—it does not mean he is not entitled to get help from society to get out of his predicament. When an individual is suffering from this addiction, several others who are close or not so close to him also suffer. Therefore, we should rely less on perception and more on reality.

I remember that my late mother—may God rest her soul—was convinced at one time that a young man who tried smoking a marijuana joint would definitely end up a wreck. Even though she and I did not do drugs, we had many discussions on this issue, and I tried to prove to that she was wrong. However, her perception went beyond the scientific facts that I could show. This revealed something even more extraordinary: the fear of the unknown and the fear of something we do not know how to fight. Well, it seems to me there is only one effective way to fight fear, and it is called education.

Looking at Bill C-2, I see that it covers everything but education. If we were to talk about education in reference to a centre like InSite, we should also talk about the neighbouring parks in the community, but I am thinking mainly of the parks that have been made safer because needles no longer litter the park.

Moreover, what is true for Vancouver is also true for Montreal, Trois-Rivières and all small cities, not just the major centres.

InSite is a successful formula that helps reduce crime. If we are really concerned about heroin use—and there is every reason to be, of course—we should also be able to recognize initiatives that reduce crime rates. InSite is one of them.

InSite also helps reduce infections. Addicts can get an infection through injection drug use, but others can get infected entirely involuntarily by stepping on a needle thrown away in a public park.

InSite also helps reduce the relapse rates for drug users. In other words, when addicts choose to go clean to overcome their addiction, organizations like InSite help them and let them reach their goal with a better success rate.

I have some examples from my own riding. They are not injection sites, but agencies that do street work with people suffering from addictions, often multiple addictions, people thought to be hopeless who, for just a few dollars, managed to reintegrate into society and the workforce.

This hardly ever makes the headlines. The government probably prefers photo ops with big cheques announcing that it has funded such and such a program that creates jobs. It seems to me that bringing people back to life also deserves a photo on the front page of the newspapers. Some people might not be as socially sensitive as they should be.

Support is the key to everything. When people decide to inject drugs at a place like InSite, they are no longer alone. They are back in contact with society and agencies that can help them overcome their addiction.

What better way to combat illegal drugs than to eliminate drug users by rehabilitating them. We all know that organized crime is behind the drug industry. Since the crime is highly organized, we have no choice but to organize the resources that will help victims overcome addiction. InSite is one such resource.

I was talking about an agency back home called Point de rue that works with young people dealing with all kinds of problems, including addiction. I had a minor hand in two projects that have restored hope and life to many of those young people.

There was a project back home by an artist named Jean Beaulieu, a world-famous painter and stained-glass window maker. He put people to work 40 hours a week making stained-glass windows (cutting, polishing and soldering) while sticking to the plan. Each piece honoured a celebrity, and at the end there was a public exhibition. More than 90% of the addicts who took part in this program reintegrated into society.

This agency, which enjoyed extraordinary success, has unfortunately closed its doors because the Conservative government stopped subsidizing such agencies. With that attitude toward fighting homelessness, soon Point de rue will also be closing its doors, not just Jean Beaulieu's stained-glass-making project. For a photo exhibit project that was held at the office of the member for Trois-Rivières, young people from Point de rue went to South America as part of an international support project and took that opportunity to launch a photo campaign.

Unfortunately, since time is short, I will simply say that the values of every parliamentarian here today, whether they are religious or humanist, should instill in us the duty to overcome our prejudices, face reality and do the work entrusted to us—to serve Canadians.

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 motion that this question be now put.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Mr. Speaker, since this is the first time that I am rising in the House in 2014, I would like to offer my constituents, all my colleagues in the House, and all Canadians my best wishes for happiness and especially for health.

I wish a happy new year and much health and happiness in 2014 for everybody.

I am pleased to take part in the debate on Bill C-2. This is a very imperfect piece of legislation that is built on an anti-drug ideology and on unfounded fears about public safety. It is another attempt to rally the Conservative base, as demonstrated by the fundraising campaign called “Keep heroin out of our backyards”, launched only a few hours after Bill C-2 was introduced in Parliament.

However, by making it almost impossible to open supervised injection sites, the bill will actually bring heroin back into neighbourhoods.

Canadians should be concerned with the approach the Conservative government has taken to drugs. This bill is a prime example of how it refuses to deal with health problems it finds distasteful.

We are told this is a response aimed at shoring up public safety, but the facts do not bear out this claim. Instead, they point to an inevitable return to a situation that places more people at risk than under the current scheme, which actually minimizes the risk to users and society at the same time.

How do we know this? It is because of the outcomes that have been achieved by InSite, Vancouver's safe injection site, operating since 2003. InSite has allowed researchers to study first-hand what happens when heroin use is treated as a public health challenge, rather than a moral failure on the part of the users. The results must inform this debate.

Before InSite opened, Vancouver had been through a six-year period that saw a twelvefold increase in overdose deaths. At the same time, there were increases in communicable diseases among injection drug users, including hepatitis A, hepatitis B and hepatitis C, as well as HIV/AIDS. Since InSite opened, Vancouver has seen a 35% decrease in overdose deaths, along with a decrease in crime, communicable disease infection rates and relapse rates of drug users.

Surely we can all agree that these are beneficial outcomes, yet the government continues to rally against these benefits and prefers to fight for a system that punishes users and the communities they live in, in order to play a wedge politics fundraising game.

The Conservative government tried to close InSite in 2008, when it refused to extend an exemption to section 56 of the current Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which allowed the safe injection site to operate. That resulted in the Supreme Court ruling that called on the minister to consider exemptions for safe injection sites based on a balance between public health and safety. It called on the minister to consider all of the evidence on the benefits of safe injection sites, rather than setting out a lengthy list of principles by which to apply judgments. Despite the clear instructions from the highest court in the land, the Conservatives' fearmongering on the issues continues.

I agree with my colleague, the member for Vancouver East, who said that this bill has more to do with creating an environment of fear and division than with creating a system that helps our communities or concerns itself with the safety of users. What is troublesome is that this bill does not match the spirit and the intent of the Supreme Court of Canada ruling. Instead, it is designed to work against that ruling and create a situation where everything would run in the government's favour to not even consider applications or, if it does, to simply turn them down based on the principles it has outlined.

It is clear that the government wants this fight. One might even suggest it looks forward to the court challenges that would likely follow the enactment of Bill C-2. We have to remember that it is playing with taxpayers' dollars. The government should remember, while it is engaging in this propaganda exercise, that Vancouver's safe injection site has the support of the police, local businesses, the board of trade and municipal politicians.

While the government is creating a climate of fear based on misinformation, the outcome of Bill C-2 would actually increase the danger to our communities.

When we force addicts into the shadows, the outcomes are predictable: more needles on the streets, greater rates of infection as communicable diseases run rampant, broken lines of communication with addicts, as well as more deaths by overdose. Is that what Canadians want? I cannot imagine that we would.

To help us understand why, we have to ask ourselves who the addicts are who we are discussing. There seems to be a lot of discussion about addicts as if they are somehow second-class individuals. Perhaps we are more informed by television and movie portrayals than we should be, because it is easy to lose sight of the fact that when we talk about addicts we are talking about people. Perhaps it would help to remember that these are our children, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers, not anonymous people. We have to cut through stereotypes and recognize that drug addicts come in all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life, and how we care for them says much about who we are as a society.

That begins with the admission that the choice we face with this bill is not between safe communities and safe injection sites; it is between legislating with the benefit of evidence or relying on the rose-coloured glasses of opinion. In fact, as they push this bill through, the Conservatives are disregarding the advice of the Pivot Legal Society, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, along with the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Nurses Association, all of whom have spoken against Bill C-2.

The Canadian Medical Association tells us that:

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.

Despite having the benefit of those who work closest with the population at risk, it is clear the Conservatives want to continue with the failed and costly war-on-drugs mentality. This is at the same time as jurisdictions all around the globe are seeing the benefit of taking a different approach to dealing with drug addiction. Australia, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland are all working with some form of safe injection site and are seeing the same benefits as we have seen in Vancouver. In addition to the reduction in overdose deaths and communicable diseases, safe injection sites also allow for a stronger line of communication with addicts, through which to educate them about options that may be available for those who would like to break their addiction.

It is obvious what the Conservatives are doing with this piece of legislation. They are whipping up fear across the country at the expense of vulnerable individuals. They are further demonizing addicts to suit their own needs and raise money for political gain. They are dismissing the benefits of InSite and preparing to abandon the project without offering any alternative to deal with the health-related challenges of addiction. This speaks to a willingness on the government's part to see increases in the infection rates of HIV as well as hepatitis A, B and C, as a result of its initiative. The Conservatives are choosing to increase the money spent in our health system dealing with these preventable diseases in order to attack a progressive approach to dealing with addiction. If we were debating this from a purely economic viewpoint, the position of the government would make little sense. This is a case where the Conservatives are showing that their economic management is limited to a narrow band of issues and can take a back seat to the politics of opinion when it suits their needs.

As the world moves away from the belief that we can wipe out drugs with concentrated punitive efforts focused on users, the current government is moving in the opposite direction.

New Democrats would not do that. We believe that harm-reduction programs, including supervised injection sites, should be exempt, not for ideological reasons, but because of the evidence showing that these programs help to improve community health and save human lives.

To achieve that, we must defeat this bill and ensure that those communities that want to benefit from safe injection sites are provided with the process to do so—one that is not designed to frustrate them.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to take part in a debate that we began before the holidays, and are continuing now, on Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Let me recap. People usually cannot take drugs—in this case, we are talking about heroin—but an exception was made for a centre in British Columbia called InSite. People can go there and inject drugs under the supervision of health care professionals. That is why they are called supervised injection sites.

However, for this to happen, an exemption was needed, and the Conservatives decided to take the centre on. The Conservative government clearly intends to close the centre. As a result, it started lengthy legal proceedings that were costly for taxpayers. In the end, the Supreme Court of Canada's decision was unanimous: this kind of centre is permitted. Despite everything, the government is continuing its assault.

It is important to remember why these centres exist. Contrary to what we are hearing from the Conservatives, who ran a fundraising campaign to take on these centres, it is not a free-for-all, where people take drugs and have fun. No, the idea is to protect them. It is a matter of public health and safety. The goal is to ensure that people who use drugs like heroin do so safely. They rarely choose to take drugs; it is an addiction.

The idea is to ensure that they are not injecting drugs in the street and that they are supervised in order to prevent overdoses. Overdose deaths have dropped by 35% since the centre opened. In addition, needles no longer litter the streets. Cases of devastating illnesses like AIDS and hepatitis have also decreased.

Such centres already exist in a number of countries. There are 77 centres around the world: in Europe, in Australia and one in Vancouver. This initiative has also received support from professionals in the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Nurses Association.

Unfortunately, the Conservatives have an ideological vision, illustrated by the slogan of their fundraising campaign, which says that they do not want such centres in their backyards. Despite the Supreme Court ruling, they are holding up the process and drafting legislation to make authorization from the minister a requirement.

Their intention is obvious. Clearly, the government is at odds with what 30 or so serious medical studies have shown: these centres save lives. This is a public health and safety issue. The hon. member for Kootenay—Columbia will certainly ask me about the use of heroin in these centres since he has asked all my colleagues that same question. We are well aware that heroin is illegal in Canada. We do not want to promote heroin, quite the opposite. People bring their own heroin to the centre.

Unfortunately, some are addicted.

It is not a question of choice; it is an illness to be addicted to such drugs. What we are trying to do, and what people from InSite are trying to do, is to help people with addictions. They can make sure that their health issues are taken care of and that there are explanations on how to stop and how to get away from addiction.

Ignoring the problem does not work. We have seen it time and time again, with all the lives that were lost. The Conservatives are asking us to just go back, but it means that the lives that were saved might be lost again.

That is why the Supreme Court of Canada was very clear. I find it difficult to accept that the government and the Conservatives do not understand that the Supreme Court rendered a decision on the issue and that the scientific community supports this initiative.

The government is choosing to act based on ideology. We knew that the Conservatives do not believe in science. They are at odds with what scientists are saying. They are using prejudice and fear. That is most unfortunate.

I have tremendous respect for my colleague. I know that he worked in public safety before he became an MP. I do not understand why he is opposed to the centre when we know that the decisions are clear and that the centre saves lives, and we can see the whole process that was followed.

To come back to Quebec, since the Supreme Court of Canada decision, Montreal has decided to develop four injection sites. I know that the members opposite said that there was just one site. They are just trying to remove any possibility of setting up a site; they are trying to ignore the fact that the site works. That means that the Conservatives are not looking at what is actually happening. On the ground, people are still dying.

I am happy that there has been this support from the people of Vancouver. It was a step in the right direction, and unfortunately, instead of helping the site, the government put obstacles in its path. It took the case to court, even as far as the Supreme Court, let me say again. However, in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court told the government that what it is doing makes no sense and is against the law, contrary to the charter and unconstitutional.

Sadly, the government is persisting in closing its eyes and, in a purely ideological approach, is continuing in a direction that really is contrary to public health and safety.

I am not the one saying this. If it were me alone, I could understand that the Conservatives might complain. Studies have been done by scientists. However, I am pretty sure that when the question is put to the Conservatives, they will not be able to denigrate that. The facts and the studies are there. Unfortunately, they are coming to us with a bill like this one. According to legal experts, this bill may once again be contrary to the Constitution and thus initiate another legal battle.

I know they are used to doing this, and it is an approach they follow. Having once been a member of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, I know that the Conservatives tend to introduce bills without really studying their impact, despite the recommendations of the Canadian Bar and legal experts. They subsequently find themselves arguing before the Supreme Court. This costs money.

Speaking of saving money or cutting budgets, something the Conservatives are so good at, why do they not bring us more sensible decisions that begin by taking into consideration what is going on in the field, that is, do what is required to save lives, then abide by the Supreme Court’s decision? Why not just move in that direction?

We know that the heart of the problem is that the Conservatives say “not in my backyard”. They use that to stir people up, whereas in reality we know that this saves lives. Certainly, it is not a good thing, in the sense that we would all like to see no more heroin in the streets or in Canada. We would like people to stop using. The reality is different, though. What we are asking is that the Conservatives face facts, make sensible decisions and do, among other things, what the Supreme Court tells them.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to have an opportunity to speak on a subject as sensitive as Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. First, we should remember that the government introduced this bill before prorogation. Then, it was Bill C-65; now it is Bill C-2.

This bill is a clear demonstration of the Conservative government’s methods and intentions with respect to public health. It values ideological prejudice over Supreme Court decisions; cynicism over a search for the common good; and scorn over a helping hand for our fellow citizens in distress.

Before continuing, I would like to recall some facts that are essential to an impartial debate. The core of the issue concerns the effectiveness of supervised drug use, and the referral of addicts to appropriate care.

In order to assess effectiveness, let us look at the results achieved by the only safe injection site in Canada: InSite, located in Vancouver’s East Side. It opened in 2003, as part of a public health project undertaken by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and its community partners. The establishment of this safe injection site was a coordinated response to the wave of fatal overdoses hitting Vancouver.

The annual rate of fatal overdoses had increased 12 times between 1987 and 1993, to some 200 cases. Over the same period, the Vancouver area experienced spectacular increases in cases of communicable disease, such as hepatitis A, B and C, as well as HIV and AIDS. From the beginning, InSite has reported conclusive results in terms of public health and safety. The fatal overdose rate in the East Side district fell 35%, as shown in the study conducted by the prestigious medical journal The Lancet in 2001.

The main thing, however, is that the centre provides valuable help to addicts by referring them to detox programs. It has been shown that going to InSite increases by 70% the likelihood that an addict will take part in a detox program. Moreover, the benefits provided by the centre have a direct impact on safety and public order in Vancouver’s East Side. Since InSite opened, there has been a significant decrease in the number of needles left in the streets. Drug use in public places has decreased. The impact of the centre is so apparent that 80% of those surveyed who live or work in the neighbourhood support what InSite is doing. Even the local police recognizes its positive impact.

The success of this centre is recognized not only at the local level, but also at the international level. More than 30 medical journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal, have studied the positive impact that InSite has had on health and public safety and published articles about it. This success is not random or accidental. In fact, 70 cities in Europe and Australia have opened similar centres to monitor drug use, and we are seeing the same positive impact.

Instead of helping InSite help drug addicts get clean, the Conservative government is creating more legal impediments and putting out more ideological propaganda. In 2008, the exemption under section 56 of the act expired. This exemption allowed the centre to exist and operate, but the government refused to renew it, which led to a serious legal battle. The Conservative government went as far as the Supreme Court to oppose InSite's right to provide its services. In 2011, the highest legal authority in Canada issued a very clear ruling on this matter. It called the Conservative government's decision arbitrary and even said, and I quote, “it undermines the very purposes of the CDSA...”.

The court declared that, in accordance with section 7 of the charter:

The infringement at stake is serious; it threatens the health, indeed the lives, of the claimants and others like them. The grave consequences that might result from a lapse in the current constitutional exemption for InSite cannot be ignored.

The court states that the minister must grant InSite in particular, and safe injection sites in general, the exemption provided for in section 56(d), when such a site “will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety”.

The Supreme Court decision completely repudiated the Conservative government's position. However, not content with having lost, the government is implementing a well-known strategy. Driven out through the door, it comes back in through the window. Having lost in court, it is coming back today with a bill that is contrary to the Supreme Court ruling.

Communities will now have to show the benefits of safe injection sites in order to obtain an exemption and be able to work. In order to do so, they will have to go through incredibly complicated administrative procedures and ultimately submit to the decision by the minister, who will do whatever he wants in the end. We are awash in arbitrariness.

The government’s action in the area of public health is based on prejudice, not on fact. The government cannot accept the existence of InSite, even though the benefits of the site have been proven. To support its action, the government is calling on Canadians to support the campaign it calls “Keep heroin out of our backyards”. However, this bill will bring heroin into our backyards, into our neighbourhoods, into our streets and in front of the eyes of our children, because it will be almost impossible to open safe injection centres.

The NDP has a clear standpoint on this issue. We are sensible and responsible people. We have a clear-eyed view of the situation, without preconceived notions. We can draw the necessary conclusions in order to manage it for everyone’s benefit. Desperate people take drugs. It is a fact. There are solutions that can help them recover from their addiction and preserve their health. These solutions work; let us implement them. We must never forget that the true test of a civilized society lies in how it treats its weakest members. Let us not turn a blind eye to them. Let us hold out a helping hand to our fellow citizens, who have stumbled on their path. Let us help them regain their dignity.

The NDP believes in these values. The NDP believes that any public health decision must be based on facts and on facts alone. The NDP believes that any bill put forward by government must abide by the rulings handed down by the Supreme Court. That is why I am calling on the honourable members of this Parliament to listen to what I am saying. We must work together to throw out this bill that will undermine public health and safety. Let us turn the page on ideological assumptions; let us look at reality full on and develop a constructive solution that will benefit all our fellow citizens and lead to a more just society.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-2. Before I go any further, I would like to take some time to put everything in perspective.

First of all, we need to understand that any bill is a response to a problem. In this case, the problem is injection drug use. I would like to clarify that heroin is a drug that people inject. Unfortunately, there are several other drugs that people inject. For example, some people crush Dilaudid pills, a morphine derivative, and inject them. Heroin is one thing, but people sometimes inject other drugs, such as cocaine.

Injection drug use is a problem, but it is only part of the problem. There are other parts of the problem related to the sale and trafficking of drugs. There are the many risks related to public safety and the health of users, such as infection and bad lifestyle choices resulting from drug use. There is also an impact on the fabric of our society.

To tackle problems like this, we need to do several different things. The first is, of course, prevention. The provinces try to reduce drug use by taking preventive measures, identifying people who are at risk and taking action at the school level. They also fight drug trafficking. There are programs and houses where people can wean off drugs and get clean. There are also methadone programs to help people overcome their heroin addiction. There are strategically located needle drop boxes, and clean needles are given out to prevent infection. That practice is becoming more widespread and has its own logo. When we talk about distributing needles for injection drug use, it might seem like this is big-city problem, but what many people do not know is that, unfortunately, people use injection drugs in the regions too.

In my administrative region, that is, Abitibi-Témiscamingue, which is a little bit different from my riding, from April 2006 to March 2007, 1,333 users came to see the staff and 10,482 needles were distributed. These figures are quite surprising to people who probably did not think that there was so much drug use in Abitibi-Témiscamingue because there is not much talk about it. In the more rural areas, drug use is very localized. It is often apartments that are used for improvised injection sites. This may be less often the case in downtown cores, parks and backyards. Unfortunately, there is still injection drug use.

This is why action is needed. When we talk about rural areas such as mine and the high number of users there, resources like those in a safe injection site are not going to be effective. The most effective solution involves nurses who take their services to drug users on the ground.

However, when there are many users, such as in major centres where the problem is widespread, it is more useful to have supervised injection centres because of the volume of work for social workers, doctors and nurses.

Furthermore, a safe injection site is more than just a place to inject drugs.

Clean and sterile injection equipment is provided, and users are shown an injection technique that minimizes cross-contamination. Obviously, the drug itself is not sterile, but an attempt will at least be made to minimize the damage. Blood-borne infections such as hepatitis B and HIV are one thing, but people can also contract skin and soft tissue infections by using the wrong injection technique. The staff try to decrease the risk by showing users the proper technique.

In addition, action is taken in the event of an overdose. Emergency care is given. Staff connect with other agencies that can deal with other issues. Referrals are given and staff help make contact. For instance, if an addict is a victim of domestic violence and she wants to get out of the situation, she may receive help in resolving other issues with a referral to other health professionals. If a woman becomes a prostitute in order to pay for drugs, she can be referred to other agencies that help women who have turned to prostitution. The needs of the individual are paramount. Over time, the addicts are helped and encouraged to adopt healthier lifestyle choices.

Clearly, some users have a very long road ahead of them. In the beginning, no one will tell an addict to eat three square meals a day and exercise for 30 minutes. The staff try to give advice that will make a tangible improvement in the user’s situation. They will try to ensure a steady improvement. If the user says that he sometimes eats only every third day, he will be encouraged to have at least one meal a day. Centre staff try to minimize the damage as much as they can.

The centres also carry out social interventions. For instance, users can receive housing assistance. If someone has no home, he or she can be directed toward the appropriate resources.

The healthcare professionals at the centre conduct a brief appraisal simply by looking at the person. When they watch a person move around, they may realize that there is a problem. If a person has walked for two days on an ankle that is sprained or fractured, if he or she has an infection or yellow skin, they will be able to take action, provide advice and tell the person where he or she can receive care. This is not the case if a person remains solely on the street with his only contact being the network, if we can call it that, linked to his drug addiction.

If there were no supervised injection sites, these individuals would only come into contact with other drug addicts and dealers. That would be quite unfortunate. At least while they are at the site, they cross paths with people who are not part of their addict community and who can help them. Often these are the only people they come into contact with outside their network and the only people they can turn to for help.

Contraception advice is also given at the centres. People are encouraged to use condoms or another form of contraception. Being pregnant is not an ideal situation for a drug addict.

These centres therefore provide assistance on many different levels.

Normally, on seeing that such centres are beneficial as part of a comprehensive approach, a government should provide the tools these centres need to operate, all the while conducting reasonable evaluations to ensure that the location is appropriate.

However, this bill sets so many conditions that it is not even possible to establish these centres. Trying to meet all of these conditions makes no sense whatsoever. The list of conditions is endless. I think it goes as far as the letter “u”. It is truly incredible. Setting up a centre becomes virtually impossible.

Concretely, this bill provides for the establishment of a centre, provided all of the stated conditions are met. However, the list of conditions is so long that practically speaking, the government really wants no part of this. This is really not a responsible attitude for the government to adopt, given that it should be taking steps to improve people’s health.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to rise to speak to this bill, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, or the respect for communities act.

As man advances in civilization...the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him.

Who said that? It was Charles Darwin. That was a long time ago, but it is more necessary today than ever. There are some opposite who might not agree with what Mr. Darwin had to say.

Bill C-2 is, we believe, another example of knee-jerk, mean-spirited, ill-informed, anti-science, anti-evidence, anti-taxpayer, anti-health, Conservative fundraising propaganda disguised as legislation. We, as parliamentarians, are sent here to make the tough choices. We are sent here to make decisions on behalf of all Canadians to advance our civilization forward, not backward. It is really easy to foment alarm and outrage among Canadians who are not generally exposed to the darker side of humanity. This is the choice made by the Conservatives.

The right choice is to explain to those who might be susceptible to such fomentation that the better path is to create safe places for the darker side that most of us do not see. The explanation that the Conservatives should give would include the science and evidence that providing a safe place for persons who are addicted to drugs, requiring needles, is ultimately making the rest of Canadians safer. It is a win-win. It will not generate a lot of reactionary donations, but it is the right thing to do.

However, that is not how the Conservatives work. They work through fear, intimidation and keeping their constituents in the dark about the truth as much as possible. Eliminating data such as the long-form census, repressing and firing scientists whose findings may not agree with their point of view and deliberately spreading the falsehood that suggests that denying licences to places such as InSite will make communities safer, are not just the wrong choices; they are chosen for the wrong reasons.

Canadians expect their government to protect them from harm. This bill would do the opposite, but it is just part of a long line of Conservative actions that make our Canada more harmful to more Canadians. Conservatives got rid of ways for the police to keep track of where guns were. That action will cause harm to many Canadians, including those in my riding of York South—Weston.

Conservatives cut budgets for the department responsible for meat inspections. This action caused many Canadians to get ill from eating meat. Some died. Are we or our communities safer?

Conservatives have continued the Liberal practice of permitting the railways themselves to manage their own safety. Clearly, that is not keeping Canadians safe either. The three massive explosions and fires last year, one of which claimed 47 lives and destroyed a Quebec city, are all the evidence Canadians need that the Conservative safety system is not working. Except for a bit of tinkering around the edges, no concrete actions have been taken. Indeed, the present government has consistently ignored the findings of the Transportation Safety Board, and Canadians are no safer as a result.

Of course, the Conservatives' signature piece of legislation making us less safe was the evisceration of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. Now, the impact on human health, which is what we are talking about here, is ignored by environmental assessments. Only a small handful of projects are subject to assessment.

How are we less harmed by this regime? Add to all of this the changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act, which removed environmental protection from over 99% of Canada's waterways, including the Humber River, which flows right on the edge of my riding, and we should all worry.

The present legislation is designed to prevent, not assist, the creation of harm reduction regimes in cities in this country. I will explain exactly how it would prevent it.

The new application for a safe injection site must include “scientific evidence demonstrating that there is a medical benefit”. Is this to be new scientific evidence? There is a lot of scientific evidence already out there.

It also requires a letter of opinion from provincial and territorial ministers responsible for health and public safety, municipal councils, local heads of police and higher ranked public health officials. If a government is already asking that this be put in place, why do we then need that same government to get its own people to say more about what they are asking for? It is just another piece of bureaucracy that the government is putting into place.

Information is required about infectious diseases and overdoses related to the use of illicit substances. Again, that information is publicly available and is well documented. For an applicant to have to re-demonstrate it is yet another example of the red tape the Conservative government wants to create to prevent these sites going forward.

A description of available drug treatment services is required. Of course the government has cut back on those drug treatment services, but apparently the applicant only needs to describe what is available.

A description of the potential impact of the site on public safety is required. Again, all we have heard from all the experts is that these sites actually increase public safety.

A description of all procedures and measures, including steps to minimize diversion of controlled substances, is required, as well as relevant trends and more information on drug-related loitering, drug dealing and crime rates in the area where the site is located at the time of the application.

Also required is a report of consultations with a broad range of groups in the municipality, including copies of all submissions received and steps that will be taken to address relevant concerns.

These hoops that applicants must go through are designed to prevent rather than permit the formation of safe injection sites to deal with what is an ever-growing public health problem in this country, with which we need to come to grips.

As a result of those kinds of denials and whether they go through all these hoops and the department says yes, the minister is going to say yes or no, as ultimately the minister gets to decide anyway. As a result of that, more addicts will contract contagious diseases and more addicts will die. The needles will be reused and left in parks and other public places. The crime rates related to drug use will increase. Fewer addicts will be exposed to the help they need to beat their addictions. The diseases they contract will be treated in provincially run health centres and hospitals at taxpayer expense. We must remember there is only one taxpayer. This is a federal problem not a provincial problem because it is going to be federal money that is spent. The increase in disease will make Canada and Canadians less safe. More Canadians will be harmed. It is yet another part of the Conservative plan to move Canada backward.

Apparently no Conservatives are prepared to speak to this legislation, but the questions they sometimes ask speak to the misconception that somehow the victims of these addictions are at fault for their addictions and that any consumption of illicit substances is to be treated with contempt and disgust. The views expressed by those questioners are often at odds with their constituents, who view these individuals as victims needing help, and sometimes among members themselves.

We have in Toronto a mayor who has admitted to smoking crack cocaine, to driving while drunk and to associating with persons known by police to be at least unsavoury if not criminal. The outward position of the Conservative Party is that all these actions should be condemned, and yet some in that party who are friends of the mayor have expressed the wish that he get help, which is the appropriate response. This brings me back to my initial statement from Mr. Darwin that as man advances in civilization, not retreats, the simplest reason—that is where we use our minds to think—“would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him”.

The very fact that the Minister of Industry has stated that it is not his job to look after his neighbour's child is an example of the very attitude that prevails on that side of this chamber. Although he has since suggested perhaps that was the wrong thing to say, it is an example of the knee-jerk reaction that goes on in that party, the knee-jerk reaction that creates the kind of sense that we should not be looking after our neighbours and we should not be looking after our neighbours' children. We in this party believe it is part of our job to look after our neighbours, to look after our neighbours' children, and in so doing we will all be the better for it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Trois-Rivières for his question.

Quebec's Institut national de santé publique has noted that one of the benefits of a supervised injection site is that it provides a way to reach the most vulnerable members of our society. It is a front-line service for individuals who do not usually turn to traditional health services. To argue that this is impossible is completely false.

The truth of the matter is that the Conservatives do not want to do this. The Liberals also mounted some opposition to supervised injection sites for many years prior to 2003. The fact is that it is possible to make life difficult for such sites with legislation such as Bill C-2. It is also possible to facilitate the opening of well-regulated supervised injection sites, but that is not what the Conservatives have decided to do.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to continue my speech on Bill C-2.

As I said earlier, despite all the scientific evidence and literature, the Conservatives hold obstinately and unreasonably to a certain ideology by introducing a bill like this.

I have heard my Conservative colleagues make some incredible arguments in their speeches. For instance, some members believe that supervised injection sites encourage the use of hard drugs. Others feel that neighbourhood safety is compromised if a supervised injection site opens its doors. Those arguments are completely ridiculous and they definitely fly in the face of the evidence available to us.

I would like to turn briefly to AJOI, a community organization from Pierrefonds—Dollard that does amazing work with street youth at risk of joining street gangs or in very precarious situations. When AJOI was ready to start its activities, people said that West Island had no street youth. It took some time for reality to be accepted and for the organization to be able to take action.

Does this organization want young offenders to be on the street? No. Is having case workers helping youths in the streets a danger to the community or to neighbourhood safety? Not at all. In fact, the opposite is true. These people provide medical, moral and social support to youth in need to help them get out of that situation.

The parallel with what we are seeing in this debate on Bill C-2 is very relevant, and it is easy to understand why. I would like to give you a few facts that have emerged from the experiences of InSite in Vancouver.

Eighty percent of people polled who live or work in downtown Vancouver support InSite. Therefore, these neighbours do not feel threatened by having a site in their neighbourhood.

The rate of overdose deaths in East Vancouver has dropped by 35% since InSite opened. In one year, 2,171 InSite users have been directed to addiction counselling or other support services. I could go on. The facts speak for themselves.

I would just like to wrap up by saying that a number of studies have been done in Quebec. A very serious process is under way to support a position for or against supervised injection sites.

The Institut national de santé publique du Québec stated that sites like these could meet some needs and should be encouraged. They came to a number of positive conclusions after analyzing the facts and the literature.

This is something this government clearly did not do before introducing Bill C-2, which is unfortunate. It is a completely thoughtless way to act and, I will say it again, it amounts to incredible ideological obstinacy.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to categorically voice my opposition to Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. That is what the bill’s title says, but if we read a little further, we see that this bill is really a completely incredible ideological stand against supervised injection sites. In fact, this is not the first time the government has tried to abolish this sort of site.

InSite is one such site that currently exists in Canada. Much has been said about InSite during the course of this debate. In 2008, it was denied, to some extent, the right to exist because of legislation governing drugs and other substances.

The government tried to put InSite out of business. The matter ended up before the Supreme Court, and InSite was ultimately granted the right to operate. The court recognized that it provided valuable services and called on the government to relax the rules to allow sites such as this to operate and provide much-needed services to the public.

Today is a sad day because we are reopening the whole debate. This bill is nothing short of another attempt to shut down facilities such as InSite. By calling for incredible regulations and requirements, it attempts to discourage people who might want to open this kind of site or offer these kinds of services. Instead of making it easier for sites that have proven their worth to operate — and I will talk more about that later — the Conservatives have decided to hold obstinately to a certain ideology and to try once again to shut down this debate and dismiss such options.

I have listened to several of my colleagues’ speeches, and I have heard some rather absurd comments. One Conservative parliamentary secretary expressed concern about the market value of buildings in proximity to any supervised injection sites that could open. If this is the government’s main priority, then we can understand their ideological opposition. Never mind that property values may be affected. We are talking about services that save lives. That is the priority. Quite frankly, if our focus shifts to matters like property values, we are all losers and it is clear that we are not on the same page.

I would like to talk about something that happened in my riding and that is reminiscent of the kinds of arguments I heard from the parliamentary secretary. An agency was providing care for people with intellectual disabilities, and not just care, but supervised apartments. The agency had to rebuild completely after there was a fire and the site was inadequate. It faced opposition from the people in the neighbourhood. When the plan was announced, the neighbours were worried that people with mental health problems would be moving in. They were afraid for the value of their homes and the safety of their children.

The city could very well have cultivated their fear to show them it was on their side and could have banned any initiative to provide supervised apartments for these people.

In politics, of course, the easy option is always to use, foster and inflame people’s fear in order to prove them right and put an end to a plan, without even examining the facts and the benefits.

Instead, these people sat down, they knocked on doors, and they talked to the residents with reservations to try to change their minds, to provide them with the right information and the facts. Finally, after much consultation and consensus building, the Centre Bienvenue opened its doors. It now provides services for dozens of individuals who need care. People were able to work together to implement these essential services.

Surely members can see the parallel I am drawing with this debate on Bill C-2. The Conservatives could have given information to the people who are afraid of having supervised injection sites in their neighbourhood and shared with them the facts, the statistics, the successes and even neighbourhoods’ level of satisfaction with having a supervised injection site close by. Instead, the Conservatives are taking the easy way out, the cowardly way out, if I may say. They are cultivating people’s fear and supporting their ideological opposition by putting forward draft legislation like Bill C-2.

I heard another peculiar argument during this debate: according to many Conservatives, supervised injection sites encourage the use of hard drugs. It is unbelievable that we hear these kinds of comments even though there are many studies, whose validity has been proven, that show the opposite is true. The people who go to these sites will go on to detox and are followed by social workers who try to help them reduce their drug use.

When we help school dropouts by providing them with services, are we encouraging students to drop out of school? Of course not. Nobody would say that, because it has been proven and it has been accepted for a long time that young people have problems in school. Rather than ignoring them and throwing them out of our school system, we involve them and offer them appropriate services.

I could give a number of other examples of agencies in my riding, such as the À ma baie youth centre and the La corde centre, that offer motivation and support programs. They do an exceptional job, and I would like to commend them for it.

I heard another strange comment: that safety would be at risk in these neighbourhoods. Some Conservatives on the other side of this House believe that supervised injection sites jeopardize the safety of children and the safety of the neighbourhood. Once again, the opposite is true and it has been proven.

I will continue my speech after question period, and I look forward to it.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a two-part question for my colleague.

The first part of the question is a little sarcastic. I would like to know whether the roles have been reversed in 2014. Since we have resumed debate on Bill C-2, we do not seem to be hearing the Conservative government's position, even though it introduced this bill. On a few rare occasions, a Conservative member rises to ask a question about our suggestions to support an organization like InSite. I get the impression that we are ready to govern and they are ready to cede power.

More seriously, does the member think that an organization like InSite is the first step towards rehabilitation and, eventually, reintegration into the workforce for drug addicts?

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt that the Conservatives are now making a concealed attempt to shut down InSite, having seen how they have acted in the past in trying to shut it down and when the Supreme Court of Canada clearly said that it would be irresponsible to do so.

I cannot tell the House what a difference InSite has made to the Downtown Eastside. Being a long-time resident of the Lower Mainland, I will go back in history. It was when the former Liberal government callously destroyed the national housing program that we started to see overdose deaths skyrocketing in the Downtown Eastside. We have seen under both Liberal and Conservative governments very meanspirited policies that have helped to contribute to what has been an appalling abuse of the public.

The reason we are opposing Bill C-2 and are promoting such things as housing being put back in the hands of the public is that we understand that we have to build stronger communities to tackle issues like drug addiction.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, for those citizens concerned about the Canada Post closures and Canada becoming the only G7 country without home mail delivery, the NDP is putting forward a motion that every MP will be voting on later this week, asking the government to maintain home service delivery. It is in the interests of Canada and communities across this country. However, we will be speaking about that in question period and in the days to come.

Today, we are called upon to speak on Bill C-2, which is called an act to amend the controlled drugs and substances act, but should more rightfully be called an act to shut down InSite. Members will recall that the Conservative government wanted to shut down InSite. The Supreme Court justices, who are appointed to maintain the rule of law, said no, that it was not in the public interest.

Now we have Conservatives coming back with a mean-spirited bill that attempts to do exactly the same thing. On this side of the House, within the NDP caucus, we say no to that. We stand with most British Columbians, who believe that InSite should be maintained. Why? Because the scientific evidence very clearly points to the importance of InSite.

I grew up in the Lower Mainland. I can recall a time in the early 1990s when we saw a tragic skyrocketing of overdose deaths to over 200 people a year. That is 200 individuals. Conservatives might call them addicts, but many Canadians knew them as fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. These family members were passing away at an alarming rate. InSite was a reaction from the community to put in place a controlled injection site so that we could bring down the number of tragic overdose deaths.

InSite has succeeded remarkably. The number of overdose deaths has decreased by more than 35%. That is an extremely important statistic to know. More importantly, InSite is keeping heroin off the streets and keeping it in a controlled injection site. Study after study has pointed out very clearly that the number of discarded syringes has decreased in the Downtown Eastside and in parts of the Lower Mainland as a result of InSite. Studies show that over 2,000 referrals to addiction counselling are being made every year. In fact, the rate of those who are looking at addiction treatment and who go to InSite is more than twice the average of those who do not go to InSite. What this means, in a very real sense, is that InSite is the first door and the first hallway into addiction treatment programs.

The Conservative government has been equally irresponsible when it comes to addiction treatment and crime prevention programs. What we have seen under the Conservative government are severe cutbacks in addiction treatments and crime prevention programs. What we have is a Conservative government that just does not seem to get the importance that communities place on putting in place effective crime prevention measures and effective addiction treatment measures. InSite is part of that process of finding solutions.

Many of my colleagues in the NDP caucus have spoken very eloquently. We have yet to hear from a Conservative on this issue, at least this year. The Conservatives will ask questions designed to take us away from this issue of InSite, for the simple reason that most British Columbians support it. They have yet to comment on the very compelling statistics and evidence of the success of InSite.

A very compelling result of the success of InSite is the fact that we are now talking about dozens of similar sites around the world, particularly in places like Australia and Europe. There we are seeing the model of InSite, which of course was modelled on other similar facilities, going into other communities. Why is that happening? It is happening because of what comes from having that type of controlled injection facility.

As I mentioned earlier, there are fewer addicts. I go through the Downtown Eastside and past InSite regularly, including last Saturday. So I can see first hand, as a resident of the lower mainland and someone who grew up there, the difference it has made to the Downtown Eastside. There are fewer addicts shooting up in the streets around the area in the Downtown Eastside. There are fewer discarded syringes.

What this has done is to take heroin off the streets to a certain extent. Instead of trying to shut down InSite, many cities in Canada are looking at the possibility of establishing an InSite-type facility. Because of Bill C-2, they cannot seriously look at doing that because, very clearly, the Conservative government, instead of looking at solutions and harm reduction and at expanding addiction treatment and crime prevention programs and allowing, as the Supreme Court very clearly said, a controlled injection site like InSite to exist, is endeavouring instead to shut down InSite by bringing forward Bill C-2.

Canadians, certainly in my area of the Lower Mainland, who have followed the debate, very clearly express support for InSite. Polls show that over 80% of the residents of the Downtown Eastside support InSite. They are the ones who are closest to it. A few minutes ago my colleague from Vaudreuil-Soulanges very eloquently mentioned that the Conservatives need to understand the neighbourhood and the situation before they start putting forward legislation based purely on ideology. There is no doubt about that. The reality is that those closest to InSite support it, some 80%. Most British Columbians support it.

That is not all. Let us look at some of the world's most prestigious medical journals that have looked at the issue of InSite and controlled injection sites and have seen the medical benefits and the harm reduction benefits that come from having a site such as InSite: the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, the British Medical Journal. This is not a question where one member of Parliament should express his or her personal opinion compared to another member of Parliament's. All members of Parliament are called upon to look at the evidence, to look at the medical professionals and what they say. When the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medical Journal and The Lancet all say there is real merit in the harm reduction approach embodied in facilities such as InSite, one would think that the Conservatives would be willing to listen, rather than pushing forward what is a very narrow-minded ideology and attacking addiction treatment programs and crime prevention programs. Those things are terrific investments of taxpayer money, because if we spend one dollar on crime prevention or addiction treatment programs, we are saving six dollars later on in policing, court, and prison costs. So it makes a lot of sense from the taxpayers' standpoint to put in place a process and a philosophy where we are saving taxpayer money and stopping the crime from occurring in the first place.

The Conservative government has gutted crime prevention and addiction treatment, and now we see it attacking InSite. It makes no sense at all, except when we look at what the Conservatives have done since they introduced the bill. My colleague from Halifax was very eloquent in this regard: “Keep heroin out of our backyards”. The Conservatives have been using this as a fundraising tactic, which is absolutely reprehensible. The reality for anyone who knows the issue is that what the government is doing in shutting down InSite is putting heroin back on the streets of the Downtown Eastside. By shutting down InSite, there would be more syringes in children's playgrounds throughout the Downtown Eastside and throughout the Lower Mainland. There would be more overdose deaths as a result of the current government's mean-spirited drive to shut down InSite. The reality is that there would be fewer addicts looking for addiction treatment programs, because one thing that is clear from every study that has been done on InSite is that addicts are more likely to go into addiction treatment and counselling if they can go to a supervised injection site. It is a two for one proposition: there is twice the possibility they will look for treatment.

That is why, on the basis of evidence, the NDP is voting against this bill.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, these questions have been raised a number of times by the government member. He is not addressing any of the facts relating to Bill C-2.

With this bill, the government seeks to put up barriers to an innovative solution that would enable our cities and the rest of Canada to make a meaningful effort to tackle the problem of addiction to hard drugs. This solution would offer people with addictions a safe place where they can receive services that would help them. We must acknowledge this fact. This bill seriously hinders the establishment of supervised injection facilities.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to extend to you, to all my colleagues and to my constituents in the riding of LaSalle—Émard my best wishes for health, happiness and solidarity in the new year.

Before turning my attention to the proposed legislation to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which the Conservatives have dubbed the Respect for Communities Act, I would like to quote a firsthand account recently published in the Globe and Mail:

As I watch the daily circus and the madness surrounding Mayor Rob Ford, I envy the people of Toronto, who get to watch this on television, read it in the newspaper and listen to it on the radio. They quack about it on Facebook and laugh about it on their daily travels. I envy them because they can change the channel, stop talking about it or turn it off. In my life this is not an option.

My daughter is 23 and she has been an addict, in one form or another, for seven years.

She has snorted drugs, shot them in her arm, smoked them and taken pills. She has had her own version of the “drunken stupor,” and she has even been found with vital signs absent by paramedics.

Contrasted to this is the very bizarre fact that our daughter is also a university student who pulls A grades in every subject. What she desperately wants is to be well.

The family, if the addict still has a family intact, is swallowed whole and suffers immeasurably.

On reading this account, I feel compassion for this mother who goes through this tragedy every day, a tragedy that affects the entire family, even though I cannot fully comprehend this family’s suffering or the suffering of an individual addicted to hard drugs.

Compassion is a value Canadians hold dear. We live in a country with a harsh climate, as today’s weather attests. The population is spread over a vast area. Communities have always survived by helping each other through difficult situations. Similarly, Europeans shared with and forged mutually beneficial ties with First Nations.

Canada therefore became a country in which communities forged close ties with one another. I am fortunate to represent the closely knit community of LaSalle—Émard, where a wide range of community groups and volunteer associations never ask whether they should assist those in need or why they need help. They simply roll up their sleeves and extend a helping hand.

Addiction to hard drugs is a complex problem, as my colleagues noted earlier. In Vancouver an innovative approach was developed to help hard drug addicts.

This innovative approach helps persons struggling with hard drug addictions by providing them with a safe place where they can survive. Addicts are given a helping hand and directed to services that hopefully will help them overcome an addiction that slowly kills them.

InSite also has associated benefits, so to speak. By providing drug users with a safe injection site, this service also keeps the neighbouring community safer. As was pointed out, public places are kept free of drug addicts and their syringes. This also helps provide the health care that is so important to prevent the spread of infectious diseases and to give people the help they need.

The current bill would amend the legislation that regulates certain drugs and other substances, but primarily it would affect the way in which supervised injection facilities can be set up. First there was the non-renewal of InSite’s licence, and then there was the ruling handed down by the Supreme Court of Canada on the matter. What happened? The government decided to challenge the Supreme Court ruling and then to comply with it, more or less, by introducing this bill.

This decision and the proposed policy in Bill C-2 garnered a variety of responses. I will mention a few, as follows:

It's difficult to imagine a more cynical and dangerous response to a unanimous Supreme Court ruling that Ottawa has a constitutional duty to protect Canadians than the...government's Respect for Communities Act announced Thursday.

They say that the government, through Bill C-2, also called the “Respect for Communities Act”, is providing a very cynical and dangerous response. The government must protect all of its citizens. What is even more dangerous is the partisan way in which the current government has exploited such a situation. I will continue with the quotation:

As [the former] Health Minister...was holding a press conference to announce details of the act that sets conditions for new safe injection sites, the Conservative party was emailing its faithful to organize opposition to such facilities.

How can the Conservatives be so partisan when it comes to a safe site that—hopefully—helps improve the health of people who are addicted to hard drugs?

How can they be so cavalier in opposing a unanimous Supreme Court ruling and propose insurmountable barriers that will allow the federal health minister to strike down any initiatives that could improve the lives of people who need them so badly? This is why the NDP will vote against Bill C-2 as it currently stands. We should show compassion and extend a helping hand to these people.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today we find ourselves debating Bill C-2, a bill that has been given a pet name by the Conservative government that really does not speak to what the bill is about.

I would like to start off with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. who once said:

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

I would like to ask each member in this House a question. How many people in this House have actually met and spoken with drug addicts? How many people have been witness to neighbourhoods affected by drug addiction and poverty? How many people would prefer to steer away from these areas? These are pertinent questions to put to the House today.

I remember vividly when I was living on the west coast. I would take weekend visits to Vancouver to visit friends in the Strathcona neighbourhood. I remember walking down streets like Hastings and Cordova during the winter of 1995 and seeing people huddled on doorsteps, people who might have been dead. The rate of overdoses that winter was horrible. One could walk the streets and literally see people dying on the streets. It was devastating.

In the media at the time, figures such as drug enforcement staff sergeant Jack Dop could see the problems that were hitting the streets in Vancouver. They were saying that we had to do something about it. They could see how this scourge was affecting the community, because it was not controlled. It was uncontrolled.

I should point out that at the time, in 1995, the Chrétien regime had instituted cutbacks and a reorganization of Transport Canada that affected the coast guard and ports. It might have been a coincidence that shipments of heroin from Asia increased at our ports during that time of reorganization and cutbacks. It might have been a coincidence, or it might have been related. That is for the House to decide.

This is a complex issue. We know that drugs exist in our communities, that people use drugs. As responsible legislators, we have to respond to this problem in a responsible manner.

I asked before if anyone in this House has known a drug addict. I asked that question because I have known a drug addict. I knew a guy named Johnny. He stayed with us in Victoria for a couple of months. He was a tree planter. He was a very hard worker, and he was a recovering heroin addict. He had been clean for four or five months, and he had been planting trees in the interior of British Columbia. He worked hard. He was a funny guy and a nice guy. He could play a mean guitar and cook a great meal. We had lots of laughs with Johnny. He was a nice guy, a human being.

Now at the time I met John in 1994, we were living in a poor neighbourhood. It was the North Park neighbourhood in Victoria. It was a pretty rough-and-tumble, poor neighbourhood. It attracted all types of people: students, artists, and coincidentally, drug addicts.

I know that John eventually went back to using, and I lost track of him. He got swallowed up by drugs. He ended up back on the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. I do not know what happened to him. I do wonder if during that winter of 1995 John was one of those people on the doorsteps who had overdosed and died because there was pure heroin and there was no one there to take care of them.

This is a human story. This was a good guy with a bad habit. There are a lot of good people out there who have bad habits, and they need our help. They need us to stand up for them. That is why we need places like InSite.

Ten years later, when I was doing my graduate studies at UBC, I worked with communities in the Downtown Eastside, primarily in the child care community. I talked to people in that community. They said that their fear was needles in parks and needles found in child care centres. InSite was responding to things like that. InSite was keeping these neighbourhoods safe, because it was centralizing the problem, and it was controlled.

This legislation would promote unsupervised drug consumption sites. They do exist. There are flophouses in communities. They pass under the radar because they are not official. They are drug dens. They could be anywhere in our communities and could pop up anywhere.

InSite creates a centre that is legitimate, controlled, and visible in the community, rather than unsupervised drug consumption sites, which I would contend the government is promoting by trying to make it more difficult for supervised ones to open.

“Keep heroin out of our backyards” is the slogan of Conservative national campaign manager Jenni Byrne. She thinks it is pretty clever. I do not think it is clever. I think it is irresponsible policy on the part of the government to make it more difficult for supervised injection sites to open.

I do not think the bill would eradicate heroin from people's backyards. If we do not have supervised drug sites, we would have unsupervised ones, which I think could be more chaotic, dangerous and have greater criminal elements attached to them. Since they are not controlled or supervised, those criminal elements could flourish.

We need a responsible way to frame these afflicted communities and to help them.

The current government often talks about safe streets and communities. I think InSite contributes to safe streets and communities. As I said, maybe my friend John was one of those who overdosed. If he had been able to go to InSite, then maybe when he had a reaction the people supervising him could have seen that and contacted medical authorities to help him out.

In terms of needles in parks and schoolyards, at least when people are injecting on those sites the needles are taken care of. They are not discarded next to a swing set at a child care centre or in a public park. It is controlled. It is supervised. That is the whole idea around it.

When something like InSite is created, it is a community coming together to say they have to find a solution to this problem. We have addicts in our communities and they need help. They need medical help. They might need psychological help. They might need clean works. A place like InSite provides that. It is a step in a community's deciding to better its environment, not worsen it.

I think this policy is playing a lot on people's fears. They are people who have never met drug addicts and are afraid to talk with people with these problems. As a society we all have to work together to solve these problems. We have to talk to drug addicts. We have to work with them. We have to create points of contact with these people. Otherwise, it goes under the radar and we end up with unsupervised flophouses and drug dens. The criminal element is allowed to flourish because we do not want to deal with it.

By creating places like InSite, we have a point of contact where we start to deal with these problems and with complex questions like the hon. member from the interior of British Columbia asked about. It was a good and pertinent question. However, if we back up and move away from places like InSite, I do not think we are going to ask those important questions complex questions about drug addiction and drug importation in this country.

Through InSite, we can start to discuss these questions. This legislation has offered a chance to debate this issue, and I look forward to questions from my colleagues on the other side concerning this. I do not think we can put on blinders and say that hard drug use in our society is going to go away if we do not do anything about it. Nobody wants a flophouse or a drug den or a crack house next to their house. If you ask anybody in Canada, they would not want that.

InSite creates a community point of contact where these people can get help, be supervised, and where they can be kept healthy. It is a good positive step in the right direction. There is always room for improvement, but we have to start somewhere.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague and caucus mate for bringing forward some additional points on the ideology that underpins the bill. I spoke to it before the recess.

One of the things I find most distressing about Bill C-2 is that it is a disguised attempt to bring in, by stealth, measures that would defeat the purpose the Supreme Court of Canada threw back to Parliament to meet, which was to ensure that the security of the person is protected.

There are more than 40 different so-called conditions before a clinic for harm reduction can be opened in a community, including some that are practically impossible. For example, before they are even able to get permission to open such a clinic, they have to provide the background, resumé, and educational qualifications of the people they plan to hire. This is not a reasonable set of conditions.

I certainly have a lot of sympathy with the idea that a community where an InSite harm reduction, needle exchange program facility would open, such as the one that exists in Vancouver, should be consulted. My view is that Bill C-2 is not a set of conditions for consulting a community. It is a set of conditions for defeating the instructions of the Supreme Court of Canada by stealth.

I wonder how the hon. member feels a community should be engaged in these decisions.

[Bruce Hyer, Green, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to be back in the House today, after the recess, not only as the newest member of the Green caucus of Parliament but also, as of today, as the deputy leader of that party.

As we know, we are here to talk about Bill C-2, an Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

It is clear to me, and I believe to at least three-quarters of Canadians, that the party across the way is of the mindset that if a person is poor, or a single mom, or a person of colour, or unemployed, or if the government has unfairly cut off EI, that is that person's fault. That also extends to addictions. If someone is in the unfortunate position of becoming addicted to a substance, all too often caused by the sorts of things I just mentioned, it is entirely his or her fault. Society and the government are not to blame.

We have a government with a punishment attitude. Empathy is often lacking. Understanding of the root causes is often lacking. For those who fall into that class of society and who the government feels are, pardon the expression, "losers", it is their fault.

I do not think I can do better than to read some of the recommendations of the Canadian Nurses Association on why Bill C-2 is a bad idea. They state:

The federal government has the opportunity to create policy founded on the best scientific evidence, while reducing costs to taxpayers, supporting vulnerable members of society, providing essential disease-prevention services and encouraging access to addiction-treatment.

Given the numerous benefits of [safe injection sites] to public health and safety...

If I may interject, the Supreme Court has indicated that it agrees with the nurses on this.

...the [Canadian Nurses Association] recommends

1. that the proposed legislation governing Section 56 amendments to CDSA be withdrawn; and

2. that it be replaced by legislation that creates favourable conditions for the minister to grant exemptions in communities where evidence indicates that [a safe injection site] stands to decrease death and disease.

The legislation must

- recognize access to health services as a human right for vulnerable groups;

- be based on the principles of harm reduction;

It should not cause more harm. It goes on:

- be founded on evidence-based practices in public health;

- be developed in consultation with relevant stakeholders, including people who use injection drugs;

- consider the cost-savings benefits of [safe injection sites] to the Canadian health-care system; and

- provide for reasonable establishment and evaluation periods prior to renewal.

In addition, [the Canadian Nurses Association] recommends that harm reduction be reinstated as a fourth pillar in Canada’s National Anti-Drug Strategy. [The Canadian Nurses Association] recommends that the auditor general review Canada’s National Anti-Drug Strategy every [decade]. Doing so will not only ensure that the strategy is modified if it is not meeting public health objectives, it will also allow the strategy to integrate recent, effective, evidence-based public health interventions.

We have heard it said on many issues in this House, such as the environment, Statistics Canada, and now this, that Canada needs to have policies based on evidence and science. Today we have legislation, like this, based on an ideology that if one is rich and powerful, one is a winner. The government picks winners. If a person is a loser, it is his or her fault.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am just going to pick up from where my colleague left off with his answer to a question about the perceived ideas of what a safe injection site is. My colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley talked about getting access to the addicts as being one of the most difficult things for people working in health care, for people working with folks on the street and for people who are trying to reach out to addicts and help them, whether to access health care or addiction services or housing. How do we actually find the addicts? How do we get to them so we can give them the supports they need?

That is very true in my home community in Halifax. We have this incredible program right now called MOSH, which stands for mobile outreach street health. It is a van with nurses that goes around to where people are. They go to homeless shelters, under bridges and to fields. They go with the van to where they know homeless people are and try to access them and give them some very basic, rough medical attention, and maybe talk to them about the next step. They may talk to them about treatment; there is a doctor down at the North End Community Health Centre. They may talk to them about housing and ask if they know how to access housing. They might connect them to Halifax Housing Help or to Direction 180, which is our methadone clinic in Halifax. Actually having access to people with addictions is a great thing because we can give them the supports they need. We need access to people who are looking to deal with their addiction or become housed or get the health care they need, and safe injection sites are a way to access people with addictions.

My colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley cited some great statistics about how safe injection sites work, such as InSite in particular, and how people who want support—not everyone—can actually get addiction counselling and can transition to a healthier life where they tackle their addictions. That is something we should be doing as a country and as Canadians. We should be helping. We should be thinking about ways to actually help people with addictions instead of just further marginalizing them and making it harder for them.

So why are we here talking about Bill C-2? We are here because, in 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada decided that InSite saves lives, that it offers life-saving services and therefore should be exempt from section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the CDSA. I really think judicial decisions are separate from who we are as legislators, but I read that decision and think it was a victory for evidence-based science over ideology. That was 2011. Here we are now at the beginning of 2014 and, unfortunately, I am standing here debating a bill that is a return of that ideology, and it makes me quite sad that we are actually moving backwards.

This bill is deeply flawed, and it is based on an anti-drug ideology and on fears about public safety that are not necessarily rooted in evidence. The fears are not necessarily real. They are false fears.

What are these fears? My colleague from Guelph was talking about some of these false fears: people think there are raging addicts going around our communities, who get to go into these posh sites and put their feet up and access drugs, and it is like one-stop shopping for addicts; people think that if there is a safe injection site there will be increased drug use; people think there will be more drug users on the street. When I say “people” I do not mean all people, but those are the false fears that exist. They are false fears that drug users are going to terrorize our children and our communities.

Why do I say these false fears are out there? It is because on the Conservative Party website we see that the Conservatives are trying to capitalize on these fears. There is this beautiful page, and I say “beautiful” with a heavy dose of sarcasm. It says, “Keep heroin out of our backyards”. It is a fundraising request. People can sign up, and the big donate button is there to donate to the Conservative Party of Canada. There is a picture of a couple of needles on the ground and people milling around. They are not people in fancy dress shoes or high-heeled shoes. It is apparent that these are the shoes of drug dealers; again there is a heavy dose of sarcasm there.

It is incredible; it is fearmongering. There is a Facebook site that goes with it. If members have some time and they want to get themselves quite exercised about what state the country is in, they should read those comments. They are comments filled with vitriol and more fearmongering. It is incredible. I pulled one comment that said, “Addiction is not a health problem. Addiction...is stupidity”. The vitriol extends bizarrely into saying the civil service should be gagged and put on the EI line. I do not really know where that comes from, but it is out there. That fearmongering is being fueled by the Conservatives.

People may say they do not want a safe injection site in their backyards, but I am going to talk about my backyard in Halifax. My office is on Gottingen Street. Gottingen is a beautiful, strong, vibrant street full of community action and community togetherness. I love the street my office is on, but Gottingen Street has its share of social problems. It is a historically poor neighbourhood. There is drug use and sex work in my community. There is a lot of poverty in this community.

The last time this legislation was up in the House I spoke to it as well. The week before was a riding week and MPs were at home in our constituencies. Just purely by chance that it happened that week, I rode my bike to my office and right on the ground by my bike lock was a needle. I dutifully went inside, got something to pick it up with and took it three doors down to the community heath centre, which has a sharps bin. That is the reality of my community. If my community decides it is better to have a safe injection site, then why can my community not make that decision free of interference and fearmongering from the Conservatives?

I was chatting with some folks from the Metro Non-Profit Housing Association, which is located across the street from my office. I did not know this, but they told me that it and other community organizations had rallied together to put a sharps container on a street behind my office where there is not a lot of back and forth traffic nor a lot of people, so it turns out to be a place where people do use intravenous drugs. Bushes provide privacy. It is ideal if someone is looking for a place to do something outside the eyes of the public. The association rallied together and said it would put a sharps container behind these buildings because there is so much drug use. At the very least, kids would not be walking around in the midst of needles and having an accident.

At first I thought that was a great idea. If there are needles, then let us give people a place to put those needles. Then I found out that people were breaking into the sharps container to steal dirty needles. What kind of desperation must one feel to break into a sharps container to steal dirty needles? What kind of low is that individual at? Where is that individual who thinks that is a good idea and acts on it? Where is that individual when he or she acts on that, when that is the reality?

That is not an awesome thing about my town, but it is real, it exists and it is not going to go away if we just ignore it and do not talk about it. My community says enough is enough. It does not want sharps containers in the café down the street anymore. It does not want sharps containers in all of the community organizations along Gottingen Street. We do not want people shooting up behind the office or behind the health centre. We want to take care of people and offer them the supports they may need. We want to help them if they want to transition away from addiction. Who is to say that we cannot do that?

I will finish with a quote from the Supreme Court of Canada. “Insite saves lives. Its benefits have been proven.” That speaks volumes.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin my comments on Bill C-2, I would like to welcome you and all my colleagues back to the House of Commons from the weeks we had with our constituents and families. I hope everyone had an informative and restful time away from the House, because the debate about the future of the country begins again.

One always hopes, coming out of a time when politicians are separated by great distances and surrounded by friends and family, that we would return to find a new spirit from the government, a spirit in which we could start to renew and rebuild Canada and perhaps find some common ground in order to make our country a better place, which I believe we all begin our political careers hoping for.

Unfortunately, after a very productive debate we just had on a democratic motion from one of the New Democratic members about e-petitions and restoring and enhancing democracy in our Parliament, for which we hope to see some Conservative support, we now move over to an incredibly offensive piece of legislation. This is the first one the Conservatives felt they needed to call. They often have trouble naming their pieces of legislation accurately. We have seen them time and time again borrow from the worst aspects of our neighbours in the south, particularly the Republican Party, which uses the naming of bills to inappropriately stir up feelings and emotions within the public and inaccurately reflect what is actually being proposed in the legislation. We have that here with Bill C-2. An appropriate name for the bill would be “Bill C-2, shutting down InSite”. This is essentially what the bill is meant to do.

For those who are not familiar with InSite, it has become something that the Conservatives constantly and almost vehemently oppose. It is a program run out of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, one of the most troubled communities in the entire country but also one of our most resilient communities. I spent some time working with people who have been positively affected by InSite, a program started a number of years ago in the nineties. It is a safe injection site and the only safe injection site in Canada.

I know some of my Conservative colleagues who choose ignorance over the facts will use this as some sort of culture war rallying cry, raising money and potentially securing votes by misinforming the people they represent. However, they cannot misinform themselves during the course of this debate, because the facts sit before us. They can choose to have their own opinions, but they cannot choose to have their own facts. What we see in this piece of legislation directly goes against science. It goes against the facts of the matter and the principles that we, at least in the New Democratic Party, think are important. Therefore, I am disappointed that this legislation continues to receive support from the Prime Minister and the Conservative Party. I am not surprised, unfortunately.

However, I am also encouraged because it allows us to talk about such important things as public safety and the health of Canadians. InSite was at the time, and remains, a cutting-edge program, a bold initiative to try to tackle a problem that has been plaguing a community for many years. It is one that has received support, at least in British Columbia and Vancouver, from both ends of the political spectrum. Very conservative mayors and more progressive mayors, like Mayor Robertson, have supported this initiative over the years. It forms one pillar of the four-pillar approach in Vancouver, which has taken on a challenge.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, being from Windsor and having spent some time in Toronto and other Canadian cities, within some of our neighbourhoods there can be a cycle in which crime leads to more crime, open drug use leads to more open drug use, and people stop fighting for their neighbourhoods. They leave. The people we want to move into the community will not do so because they do not feel safe, and communities spin almost out of control. The police are unable to regain a certain amount of public security, and the community ends up looking like one of those communities we fear.

Perhaps there are better examples across the border from your home, Mr. Speaker, in Detroit, where because of economics and social malaise, entire neighbourhoods are essentially being bulldozed because no one wants to live there.

It costs communities not only the hardship, but many millions and billions of dollars in the end. The Downtown Eastside has seen a renewal and revitalization owing not just in part to InSite and the good work the people there do, but also because of many programs that progressive governments have brought to bear in dealing with issues like housing. The Conservative government would perhaps take note that housing is one of the most affordable and most essential components. The renewal has not been complete, but there is certainly an incredible difference from even 15 years ago when I spent some time working in the Downtown Eastside. It is quite amazing.

Let us deal with the bill, because in Bill C-2 the government has found a new love for public consultation and community input. I look to my colleagues to see if they can think of anything else the government has ever done on which the public's opinion has actually mattered. Those of us dealing with the pipeline politics in northern B.C. and the Enbridge northern gateway would love to hear the Conservative government suddenly have some feeling and concern for the opinion of the public.

For those dealing in the Toronto waterfront, such as my friend from Trinity—Spadina, to hear that the Conservative government actually cares what the public thinks would be remarkable. Right across the country we have seen the government time and time again simply invoke measures, as happened when the Prime Minister changed the age of retirement from 65 to 67. I do not remember that he consulted with Canadians and asked for their opinion, but suddenly, when it comes to a safe injection site, the Conservatives ideologically oppose it. Their opposition is not based on any facts or evidence, even though Conservatives say from time to time they have a new-found love for science.

We asked them to help review with us the 30 peer-reviewed articles and medical journals that have studied the effectiveness of InSite. InSite is supported by the Police Association, by the Chiefs of Police, by the Nurses Association, and by the Canadian Medical Association. These must be some of those foreign-funded radical groups the Conservatives are always crying about, these well-respected institutions of our health and public safety in Canada, but each of these studies has shown time and again that this harm reduction strategy has lowered fatalities due to overdose by 35% since its inception.

A caring Conservative would say there are fewer people dying of drug overdose, and it seems like a good thing. A Conservative who is concerned about public safety would also note that crime has dropped precipitously in the same region over the same time. Therefore, the whole idea that safe injection sites in communities cause the crime rate to go through the roof has proven to be the opposite; in fact, the spread of communicable diseases in that community, a serious public safety and public health issue, has also dropped in that same community in which InSite exists.

Not only must we consider the pain and hardship of those who contract these communicable diseases, we must also consider the public purse and what it costs the already strained public system. It should be every government's intention and work to lower the amount of disease spreading in our communities, and drug relapse for those who have participated in this program is significantly lower than it is in any other program in this country. The addicts who go through the InSite program tend not to get back on drugs nearly as frequently as they do after any other detox or remediation program we have.

All those facts together—public safety, the lowering of crime, the lowering of health costs, the encouragement and support of people in Vancouver and British Columbia of all political persuasions for such a program—should open the eyes of the Conservatives just a little bit.

The medical doctors of Canada support this program, the nurses of Canada support this program, and the police in the city and the province support this program. One would think one of those groups would be of interest to Conservatives, but no, that is not the case. What is of interest is fundraising and ideological warfare. We know that when they introduced the bill, it had not even been debated for a minute in the House of Commons before the Conservative Party sent out a fundraiser to its membership asking them to send money for this great bill.

I remember that when the Prime Minister ran for election after being in a position of minority government, he said to give him a majority and not to worry about any agenda he had, because he would be restrained by the courts. In the case of the Supreme Court of Canada, after three trials at the B.C. Supreme Court, the government took the case to the B.C. Court of Appeal and finally to the Supreme Court. What was the cost to taxpayers? I do not know, but it was millions.

Even after the Supreme Court said that this bill violates charter rights, that it may well be unconstitutional, and that the government is arbitrarily undermining the very purposes of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which includes public health and safety, that is what the government is doing.

It is not a free and conscious clear-thinking government. It is one driven only by ideology, only by fundraising initiatives, and only by blind faith in some sort of world view that absolutely contradicts the facts in front of us.

We will be opposing this legislation at every step of the way.

The House resumed from November 28 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.

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Mr. Chair, I believe that our honourable colleague from the opposition is really trying to reference and debate Bill C-2 here in the committee. It's really not the appropriate forum for it. We are here to study prescription drug abuse, and while witnesses may speak to the broader experiences that they may have had, it's incumbent on the members of Parliament to stay directed and focused in their questions.

[Paulina Ayala, NDP, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to rise today and add my voice to those of my colleagues in the official opposition against Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Bill C-2 is designed to make it more difficult to grant an exemption for supervised injection sites. The problem here is that at this time, there is but one such site, in Vancouver. This site was rightly granted an exemption, because it offers proven benefits. This bill is merely a reflection of Conservative anti-drug ideology. Yet tabling such a bill, which would prevent the establishment of supervised injection sites, will not eliminate addicts from our society. Unfortunately, they are here to stay.

I would like to acquaint you with some scientific data showing that supervised injection sites benefit both drug users and public safety. I will shortly be providing some additional information on public safety.

The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse concluded in 2008 that such establishments provided a clean, safe and above all supervised place in which to monitor addicts’ injections. As we know, a used syringe can be used by another drug user, and may transmit disease.

Next, the federal Minister of Health asked an advisory committee of experts to assess the impact of the InSite centre with respect to its objectives. The conclusions are persuasive. It was found that InSite encourages users to seek advice, detox and treatment, and this resulted in increased use of detox and treatment services. These successes were achieved because of the exemption they obtained, which the government wishes to restrict.

It should also be added that the establishment of such a site provides a connection to treatment and rehabilitation services. Such a site gives young people a chance to get off drugs and opens a door towards rehabilitation. This is very important, and we are all in favour of it.

The qualified staff working at this facility monitor drug users and give them options to overcome their addiction.

I am presenting published facts, which the Conservatives cannot deny. They base their bill on the notion that public safety will be threatened by the kind of site we are talking about. I would like to point out such sites were established in response to concerns on the part of the authorities about the spread of HIV and hepatitis C. Such sites met the needs of addicts who were unable to stop using drugs by providing them with hygienic facilities. Furthermore, they also meet the needs of all those who do not use drugs and who sometimes find a needle in the street. It was thus a way of preventing the spread of drugs and disease in the streets.

In drafting this bill, the Conservatives pointed to the unsafe nature of neighbourhoods surrounding such sites. By imposing cumbersome administrative procedures to impede the creation of such sites, however, the Conservatives are forcing addicts to use drugs in the streets, in the parks or anywhere where children will be playing the following morning.

I do not believe that the presence of contaminated waste such as syringes or the spread of infectious diseases through unsupervised injections is reassuring for the public. I would like to emphasize this point, because I have witnessed the consequences of drug use in the streets. I will provide a few examples. We are talking about addicts, people who are already struggling with drugs. Let us take the example of a couple strolling in the park with their child. The child is playing in the sandpit, and suddenly he finds a syringe. Day care centres have complained about this phenomenon in the past. Children are playing in the park, and suddenly they are pricked by one of these needles. Obviously, they have to go straight to hospital. It is serious when people do not feel safe.

I do not have to look much farther: I live in Ottawa, 15 minutes’ walk from the House of Commons. I still remember that last spring, when my co-tenant was clearing dead leaves from the property, she found a syringe in the front yard. Fortunately, she was wearing leather gloves.

We were afraid. We told ourselves it was serious, but we thought it was an exception.

A few months later, arriving home in the evening after my workday in Parliament, what do I see? A young man injecting himself with drugs in front of my home. We are not in a poor neighbourhood, after all. This man dropped his dirty needle outside a hotel. I was very afraid, so I told the police about the situation, and they arrived shortly after.

The next morning, before I went to work, what did I see? Two women picking up leaves with very thin rubber gloves. Since my English is not particularly good, I did not know how to tell them to be careful, because this is serious. I tried to tell them about the dangerous things on the ground. I do not know if they understood me, but I continued to feel concern.

These women are working mothers, and they may prick themselves inadvertently by touching needles thrown down in the street. Drug users, of course, are thinking only about satisfying their need, and do not realize that their actions have consequences.

In some ways, these sites can help us to manage the social problems related to drug addiction. These sites do not just help addicts; they can protect all of us.

Another thing that troubles me about this bill is that it goes against a decision rendered by the Supreme Court in 2011. I would like to quote a key excerpt from that decision. It reads:

Where, as here, [the evidence shows that] a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, [quite the contrary,] the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

The court therefore ruled that InSite should remain open under the exemption set out in section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Although the court left the decisions regarding exemptions for future supervised injection sites to the minister's discretion, it indicated that:

...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.

It is important that any new bill pertaining to these sites take into account the Supreme Court of Canada's decisions.

In closing, throughout my speech, I presented arguments that show that supervised injection sites are safe, controlled environments that provide health and social services, and not just for drug users. They can also protect us and our families on the streets.

In light of such concrete evidence, the government must stop proposing bills designed only to satisfy its voter base and instead meet the needs of Canadians.

We are not living in an ideal, drug-free world. There are people who have problems that drive them to inject illegal substances.

It is our duty to offer them solutions. Preventing the establishment of the only services that can help them will not make their addictions disappear. It will even put us, our families and our children at risk of finding contaminated needles on the streets.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

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

Once again I am struck by the title of the bill, but I am also confused as to where the bill would be going after we have finished with it in this House at second reading. It will be sent to the public safety committee. I am finding it hard to understand why it would be going there when we are looking specifically at a health issue. Controlled drugs and substance abuse fall under health issues.

Once again I am forced to ask myself the question of what this bill is really about. Is it really about tackling drugs and substance abuse in our community? Is that what the bill is really about? Is it about making sure that our young people are safe? Is it about making sure that there are rehabilitation programs to help young people, and those who are not so young, who have managed to become engaged in addictive behaviour?

There are addictive drugs, and often people end up being sufferers of substance abuse not because of choice but because circumstances have taken them there. However, once we have identified them as addicts, so to speak, then we also know that it is a health issue and we have to treat it as such. Instead of looking at ways to tackle the very complex issue of substance abuse, the government once again wants very simplistic, headline-grabbing kind of legislation.

A few days ago, we were debating a bill called drug-free prisons. That legislation had nothing to do with treatment or rehabilitation. All it had to do with was a urine test that was already being conducted and was already being taken into consideration by the Parole Board. That is the only part that was in the bill, yet according to the government across the aisle, it was all about drug-free prisons. We begin to wonder, when we see bills like this one and the other one, if it is not really about appealing to the base. Is it just a modus operandi to fill up the Conservative coffers? I am beginning to think that is what it is all about.

The reason is that as a teacher and a counsellor who worked for a long time in the public school system and has experience dealing with people who are engaged in substance abuse as well as those who live with those who are abusing drugs, I have seen the devastation it can have on people's lives. All the research that exists says that just telling people they cannot do something will not get rid of the problem; instead, what we need is a multi-pronged approach in order to take on an issue such as substance abuse.

I come from a riding very far from here, Newton—North Delta, in beautiful British Columbia. In my riding we are very concerned about community safety. We are very concerned about gangs and we are very concerned about substance abuse.

The community wants to find solutions to help our youth, but I do not see anything coming forward in this House from the other side that is a proactive, preventive, or rehabilitative program. I see just words on paper and more or less ideological positions that are not based on science, research, or anything else. The fact that addictions are a health issue is not even taken into consideration. They are a health issue, and as such, we must treat them as a health issue.

That does not mean we are saying that people involved in criminal activities should not have consequences, but surely, at the same time, we also have to realize that we live in a country where even through our penal system we absolutely believe in rehabilitation. We do not believe that we just put someone in prison, shut the door, and that is it, because we know those people, young and old, are going to come out and come back into our communities.

When I look at the bill, I see that it is really a not-so-veiled attempt to defy a Supreme Court ruling that ruled in favour of injection sites operating when a community assessment shows that community support is there and when there is value to it.

I note my colleagues across the way have an allergy to science. They also have an allergy to research, facts, and data. Their way of operating is to just appeal to their ideological base and not take into consideration what will work and what will make our communities safer. All they want are sound bites without any substance so that they can collect more money.

There are over 30 peer-reviewed studies published in respected journals, such as The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and the British Medical Journal. They have all described the beneficial impacts of InSite.

Some may not be aware, but InSite is situated in British Columbia, on Vancouver's east side. Studies on over 70 safe injection sites in Europe and Australia have shown similar benefits, so InSite in Vancouver is not a one-off. Programs similar to InSite that operate throughout Europe have shown similar benefits.

InSite is one of the greatest public health achievements in Canada. I do not say that lightly. I have actually been on site and I have seen how it works. I have actually talked to the people who go in there, and the people who work there as well. We believe sites like this would benefit other cities where they are needed.

There is also this idea that InSite just opens the door and anybody can just walk in, that it is just a way of getting free drugs and free needles. That is very far from the truth. In order to use InSite, one has to be at least 16 years of age, sign a user agreement, adhere to a code of conduct, and not be accompanied by children.

Eighty per cent of the people living in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside support InSite. Also, overdose deaths in East Vancouver have dropped 35% since InSite has been in operation. Surely that is evidence that we need to allow InSite and other organizations like it to be established so that we can take on this problem.

Once again, I want to appeal to my colleagues across the way. Let us start looking at science. Let us start looking at the research. Let us start listening to health professionals, from nurses and doctors to associations. Let us start paying attention to the real professionals and take our guidance from them, and let us not make things worse and make our communities unsafe.

While ideologically you argue that you are fixing a problem, you are actually putting communities at risk.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House for the second time to speak to Bill C-2, because this bill is very important to me. Unfortunately, I have known people suffering from addiction. I say “suffering from” because this is not a choice. These people need care.

To add some perspective, Bill C-2 is very dangerous. This is a Conservative attempt to deprive us of supervised injection sites such as InSite in Vancouver.

The Conservatives' bill adds a list of conditions for opening a supervised injection site in a community that are quite complex and difficult to meet. I find this quite unfortunate.

In my speech, I talked about safety on the streets, because our Conservative friends claim they are doing this for the sake of safety. However, I would much prefer seeing people who inject drugs do so in a specific place in the city rather than finding syringes everywhere. I also pointed to the absurdity of the Conservatives' decision to refer this bill to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, rather than the Standing Committee on Health. That is rich.

That proves that the Conservatives do not believe that supervised injection sites are a health issue. However, these sites are not just places where people go to get high together. These are places where health professionals provide supervision, prevention and guidance. The fact that the Conservatives are sending this bill to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security tells me, on one hand, that they want to scare people and confuse the facts about supervised injection sites, and on the other, that so many health professionals support supervised injection sites that the Conservatives are having trouble finding enough witnesses to support their views on health. This is what I said in my first speech.

At this time, Canada has one supervised injection site, InSite. It was created as part of a public health plan by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and its community partners following a dramatic increase in overdose deaths in Vancouver between 1987 and 1993. At the time, the Vancouver area was also seeing a dramatic rise in the rates of communicable diseases spread by injection drug use, including hepatitis A, B and C and HIV/AIDS.

World AIDS Day is coming up in a few days, on December 1, so I would like to take a moment to talk about that. The Canadian AIDS Society, which was founded about 20 years ago, does excellent work. It is too bad that the Conservatives do not believe in the benefits of supervised injection sites, because sites such as InSite help reduce the number of people with AIDS every year.

The Conservatives like to talk about the economy. We can significantly reduce health care costs related to communicable diseases spread by injection drug use. For instance, AIDS can be transmitted sexually as well as by dirty needles. Supervised injection sites tackle this problem by distributing clean needles. Little things like that help. In my riding, an organization called À deux mains distributes clean needs to injection drug users.

I do not have the figures for hepatitis, but I have some pretty incredible figures for AIDS from a study done in 2008. I would like to share the total economic losses associated with each individual who is HIV-positive.

This was in 2009. If we factor in inflation, the numbers might be a bit higher today.

For every HIV-positive person, the estimated cost is $250,000 in health care, $670,000 in terms of productivity and $380,000 in terms of quality of life. I am not sure what, specifically, is meant by quality of life, but I imagine it has to do with everything that comes with daily life, such as productivity, food and morale, which must be at rock bottom.

These numbers from the Canadian AIDS Society add up to a total of $1,300,000 per person. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, roughly 69,000 people in Canada had AIDS in 2011, making the total cost $4,031,490,000. That is a lot of money. I am not saying that all those people were infected by dirty needles, but some of them were. We could save a lot of money.

It is unfortunate that most bills, especially Conservative bills, focus on healing instead of prevention. The Conservatives never consider prevention. The same is true when it comes to crime. There is no prevention, just healing. People are sent to prison where no one will look after them. It is sad.

No one chooses to be an addict. We rarely talk about the social determinants of health. If you go to Vancouver East you will see that the people who live there are not very rich. They did not get everything handed to them in life. I am very fortunate. I come from an educated family. My parents taught me the importance of staying away from drugs, going to school and getting a job.

Not everyone is lucky enough to be born into those circumstances. Through no fault of their own, people end up with rather serious addictions. They shoot up drugs. I imagine that no one plans to get to that stage. I doubt they woke up one morning and decided to become a heroin addict. We have a duty as a society to help them.

I would like to come back to the issue of discarded needles that turn up all over the place. When I found out that I was going to give a speech, I checked the websites of major Canadian cities. The Conservatives say that they do not want these needles in their backyards. However, the websites of Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver and Montreal indicate that all these cities have a program to retrieve used needles found on the streets.

The Ottawa website, for example, has an 11-step set of instructions for what to do with a needle found on the street. If the city puts this on its website, there must be a lot of discarded needles. Moreover, if on its site it says to be careful and that children should never touch used needles, that must be because needles can be found where they live. This is rather worrisome.

This is also the case for Montreal. Look at the website and this is one of the first things you will read: “In order to take collective action to reduce the problem of discarded needles...”. Therefore, the problem exists. We know that there are groups in Montreal that would like to establish supervised injection sites, but Bill C-2, which the Conservatives will unfortunately pass, will block them. Thus, people will keep discarding needles in the streets.

In closing, I would like to thank the Montreal organizations that pick up these needles. Thank you to À deux mains, located in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, which is in my riding, Cactus Montréal, Spectre de rue, Pacte de rue, L'Unité d'intervention mobile L'Anonyme, Dopamine and Le Préfixe, and also several CLSCs.

These are not establishments where you go to take drugs; their mandate is prevention. I urge my colleagues to vote against this government bill, because it will be detrimental to the health of our communities.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak again on Bill C-2. I did speak previously on the amendment that was proposed to Bill C-2 and gave a broader speech on my opposition to the bill then. Today, I want to focus on HIV/AIDS and Bill C-2.

Today I am wearing an AIDS ribbon as a reminder of World AIDS Day this December 1. I want to restate the AIDS Society's message this year, which is, “If you think the fight against HIV/AIDS has been won... Think again. It's not over”.

I think that's a very important message for all of us in the House of Commons, particularly when we are debating a bill such as Bill C-2.

I am from a generation of men who lost many, in fact, most of my closest friends to HIV/AIDS. When this was being ignored as a gay disease, gay men had to organize and fight back against prejudice and ignorance. Society responded, in particular, the medical community responded quite strongly. We have made great progress, but we have not cured AIDS.

Now an HIV/AIDS diagnosis is no longer a death sentence, but it is still a very serious medical condition. It is one which has great costs, and the Conservatives are always worried about costs. In financial terms, it has been estimated at about $500,000 per new case of HIV/AIDS, but it also takes a great personal toll on our friends and families.

It is still a serious medical condition, but the success we have had has led to some unfortunate consequences.

One of those consequences is the rise of HIV/AIDS rates among young gay men, again. Some of the education we have been doing is obviously failing as a new generation of gay men are coming up and feeling invincible, as all young people do, but also feeling that somehow HIV/AIDS medical progress means it is something they do not have to worry about. We have to recommit ourselves to doing that education in the gay community so that people are aware of the seriousness that HIV/AIDS still represents.

However, another thing has happened, which is that the main population being affected by AIDS has shifted. While AIDS was highly prevalent in most cases in the 1980s and 1990s among gay men, we have had a change and now over half the new cases of HIV/AIDS are among injection drug users.

This is a population, again, for which there is a great deal of prejudice. I was very disturbed by the comments from the member for Prince George—Peace River when he talked about “happy addicts”. There is no such thing as a happy addict. It is indicative of the ignorance that some members have about addiction as a serious medical problem. We are talking about how we deal with this medical problem. Injection drug users are now, in most parts of the country, the largest number of HIV/AIDS infections, and this has been true for much of the past decade.

Therefore, both the idea that HIV/AIDS is a manageable medical condition and the moral opprobrium that we heap on injection drug users means that we are now tending to ignore this problem in an important part of our society. We treat HIV drug users as if they have some kind of moral failing, as if somehow they have not understood how they have to act, instead of thinking about the reality of the situation, which is that addiction is a medical problem.

What does this have to do directly with Bill C-2?

I want to speak about a policy paper from the Canadian AIDS Society on injection drug use and HIV/AIDS. It refers to what it calls a health crisis caused by an epidemic of injection drug use. I think the use of the term “epidemic” is quite apt. This is a medical condition. This is not a moral condition of our society.

According to the Canadian AIDS Society, starting in 1996, over half of the new HIV/AIDS infections in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver were as a result of injection drug use. Starting as early as 1996, we have seen the shift in the population most seriously affected by HIV/AIDS. Now, the AIDS Society reports, that trend has extended across the entire country to smaller cities and rural areas. The focus of new infections is the injection drug user community.

There are obvious reasons, and one of those is sharing needles and other drug paraphernalia and equipment. However, there is a secondary reason I do not think we like to face up to, which is that many injection drug users engage in unsafe sex while high on drugs, and this is a significant contributor to HIV/AIDS infections. In fact, in our major cities it is not uncommon among young male street youth to trade unprotected sex for injection drugs, again, putting themselves seriously at risk.

No one does this as a conscious choice of something fun to do. They do it out of circumstance and they do it out of an addiction condition, which is medical.

The solutions are to be found, obviously, in harm reduction and in particular in safe injection sites.

I want to refer to a backgrounder that was produced by the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition on supervised consumption sites. What it has done is it has tried to summarize the research. We hear the Conservatives asking, “Where are the facts? Where is the evidence?” I am actually going to take a moment to go, point by point, through the findings that are summarized in the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition backgrounder on what research, peer-tested research studies, have shown.

What the research has found is that safe injection sites are used by people who inject drugs, including those who are at the highest risk. Therefore, when I talked about young male street workers, these people who are at the highest risk will often end up at the safe injection site.

The second finding is that they reduce overdose deaths. No deaths have occurred at the InSite safe injection site since its inception.

Third, they reduce behaviour such as the use of shared needles, which can lead not only to HIV infections but also to hep C infections.

Fourth, they reduce other unsafe injection practices and encourage the use of sterile materials. Therefore, users of these services are more likely to report changes to their injection practices and more likely to consult health professionals for assistance in crises resulting from injection drug use.

Fifth, they also increase the use of detox and other treatment services. The other side likes to point to providing a safe and warm place to inject drugs. That is not really what it is about. It is about providing a safe place, yes, but a place where there are other services on site. Therefore, when vulnerable populations build a relationship at InSite, the research shows 30% are much more likely to use detoxification and counselling services. Thirty per cent are more likely to actually try to get help as a result of being at the safe injection site.

Sixth, they are cost-effective. Research shows InSite prevents 35 new cases of HIV and three deaths a year, providing a societal benefit, in monetary terms, of $6 million per year. Of course, I do not wish, at any time, to try to quantify the personal savings in saving three lives, because those are people's kids, people's brothers, people's sisters, people's parents.

Seventh, they reduce public drug use. I think the most disturbing thing that happened when the bill was being talked about by the government was that it sent out a fundraiser saying, “Keep heroin out of our backyards”. That is exactly what safe injection sites do. They reduce the public use of injection drugs. They reduce the incidents of finding needles on public streets. They reduce the amount of publicly discarded injection equipment.

Finally, they do not cause an increase in crime around safe injection sites. In fact, crime rates have gone down around safe injection sites.

Those are the facts. There is the research about safe injection sites.

I think it is very important, when Conservatives call for the facts, that we actually look at the facts about safe injection sites. We will find that they save lives, they prevent new HIV/AIDS infections, they save money, they reduce crime, they make our neighbourhoods safer, and finally, the most important one to me, they create community support for treating injection drug use as an addiction and public support for harm reduction measures.

When people in the Downtown Eastside were surveyed, it was found that over 80% of those who live and work in the Downtown Eastside support a safe injection site. Bill C-2 is called “respecting communities”. I would like to call it just ironic, but I think it is a cruel irony that when people are saying they need safe injection sites in their communities, the Conservatives introduce a bill that would frustrate that in every way possible and call it “respecting communities”. It is directly the opposite.

The bill aims to shut down the supervised injection site in east Vancouver and to prevent any other supervised injection sites from operating. Why else do we have 26 conditions, literally, (a) to (z), set out in the bill? Even if every one of those conditions were met, it would not require the minister to issue a licence. It only says the minister “may” issue a licence.

Once again, I believe the bill is actually a fraud on the House of Commons, a fraud on the public. It is designed to frustrate a very important public health measure. I will be doing everything I can to ensure the Conservatives see the harm they would be doing, rather than the harm they could be reducing.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it will be very difficult for me to speak after my colleague's impassioned words. Today's debate has been very emotional because we believe that we can do better for Canadians. I am therefore honoured to comment on Bill C-2.

The government says that it would like to consult communities before opening supervised injection sites. Curiously however, on the very day that it introduced the bill, the Conservative Party posted a petition online entitled “Keep heroin out of our backyards”. The petition asks people whether they would like a supervised drug consumption site to be opened in their community. The government is doing everything it can to get in the way of those who would like to open a supervised injection centre.

According to the new rules, anyone wishing to open such a site would first have to ask how the communities in question and the police feel about it, and obtain support from the municipal and provincial authorities. However, they will have to do a lot more than that, in the form of a lot of evidence and documents, including documentation on the financial viability of the site, the need for it in the community and its potential impact on public safety. Furthermore, the Minister of Health would have the last word on applications.

And yet, evidence has shown that supervised injection sites effectively reduce the risk of contracting and spreading communicable diseases through blood, as is the case with HIV and hepatitis C, as well as the risk of dying from an overdose. It has also been demonstrated that they are not a threat to public safety and that in some instances, they promote public safety by reducing the number of people injecting drugs in public, and the violence associated with drug use. Safe injection sites strike a proper balance between health and public safety goals. They also direct people with an urgent need for assistance to the appropriate health services, such as primary care and addiction treatment.

Injection sites are beneficial to communities. However, for a number of ideological reasons—which have been properly demonstrated by my colleague—the government has chosen yet again to put on blinkers and pretend that drug and addiction problems simply do not exist. Rather than attempt to mitigate the harm, they would rather say that everything is fine and dandy. Things are not fine. The work done by these organizations saves lives. A centre like InSite helps to reduce the number of deaths caused by drug overdoses, and directs people who use drugs to the essential social services that can help them.

There is at the moment only one supervised injection site in Canada. Its name is InSite and it is located in Vancouver. Since it was opened, Vancouver has experienced a 35% decrease in overdose fatalities. It has been established that the InSite organization has led to a decrease in crime, communicable disease infections and addiction relapse rates.

The bill goes against the Supreme Court decision. In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that InSite was providing essential services and should remain open under the exemption provided in section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The court ruled that the charter authorized users to have access to InSite's services and that similar services should be authorized under an exemption.

What message is the government sending if it fails to respect the Supreme Court's decision? The Supreme Court of Canada clearly asked the federal government to stop interfering with the InSite injection site in Vancouver. The highest court in the land is of the opinion that the government's decision to stop exempting centres from criminal prosecution is arbitrary and infringes the rights of addicts to life and safety as provided under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

What more will it take? Why is the government proposing such a bill? It is doing so to impede the work of organizations that help addicts. 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...

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 NDP believes that any legislation introduced by the Conservative government must comply with the Supreme Court ruling and strike a balance between public health and public safety.

The Supreme Court ruling also gave various organizations the go-ahead to open supervised injection sites in other areas of the country. That is why this bill should not be passed. Not only is it based on a regressive ideology, but it is also flawed. This bill shows just how out of touch the Conservatives are with reality and just how much they ignore the opinions of experts and scientists.

Supervised injection sites are essential resources for improving the safety of our communities. The Conservative campaign with regard to this bill was called "Keep heroin out of our backyards”. Precisely the opposite will happen. Passing this bill will do nothing to address the problem of drug use on the streets. This bill will not stop people from using drugs on the streets. On the contrary, it will now be almost impossible to open safe injection sites, which will bring heroin back into our neighbourhoods.

People will continue to find dirty needles on the ground. Drug users will still not have access to clean, safe equipment, and the rates of HIV and hepatitis will continue to climb. It is obvious that safe injection sites have been proven to work, and the Conservative government needs to face the facts and listen to what health experts have to say.

When researching this bill, I found a statistic that I thought was quite striking: people who used InSite's services at least once a week were 1.7 times more likely to enter a detox program than those who visited infrequently.

This statistic clearly shows that supervised injection sites can help people into detox programs. Facilities such as InSite play a vital role in reducing harm and getting people off drugs.

One argument that I often hear made against programs such as InSite is that people prefer to allocate resources to initiatives that help people overcome their addiction instead of opening additional safe injection sites. That is only natural; I can understand that argument.

However, that statistic clearly indicates that safe injection sites are a step towards getting off drugs. People who use drugs in the street will not wake up one morning and decide to stop using. However, by going to a safe injection site, users have the opportunity to speak with medical professionals, receive advice and learn more about how to access treatment centres.

InSite administrators clearly saw those benefits and opened OnSite in 2007. Users can be sent on OnSite, located directly above InSite, which provides detox and rehab services. There, users who are ready to take control of their addiction can undergo detox treatment under the supervision of social workers, nurses, mental health specialists and doctors. Those specialists can also help users plan their next steps and provide counselling to avoid a relapse.

I touched on the benefits of safe injection sites, and now I would like to speak to Bill C-2 and how it makes it nearly impossible to set up a new safe injection site.

Preparing an application for a new supervised injection site will be such a cumbersome process that it may dissuade applicants from even opening a file. If an applicant mistakenly forgets to include certain documents, the application could be automatically denied. Even if an applicant manages to obtain all of the documents needed for the application and has the community's full support, the minister can still deny it. Some applications may also take forever for no good reason, which means groups could be kept waiting for months or even years.

This bill is a serious obstacle to opening safe injection sites that can really help drug users and improve safety in our communities.

It is clear that safe injection sites have proven their worth.

They are a sound and effective solution to the problem of addiction in Canada.

I am ready to answer questions.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-2.

The subject of drugs is not always easy to address because it is still taboo. We put people who have used drugs in prison. We get rid of them. However, how long have drugs been around?

I do not know how our great-grandparents managed to deal with it all at the time when distilled alcohol was illegal. Some tough speeches must have been made in Parliament before it was legalized.

Today we are talking about drugs. We are not talking about legalizing heroin, but about a site that was established in Vancouver East and that distributes needles to people with drug problems.

The government has introduced a bill providing for restrictions so tough it will be difficult for that site to renew its licence and for other sites to open in Canada. This bill is a thinly veiled way of preventing supervised injection sites from carrying on their activities, which defies the Supreme Court's decision.

It establishes a long list of restrictive criteria that supervised injection sites will have to meet for the minister to grant them an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Those criteria will make it much more difficult for organizations to open a supervised injection site. That is the thrust of the bill.

The bill even comes in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling. We could consult that decision. It mentions, for example, that no one may prevent anything that may save lives.

In 2003, InSite was granted an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. That exemption was issued for medical and scientific reasons so that InSite could offer its services and the effectiveness of supervised injection sites could be assessed.

Section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act gives the minister the power to authorize the use of drugs for medical or scientific purposes or if it is in the public interest.

In 2007, InSite opened the OnSite detox centre. The number of overdose-related deaths in Vancouver has fallen by 35% since that centre opened. The crime rate and the prevalence of communicable diseases and relapses have declined as well.

Earlier the member for Cariboo—Prince George asked where the statistics were. However, I would ask the same question: where are the statistics that warrant changing the act? I would like the government to show us the statistics that explain why they want to amend the act.

For example, the government could tell us that the number of deaths has risen by 35% since needles have been distributed. It is time we thought about this. Has the crime rate risen by 35%? That is a statistic. Before amending the act, the government needs to prove the opposite of what doctors and authorities are saying. However, the Conservatives' ideology is front and centre today.

According to the right-wing Conservative ideology and Conservative supporters, we should put drug users in prison. Above all, we should not give them needles, do prevention work or make contact with people who are helplessly addicted to drugs so that we can direct them to an institution that can help them get off drugs.

If you tell someone that drugs are illegal and not right, that person will still break the law, but he will not talk about it and he will be stuck with his problem.

We will be unable to help these people. The statistics gathered in Vancouver have shown that overdoses have fallen by 35%. In addition, crime has dropped and the number of HIV infections has also declined. Is it not our responsibility to ensure that happens?

The member for Cariboo—Prince George asked where the statistics are and said he would like to see the numbers. I am going to repeat it. We are not supposed to say he was not in the House, but I see him now. I think I was just not looking his way, but he is there and I want him to hear this. When he stood and said he wanted to see the statistics, the statistics are that there was a 35% decrease. Crime went down. HIV went down.

That is why I said that it is the government that should come to us and be able to say it is proposing the bill because it has statistics. The government should give us the statistics to show that crime and HIV went up after people were given needles, but that is not what the statistics are saying.

Doctors and nurses disagree as well. Two days ago, there were nurses in my office saying they were hoping there would be amendments to this bill, as it does not make sense and goes against the health of people.

Let me cite an example from Bathurst. Earlier my colleague from Scarborough Southwest talked about people who collect garbage. Bathurst, the community where I live, has a law prohibiting people from putting their garbage bags out at the curb. They have to be put in plastic containers. Workers said that they were being pricked when they picked up garbage bags and that they had caught infections.

One population group has health problems as a result of heroin, but we are prepared to leave them on the street.

I went to Vancouver East and I felt pity for the people living on the street. My colleague from Vancouver East says she supports the idea of distributing needles to people with drug problems.

As an ordinary person, I initially did not understand why we should give needles to people who use drugs. When I went to Vancouver East, however, I realized that it was the right thing to do. My colleague made me understand that when we can receive them in our homes, talk to them and direct them to a medical centre that can help them, we will have done something good.

However, if we abandon them, we will have failed to get the job done and discharge our responsibilities as Canadians and as politicians. The members of this House have a responsibility to pass legislation that helps the men and women of this country. People who live on the street are someone's children. They are citizens. They are human beings. We would not even allow animals to be treated this way.

Today we have before us a government bill that defies a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada solely because of the ideology of the government and its supporters. I forgot that this is the same government that does not believe in the court, in the opposition or in Parliament.

I hope that one day Canadians will make the right decision and get rid of this government once and for all, since it is not working for the welfare of Canadians.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in the last portion of the debate, my colleague said that if it working, they fix it again. I have a different take on that.

I remember, in the government of Mike Harris, an education minister, John Snobelen. He actually had the gall to say, in regard to education, that we have to create a crisis so we can come in and fix it. We have to break what is working so that we can go in and fix it.

When I look at the front bench across the way, it reminds me that the Minister of Finance, the President of the Treasury Board, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs were all principal players in that government and are bringing that kind of approach to the federal level.

I am rising today to oppose Bill C-2. What Conservatives are trying to do with the bill is clear. I have to give them credit for the level of political camouflaging contained within the bill.

It is clear that the measures in the bill would hurt some of the most vulnerable in our society and would be very costly to our health care system.

There is another very troubling and repeating pattern with the government. Why do we even have a Supreme Court ruling in this case? It is because the government challenged the right of InSite and safe injection sites to exist. The Conservatives do not believe in them. They do not want them. They want to make it as onerous as possible, which is the purpose of this legislation.

The member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore stood and asked if we are against community consultation. It is ridiculous to try to camouflage the deep flaws in the bill with statements like that. Of course we are in favour of consulting Canadians and communities about what goes on in their neighbourhoods. That is exactly how governments should work. However, the government, time and time again, ignores that basic principle when we are talking about resource development, environmental protection, and the safety of Canadians. It is like asking if we are against oxygen. No one is against oxygen. We would not be here without it.

The bill pretends to address public health and safety concerns about safe injection sites. In fact, it has three other completely different goals. Very simply, the bill aims to shut down InSite, the supervised injection site in east Vancouver, and to prevent any other supervised sites from operating. I believe that it aims to nullify and circumvent the 2011 Supreme Court of Canada ruling in favour of safe injection sites, and I believe that it constitutes a further attack on the principle of harm reduction.

Harm reduction is critical to dealing with issues of substance abuse. We have to reduce the harm so that people can be in a position to gain quality of life and have the strength to overcome the tremendous challenges that come with addiction.

In Toronto, we have one of the country's foremost centres for dealing with addiction and mental health. It is called CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. I would like to read its submission to the Toronto Board of Health in July in regard to supervised injection sites. It said:

Supervised Injection Services are another public health approach that can reduce harms associated with injection drug use. Research from around the globe has shown that these services are associated with several benefits to injection drug users including reducing behaviours associated with HIV and Hepatitis C infections, lowering risky injection practices, reducing overdoses, and increasing referrals to treatment and other health services.

I will stop there for a moment and repeat that last part: “and increasing referrals to treatment and other health services”.

I will bring up a business analogy, and of course, the folks across the way love those. Anyone who has run a business knows how much harder it is to get a new client in the door than it is to keep an existing one. Part of the purpose of safe injection sites is to get people in the door so that they can be given access to the other services that are going to make them healthy and productive members of our society, at lower cost. That is what is really funny about the bill. It is going to cost Canadians millions of dollars in future court challenges, in future health care costs, and in the destruction of communities, because these services will not exist.

The submission by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health to the Toronto Board of Health in July 2013 continues:

In addition, Supervised Injection Services do not increase crime and disorder in the surrounding neighbourhood and actually reduce other problems like public drug abuse and discarded injection equipment.

That is pretty clear and simple. It is very basic. It does not increase crime or disorder in the surrounding neighbourhoods and actually reduces problems such as public drug use and discarded injection equipment. It helps to actually keep our communities safer, the communities that have these kinds of problems.

With respect to discarded injection equipment, when I was a child of nine or ten, my father was a teacher in Scarborough at Samuel Hearn public school. Every year around environment day, they would engage in community public cleanups. They would go out into the neighbourhood and do a fabulous public service and help keep their neighbourhoods clean.

They were in an alleyway, about a block away from the school, behind Danforth Avenue near Pharmacy, cleaning up trash. My father was wearing work gloves, but they did not have the thickness that would be required to stop a needle from piercing. He picked up a pile of garbage and was pricked by a discarded syringe from a drug user.

As a nine or ten year old, it is very hard to fathom and understand what follows from that. What followed was that my father had to be tested for HIV, for hepatitis, and for other infectious diseases. That created months of concern and anguish in our family, not knowing whether he had picked up a transmissible or communicable disease and whether he would be facing horrific health challenges in the future.

We were very fortunate that in the end, all the results were negative, but the cost to the health care system, the cost to our family in having to deal with it, and all the uncertainty that followed was a direct result of the fact that there were discarded needles on the ground. Will safe injection sites eliminate this problem completely? Of course not. There is no silver bullet. However, they will be a big part of reducing the harms in our communities.

I also remember, not so long ago, when a Starbucks in Toronto, at John and Queen, installed a safe disposal box for needles in their bathroom. There was an absolute uproar from Conservatives. “You're encouraging drug use. People will now go to that Starbucks to shoot up”. No. What was happening was that people were already going to Starbucks and shooting up and throwing needles in the garbage can. The staff, at the end of the day, would have to pick up that garbage and put their lives at risk because of stupid, inconsiderate policies brought forward by people on the other side. This trend continues to this day. Never let an argument get in front of ideology. Absolutely not.

The submission by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health continues:

Given the difference in geography and culture of drug use amongst cities, experiences from these Supervised Injection Services are not simply transferrable to other cities such as Toronto. However, there is evidence to suggest that a Supervised Injection Service could be beneficial to Toronto, though further research involving the development of a pilot Supervised Injection Service would be needed to confirm. With that in mind, CAMH supports the development of a pilot Supervised Injection Service in Toronto. As a teaching hospital dedicated to care, research and education in mental health and addiction, CAMH would be happy to work with other partners to play a role in the evaluation of the pilot service and offer treatment to those in need.

Treatment is what is important and critical here. It is the treatment people would receive going to these safe injection sites, the kind of treatment that would help get them off the streets and help reduce the harm to them, their families, and the community. It would reduce the amount of drug addiction that exists in our communities, and it would help more people have a better quality of life and fulfillment and be active and participating members of our communities.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is nice to see that all my friends are here to listen to my speech in great numbers.

I would like to start by saying that in analyzing the notes and looking at what is going on, I find this to be a disturbing situation. In one part of the country, we have a program that works, but then we have the government with its bill trying to make it more difficult to continue this program and more difficult for others to implement it. It seems that the tendency of the Conservative government is to ignore evidence as it constructs policy, which I would say is often based on ideology rather than the facts.

As a prelude to my speech on Bill C-2, I just had a chance to skim through the annual report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator for 2011-12. One of things highlighted is the increase in prison population even though our crime rate is decreasing. If members look at that report and the various crime bills and legislation, I would say that one could comfortably say that it is based not so much on the idea of trying to rehabilitate people to become productive members of society when they get out, but on punishment, almost vicious punishment. I think back in history to the age of enlightenment and the Dark Ages when western civilization was invaded by barbarians. I hope we are not going in that direction.

Some of the concerns in the correctional report is in regard to double-bunking, for example, which puts a strain on the system. In a sense, it is a punishment, but the effects, which I will talk about later, are far-reaching. The report says:

The increasing costs of corrections in Canada and rising inmate numbers are inseparable from a number of significant legislative measures. Since 2006, these reforms have resulted in:

Expansion of a range of mandatory minimum penalties for certain offences, particularly for serious drug offences, gun crimes and child exploitation offences

Abolition or tightening of parole review criteria

Reduction of credit for time served in pre-trial custody

Restricted use of conditional sentences.

Although we may agree with a number of these criteria, the fact remains that we have put more people into our prisons at a time when the crime rate was decreasing, and we have made it more difficult for these people to get rehabilitated and become productive members of society when they come out.

Prison crowding, for example, has negative impacts on the system's ability to provide humane, safe and secure custody. The report says, “Putting two inmates in a single cell means an inevitable loss of privacy and dignity, and increases the potential for tension and violence.”

The report talks about how this tension and violence is detrimental to the final rehabilitation of prisoners so they can come out into society.

As prisons become more crowded, the physical conditions of confinement are hardening. At the higher security levels, inmates already have extremely limited opportunities for association, movement and assembly.

Programming and vocational opportunities in maximum security prisons are extremely limited, defined by operational and security concerns driven largely by the influence of gangs, drugs and incompatibles.

I would like to transpose this to our current discussion on Bill C-2.

Overall, one would think that if we have a program that has been successful, has taken drugs off the street and was able to work in rehabilitating addicts, the tendency would be not only to keep it but to expand it around the country.

Unfortunately, what we have here is a thinly veiled attempt to shut down supervised injection sites, which runs directly counter to the Supreme Court’s decision. With these criteria, it will be much more difficult for organizations to open supervised injection sites in Canada.

The NDP feels that decisions respecting programs that may improve public health must be based on facts, not on ideological positions.

In 2011, for example, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that InSite provided essential services and that it could stay open under the exemption provided for by section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The court held that the charter permitted users to access InSite's services and that similar services should also be allowed to operate under an exemption.

What is surprising is that more than 30 peer-reviewed studies published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal have described the benefits of InSite. That is more than 30 studies. In addition, studies on more than 70 similar supervised injection sites in Europe and Australia have reported similar outcomes. InSite in Vancouver is one of the biggest public health breakthroughs in Canada. We believe that this site and others delivering similar benefits should be able to offer their services under appropriate supervision.

It is strange. We have a program that works well. Articles and studies published in Canada and in scientific journals show that it works well and that it is helping people. However, here we have to debate a bill that will prevent that program from continuing. It makes no sense.

This is a very imperfect bill, based, as I have previously said, on an anti-drug ideology and on baseless fears about public safety.

The Conservatives say they are going to try to get drugs off the streets, but what is interesting is that this bill will make it virtually impossible to open safe injection sites. That answers my colleague from Langley's question. It will be virtually impossible to open safe injection sites, which will have the effect of promoting heroin's return to neighbourhoods. How ironic. This bill will promote heroin's return to neighbourhoods.

We believe that any new legislation on supervised injection sites should abide by the spirit of the Supreme Court's decision, which this bill does not do. We also believe that harm reduction programs, including supervised injection sites, must be subject to exemptions based on evidence of their ability to improve a community's health and preserve human life, not on ideological positions.

In conclusion, I am very disappointed that we are debating this bill, which will make life more difficult for people who are trying to combat this disease of heroin abuse.

When the bill goes to committee, which I imagine it will, there will be evidence and debate. I hope the governing party will take into account the effects and the scientific evidence when it looks at amendments to the bill, so that we can make this work for all Canadians.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am rising in the House to join with my colleagues in opposing Bill C-2.

To be quite honest, I am extremely disappointed that the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Vancouver East was rejected. It is very unfortunate. She put forward an amendment that was sensible, reasoned and based on scientifically proven facts. Unfortunately, Conservative ideology has once again prevailed over science and reason. We are debating yet another seriously flawed bill that reflects the Conservatives' outdated thinking and prejudices. Falsely touted as legislation that will protect Canadian families, Bill C-2 is designed to violate the Supreme Court's 2011 decision regarding safe injection sites.

I think it is important to note that at the time, the Supreme Court ruled that the minister's decision to close InSite, in Vancouver, violated the rights—as guaranteed in the charter—of InSite's clients and that the minister's decision was arbitrary and undermined the very purposes of the act, which include public health and safety. The Supreme Court also ruled that the minister's violation was very serious. It endangered the health and lives of the clients as well as people in similar situations. The Supreme Court also stated that InSite and other supervised injection sites should be granted an exemption as provided for under section 56 of the act when a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety.

Naturally, this decision contradicted the Conservatives' obvious desire to get rid of anything that could even remotely resemble a supervised injection site. Bill C-2 is another attempt to satisfy this desire, even though many scientific studies have proven that supervised injection sites like InSite are beneficial. Studies have also proven that these sites do not represent any risk to public safety and that they actually tend to enhance public safety in our neighbourhoods.

Scientific evidence has shown that supervised injection sites can effectively reduce the risk of contracting and spreading blood-borne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C, and also help decrease overdose-related deaths.

Supervised injection sites are consistent with a harm reduction approach, an approach that Canada took until 2007, when the Conservatives decided to impose their abstinence ideals at the expense of the public, even if it risked the lives of people struggling with addictions.

I think it is rather ironic that we are debating Bill C-2 to get rid of supervised injection sites so close to December 1, World AIDS Day. Yesterday, the Canadian AIDS Society was handing out red ribbons, like the one I am wearing proudly today. My Conservative colleagues went to pick up ribbons and wore them proudly, but today they are here in the House continuing to push their partisan agenda. They are still doing everything they can to get rid of supervised injection sites. They are directly undermining the work done by health care professionals to eradicate epidemics of blood-borne diseases like AIDS.

While talking yesterday with representatives from the Canadian AIDS Society, I learned that some parts of Canada are currently facing an actual AIDS epidemic. For example, in Saskatchewan, the HIV infection rate is almost three times higher than the national average. These figures are disturbing. One factor that contributes to the spread of HIV/AIDS in certain parts of Saskatchewan is unfortunately injection drug use.

Having sites like InSite would be a very effective way to reduce the incidence of this disease, in addition to reducing overdose deaths, as I mentioned earlier.

However, rather than directly supporting the efforts being made to eradicate this epidemic, the Conservatives are trying to prevent the opening of new sites and depriving vulnerable Canadians of the services and support they actually need. Rather than helping these vulnerable people, the Conservatives are using them to raise funds from their voter base. Honestly, this is one of the most disgusting things I have seen this government do, while hiding the truth from its base.

The Conservatives tell their voter base that this bill will help keep heroin out of their backyards. This is totally false. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. If people no longer have a place where they can go, receive medical care and get the help they need, in addition to having a safe place, inside, to use the drugs they are unfortunately addicted to, where will these people go? They will go into the streets and the parks and near schools.

In recent weeks, we have heard a number of Conservative members say they care about Canadian families and they want to protect mothers, children, widows and orphans. Really, they are simply fearmongering in order to fill their coffers in preparation for the next election and using vulnerable people in our society to do so. Those people really need our help; they certainly do not need the contempt this government is showing them every day.

Frankly, I cannot believe the Conservatives are waging such a fundraising campaign in our society. It is beyond comprehension and furthermore, based on a campaign of fear and prejudice, with no basis in fact. The Conservatives are trying to address some legitimate concerns of the people they represent.

Quite honestly, each and every one of us has people in our riding who are worried about supervised injection sites. These are legitimate concerns that must be addressed. We must not react by fearmongering or encouraging prejudice and scorn towards people with substance abuse problems. Instead, we should be using our resources to try to solve the problem. We need to ensure that people can get the support they need, as well as easy access to resources to help them treat their addiction.

That is exactly what is happening at InSite. People have direct access to health care professionals who are there to help them in case of any problems or to simply provide advice. They have access to social workers and can be referred to detox centres.

Research has shown that in addition to reducing overdose deaths in Vancouver by 35%, which is significant, people who use InSite's services are almost twice as likely to enrol in a detox program. They are also more likely to have access to the resources that will help them turn their lives around and overcome their addiction. However, we have to go to them. To simply say that services exist, without making them easily accessible to the people who need them most, does not guarantee access and will not have the desired effect on public safety.

I do not have any children yet, but I can picture myself taking my children to a park one day and watching them discover discarded needles that might expose them to communicable diseases. I do not want that to happen. No one does.

However, that is what we might see happening in our streets as a result of the Conservatives' decision. People will no longer have a safe place to go to. They will have to go back to what used to be standard practice in neighbourhoods across the country, when people would shoot up here and there in the street, in the lobbies of commercial and residential buildings, near schools and in parks. Unfortunately, that is what we can anticipate if Bill C-2 passes as is. I hope it does not.

I am totally against passing such a bill. I hope that the Conservative Party members will listen to reason and understand the message from social organizations, health professionals and people who work with addicts daily and know their reality.

These people and these organizations dispense with prejudice and false, backward ideology, and focus instead on research and proven clinical trials. That is what we should be basing our decisions as parliamentarians on. The government should rely less on ideology and more on facts. For that reason, I hope that Bill C-2 will be defeated.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity today to speak to Bill C-2. Members will know how unusual it is for a member in my position in this House to actually get a chance to speak at second reading to any of the legislation. This is a particularly important piece of legislation, and I am pleased to stand here and urge that, when this piece of legislation goes to committee, the Conservative members should actually take on board significant changes, in a departure from current practice. In fact, the most important and significant change that could be made would be to withdraw this piece of legislation altogether.

Let me go back and review some of the history of how it is that we find this piece of legislation before us, as was described by my friend earlier, the member for Burnaby—Douglas. Vancouver is the site of North America's only safe injection drug site. It is absolutely a sign of progressive, science-based decision-making within the municipality of Vancouver and also within the province of British Columbia.

The InSite safe injection site in Vancouver, just to put it bluntly, bottom line, saves lives. That is what matters. The InSite safe injection drug site in Vancouver does not promote drug use; it does not increase the number of people in the criminal element, but it seeks to save the lives of those who are so unfortunate that they have become users of illegal drugs.

To cover some of the history, we know this whole area of public policy is known as “harm reduction”, and a safe injection drug site is designed to assist people get to care, get to help and avoid overdoses. The studies that have been done make it clear on any empirical analysis that this is cost effective, saves lives and is in the interest of public health. It has been found to work as a system. Safe injection drug sites have been found in studies by international agencies—the United Nations drug and illegal substances organization, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the World Health Organization and others—to have the kind of approach in harm reduction that works and saves lives. The specific data from the InSite site in Vancouver confirm all this.

Why do I bother to mention all of that? It is because the current bill before us, Bill C-2, really goes back to a failed effort by a previous minister of health in 2008 to shut down the InSite centre by refusing to extend its licence. As one can imagine, a centre that allows the safe injection of otherwise illegal substances does require an exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Back in 2008, the then-minister of health, currently the President of the Treasury Board, decided not to extend its licence. This was a decision taken in the absence of facts. It was taken in essentially a fact-free zone in which, unfortunately, too much of the legislation from the current administration resides. In this fact-free zone, it did not matter that InSite was saving lives; it mattered only that it involved illicit drugs and that there might be some scope here on an ideological basis, going along with an agenda that is generally described as “tough on crime”. In this case, it would be tough on people who have been unfortunate enough to become drug addicts.

Going back to the 2008 decision, that gave rise to several court cases that ultimately were resolved in the Supreme Court of Canada in a case of Canada (A.G.) v. PHS Community Services Society. The decision of the Supreme Court of Canada was handed down on September 30, 2011. What the court said was that the services of this InSite drug facility, for which the minister of health had refused to provide an extended exemption under the act to allow the site to continue to operate, were found by the Supreme Court to reduce health risks.

Further, the court said:

On future applications, the Minister must exercise that discretion—

This is the discretion the minister has to allow exemptions under the act. Then it continues:

—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.

Those are very strong words from the Supreme Court of Canada. First, it said this harm reduction safe drug injection site in Vancouver was in the public interest and was necessary because it reduced health risks. In other words, the Supreme Court found on all the evidence that this safe injection drug site saved lives. It further found that, if the minister is looking at exemptions in future cases, the minister must turn his or her mind to the question of whether denying such an exemption would cause deprivations of life and security of the person and that there must be an appropriate balance between public health and public safety.

If there were a good-faith effort in Bill C-2 to find an appropriate balance between public health and public safety, then this piece of legislation would not have emerged. There is no attempt at balance here. Bill C-2 is, pure and simple, an attempt by the current ideologically driven administration to do indirectly that which the Supreme Court will not let it do directly. This is a convoluted attempt to make it impossible, or virtually impossible, for future ministers to approve any more exemptions to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to allow for safe injection drug sites.

Let me share with the House why I say that this is not a good-faith effort to find balance. This is a disguised attempt to shut down safe injection drug sites. In other words, it is an attempt, through the legislative process of this place, to let people die when we know how to save people's lives. That I find unconscionable.

If we look at subclause 56.1(3) of the act, which requires the minister to examine any application for an exemption—in other words, a permit to allow such a site to exist—it starts with a review for 26 different criteria. More than two dozen different criteria must be provided to the minister. Ironically—and I think we will all find this ironic—the first is scientific evidence. It is only by ignoring the scientific evidence that this particular administration wants to shut down such sites.

Scientific evidence must be provided, as well as letters from all and sundry, such as the police chief and local government. There must be surveys to consider what kind of local litter problems there are in the community. They must have statistics pulled together, which is again ironic from an administration that has shut down access to many statistics. It is a long and convoluted process.

I found the most stunning requirement was not the financing plan of how this would be self-sustaining, but at the early stage when anyone is applying to run such a site, the applicant must provide the name, title, resumé, relevant education and training of the proposed responsible person. In other words, before someone can even get permission to run such an operation, that person has to have staff ready and on site, and all of their qualifications must be put forward to the minister. Not only that, but the applicant has to have run extensive checks on the possibility that in any previous jurisdiction in which the employees have ever lived, they may have run afoul of the law.

On top of all the specific conditions and requirements for an applicant, there is the general (z) provision, which is “any other information that the minister considers relevant for the consideration of the application”. In other words, on top of these multiple onerous requirements before an application can even go to the minister, the minister can make up anything else that he or she feels like asking the applicant to provide.

If that was it, we could say it is important in any community to ascertain that the people who are running safe injection drug sites know what they are doing, that they are competent, that they have considered all the evidence and that it would be welcomed in the community. That is not necessarily unreasonable, but there is no balance. All the factors go against saying yes.

However, then we come to subclause 56.1(5), which is really putting the kibosh on any new site because the minister may only grant an exemption for a medical purpose if the applicant has taken into account certain principles.

Paragraphs 56.1(5)(a) to 56.1(5)(f) list principles that all go toward a thought process that leads to no. They must take into account that illicit substances may have serious health effects, that there are health risks, that there is a risk of increasing organized crime and that organized crime profits are part of the drug trade. There is no mention once that the minister should take under his or her consideration the fact that safe injection drug sites save lives. It is not even in the list of possible considerations for a minister. Therefore, after all the considerations are received and after all the hurdles to opening such a site, the list of principles under this act lead any minister to be forced toward saying no.

In other words, this bill is not about balance. This bill is a disguised prohibition on doing what the Supreme Court of Canada said we must do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evidence demonstrates that supervised injection sites and other harm reduction programs bring critical health and social services to vulnerable populations—especially those experiencing poverty, mental illness and homelessness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bill is problematic because it is too prescriptive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There you go.

Basically, what we are looking at here is something that is onerous for these people to exist. We are scrambling now. Before the bill becomes law, hopefully we can engage members in debate and try to put some reason to this.

Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, would do the following:

(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.

This is where things start to fall off the rails, as it were, because it is an incredibly overly prescriptive way of trying to reduce harm in the cities and the impact drug abuse has on all of our communities, whether they are big cities or small towns. Very few people in this country have not had the experience of seeing what heavy drug abuse can do to communities and families.

Liberals feel that the bill far exceeds the 2011 Supreme Court of Canada ruling regarding InSite. We believe this is an ideological bill from a government always opposed to evidence-based harm reduction measures, such as safe injections sites, as I talked about earlier. Safe injection sites must be part of a broader evidence-based national drug policy that saves lives, reduces harm and promotes public health. The criteria that must accompany an application as listed in this particular bill are so cumbersome that it raises serious concerns as to whether any future site could be established in Canada, as my colleague from Alberta pointed out about the 40 requirements involved here.

We support the need to consult broadly and work in conjunction with provincial and municipal governments, public health authorities, business associates, and of course, the public. The engagement with other levels of government is not just important in this particular matter, but in all particular matters these days. The idea of engaging the provinces on much broader issues seems to be lost. I cannot remember the last time this country engaged with the provinces, certainly with the head of state of each province, with the first ministers involved, to allow them, in a public manner, to engage in a national issue. This is another one of these things.

It was initially launched as an experiment that has proven to be successful. I am talking about InSite, of course. It has saved lives and improved health and communities and the incidence of drug use and crime in the surrounding area. The Vancouver police supports InSite, as well as the City of Vancouver and the British Columbia government. The minister has never even stepped into Vancouver's InSite and her legislation is based on ideology and not evidence.

Now we go back to the theme once more of evidence-based policy.

I have been here nine years and the Conservatives have been in government for about seven years. It seems to me that year after year those who work so diligently to give us the evidence upon which we can base our decisions have had numerous protests. Not just when it comes to InSite, but also in the case of the Library and Archives, the Meteorological Service of Canada, Statistics Canada. All these employees have high amounts of education and want to do their jobs in the best manner possible, yet each and every time policy seems to run away from what we consider to be evidence-based policy or at least the making of decisions and drafting of policy with the latest data and facts in mind, which are given to us by our experts.

This is just another example. Harm reduction is actually taking place in a supervised site. Now, in order for them to exist and do what they do best, we find ourselves in the situation where the government wants to strap them down. It is almost as if they want to use, I believe the term is, “regulation creep”, where the government would allow regulations to be imposed that would suffocate a particular incentive or a project, which has been successful in making our communities better.

That is the unfortunate part because when these regulations take hold, as was pointed out, the 40 criteria are going to make it near impossible for these places to exist. The Vancouver police certainly would not be happy, and the Province of British Columbia feels much the same.

Only an hour after the legislation was introduced, Conservative campaign director, Jenni Byrne issued a crass and misleading fundraising letter to supporters stating that the Liberals and the NDP want addicts to shoot up heroin in backyards in communities all across the country.

Now we have come to the nub of the issue. This is what it is all about. It is not about creating a framework for harm reduction. This is a 30-second ad or a tweet of less than 140 characters that talks about how good the Conservatives are and how bad we are. The Conservatives are chasing after this headline. Lost in the headlines would be a lot of drug abuse taking place in the dark shadows once more.

This site reduces the harm and brings it under control so that these communities can be better. It will not eradicate the issue. Nothing can eradicate the issue of drug abuse.

Certainly if evidence-based policy tells us that this is making a difference in our communities, making our streets safer, a phrase the Conservatives use all the time, why would they want to chase after a headline with a fundraising letter and a notice in Canadians' post office boxes geared toward an election campaign, when there is no election campaign? It smacks of desperation, and it is unfortunate that this is a ploy the Conservatives are using. I am not going to blame every member in the House for engaging in that. There are a lot of people on all sides of the House who, when they see it in their post office box, are obviously disappointed, and they just roll their eyes.

However, we are affected by this. We need to have a mature debate. I hope the idea of this is not to go after a headline and score some cheap political points. I say, “I hope.” We can only hold out for hope.

We support evidence-based policies to reduce harm and protect public safety. These are paramount. They should always be paramount. A 2011 Supreme Court ruling declared the Minister of Health's 2008 decision not to grant an extension of the exemption of section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which had allowed Vancouver's safe injection site, a safe consumption site, to operate since September 2003, had violated section 7 of the charter rights. That is:

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

Determining whether there has been a breach of section 7 involves a two-part analysis that courts considering potential section 7 violations must ask. First, is there a deprivation of the right to life, liberty or security? Second, if so, is the deprivation in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice? Therein lies the core of the issue.

This is about harm reduction and this about the rights of communities to reduce harm and to reduce drug abuse.

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

Mr. Speaker, indeed, it is an honour for me to stand here to discuss this particular issue. I have done a bit of research in the past little while, as I am not familiar with the areas in question, though I have experienced living around it. I did live in Vancouver for some time.

I became interested, after reading the evidence put forward and the decision by the Supreme Court, in the issue of harm reduction. Some time ago, I was in Europe with a delegation and we were talking about harm reduction in a very broad sense. We were exploring the best practices to reduce harm in big cities and to reduce drug abuse and how we could do it in a very smart way, not necessarily punitive all the time. Of course, there has to be certain punishment involved when it comes to drug abuse, but we certainly have to enable people to put themselves in better places by reducing harm. That is where the focus should be. I heard compelling reasons as to why harm reduction should be at the centre of this.

In this particular bill, there is talk of frameworks so that these sites could exist and that there would be rules to follow in order for the sites to do what it is they do, which I believe is good work. As my hon. colleague just pointed out, though, 40 requirements in Bill C-2 for InSite to exist really straps these people into positions—

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-2 directly defies the 2011 Supreme Court ruling, which called on the minister to consider these exemptions for safe injection sites based on a balance between public health and safety. It called on the minister to consider all the evidence on the benefits of safe injection sites, rather than setting out a lengthy list of principles by which to apply judgment.

What we are calling it on this side of the House is a backdoor attempt to change the Supreme Court decision. We need to ensure that we actually find ways to continue to help facilities like InSite, because the job it is doing in the community of Vancouver is coming from the community, and it is doing a good job.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am going to forgive my colleague from Sudbury, whom I have worked with very positively in a number of different dimensions, for inferring that there is some alternative intention of the bill.

He began his speech by mentioning a framework for supervised injection sites. In fact, the real issue is that there is no framework. He refers to section 56, which simply provides an opportunity to get an exemption for research on illicit drugs or for use with things like sniffer dogs. There is no framework at all right now.

Bill C-2 is the first attempt to put a framework in place for supervised injection sites. Would he not agree that some of the aspects of the bill should be in place to make sure that the community has a say and that police, the municipality, and the provincial health officer have a say in where these sites go, when we are talking about people who are hopped up on illicit drugs and who are going to be leaving these sites and going into communities?

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. For members representing urban communities, like mine in Sudbury, this is a very significant and potentially dangerous piece of legislation, particularly as communities continue to see intravenous drug use taking place in outdoor public spaces.

There is also a very important public health component of this legislation, particularly as it relates to communicable diseases, such as HIV/AIDS. As the former co-chair of the HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis Parliamentary Caucus, I think some of the concerns of people on the front lines of the fight against HIV/AIDS merit strong consideration before this legislation is allowed to move forward.

Let me begin by focusing my comments on what this legislation would seek to do and how the changes to Canada's regulatory framework surrounding safe injection sites may actually contravene the ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada on this subject. Essentially, what Bill C-2 is proposing is a complete reworking of the current framework governing safe injection sites in Canada by creating a lengthy and arduous list of criteria that supervised injection sites would need to meet before the minister would grant them an exemption to operate under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Among the numerous new provisions that would be included in the application process, many seem to be designed solely for the purpose of slowing down the process itself, while others, such as principles the minister must adhere to before approving an application, seem to be intended as a means of giving the minister unilateral power to accept or reject a new application. Essentially, these new criteria would make it much more onerous for organizations to open safe injection sites in Canada.

What is most troubling about this exhaustive set of new application criteria is the fact that this legislation seems to be an attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court's decision on this matter by creating a system that is so onerous and arbitrary that the minister could subjectively reject applications at his or her discretion.

In its 2011 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the minister's decision to close Vancouver-based InSite violated its patients' charter rights and that the minister's decision was arbitrary, undermining the very purposes of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which includes public health and safety. Here the court based its judgment on section 7 of the charter, and stated:

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

Yet here we are, not even two years later, facing a subversive attempt to undermine the decision of the court with a bill designed to find a backdoor means of closing down supervised injection sites. For instance, despite already having the Supreme Court of Canada rule in favour of its continued operation, InSite will now have to once again apply for a section 56 exemption under the new criteria. This means that InSite is being asked to validate its existence once again and that the minister can still arbitrarily shut down the institution.

This speaks to the heart of why I am so concerned about the way this process is unfolding. Without pulling punches, it is clear that Bill C-2 is part of a larger attempt by the Conservatives to align all government policies and programs with their anti-drug and abstinence ideals. They are slowly removing all avenues for Canadians to safely address their addictions at safe injection sites and to access medical marijuana for therapeutic needs.

With the Conservatives' agenda, we are turning back the clock on public health achievements and community benefits gained from harm reduction programs that have been proven to be successful over the past two decades.

In an attempt to garner support for the bill, Conservatives have been suggesting that it should be passed, because it will help keep heroin out of our backyards. However, the bill will make it almost impossible to open safe injection sites. It will actually put intravenous drug users back into public spaces in certain communities and make it more difficult to safely remove this activity from communities that do not currently house a supervised injection site.

Let me use a local example from my great community of Sudbury to illustrate how backward the government's thinking is on this issue. The Point, Sudbury's needle exchange program, has for the last 20 years supplied clean needles to reduce harm to intravenous drug users. While the majority of those needles are returned after they are used, some still end up on the ground. This means that each year, as the snow melts across my city, the thaw tends to reveal hundreds of discarded needles in our city's parks, playgrounds, and other similar public spaces.

Some Conservatives might cite this as a prime example of why we, as legislators, should be making it more onerous for intravenous drug users to access clean needles. However, I believe that it underscores that we have not created an effective system that allows these individuals to access clean needles in a space removed from the public so that used needles are not carelessly discarded on our city's streets. Evidence from Vancouver's experience with InSite supports this belief, as 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.

While no organization in my community has thus far come forward with an application to open a supervised injection site, should one eventually come forward with an application, the government's desire to make the process more onerous would actually reverse course on a 20-year public health trajectory. It would once again lead to a higher threat from discarded needles, and more importantly, from the threat of deadly communicable diseases, such as HIV and AIDS.

I mentioned previously my involvement in parliamentary initiatives related to HIV and AIDS. Given this experience, I firmly believe that the most disturbing thing about what Bill C-2 is proposing is the impact it would have on the spread of communicable diseases. For instance, the Pivot Legal Society, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, and the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition have jointly stated:

[Bill C-2] is an irresponsible initiative that ignores both the extensive evidence that such health services are needed and effective, and the human rights of Canadians with addictions.... It is unethical, unconstitutional and damaging to both public health and public purse to block access to supervised consumption services.

Once again, empirical evidence confirms the efficiency of supervised injection sites in preventing the spread of communicable diseases. Drug users who use lnSite are 70% less likely to share needles, and reducing needle sharing has been listed as an international best practice to reduce the rate of HIV/AIDS.

In conclusion, it is worth highlighting that safe injection sites currently operate in 70 cities in six European countries and in Australia. The experience in these cases, as with InSite, has been positive for drug users, because of health improvements; for the surrounding communities; and for reducing the transmission rates of HIV/AIDS.

By making the application process more onerous and arbitrary, the Conservatives are using processes as a means of clandestinely supporting their ideological beliefs regarding the morality of drug use, ultimately threatening more than 20 years of evidence-based public health policy. New Democrats support the use of evidence-based decision-making, and for this reason, I will not be supporting this ideologically driven attempt to skirt the decision of Canada's highest court.

The House resumed from November 26 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.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the amendment to the motion at second reading of Bill C-2.

The House resumed from November 21 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.

Drug-Free Prisons Act

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it really is a mystery. The Conservatives seem to feel that expert opinions are not that important or necessary, and not only for this bill, but for many others as well.

We saw it with Bill C-2. We are seeing the same problem with other addiction-related bills. The Conservatives seem to have their minds made up: these people need to be put in prison and left there as long as possible, instead of dealing with what, in essence, is a disease.

Science really must be taken into consideration. We must also look at treatment options to help people become model citizens who can contribute to our society. Unfortunately, with the bills we have seen since the Conservatives formed a majority, we seem to be moving in the wrong direction. There are fewer resources for experts and more prison sentences. It could ultimately lead to a volatile situation.

[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.

Business of the House

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the hon. Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, I can attest that I and our government find it regrettable, to say the very least, that we hear comments such as this from the House leader of the official opposition when, in fact, the opposition members themselves are delaying important pieces of legislation through the continuance of filibustering and delaying tactics here in the House and at committee.

Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I can tell you and the opposition House leader that we will continue debating the NDP's regrettable amendment to block second reading of Bill C-2, the respect for communities act. However, if the opposition members finally allow some progress on that critical file, we will turn to Bill C-3, the safeguarding Canada's seas and skies act, at second reading.

Tomorrow we will start the second reading debate on Bill C-12, the drug-free prisons act.

Monday, before question period, we will resume the second reading debate on Bill C-5, the offshore health and safety act. After question period, we will return to Bill C-12.

On Wednesday, we will start the second reading debate on Bill C-13, the protecting Canadians from online crime act.

That debate will continue on Thursday, but if we cannot finish Bill C-2 today, we will make time for that debate on Thursday morning.

Tuesday, November 26, as the government House leader announced earlier in the week, will be the fourth allotted day, which will see a Liberal motion debated.

During the constituency week, the member for Papineau certainly put forward a number of unusual ideas, some of which, or maybe one of which, may be put forward as a motion for the Liberals' allotted day. Some of those unusual ideas include the member for Papineau, the leader of the third party, saying that he admired the dictatorship in Communist China. He also advocated to minors the legalization of drugs. Finally, the leader seemed to suggest that he is putting the interests of criminals ahead of those of their victims by reducing sentences for serious crimes.

We find that reprehensible, but we have yet to see how the Liberals will approach those very important issues, in the eyes of the Liberals, come their allotted day next Tuesday.

Respect for Communities Act

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

That is okay, Mr. Speaker. I do not mind Conservatives heckling. It just shows how sensitive they are to the corruption and the criminal activity that the public is denouncing across the country.

The Conservatives could have put in place a public safety officer compensation fund. That would have been a good bill to see. As well, they could have restored the cuts they made on the crime prevention program. Instead of that, what they did was present this flawed bill. This, as well, flies in the face of the legal system. The Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that programs like InSite should exist.

Why was InSite put into place in the first place? It was put into place because of the escalating number of overdose deaths in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, skyrocketing up to several hundreds. The community responded by putting in place InSite, with the support of the city, the province, the health authority and the community. I mentioned earlier in speaking to my colleague from Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord that it was with the support of over 80% of the public in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.

The Supreme Court, tested by this, as the government wanted to shut the thing down, said yes, that there was definitely a place for this, not only because it was good for crime reduction, not only because it had reduced overdose deaths by 35%, but because it made good policy sense. That is what the Supreme Court ruled.

Again, we have a government that likes to slap the law in the face. It is not just police officers who receive its bad treatment, and not just Parliament, where we see regularly the disrespect for democratic institutions, but it is also a Supreme Court judgment that clearly stated that a program like InSite was beneficial for the community.

Instead of responding to that, the government brought forward Bill C-2. It would allow the minister to shut the whole thing down. Does that make sense when there has been a 35% reduction in overdose deaths? Does that make sense when we have actually seen an overall reduction in crime? Does that make sense when we talk about thousands of referrals to the whole issue around addiction programs?

This has also not been treated well by the government, but when thousands of people have been referred to addiction program to be weaned off drugs, how the government has approached this issue does not make sense, not at all. Here we have a community that is in support of a program, that has reduced the crime rate and reduced overdose deaths and increased referrals to addiction treatment programs, but the government says that it will shut the damned thing down. It does not make sense from our point of view. It does not make sense from the public's point of view.

We are debating this bad bill now, but I, like so many others across the country, can hardly wait for 2015 when we finally get the chance to throw this corrupt, tired, criminal government out of office and put in place an NDP government in Ottawa.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as you know, I absolutely always respect what we are debating on the floor of the House of Commons, but the debate on why Bill C-2, which is deeply flawed legislation, has been brought forward is very much related to the circumstance in which the government finds itself right now. Criminal inquiries into Conservative activities are taking place.

Even though the government knows this bill is bad, even though the bill certainly does not have the support of the population of my area and is primarily concerned with a 15-page document that wants to shut down InSite, and even though the government is attempting to change the channel, the reality is that this bill is on the floor of the House of Commons as a result of the criminal inquiries into Conservatives and the corruption we are seeing in the Conservative Party.

In my area, in Burnaby—New Westminster, I get half the vote. The other half of the population, which I support, have their rights, and many of them chose to vote Conservative in the last election, but I meet Conservatives every day who say that they did not vote for the criminal activities that we are seeing in the Conservative Party with the police inquiries. They did not vote for the corruption that they are seeing.

Rather than putting forward flawed legislation like Bill C-2, it would be much better for the government to work to lower the crime level in its caucus and in its party. I think that would be a very positive step.

When we look at the overall criminal justice system, what we see is mistake after mistake by the government. With all the police inquiries taking place right now, a limited number of police officers across the country are spending their time inquiring into criminal activity in the Conservative Party. That is worsened by the fact that the Conservatives never kept their key commitment in the last election and previous elections to actually put more police officers on the line.

We see the corruption and the criminal activity, and we see police officers having to spend their time inquiring into criminal activities of Conservatives rather than doing what they should do, which is protecting our communities. One would argue that they are protecting their communities from Conservatives, and perhaps that is a valid point, but I can say that the NDP will be protecting Canadians from Conservatives by booting them out of office in the 2015 election. That will be our objective.

It is not just the fact that what we are seeing is a lack of commitment to add more front-line police officers. It is not just the fact that police officers are now having to spend all of their time inquiring into the criminal activity of Conservatives. It is the disrespect with which police officers are being treated by the Conservative government that also concerns me.

That is why, rather than presenting Bill C-2, it would have been good for the government to actually put into place the NDP motion that was adopted just before the government came into power back in 2005. It was for a public safety officer compensation fund, and it was an NDP initiative. The Conservative MPs actually voted for it. That was back in 2005.

Every year since then, police officers and firefighters from across the country have come to Parliament Hill on an annual basis to ask one thing. They want to know when the government is going to put into place a public safety officer compensation fund so that when they die in the line of duty, their families will actually be taken care of.

I have spoken to police officers' families. I have spoken to firefighters' families. I have seen the devastation that happens when a member of their family who was a police officer or firefighter died in the line of duty. There is no compensation in so many cases. I have heard of families having to sell their homes. I have heard of families giving up thoughts of their children going off to school. That is all because Conservatives steadfastly and stubbornly refuse to bring in the public safety officer compensation fund.

We are not talking about a lot of money. It is a small payout for families who have lost a loved one, someone who has given their life for the country. Conservatives have really slapped the faces of police officers and firefighters by refusing to bring that in.

The NDP has always supported a public safety officer compensation fund similar to the one in the United States. In 2015, when we replace the government, we will be bringing in a public safety officer compensation fund so that those families will be taken care of. Canadians can be sure of that.

At the same time, there are crime prevention programs. That is another bill that we could have seen instead of Bill C-2. No government has cut back as much on crime prevention as the Conservative government.

We have seen the closure of crime prevention programs across the country because the government has refused to adequately fund crime prevention. It is a no-brainer. The reality is that for every $1 we put into crime prevention programs, we save $6 in policing costs, court costs and prison costs later on, yet the government has cut back on crime prevention programs. It is absurd.

Here are three of the things we could have seen instead of Bill C-2.

We could have seen actual enhancement of the number of front-line officers--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Order. The member is correct that there is a rule of relevance. However, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster has just begun. I am confident that he will be speaking to the matter before the House at this time, which is Bill C-2.

The hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am a bit saddened to have to speak to Bill C-2, which is an attempt by the government to change the channel after all the months of crime and corruption among Conservatives. Every night that Canadians turn on the television, they see police investigations into the Prime Minister's Office or into prominent Conservatives such as Mike Duffy, Nigel Wright, Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazeau, and Rob Ford. Every night—

[Jonathan Tremblay, NDP, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are here to talk about Bill C-2, formerly Bill C-65. After prorogation, the bill was reintroduced with a different number.

This bill is a direct attack on supervised injection sites. Once again, we are faced with a government that uses every possible means to impose its political ideology at the expense of the broad social consensus and the positive effects of supervised injection sites.

We must remember that the Conservative government's bill challenges the Supreme Court decision and is just another way for the government to get what it wants and to put its moral values ahead of the lives of the most vulnerable Canadians.

We feel that all new legislation on supervised injection sites must respect the spirit of the Supreme Court decision. The 2011 decision reminds us, among other things, that Vancouver's InSite—the only safe injection site in Canada—has saved lives and improved health without increasing the incidence of drug use and crime in the surrounding area. It is also important to note that the police, local businesses and the chamber of commerce support those types of projects.

Evidence has shown that supervised injection sites effectively reduce the risk of contracting and spreading blood-borne infections, such as HIV and hepatitis C, and reduce deaths from overdoses. Evidence has also shown that these sites do not negatively affect public safety and that, in certain cases, they promote it by reducing the injection of drugs in public, the violence associated with such behaviour, and drug-related waste.

Supervised 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. Those are quantitative and qualitative facts that describe a reality, not an ideology.

We believe that harm reduction programs, including supervised injection sites, must be granted exemptions based on the evidence that they will improve public health and save lives, not based on ideology. Pragmatism and humanitarianism must be the two principles underlying the reality of drug use, a reality that goes against our moral values. It is unfortunate that the Conservatives do not feel that this debate in the House is useful and that they prefer to have the conversation by themselves.

In order to clearly understand the purpose of supervised injection sites, one has to take an interest in the people who need the service and remember that they have rights and that we have responsibilities toward them. Drug consumption has significant effects on people's lives, including debt, a breakdown in communication with friends and family, isolation, crime, medical problems and stigmatization. We need to support these people, not send them to prison. We must support them, not exclude them. They need to be given an anchor so that they can regain control of their lives, not left adrift without a purpose while we turn a blind eye to their problems.

Supervised injection sites are an innovative response to the expectations of an advanced and enlightened society. The philosophy of harm reduction gives priority to the personal and social management of drugs and high-risk behaviours and their negative consequences.

It is therefore important to have a pragmatic dialogue and approach. In other words, we need to look at the situation with a critical eye and assess the social costs and benefits of our laws and practices for humanism, which places human development at the heart of economic, environmental, political and social decisions.

What is more, the Supreme Court's 2011 ruling warned the government against any law that would violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The discretion vested in the Minister of Health is not absolute: as with all exercises of discretion, the Minister’s decisions must conform to the Charter. If the Minister’s decision results in an application of the CDSA that limits the s. 7 rights of individuals in a manner that is not in accordance with the Charter, then the Minister’s discretion has been exercised unconstitutionally. In the special circumstances of this case, the Court should go on to consider whether the Minister’s decision violated the claimants’ Charter rights. The issue is properly before the Court and justice requires that it be considered.

What is more, in this decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the charter guarantees Canadians the right to access supervised injection sites and that such services should generally exist when the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

A 2004 study by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction indicated that supervised injection sites reach out to vulnerable groups and are accepted by communities. That is what social acceptance is. The study also showed that these sites improve the health of their users, reduce high-risk behaviour, and reduce fatal overdoses and the consumption of drugs in public places.

Canadians do not understand the Conservative government's lack of empathy towards citizens living with this difficult reality, and the dearth of recognition and support it shows towards organizations working day after day to improve the well-being of those citizens.

Canadians see a government that imposes a course opposite to that recommended by various qualified stakeholders working with safe injection sites.

Bill C-2 will establish a process that is so burdensome that it may well deter applicants from even trying to open a safe injection site.

What would happen if an applicant should accidentally forget to include something? Could the application be turned down automatically? Even if an applicant had all the required documents and the full support of the community, it would still be possible for the minister to deny the application.

It is important to remember that a number of projects are on hold in major Canadian cities and that Bill C-2 is an obstacle to their implementation.

Speaking about safe injection sites, on June 7, Dr. Richard Massé, the director of public health for Montreal, said in Le Devoir:

…These services save lives. It is too early to say what will happen, but… [this bill] appears to me to create significant barriers, even though the Supreme Court clearly said that not providing these services was a violation of human rights.

Also in Le Devoir, the Canadian Medical Association said it sees a bill that is built on ideology. As to the objection that establishing a place where drugs obtained from illegal sources are consumed could cause a lot of harm in the community, Quebec's health minister says that the studies that have been conducted on the subject do not bear that out. He said that the bill should be studied further, specifically with the justice minister of Quebec.

Many groups are concerned about this bill that challenges the Supreme Court decision. It is designed as a way to undermine the court's decision and to find another way to close safe injection sites because they go counter to this government's ideology.

Why do the Conservatives not simply admit what this bill is about? What are the real reasons behind the bill? How far are the Conservatives prepared to go to jeopardize health, safety and the dignity of human life and when are they going to admit that this bill really is based on ideology?

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to today's debate on Bill C-2, which I would have entitled the “not in my backyard” bill.

The Conservatives’ ideology is to always be sure to try and hide what they regard as neither fine nor good. It makes me think of those countries that are named hosts of the Olympic games and, at some point, decide that when the foreigners are about to arrive, it will be time to clear the area around the games site of the homeless and all those who, in the authorities’ opinion, would not reflect a good image of the country.

However we must not bury our heads in the sand, as a member of the Quebec National Assembly has said. It is a fact, however, that people do play the ostrich. In vain we put on rose-coloured glasses, in vain we try to build a wall of silence around problems of health, homelessness, substance abuse and so on: the fact remains that these things exist.

The InSite centre was created to help people who are dealing with substance abuse problems, not to be a place of debauchery. To listen to the Conservative members’ speeches since the start of this debate, one would think that the latter was true.

However, as my colleague just said, the courts that have considered this issue have been very clear.

First of all, the British Columbia Court of Appeal declared in 2010 that this was a medical centre falling under provincial jurisdiction. The matter should have been settled there: it had been put to rest. The province, the local authorities and the people familiar with the issue who work in the health field know what to do and what is good for their population. The City of Vancouver and the Government of British Columbia had decided that the supervised injection site had its place and its usefulness, as has since been demonstrated.

The Conservative government just cannot accept this. It is now bringing forward a bill that sets a whole pile of conditions. I think there are 26 in total. The purpose behind this, and it is certainly no secret, is to effectively shut down InSite and prevent other sites from opening.

I will talk a bit later about Montreal, for example, in Quebec. Indeed, the new mayor, Mr. Coderre, said during his campaign that this was a pressing public health and safety issue, and that he was considering at least creating an agency to discuss the issue more thoroughly and move forward with plans for a supervised injection site. I never thought I would be quoting him in a good way; no, I am just joking.

A Supreme Court decision followed in 2011, as the federal government had appealed the ruling of the B.C. Court of Appeal.

This was clear to the Supreme Court:

It is a strictly regulated health facility, and its personnel are guided by strict policies and procedures. It does not provide drugs to its clients, who must check in, sign a waiver, and are closely monitored during and after injection...The experiment has proven successful.

The Supreme Court also stated the following:

The Minister’s decision, but for the trial judge’s interim order, would have prevented injection drug users from accessing the health services offered by InSite, threatening their health and indeed their lives.

I think that this is very clear and very far from the horror stories we heard earlier from the Conservative minister. He would have us believe that supervised injection sites are located in residential neighbourhoods right next to daycares. According to him, these sites hold open houses every Sunday afternoon after church, so that small children can visit, play with needles and mingle with people who are, as they say, unsavoury. Obviously, this is not at all how these sites operate.

Bill C-2, with its 26 conditions, requires obtaining the approval of a city’s police service, first responders and mayor. There is nothing wrong about this on the surface, because we tend to think that nobody can be against social acceptance.

However, the InSite centre in British Columbia is socially acceptable because the provincial government, the municipal government, the police, first responders and doctors have decided that it is. Clearly, all these people are not imbeciles who suddenly decided that it would be fun to open such a site, and, why not, to open more sites just about everywhere else in the province; and to arrange, as I was saying, for sites like this to be located in residential areas, more or less haphazardly, with no framework.

On the contrary, when a decision is made to set up services like these, it is done with a sense of social acceptability. We do not need an ambulance attendant to suddenly exercise a veto right and to say that it cannot work, and that the site will not be opened. That is not how it works.

In any event, it is clear to the Bloc Québécois that medical treatment and the organization of health services are not Ottawa’s areas of jurisdiction. It is up to Quebec to evaluate and authorize treatment, together with Quebec's health institutions. Quebec has the power and the jurisdiction needed to open supervised injection sites as part of a solution to mental health and addiction issues. That, moreover, is a subject that was studied by Montreal's health and social services agency in 2011.

There is a very eloquent and interesting report entitled “Vers un service d'injection supervisée” that sets out succinctly what would justify the opening of a supervised injection site in Montreal. It is a matter of a higher mortality rate among injection drug users and infection epidemics caused by HIV and hepatitis C.

It says:

Cocaine use, the drug most often injected in Montréal, is a major determinant of HIV transmission, as is sharing used needles.

That is why, in one of the main recommendations in the conclusion of the report, the director of public health recommends fixed sites and a mobile unit staffed by nurses:

It is proposed that the fixed sites be located in RSSS [health and social services networks] institutions and community organizations that based on an agreement with the RSSS, would integrate medical supervision of injection and nursing care into the services they already offer.... The mobile unit would be more appropriate for priority sectors where a fixed service could not be offered....

According to this report, supervised injection sites are essential because even though they are geared toward only a small segment of Montreal's population, that segment of the population is affected by more than its share of health and social inequalities. Dr. Richard Lessard, Montreal's director of public health in 2011, stated that he felt it was a matter of social justice and equality.

I would like to give everyone a chance to have a look at this important report. As I was saying, this issue came up during the Montreal election campaign. It definitely has a lot of momentum. Neither Quebec, nor Montreal, nor public health and safety stakeholders will let the federal government create all kinds of obstacles and barriers to prevent this kind of service. That is what the Conservatives really want. They would rather not see and not know.

I am sure my government colleagues will be interested in the fact that the Montreal police has studied this issue. The Montreal police has said it will collaborate under certain conditions. That makes sense because the police force cares about public safety. It is in favour of a collaborative effort among partners to combine several approaches: prevention, treatment and care, law enforcement and harm reduction. To keep users from shooting up on the street, the Montreal police would encourage them to go to supervised injections sites.

Earlier, I was listening to the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, who is clearly from Montreal. In response to the Conservatives' rhetoric, he said that by not allowing drug addicts to use supervised sites, they will not just suddenly give up drugs. Unfortunately, these people will not stop using. That is what we would like to see, but they will not necessarily stop using drugs. They will keep using, in public washrooms, parks or places where a child's hand, foot or finger could come into contact with a used needle and he could get sick or hurt himself. That has already happened; it has been documented.

It is a myth to think that banning these types of sites will improve the safety of our children and families. It is quite the opposite.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague, who gave a compelling, fact-based speech. The facts show that supervised injection sites save lives, help people, allow people to take care of themselves and get off drugs. These people are sick, suffering from addiction.

I can scarcely believe that the Conservatives have managed such a feat with Bill C-2. They have managed to challenge the Supreme Court, the scientific community, doctors and nurses and ignore international proof, all with a single bill. My hat goes off to them.

I would like my colleague to tell us how these sites protect the community. Thanks to centres such as InSite, fewer people will be shooting up in back alleys and parks. Our children will be less likely to come across dirty needles.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to say how shameful it is that the Conservatives are not standing up to take part in the debate on Bill C-2. As my colleague just pointed out, their position is indefensible.

This is an important debate about saving lives by giving people in need access to care and referrals to drug treatment options. This debate is about a very important public health and public safety issue: setting up supervised injection sites.

I would like to begin my speech with some quotes from a feasibility study for such a site in Montreal. The study was conducted in 2011 by the Agence de la santé et des services sociaux de Montréal. The tone and the word choices paint a very accurate picture of what supervised injection sites do:

Supervised injection services are medical and nursing services provided in response to addiction, which is a disease. In countries where these services are legal, they are offered in places where injection drug users can inject drugs they bring in themselves in a clean and safe environment, under the supervision of qualified medical, nursing and psychosocial staff.

What are the goals of these sites? I quote:

...to help prevent diseases and deaths among people who inject drugs, and to reduce social inequalities in health that affect one of society's most vulnerable groups.

Earlier, members talked about compassion and helping people who need resources and tools. That is what the government should be doing, but the Conservatives either do not understand or they have decided to wash their hands of the whole thing.

Anyone who wants to understand what supervised injection sites do has to understand what drug addiction is and what patients suffering from the disease go through. It just so happens that drug addicts consume substances deemed illegal, but they are still people with a disease. More than anything else, they need help.

Any government that cannot understand that basic need for care and help cannot create public health legislation. Unfortunately, that is what is happening now with Bill C-2.

This bill is the result of the Conservatives' ideological war against drug addicts. It is not based on science or facts, but rather on ignorance and fear. Earlier we were accused of being soft on crime and soft on heroin. On the contrary, supervised injection sites provide a safe, secure and supervised place for users, while the Conservatives would rather send all these people into the streets, with no resources and without any chance of being referred to health care professionals.

The New Democrats cannot help but be opposed to this witch hunt. This is not the Middle Ages. This is a modern, advanced society with experts who can help the people who need help.

The Conservatives' war on the InSite supervised injection site in Vancouver and others has been going on for years. In 2003 InSite received an exemption to operate for medical and scientific purposes under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. More than 30 scientific studies have confirmed that InSite has positive effects on patients and public health.

In Europe and Australia, 70 similar injection sites have seen the same positive results. I do not know what other evidence the Conservatives need. There have been 30 scientific studies on 70 sites around the world.

In 2008, when the site had been operating successfully for five years, the Conservative government set out on a crusade against InSite. It refused to renew the site's exemption and spent thousands of dollars in court, but every court ruled in favour of the medical centre.

The B.C. Supreme Court, the B.C. Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada all said that the centre should remain open. The Supreme Court was very clear: the minister's decision to close InSite violated the charter rights of the centre's clients. Here is what the court had to say about the decision:

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

Who is soft on crime? I do not think those of us on this side of the House are. This quote was from the Supreme Court of Canada.

With Bill C-2, the government sets out the new criteria to establish a supervised injection site. Some of these criteria are reasonable, but others seem to indicate that the government will use this legislation to close such sites. Moreover, the sheer number of criteria is enough to deter people from launching a project before they even begin. The number of criteria is really high.

These criteria are basically new ammunition for the Conservatives' ideological war against addicts. This is also a way to shape people's minds through fear. Bill C-2 requires proof of the project's acceptability to the community. That is fine. However, this will have to be done with all the necessary medical and psychosocial information. When people are well informed, they support such initiatives.

However, I suspect that the government will once again resort to ignorance and fear, rather than education and public health. How can we trust it when it has been fighting for years to close InSite, a decision that flies in the face of the Supreme Court's position? Did the government even read the scientific studies confirming the results achieved with these supervised injection sites? People who use these sites are almost twice as likely to enter a detox program.

There is a significant drop in the number of discarded needles on the streets. As I mentioned, there are fewer people shooting up on the streets. There is less crime and less violence. Consequently, there should be less fear about the Conservatives' claims whenever they talk about heroin on the streets.

The drop in needle sharing reduces the transmission of HIV-AIDS. More importantly, supervised injection sites help improve the health of people who use them and lower the number of overdose deaths. Even though people's lives are at stake and studies show that crime decreases, the Conservatives deny this and only talk about crime.

This approach is pragmatic and humane. It is based on compassion for people with addictions and respect for their rights, including their right to life and their right to be treated like any other citizen. This medical approach has proven effective, unlike the coercive and repressive approach proposed by the Conservative government.

Repression has only had negative and deplorable effects for decades. Criminalizing drug use gives power to the Mafia and street gangs. We must talk about both public health and public safety because they go hand in hand. By criminalizing substance abuse, we force people struggling with this problem to live on the margins of society. By contrast, if we treat them, we help them overcome their addictions. Fewer drug users also means less crime and less power for the underworld.

Would we rather focus on medical science or ignorance, on compassion or fear? What moral values do we want to teach our children? Do we want to teach them to pass judgment on a sick individual or to help that person? Do we want to base our judgments on facts or ideology?

Canada is held up as an example for its universal health care system. Our system is based on respect for universal rights, including the right to life, health and safety. By restricting access to supervised injection sites, the government is denying patients their right to be treated and receive care. This is contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Supervised injection sites that have done well work with the community. That is the case with Vancouver's InSite. Effective mechanisms are put in place to promote cohabitation, patients must comply with a code of conduct and the site co-operates with the police, the public and various community organizations.

The Conservatives should be ashamed of inciting public fear and making up information that is not based on scientific data or studies. Instead, they should look at the studies and the Supreme Court decision supporting an exemption for a facility such as InSite.

They should co-operate with the opposition parties, with the NDP, which feels that policies should be based on facts, not ideologies. Crime reduction programs, including supervised injection sites, should be evaluated based on their ability to improve public health and safety.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to the member for Winnipeg Centre; his articulate and heartfelt speech focused on issues that are dear to Canadians. The benefits of supervised injection sites and their positive impact on communities are known across the world.

The Conservatives have launched a campaign with the slogan “keep heroin out of our backyards”. Furthermore, it does not take an MBA or a medical background to see that, with Bill C-2, the Conservatives are doing everything they can, not only to stop new supervised injection sites from opening, but also to shut down the Vancouver site.

Would this not bring heroin back to our doorstep, our parks and our neighbourhoods?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I asked for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-2 today because it is a piece of legislation that has to be called out. It has to be exposed. We have to tell the Canadian people what is really going on in the Parliament of Canada and what is driving and motivating the type of legislation being put forward by the Conservative Party, the ruling party.

I should say at the outset that Bill C-2, the bill that is supposedly entitled “an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act”, should really be called “an act to raise money through fearmongering act”, because within hours of Bill C-2 being tabled in the House of Commons, a blitz, a flurry, of fundraising letters went out across the country under the title “Keep heroin out of our backyards”.

Imagine the cynicism of introducing legislation that is not based on evidence, reason, logic, science, or public health. Not one of those factors enters into this whatsoever. The fact is, the Conservatives are running out of red meat to throw to their base. They do not have the gun registry to milk anymore. I am amazed that they killed the goose that laid the golden egg on the gun registry. That used to be how they bankrolled the whole darn party, really, their war room and everything.

The hon. member across is probably wanting to say that we do not have the Canadian Wheat Board to slap around anymore. No, the Conservatives cannot milk that one anymore either. That was a good one. They milked that one for years, calling it marketing freedom. I always called it the freedom to sell grain for less.

We should label these bills a little more honesty, really. The keep heroin out of our backyards fundraising campaign started just hours after the bill was tabled. Sometimes it is the same minute that the bill is tabled that the fundraising letters start blitzing out. It makes us wonder who is paying for some of the mailing, because I know a lot of this messaging is paid for by the taxpayer.

In my own riding, 10 Conservative members of Parliament have been carpet bombing my riding with their propaganda and their literature, followed up immediately with a fundraising letter from the party. The Conservatives plant the seed on the taxpayer's dime, putting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of letters into my riding on a regular basis, and then they pay for the postage stamp for the follow-up letter that asks for money based on the taxpayer-funded literature that just arrived.

Is that legal? I do not think it is. I think it is an abuse. At the very least, it is an abuse.

When the Prime Minister's Office is being investigated for high crimes and misdemeanours, let us summarize some of the abuse of privileges, mailing privileges being one. With the Prime Minister's Office being investigated for bribery, breach of trust, fraud, and obstruction of justice, we could add contempt of Parliament to that sordid list. We could add abusing the taxpayers' dollars by misusing the mailing privileges of members of Parliament to another one.

But I digress. I want to speak to the substance of the bill in a serious way.

I might be one of the few people in the House who have actually toured the InSite safe injection site in Vancouver, although I know quite a few of our NDP members have, in fact. I doubt that very many members on the Conservative side ever have, because they would not be able to say with a straight face that there is any evidence in the way they have been arguing in the keeping heroin out of our backyard fundraising drive. That is because if they did canvass the community of the Downtown Eastside, they would find it is overwhelmingly supportive. If they canvassed ordinary Vancouverites, they would find the site is overwhelmingly supported. There is no NIMBY, not in my backyard, associated with InSite, yet we have a whole piece of legislation that is crafted specifically to undermine the Supreme Court ruling and shut down one public health facility in downtown Vancouver. It is another spurious, wasteful use of the taxpayer's dime to have Parliament seized of the issue in order to get revenge for the Conservatives losing a Supreme Court ruling on the veracity, the use, and the efficacy of the InSite safe injection site in downtown Vancouver.

One of the problems is that the mindset of the Conservatives is that substance abuse and addiction are somehow a criminal justice issue. They are not. They are health issues and they should be treated as public health concerns.

One of the other problems that I do not think a lot of the people who introduced this bill realize is that if we are going to help someone who has a substance or addiction problem, we need to reach them and have the supports available and concentrated for when that person is ready.

I had an example in my own office recently. My riding has some serious issues, not unlike the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver. There was a young sex trade worker who worked up and down the street on Sargent Avenue, where my office is. One time, she came into our office, clearly jangled on what we believe was crack cocaine. She wanted to make a change to her life. She said she had had it and she wanted to get off the streets. She wanted help and she wanted to clean up.

We got on the phone to try to help her, but we could not find a bed for her. We could not find any place to refer her. We cannot tell addicts that we are glad they want to clean up, but to come back in six weeks when we will have a bed for them. It does not work that way.

One of the magic things about InSite is the Onsite, which is eight floors above. There are rooms. They are clean, safe, detox-assisted rooms where an addict can literally be using the safe injection site on the main floor one minute, speak to a counsellor or social worker that very moment and then be referred to the detox centre, where they dry out in the rehabilitation program in the same building at the same time.

The success rate is evident. The empirical evidence exists that InSite saves lives and helps people get off drugs, because we can have access to them to offer the services that they need to clean up their lives. Unlike the situation with the woman in Winnipeg, where there was no room available. InSite/Onsite/apartment hotel services are a whole campus of support mechanisms, concentrated right where they are needed.

In this fearmongering and fundraising campaign about keeping heroin out of our backyards, one of the pieces of literature that the Conservatives are bombing into my riding, misusing their MPs' mailing privileges, has a picture of a guy sneaking in a bedroom window with a knife. It is as if this junkie is going to kill us in the night with his knife if we do not vote Conservative and only the Conservatives can help protect us from the junkie who is going to creep into our bedroom windows. That is how cynical this messaging is. They build up a straw man and then try to convince people that this straw man is going to hurt them, and say that the Conservative Party is the only one that can protect them from this imaginary straw man.

That is what the Conservatives are doing with this legislation. They are trying to imply that if the bill does not pass and if we do not somehow overturn the outcome of the Supreme Court ruling, we are going to have junkies in our backyards shooting up heroin. That is really what the message is when we strip it down to its actual substance. The Supreme Court ruling showed great wisdom and it is a shame that it had to go that far.

InSite opened in 2003 and started showing improvements immediately. There used to be 12 people a year dying from an overdose in the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver. That has changed dramatically. Communicable diseases are way down in terms of people using dirty needles and sharing hepatitis C, or even worse, HIV-AIDS. These things are being treated with a common sense approach.

People were supportive. The Supreme Court of Canada was supportive. The Conservatives are sore losers, so they are again abusing the arbitrary and absolute power that they have by not showing any respect for Parliament to ram this through. At least show some respect for the Supreme Court of Canada, which has spoken recently on this subject.

Bill C-2 should go down in flames. The Conservatives should apologize for the fundraising campaign where they are trying to milk the public by fearmongering.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to speak today to oppose Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. As you are aware, this bill had been introduced as Bill C-65 at the end of the previous parliamentary session. It has now been reintroduced in its current form, as Bill C-2.

We are the only party to comment on the subject today. The NDP is the only party standing up to give a voice to the least fortunate in our society.

The Conservative government has missed a fine opportunity. It should have taken advantage of the House prorogation to consign this bill to oblivion. It is a thinly veiled attempt to stop supervised injection sites from operating, in direct defiance of a Supreme Court ruling on these sites.

The bill sets out a lengthy and arduous list of criteria that supervised injection sites would have to meet before the minister would grant them an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. These criteria will make it much harder for organizations to open supervised injection sites in Canada.

For new supervised injection sites, preparing the application would be so onerous that it would likely deter applicants from opening such a site. The department's representatives have told us that if an applicant were to accidentally forget to include any detail, the application would automatically be refused. Even if all the required documents were included with the application, and it has the full support of the community, the minister would still be able to refuse the application.

If the bill is passed, new applications will have to include the following: scientific evidence demonstrating a medical benefit; a letter from the ministers responsible for public health and safety, municipal governments, local police chiefs and senior public health officials; information about infectious diseases and overdoses related to the use of illicit substances; a description of the drug treatment services available at the public safety site; a description of the potential impact of the site on public safety; a description of the measures that would be taken to minimize the divergence of controlled substances; information on loitering in a public place that may be related to certain activities involving illicit substances, drug trafficking and crime in the vicinity of the site at the time of the application; 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 would be taken to address any relevant concerns.

Needless to say, drug addicts could die 15 times in that timeframe.

Some requests may also take forever for no good reason, which means groups could be kept waiting for months or even years. The bill mentions there will be a 90-day public consultation period when a group requests an exemption, but it does say how long it could take for Health Canada to process a request, or for the minister to reach a decision.

The bill also lays out principles that the minister will have to consider before accepting a request. These principles, stated in section 5, essentially list all reasons why a request could be rejected. I quote:

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;

(d) strict controls are required, given the inherent health risks associated with controlled substances that may alter mental processes;

(e) organized crime profits from the use of illicit substances; and

(f) criminal activity often results from the use of illicit substances.

I am not sure what kind of circus the Conservatives are living in, but they seem to act as if we were still in the 20th century, rather than fully in the 13th year of the 21st century.

I encourage them to open their eyes, and to see that drugs have infiltrated communities all across the country. I encourage them to put on new glasses, and to realize that Canada exports a lot of drugs, mainly to the U.S.

To back up that statement, I would like to quote from an article by Tom Godfrey published on the Canoe network on January 30, 2012. He said:

Canada has joined Colombia as a leading exporter of synthetic or designer drugs, flooding the global market on an almost unprecedented scale, police say. The RCMP have seized tonnes of illicit synthetic drugs that include Ecstasy and methamphetamine being shipped abroad after being “cooked” in make-shift labs in apartments, homes and businesses in the GTA.

Police are now seizing more chemicals and synthetic drugs, which they say is favoured by young people, at Canadian border checks rather than the traditional cocaine, heroin or hashish that officers call drugs of “a last generation”.

According to a Radio-Canada report broadcast on November 8, 2013, Colorado was about to legalize the free consumption of marijuana for all adults over 21. This is a North American first, and it is happening in a country that has always officially waged war on drugs, including cannabis. The state is unmistakably planning to legalize it, not decriminalize it. We are talking about recreational marijuana use, not medical use. This is unique, and Uruguay and Washington state will soon be doing it too.

Before wrapping up, I would like to talk about an experience I had. I was living with my two daughters in an apartment with a back alley. I frequently found needles in that alley. When the kids found needles, they gave them to us. That is why I would really have appreciated having a place in the community that I could have referred people to when they came to shoot up behind my apartment building.

When people are sick, they get care. When people are using drugs, they are sick and need care. That is why specialized care has been made available to help these people get the unique care they need. That is what Vancouver's InSite provides.

This is a deeply flawed bill based on anti-drug ideology and false fears for public safety. This is the latest attempt to rally the Conservative base. The Conservatives' “Keep heroin out of our backyards” campaign, launched just hours after Bill C-2 was introduced in Parliament, makes that very clear. That is what I call turning a blind eye.

This bill will make it practically impossible to open safe injection sites, which will put heroin back in our neighbourhoods. The Conservative government is increasing barriers to providing a service to those in need in a safe place, rather than in an alley where needles can be found by young children. There are many risks associated with that.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to rise in the House and join my colleagues in the official opposition in opposing the bill. Normally I do not read a speech, but I find that it is very important on this bill to be clear that I am conveying the actual words of medical specialists, including those from my city of Edmonton, from the Canadian Medical Association, and from the Supreme Court of Canada.

In reintroducing Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the government is flying in the face of credible, strong evidence that safe injection sites lead to improvements in public health and public safety.

The specific objective of organized, supervised safe injection sites is widely recognized to improve health outcomes and to reduce impacts to communities where drug use is already occurring, and it is important to recognize that drug use is occurring.

Bill C-2, in imposing 24 conditions on the operation of any safe injection site and then completely giving the discretion to the minister to ignore that advice and impose her decision, rather than relying on the opinions of scientists and medical experts, has a clear intent of rendering it inoperative.

The intent of a safe injection program is to directly address the problem of addiction to dangerous and illegal substances by mitigating the negative effects of such addictions while ensuring that addicts have access to support when they are ready to begin treatment to get off drugs, and it is important to emphasize. That is clearly the path we support, and that is the path of the safe injection sites.

Safe injection sites have been proven to do both of these things. The Canadian Medical Association has expressed deep concern about this legislation. It has pointed out that there is overwhelming clinical evidence to show that safe injection sites save lives, and it has called for such facilities to be included in a national drug strategy. According to the CMA:

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. In a preliminary assessment based on initial review of the Bill, the CMA is deeply concerned that the proposed legislation may be creating unnecessary obstacles and burdens that could ultimately deter creation of more injection sites.

The CMA's Dr. Haggie, then president, in response to the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, said:

While for some this is an ideological issue, for physicians it's about the autonomy to make medical decisions based on evidence, and the evidence shows that supervised injection reduces the spread of infectious diseases and the incidence of overdose and death.

Dr. Stan Houston is a professor and specialist in infectious diseases at the University of Alberta, and he has extensive experience working with HIV patient care and organizations assisting such patients. Dr. Houston expressed support for the operation of safe injection sites for a number of important health-related reasons. According to Dr. Houston:

Although exact numbers are difficult to determine, hepatitis C infection rates run rampant through intravenous drug users. At one point, more than 80 per cent of those users were infected.

He has advised that due to needle exchanges and other social services provided by Streetworks, an Edmonton support program, the rates of HIV and hepatitis C have declined. According to Dr. Houston:

HIV cases are steadily going down in drug users in Edmonton. In fact that's our biggest HIV prevention success story. HIV rates are going up in other risk groups, but they are going down in injection drug users. And harm reduction practices should get a large part of the credit.

He said that by provision of a safe, supervised location for injection, staffed by medically qualified people, the probability of engaging drug users in drug treatment is substantially enhanced. He said that the preponderance of evidence from 25 peer-reviewed reports determines that programs such as InSite improve rates of further treatment for addictions.

Dr. Houston has advised me that, to his knowledge, not one case of drug overdose has occurred at InSite since 2003. That is a lot of lives saved, lives that can be redeemed and then supported to end addiction. Should that not be the health objective?

Dr. Houston has pointed out to me that those who operate safe injection sites are not pro drug use. It is quite the opposite. Surely it is better to have addicts injecting drugs in a clean, secure place instead of back alleys. Quite logically, it is a preferable alternative to ensure public safety. He has also called for more government funding of drug treatment facilities to help end their addictions.

Dr. Houston points out that the research supports his position. The obvious question, then, is this: why is the government not willing to take the advice of Canadian doctors when it comes to dealing with a serious health issue?

In September, a total of 87 organizations experienced at dealing with addictions signed a letter to the Minister of Health, urging her to not reintroduce this bill. They included a number of Edmonton organizations that assist the homeless, HIV-infected persons and addicted persons, such as the Boyle Street Community Services, the Bissell Centre, the George Spady Centre and Street Works. Their common request to the minister was for support for increased access to supervised consumption sites similar to the InSite program in Vancouver and those in other nations, including Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands, in order that lives could be saved.

These dedicated and highly respected community organizations point out that supervised consumption sites have been proven to decrease overdose, death, injury, and risk behaviours associated with HIV and hepatitis C infections; to increase access to health care for marginalized people; to save health care costs; and to decrease open drug use and publicly discarded drug use equipment, which is one of the issues communities usually raise.

I urge the minister to respond to their request to sit down with them to learn from their direct experience in dealing, on a daily basis, with people battling addictions and seek effective solutions to both assist those addicted and increase public safety.

There are obvious medical, social and psychological costs associated with a single HIV infection. If nothing else, one can appreciate the cost savings derived from preventing HIV infection. Directly because of the introduction of a needle exchange program in Edmonton, reduced rates of infection among drug addicts have been reported for both HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C, while in the same period rates have increased in other high-risk areas.

If we are truly serious about tackling the issue of drug addiction and the attendant health risks to the entire Canadian population, as parliamentarians we have an obligation to base our decisions on appropriate program or regulatory responses, sound science, and research results. Surely this should be the basis for all good public policy.

As the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network concluded from a detailed study, “many of the arguments against are ill-conceived or overstated, and are outweighed by the likely benefits of safe injection facilities”. It reports that there is an ethical imperative to at least support the trial facilities given the unacceptable harms currently experienced by drug users and the general community, and the potential for these sites to eliminate or reduce at least some of the harms. It advises that a refusal to establish these critical sites may be deemed to violate human rights obligations under international law or potentially subject governments to negligence suits. It is important to observe what they are advising us.

It is important to observe and respect as well the unanimous ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada in favour of the continued operation of InSite and right of access to similar facilities.

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court stated in that unanimous decision:

Where, as here, a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

In closing, by shutting its eyes to the evidence and seeking to put as many barriers in the way of communities opening their own safe consumption sites, the government is risking the lives and health of Canadians. Let us not forget that if it were not for the Supreme Court, lnSite would have been closed.

I urge the Minister of Health to withdraw this bill and begin a serious consultation on how we can decrease addiction to illegal drugs in Canada and the attendant health and social costs.

[José Nunez-Melo, NDP, Laval, QC]

It is my privilege to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

I would like to begin by firmly stating that our caucus and our party are opposed to this bill, which has now come to second reading. Our caucus feels that decisions about programs that could be beneficial to public health must be given serious consideration and must be essentially based on facts. When we talk about facts, we are of course talking about tangible, solid, quantifiable evidence, not hypotheses and qualitative methods, or indeed ideological positions.

Not so long ago, in 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the InSite organization was providing essential services and should remain open under the exemption provided for in section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Once again the Conservative government is proposing a very imperfect bill, based on a very conservative and openly anti-drug ideology. To justify itself it is fearmongering about public safety.

However, at present there is only one supervised injection site operating in Canada. This is InSite, and it is in Vancouver. Since it opened, Vancouver has seen a 35% reduction in deaths by overdose. Furthermore, it has been established that InSite has brought about a decrease in crime, in communicable disease infection rates and in relapse rates for drug abusers.

This site has become such a model that big cities like Toronto and Montreal are thinking of creating their own. We in the NDP feel that decisions about programs that could be beneficial to public health have to be maintained. We must reject any intervention based on unjustified reasoning.

The position of our party is supported by three major institutions in Canada. Those institutions issued a statement regarding the former Bill C-65, which is now Bill C-2. That statement speaks of a flagrant lack of judgment. It goes even further, describing this initiative as irresponsible and unethical.

Other institutions have also spoken out against this bill as proposed by the government, including the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Nurses Association. Both have criticized the approach being taken by the government.

I would also like to mention the attitude of the Conservative caucus, of our colleagues opposite. Since this morning, I have noticed that there are only seven to 11 Conservative members in the House.

That is evidence of blatant disinterest on their part. The members who have spoken—

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, you have no idea how disappointed I am with this bill. One would think that over the years we would get used to these kinds of laws that do more harm to the public than anything else, but I cannot get used to it. Bill C-2 is a very important reminder of that reality.

There are several elements in this bill that remind us just what the Conservatives represent. They are ideologues, they ignore scientific evidence and they even disregard rulings from the highest court in the country. It is absurd. This bill is first and foremost a way to dismiss the idea of supervised injection sites, just like they tried to do with InSite in Vancouver.

We need to put this bill in context. This bill was introduced because the Supreme Court ruled that the only supervised injection site in Canada—InSite in Vancouver—was necessary and that the Minister of Health should continue to give the facility an exemption. The court based its decision on section 7 of the charter, which states:

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

The Supreme Court decision states:

On future applications, the Minister must exercise that discretion within the constraints imposed by the law and the Charter, aiming to strike the appropriate balance between achieving public health and public safety. In accordance with the Charter, the Minister must consider whether denying an exemption would cause deprivations of life and security of the person that are not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. Where, as here, a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

I have a lot of questions. The court recognized the positive impact that supervised injection sites have had in east Vancouver, and its ruling was unequivocal:

InSite has saved lives and improved health without increasing the incidence of drug use and crime in the surrounding area.

I repeat, “without increasing the incidence of drug use and crime in the surrounding area”. The court is not the only one to say this. The Canadian Nurses Association agrees:

In Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where the Insite safe injection site is located, business owners, service providers and residents in the neighbourhood agree that the clinic has had a positive impact on the health of the people who use it and on the health of the community.

That is a fundamental aspect of this debate. While sites like InSite can improve the situation, the Conservatives want to ban them. The campaign of misinformation the Conservative Party launched just after the bill was introduced is proof enough.

As a health care professional, I find this bill mind-boggling. I want to add my voice to those of people in the field who have criticized this bill. The Canadian Nurses Association is concerned that:

...the conservative “tough on crime” ideology will overshadow evidence that demonstrates positive outcomes for communities with harm reduction programs.

The Canadian Medical Association had this to say:

The CMA fully endorses the existence of these harm-reduction tools, including supervised injection sites, and believes they should be included in a comprehensive national drug strategy. The CMA's position is founded upon clinical evidence. Bill [C-2], it would appear, is founded upon ideology that seeks to hinder initiatives to mitigate the very real challenges and great personal harm caused by drug abuse.

The CMA represents all of the doctors in the country. It added the following, which is even more critical of this government:

The unanimous decision [by the Supreme Court] was grounded in evidence, not ideology. The overwhelming clinical evidence is that centres like Insite save lives when it comes to some of our most vulnerable patient populations. In its ruling, the Supreme Court stated that “…the evidence indicates that a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption”. What we are seeing today seems to contradict the essence of the ruling.

Harm reduction works. This method has proven to be effective. In Australia, a report on supervised injection sites found that one site had reduced the number of overdoses, reduced the spread of HIV and hepatitis C and alleviated safety concerns related to users shooting up in public places and the availability of clean needles. The report even indicated that the site served as a gateway to addiction treatment.

Mr. Speaker, if that is not improving safety in the community, I do not know what is.

Many countries now have supervised injection sites: Australia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Spain and Switzerland, just to name a few. These sites work.

It is no wonder Montreal's director of public health recommended, in December 2011, that the city establish such a site in the greater Montreal area. He gave a number of reasons similar to the ones I just quoted concerning Australia's experience. Do you know why, Mr. Speaker? Because they are based on conclusive data that the Conservatives and the Minister of Health have patently decided to ignore. I will quote Montreal's director of public health:

The reasons that justify implementing SIS in Montréal are very succinct: the epidemic of infections caused by HIV and HCV, and the excess mortality among IDU [injection drug users]. Cocaine use, the drug most often injected in Montréal, is a major determinant of HIV transmission, as is sharing used needles. HCV infection is also having devastating effects: 7 in 10 IDU have been exposed to the virus and its transmission does not appear to be slowing. As for excess mortality among IDU, the data on hand indicate that the problem in Montréal is alarming.

I urge the government for once to do its job in the health field. Since the Conservatives took power, we have seen the federal government disengage from files where Canadians expect it to play a role. I am referring to the government's refusal to negotiate a new health accord with the provinces, the shortage of prescription drugs, and diluted chemotherapy treatments.

It is unbelievable and completely unacceptable for a bill such as this, which flies in the face of the Supreme Court ruling, to be introduced.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure today to talk about Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. What we are actually discussing is supervised injection sites.

Do we live in a perfect world? In a perfect world, everyone is well educated, everyone lives well, everyone is happy and everything is fine. The reality, however, is that we do not live in a perfect world. Children do not to go to school as much as we would wish, people do not necessarily have the job they want, and in many cases, basic needs are not met. Unfortunately, some people descend into the hell of drug use.

Once that happens, and we find that people are descending into the hell of drug use generation after generation, what do we do? What do we do as a society? The bill compels us to ask that question. As a society, what do we do when the issue arises? How do we respond in a civilized and effective manner? This is important. Everything depends on it.

The bill is a response by the government to a 2011 Supreme Court decision. The court based its decision on fundamental principles of our society, namely the right to life, liberty and security of the person. I am not talking just about those living in the hell of drug use, but also about those who may be exposed to it indirectly or by misfortune. This is where we get to the crux of the issue.

A supervised injection site reduces the risk of death and disease. Public safety must also be taken into account, of course. This cannot be done just anyhow and anywhere. Such things must be regulated. Reducing the number of needle-borne diseases like hepatitis C or HIV, and reducing the number of overdoses, is no small thing. We know that supervised injection sites make results like this possible.

Our deliberations should be based essentially on the public interest. What do we mean by “the public interest”? Some demagogues will say that the NDP is just defending drug users, but that is not the case. The NDP wants to make sure that harm is reduced to a minimum and that as many people as possible can overcome their problems. That is what “the public interest” means. We do not want children and young people falling into that world. If they are caught up in it, we want them to get out as quickly as possible, so that they can make a positive contribution to society.

We cannot think that someone who has succumbed to drug use once or twice will never do anything worthwhile in life. We cannot think that way. We must be able to give such people a chance, so that they have a real opportunity to make something of their lives. The reason they turned to drugs in the first place is that they saw no way out, no opportunity. They did not think they had the resources to achieve some level of happiness.

To get back to supervised injection sites, if we think about it seriously, the concept for such sites is primarily one of a front-line health care service.

Let me explain. To take the Vancouver example: nurses and paramedics supervise activities. People using the injection site are assessed. They can also be treated if things go wrong. Detoxification services are available nearby. It is easier to reach addicts, and offer them a way out. In our society, it is not possible for workers to go into the streets and go up to people one by one and tell them that services are available and they are invited to make use of them. That is not how it works; we do not have the resources to do it. By bringing them into a safe place where they do as little harm to themselves as possible, and where they can then be offered a way out, I believe we are working in the public interest.

I would like to give an example of something that upsets parents. They believe it is unacceptable to find used syringes in the parks in some cities. As parents, we do not like finding traces of drug use scattered about where children may go to play. Nobody wants that. By moving the activity to a site, getting people to do it safely, concentrating our health care resources—which, as we know, are hard-pressed—and optimizing our health care services through this kind of response, I believe we are working in the public interest. We are thus able to offer a better society to many people, both those who are living through the hell of drug use, and people to whom the children should not be exposed unnecessarily. There are enough bad examples in our society. We do not need more, we need fewer.

That is why I fail to understand some aspects of this legislation. The application process for setting up such sites and the increased complexity may discourage more than one community from trying to take responsibility and resolve or at least address the problem. There is no magic remedy, but if we add to the paperwork, the requirements and so on, are we working in the public interest? Is that not, rather, a much more ideological position? Basically, they want to see no evil, they want to be repressive and hope that it solves the problem, but history tells us that such a strategy will never really succeed.

When they tried to prohibit alcohol nearly a century ago, we saw what happened and how people reacted. I do not mean that we have to put up with people injecting just anything, but in this 21st century, we should have 21st-century solutions. We should provide care based on the knowledge we have acquired about how to treat people. First and foremost, the debate should be about the public interest, and I call upon all parliamentarians present to think about the debate on the basis of the public interest.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his speech on Bill C-2. It is very important that all members of the House stand up and be counted on the bill, which essentially is thumbing its nose at the Supreme Court of Canada.

As my colleagues have previously said in the House, we have this repetition of a policy of the government ignoring the Supreme Court of Canada. We saw it with the Wheat Board, we saw it with endangered species, and now we are seeing it with a critical health matter dealing with people's unfortunate addiction to drugs. What is particularly reprehensible is that, in reading the bill, we see that its clear intent is to prevent the establishment of any further drug injection sites. That runs directly contrary to what Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin said in the Supreme Court ruling, which was:

Where, as here, a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

I wonder if the hon. member could speak to that and speak to the calibre of intervenors in that Supreme Court case, showing the strong support from the medical establishment in favour of supporting injection sites.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on behalf of Sherbrookers to speak to this very important issue for all Canadians.

Bill C-2 is a thinly veiled attempt by the Conservatives to prevent supervised injection sites from being set up, or continuing their operations. There is currently only one such site in Canada. This is a thinly veiled manoeuvre to oppose this kind of supervised injection site.

Several scientific studies conducted by researchers have demonstrated the benefits of such sites, where people can go and inject drugs safely. Otherwise, they would do it in the streets of our communities.

The Conservative logic in all this is quite impressive and baffling. The Conservatives say that having supervised injection sites would result in more drugs on our streets. However, precisely the opposite is true, and studies have documented and demonstrated that on many occasions.

We of course cite the example of Vancouver East, the only place where a supervised injection site is located. It was ultimately observed that this produced benefits for the entire community. Needles, or everything people use to take drugs, ultimately wind up in supervised locations instead of in parks and public places, where they endanger neighbourhood residents.

You have children, Mr. Speaker. I do not for the moment, but I am sure you would prefer that those needles be left in safe places and disposed of safely rather than have your children walk around in a park or on the street and possibly find dirty needles, with all the danger that entails. You would prefer, as I do, that experienced people dispose of those needles safely. They know how that works and they can also help people who are addicted to certain drugs.

These sites therefore have clear and obvious benefits. It is unfortunate that the government is using this bill to put up all possible barriers to any future establishment of other injection facilities elsewhere in Canada. The obstacles are enormous, with conditions that are just about impossible to meet. To open a facility, 30 requirements must be met.

As I said earlier, the government’s thinly disguised objective with this bill is to stop other facilities from opening and prevent the one that already exists from continuing to operate.

It is sad to see the Conservatives using this for partisan purposes and even in order to raise funds. A few hours after introducing the bill in the House, they sent an email to their members, their supporters and the people on their email lists to tell them that the Conservatives would be protecting communities better, and then they asked for money from their supporters, with Bill C-2.

It is very obvious that they are using this issue to collect funds. They want to paint themselves as the great defenders of safety in our communities, while all the studies are showing exactly the opposite: that it is safer to have supervised injection sites.

In addition, it is important to mention that 80% of the people in Vancouver East support the supervised injection site. The Conservatives are saying that the whole community is in danger, that the people are against it, that it cannot be left open and that it must be closed as quickly as possible, while 80% of the people in Vancouver East are in favour of this supervised injection site. I do not understand why the Conservatives are saying that the centre is dangerous, it has to be closed, and people do not like it and do not want it in their backyard, when 80% of the people in the neighbourhood involved are in favour of it.

The other element that really surprises me is the fact that the Conservatives are going against a Supreme Court decision, which was handed down following a number of other legal proceedings. All the courts, from the British Columbia Supreme Court to the Supreme Court of Canada, came to the same conclusion, despite the opposition of the Conservatives and the government. All the courts have always been in favour of these facilities and have always recognized the rights of the people using them. Section 7 of the charter states that:

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

The government tried to defend its position before the various levels of court. Finally, the Supreme Court rendered its decision saying that the infringement at stake is serious; it threatens the health, indeed the lives, of the claimants and others like them.

The Supreme Court itself—the highest court in the country—supports our position that people have the right to have access to these sites in order to protect their own charter-guaranteed rights.

The Conservatives are acting as though nothing has happened and doing the opposite of what the Supreme Court asked them to do. I am rather surprised to see a government respond to a court decision in that way. Since the decision did not go their way, the Conservatives decided to pass legislation that goes against the Supreme Court's decision.

It is rare for a government to behave in such a manner, and it is unfortunate that the Conservatives are thumbing their noses at courts that are recognized as being impartial. No one has ever questioned that. As legislators, it is an affront to the justice system for the Conservatives to try to defend a position in court and then go against the court's decision when it does not go their way. It is unfortunate to see this happening.

There is a lot of talk about public health and safety. It is often said that supervised injection sites strike a balance between public health and public safety. The court also recognized that. These sites strike a certain balance between the two poles because both are equally important.

It has been shown that supervised injection sites can enhance public safety by getting illicit substances off our streets and putting them in safe and supervised locations. These substances have not been legalized; their injection is merely supervised.

What is more, in most cases, the people who come to these sites are referred to community resources that can help them to overcome their addictions. This approach ensures that there is a good balance between public health and public safety, which is something that the NDP will always support. We are therefore going to oppose Bill C-2.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would correct my colleague. I never referenced philosophical issues. I referenced science, evidence, and facts. It may be difficult for the other side to understand, as I understand that there is a difficulty grasping these concepts on that side of the House.

I think I, along with my colleagues, have been pretty clear in indicating that the issue here is the barriers that would be set up. InSite, and other communities that would like to start a similar program, would face a process that is so onerous it would be challenging for them to put it together.

They clearly already do a lot of work to get all the permits and follow all the rules. There is no question about that. However, Bill C-2 is attempting to make this such a difficult task that organizations like InSite would not have the capacity to do what needs to be done.

If the Conservative government truly cared about making a difference when it comes to harm reduction and getting heroin out of our neighbourhoods, as they put it, or crack cocaine—although some people they know seem to be quite connected to that substance—maybe they would talk to the medical practitioners about what needs to be done.

Supporting InSite, supporting harm reduction programs, is where it is at. Let us listen to the professionals and the people living in the communities who want this to happen. Let us support them instead of standing in their way.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is truly an honour to stand in the House and follow my colleagues in speaking on such an important issue and one that relates to the piece of legislation that we have before us, Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

First of all, I would like to indicate, as my colleagues have done, that we in the NDP oppose the bill. Essentially Bill C-2 is a thinly veiled effort to stop supervised injection sites from operating, a direct defiance of a Supreme Court ruling on these sites. The legislation sets out a lengthy and arduous list of criteria that supervised injection sites would need to meet before the minister would grant them an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. These criteria would make it much harder for organizations to open safe injection sites in Canada.

I am proud to be part of a party that has long advocated for safe injection sites and a party that has indicated that we need to find ways to be able to support people who have fallen through the cracks, who suffer with addiction, who are keen to get out of the trap that so many face and who need help to do so.

The NDP believes that decisions about programs that may benefit public health must be based on facts and not ideology. In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that InSite provided life-saving services and should remain open with a section 56 exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

The court ruled that it was within InSite users' charter rights to access the service and that similar services should also be allowed to operate with an exemption. Over 30 peer-reviewed studies published in journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, the British Medical Journal and others have described the beneficial impact of InSite.

Furthermore, studies on over 70 safe injection sites in Europe and Australia have shown similar benefits. InSite is one of the greatest public health achievements in our country. We in the NDP believe that it and similarly beneficial sites should be allowed to operate under proper supervision.

That is why we are so concerned to see Bill C-2 in front of us here today. This is a bill that is fundamentally based on ideology and is not based on evidence. It is certainly not based on what we are hearing from people in the medical profession who are saying that InSite and other operations like it are extremely important in being able to lead to harm reduction, to save lives, to get people on the right path to heal from their addictions, and to integrate back into their communities and into a life of dignity.

Bill C-2 is a deeply flawed bill based on an anti-drug ideology and false fears for public safety. This is another attempt to rally the Conservative base, as evidenced by the fundraising drive entitled “keep heroin out of our backyards” that started hours after Bill C-2 was introduced in Parliament. However, the bill, which would make it almost impossible to open safe injection sites, will actually put heroin back into our neighbourhoods.

Another reason we find the bill extremely problematic is that Bill C-2 directly defies the 2011 Supreme Court ruling, which called on the minister to consider exemptions for safe injection sites based on a balance between public health and safety. It called on the minister to consider all the evidence on the benefits of safe injection sites rather than setting out a lengthy list of principles by which to apply judgments.

We in the NDP believe that any further legislation on supervised injection sites should respect the spirit of the Supreme Court's decision, which is not the case with this bill. The NDP believes that harm reduction programs, including safe injection sites, should be granted exemptions based on evidence of their ability to improve a community's health and preserve human life, not ideology.

There is currently only one operational supervised injection site in Canada, InSite, which is located in Vancouver. Since it opened, Vancouver has seen a 35% decrease in overdose deaths. Furthermore, InSite has been shown to decrease crime, communicable disease infection rates, and relapse rates for drug users.

InSite, as many people will know, opened as part of a public health plan by the Vancouver Coastal Health authority and its community partners following a twelvefold increase in overdose deaths in Vancouver between 1987 and 1993. At the time, the Vancouver area was also seeing drastic increases in communicable diseases among injection drug users, including hepatitis A, B, and C and HIV/AIDS.

InSite was originally granted an exemption in 2003 to operate under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act for medical and scientific purposes, to both provide services and to research the effectiveness of supervised injection facilities. Section 56 of the current Controlled Drugs and Substances Act grants the minister authority to approve operations utilizing drugs for medical, scientific, or law enforcement purposes. In 2007, the OnSite detox centre was added to the site.

The InSite organization and the work that happens on the Vancouver east side is something that leads to better lives, not only for people who suffer from addiction but also for the broader community. I want to read into the record what people who support InSite and harm reduction measures based on medical evidence have said.

Pivot Legal Society, the HIV/AIDS Legal Network, and the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition issued a statement on Bill C-2. It was a statement first made when Bill C-65 was introduced. They said:

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

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

The Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Nurses Association have both criticized the government for bringing forward Bill C-2. 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.

Let us move on to other practitioners in the health care field. 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. A government truly committed to public health and safety would work to enhance access to prevention and treatment services—instead of building more barriers.

Based on the validation of these positions we have heard from people who are involved in the medical field, based on people who work and live in Vancouver's east side, and based on the figures that overdoses have decreased by 35%, the evidence is clear. There is a great deal indicating that the government is going down the wrong path.

What is especially disconcerting is that the government is willing to ignore and disrespect a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada that has ruled on this very issue. I wish I could say that this was shocking, but the government has shown great disregard for the work of the Supreme Court, certainly when it comes to areas that, ideologically, the government does not see eye to eye on. It is deeply disconcerting and problematic for a lot of people who are tuning in, whether to this debate or to Parliament, frankly, every day to see a government that was elected to represent the best interests of Canadians make decisions that are not based on evidence, science, or respect for the Supreme Court, the highest court of our country. It bases them on ideology and fearmongering.

I think of the people in my constituency who suffer from addiction, who are in a cycle of poverty, unemployment, and living in third world conditions, in many cases. They are unable to access help, because the same federal government has cut funding for important healing programs, including the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and other initiatives that helped people in my part of the country. I think of the many people across Canada who are increasingly struggling as the cost of living goes up, as employment leaves their regions, as they struggle to make do with what little they have. Often they are vulnerable to some of these same cycles of addiction and violence. I think of the fact that the government has a chance to act by retracting Bill C-2 and standing with us on the opposition side for harm reduction and healthier, better lives for people and communities across this country.

[Annick Papillon, NDP, Québec, QC]

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

I cannot talk about Bill C-2 without making a reference to Bill C-65, the former bill introduced at the close of the last session of Parliament, which, need I remind the House, ended when the Conservatives prorogued Parliament. All of the bills left on the table when the last session ended needed to be reintroduced and renumbered. That is why we find ourselves now completing the task at hand.

I might as well say it upfront: Bill C-2 is a thinly veiled attempt to put an end to supervised injection sites. This proposed legislation goes directly against the Supreme Court’s 2011 decision that called on the minister to consider exemptions for supervised injection sites, in an effort to reconcile health and public safety considerations.

I would like to take a moment to talk about the only supervised injection site in Canada. It is located in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. I do not know if my colleagues have ever been there, but it is certainly a neighbourhood where truly disturbing things happen. Everyone deserves to know what I am talking about.

InSite was set up as part of a public health initiative launched by the City of Vancouver and its community partners, after the number of overdose-related deaths in Vancouver increased twelvefold between 1987 and 1993. It took many years to get the InSite centre up and running, and each stage of the process was closely scrutinized, both locally and nationally.

The supervised injection site has the support not only of the Vancouver police, something which is by no means insignificant, but also of local businesses, the chamber of commerce and municipal politicians. The project has been the focus of over 30 scientific reports and studies that have described the benefits of InSite. These findings have been peer-reviewed and published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the British Medical Journal. Studies of over 70 analogous supervised injection sites in Europe and Australia have recognized similar benefits.

When InSite opened in 2003, it secured an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act for activities with medical and scientific applications. It is worth noting that since then, InSite has had a positive impact. It helps save lives, minimizes the risk of accidental overdoses and above all, makes the neighbourhood safer for everyone.

However, in 2008, the exemption granted to InSite under the law was set to expire. The Conservative government rejected InSite’s application for renewal. The debate went all the way to the Supreme Court, which held that InSite was a key stakeholder in the health field. In its ruling, the court called upon the minister to consider all of the probative elements of the matter, bearing in mind the benefits of supervised injection sites, rather than set out a lengthy list of principles on which to base conclusions.

I would like to quote a critically important excerpt from the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision, since the bill now before us is supposedly based on this ruling. Here is what the Supreme Court had to say in its decision:

On future applications, the Minister must exercise that discretion within the constraints imposed by the law and the Charter, aiming to strike the appropriate balance between achieving public health and public safety. In accordance with the Charter, the Minister must consider whether denying an exemption would cause deprivations of life and security of the person that are not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. Where...a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

That is what the Supreme Court stated. In my opinion, this ruling is quite clear.

In my riding of Québec, I have had the opportunity to meet several times with stakeholders and volunteers, including those from Point de repères, a community organization that I would like to commend. The organization's mission consists of health promotion, prevention and the delivery of care and services, especially for people dealing with addiction. It is important to understand this difference: an organization like Point de repères does not encourage drug use, but, rather, it advocates a harm reduction approach. As the Point de repères website indicates:

The harm reduction approach is a community-based approach to health that focuses on helping people with addictions develop ways to mitigate the negative consequences of their behaviour, rather than on eliminating the use of psychotropic drugs.

I think it is important to understand the fine points of this often sensitive subject. Again, as explained on the Point de repères website:

Drug use has a significant impact on both the user and the community. Often, lack of knowledge, misconceptions and prejudices about people who use drugs lead to a series of inappropriate actions that cause additional harm to the user and the community.

I had the opportunity to watch a documentary entitled “Pas de piquerie dans mon quartier” about people's resistance to safe injection sites in their neighbourhood. The documentary shed light on the addiction issue in a city like Quebec City, for example.

The documentary's introduction, which unfortunately reflects the glaring truth, states that “the war on drugs often turned into a war on drug users. It is a bit like the war on poverty—we have to be careful not to turn it into a war on the poor”.

Why is the government so lacking in objectivity when it comes to this very sensitive issue? Why are the Conservatives refusing to recognize the facts laid out before them? The NDP believes that decisions about programs that could enhance public health should be based on facts, not ideological stances. We are not alone in thinking that. According to the Canadian Medical Association:

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

For its part, 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.

A government that truly cared about public health and public safety would do everything in its power to improve access to prevention and treatment services, not create more barriers. Evidence has shown that supervised injection sites reduce the risk of contracting and spreading blood-borne diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C, and the number of overdose-related deaths. Evidence has also shown that they do not adversely affect public safety. In some cases, they actually promote it by reducing injection drug use in public, reducing the amount of violence associated with that activity, and reducing the waste associated with drug use.

Supervised injection sites strike a balance between public health and public safety goals. They also connect people who urgently need help with the health services they need, such as primary health care and addiction treatment.

The NDP believes that any new legislation about supervised injection sites must honour the spirit of the Supreme Court decision, which this bill does not do. As my colleague from Vancouver East has said, Bill C-2 contains as many criteria as there are letters in the alphabet, and those 26 criteria are so restrictive and biased that they are practically impossible to comply with.

Offshore Health and Safety Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her speech.

She stressed how much leadership Nova Scotia has provided in this area and the degree to which the province has had to wait for the federal government before seeing any action.

As she mentioned yesterday, when we were debating Bill C-2, in Quebec, we have seen experts, groups and provincial institutions conducting studies and pilot projects like InSite. They are afraid that, because of the federal legislation on the table, their 10 years of research and effort will be completely sabotaged by Bill C-2. It is an interesting parallel.

In her speech, the hon. member spoke about recommendation 29, which is not addressed at all in Bill C-5. However, in his report, the Hon. Robert Wells wrote that, in his view, it was the most important recommendation.

Do we know why the Conservatives are tabling a bill today that does not address recommendation 29, which seemed to be so important? If we do not know, we have a serious problem, because it is something we ought to be able to understand.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his question. Our constituencies share the same sea. The constituencies may be in two different provinces, but the Atlantic brings them together.

In terms of collaboration, it is interesting to note that the Conservative government really is the crime-and-punishment party in the House. The government does not consult people on the ground at all.

For example, on Bill C-2, safe injection sites, I do not recall any collaboration or any consultation happening with the people who were on the front lines who would actually understand how this kind of legislation would play out.

In the last session of Parliament, we saw more crime and punishment legislation that purported to be standing up for victims, but with no consultations with groups that represented victims and offenders and with groups that worked to try to achieve justice in our communities. It is the heavy hammer of the law. Conservatives are not being collaborative.

It did take 14 years for this bill to come forward, but as I said, the ideas and the solutions were there. When we collaborate, we are stronger because we can take those ideas, those solutions that other people may have, and work on them together. However, the government refuses to do that kind of collaboration.

In the last budget bill, Bill C-38, in spring 2012, we actually tried to make amendments correcting spelling. It is not that hard to admit that maybe something was spelled wrong and accept an amendment. We are all better for it when we collaborate. Conservatives do not have exclusive jurisdiction on good ideas. In fact, it would be the opposite. Let us correct the spelling, but that is not their modus operandi. They do not want to work with people.

Business of Supply

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-2 gives communities real and meaningful input on decisions on drug injection facilities that can have a serious impact on those communities. In my November 7 Thursday statement, I had hoped that after hearing from their constituents last week, the New Democrats would end their filibuster of the bill, but that did not happen.

It is important that this key bill make progress this fall. Therefore, we will continue debating that bill on Thursday. That means that Tuesday, November 26, will now be the fourth allotted day.

Respect for Communities Act

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to stand in the House today to speak to this issue. It is a very important one, not only for the people of our country but in particular for the community that I represent in Vancouver Kingsway, and in Vancouver.

In many ways, the bill before us causes us to think about two things. The first is about the proper and appropriate way to make public policy in this chamber for the people of this country. Second, of course, is the specific issue of the proper policy approach to supervised injection sites. In summary, there has been a lot of talk on this, but in its essence Bill C-2 represents an attempt by the government members to make it very difficult to open up a supervised injection site in this country. We presently have one supervised injection site in Canada, and that operates in my hometown of Vancouver.

I want to start by sharing with the members in this House, and Canadians, some of the realities of what we are dealing with.

Again, I come from Vancouver. It is a port city, and it has one of the highest rates of heroin addiction in the country.

Let me tell members what Vancouver looked like before InSite was opened. I had people coming to my office asking me as a member of Parliament to do something about needles that were found in the alleys behind their houses where their children were playing. I have had parents and teachers come to me to tell me that they had to do a walkabout of their schools in the morning to pick up used needles in their schoolyards.

We had an epidemic of heroin overdose deaths in Vancouver, where for a period of time there were deaths from overdoses almost weekly. I have had business people, particularly in Chinatown where a lot of the drug market is in Vancouver, who complained to me that their customers were being chased away by the prospect of seeing heroin addicts openly shooting heroin outside the doors of their stores and in the alleys, never mind the ambulances and police sirens that inevitably come when people have had overdoses.

That is what Vancouver looked like before InSite opened.

I want to talk about facts, because we will put facts before this debate. Between 1987 and 1993, the rate of overdose deaths in Vancouver increased from 16 deaths per year to 200 deaths per year. The rate of overdose deaths in east Vancouver dropped by 35% after InSite opened in 2003.

Over one year, more than 2,171 referrals were made for InSite users to addiction counselling or other support services.Those who use InSite services at least once a week are 1.7 times more likely to enrol in a detox program than those who visit infrequently.

Commencing one year after Insite opened, there was a significant drop in the number of discarded syringes, injection-related litter, and people injecting in the streets. Injection drug users who use InSite are 70% less likely to share needles. Reducing needle sharing has been listed as an international best practice in the reduction of the spread of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis.

InSite users are more likely to seek medical care through the site. This means fewer trips to the emergency room, an improvement in health outcomes, and a savings in taxpayer dollars.

Over 30 peer-reviewed studies published in journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and the British Medical Journal, the most respected medical journals in the world, have described the beneficial impacts of InSite. Conversely, multiple studies have looked for the negative impacts of InSite, but none of have come up with evidence demonstrating that it harms the community.

Safe injection sites operate in 70 cities and six European countries and Australia. A study by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction in 2004 showed that supervised injection sites reach out to vulnerable groups. They are accepted by communities, help improve the health status of the users, and they reduce high-risk behaviour, overdose deaths, and drug use in open spaces.

Illicit drug use is an issue that all of us in this chamber regard as a problem. People from all parties across the country would like to look for strategies whereby we can assist people who are addicted to drugs get off the drugs. We share that goal.

The issue really is this. Where we have drug use, what is the appropriate way to achieve that goal? I am here to tell the House that in Vancouver, if members drive with me down to Hastings and Main Street any day of the week, at any time of day, they will see hundreds of people in the streets who are drug addicts. The question is not whether or not they will use drugs. The question is whether or not we will provide them with a safe, clean place where they can do drugs under the supervision of a nurse, where if they overdose or have a problem, they can get medical care, and most importantly, where if by any grace of God they want to access treatment, they have someone there.

Alternatively, we can ignore this and we can continue to let those people purchase and use their drugs in alleys and public spaces or in front of businesses in Vancouver with no medical attention, where they are sharing needles, spreading disease, harming business, costing taxpayers money and dying.

That is the reality of the debate before us. What we have here is an issue of science and evidence-based policy-making versus a moral, ideological one. We have a question of public policy where we ask whether we want to try to make it easier to provide these kinds of health services to Canadians or whether we want to set up roadblocks, as the bill would.

The bill would set up a set of criteria that would make it almost impossible for Canada to open a second supervised injection site. That is harmful for public policy. It is bad for the health of Canadians. It is bad for taxpayers. It is bad for business. I implore every member of the House to put science before ideology and stop the bill from going forward.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to present my views on Bill C-2. I believe this bill should be rejected.

This bill is bad for human rights. It will put the lives of many Canadians at risk. Furthermore, it flies in the face of the Supreme Court ruling that stipulates, based on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that people have a right to medical services and to the security of the person. This bill seems to take us in the complete opposite direction.

Many members will recall when InSite first opened in Vancouver over 10 years ago. It was granted an exemption from the law in order to be able to offer addicts access to a service that they could not have otherwise received. This service means that people do not have to put their lives at risk, as it allows them to inject their drugs in a clean, safe place where medical services are available. It also provides the possibility of more involved medical services. Basically, it can open the door to detox services for some addicts.

The spirit of this bill does not seem to promote injection sites in Canada. On the contrary, it creates 26 conditions that must be met or they will be rejected. Canada currently has one site, InSite in Vancouver. There is talk of opening a site in Montreal, perhaps one in Toronto and one in Victoria. Other municipalities would like to do the same. I can say that in my riding of Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, officials are seriously considering the possibility of having open sites available to addicts. In my riding, people could benefit from having a site that is closer to home, in Montreal for example, instead of having to go all the way to Vancouver to obtain the services that are available to the people of that region.

InSite helps addicts not to risk their lives. I want to mention some facts that the government may have forgotten when it drafted the bill. In one year, 2,171 InSite users were referred to substance abuse counselling. That is a significant number. All these people will have access to a service they otherwise would probably not benefit from. This is about eliminating or reducing the number of people shooting up on the streets. The Conservatives would have us believe that initiatives such as InSite and other supervised injection sites could make our communities less safe, but we are saying just the opposite. These sites make communities even safer. In Vancouver, the benefits of InSite are clear: fewer people are on the streets and more are benefiting from medical services to treat their addictions. This is really the best and most effective way to make our communities safer.

In Bill C-2, the government proposes 26 conditions. The process is very cumbersome and onerous. Those interested in opening a supervised injection site are asked to meet 26 conditions in a relatively short time. However, even if these 26 conditions are met, the minister is still under no obligation to issue a licence for a supervised injection site. He or she may do so, but there is no obligation.

So, people must meet 26 conditions in a relatively short time. It is very difficult for them to meet all these requirements. However, even if they manage to fulfill these 26 conditions, the minister is under no obligation to issue a licence.

Moreover, the minister has no deadline to meet. She can take all the time in the world to issue a licence if she decides to extend the deadline.

These are very onerous conditions. If I were cynical, I would say that this is to avoid having to deliver a licence and authorize the opening of a supervised injection site. The police chief must also agree, as well as city council and the provincial minister of health. These authorities will not simply give their approval because they are asked to do so. They have responsibilities and requirements. They must respect their own process and they only have 90 days to do so.

If someone manages to meet the 26 conditions, the minister may deliver a licence. This is no way to respect those who work in this area. Moreover, it certainly does not promote the establishment of a new injection site in Canada. I think it ignores the will of the Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously that InSite in Vancouver should remain open. It cannot be closed.

Let us take a look back and remember that in Attorney General of Canada, et al. v. PHS Community Services Society, et al. the Supreme Court did not rule that public safety was the priority, but that the right to health and life was the basis for its decision.

Bill C-2 seems to express the opposite. The bill is immensely concerned with public safety, but makes no mention of the right to life. That is the aspect of the bill I find most surprising. It totally ignores the fact that the root of the debates on the bill is that the Supreme Court ruled that a person has the right to life and must have access to medical services. The bill would have Canadians believe that detoxification centres, such as the InSite supervised injection site, are a public safety issue.

According to the government, if the bill passes at second reading, it will be referred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security and not to the Standing Committee on Health. I do not understand what motivates a government that does not believe in a basic principle like the right to life that everyone has.

Public safety is important, but the facts have shown that a supervised injection site ensures public safety, since people are not in the streets and public parks, where our children play, are needle free. We want safety for everyone. The InSite location in Vancouver is proof that we can do it, that we have the capacity for it and that we must do it. It is a way of respecting people and respect is a Canadian value that is important to all of us. What is more, this is consistent with the Supreme Court ruling and does not ignore it or instill fear in the public. Some might think that a place like InSite increases risk, but the opposite is true.

I want to point out that we have seen the benefits of InSite time and again. For example, injection drug users who use InSite are 78% less likely to share needles. That is a public health issue. A centre such as InSite has tremendous benefits. It helps prevent emergency room visits, which are very expensive. We want to avoid situations in which people have to use costly emergency medical services. We want these people to have the use of a very inexpensive service that also benefits public safety and public health.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak for a few moments to Bill C-2. I have listened to my colleagues most of the day, and they have presented some very personal explanations and descriptions of why the government needs to rethink Bill C-2.

Bill C-2 deals with a public health issue. We believe that decisions about programs that may benefit public health must be based on fact. That is at the heart of this issue. All Canadians, regardless, must have the opportunity to gain the benefit of those programs.

This all stems from a program called InSite. It was opened as part of a public health plan by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and its community partners following a 12-fold increase in overdose death in Vancouver between 1987 and 1993. As a result of the efforts of this site, there was a 35% decrease in overdose deaths. Furthermore, InSite has been shown to decrease crime, communicable diseases, infection rates, and relapse rates for drug users.

In 2008, the government began to take action to close InSite. It took action in British Columbia. The minister of health at that time denied InSite's application to renew an exemption that existed under section 56. The B.C. Supreme Court ruled that InSite should be granted a new extension. The federal government then took it to the B.C. Court of Appeal, which ruled again that InSite should remain open. In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the minister's decision to close InSite violated its patrons' charter rights and that the minister's decision was “arbitrary, undermining the very purposes of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act”, which includes public health and safety.

The decision by the Supreme Court hinges on section 7 of the charter, which says that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof, except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

The court found that section 56 exemptions must be granted where they decreased the risk of death and disease and there was little or no evidence that it would have a negative impact on public safety.

I have heard members opposite say that if we poll our community and our community decides that it does not want to have that facility, then why should it have to have it there? The Supreme Court of Canada actually dealt with that question by saying that the government was not able to show that it undermined public safety and, in some instances, had proven to promote it.

We have heard members talk about the problems that result in the injection of drugs in areas that are not safe, with contaminated needles on the ground in parks and with people being exposed to those kinds of health risks. It reduces those health and safety hazards, reduces public drug injections, reduces violence associated with drugs, and reduces drug-related litter.

This is key. Safe injection sites, therefore, strike the balance between public health and public safety. They connect people in dire need of assistance to needed health services such as primary care and addiction treatment.

The point here is this. How do we deliver the services that Canadians need to make them safe? How do we ensure that our communities are safe and healthy? We need to base that not only on facts but on the understanding that every Canadian, every human being in this country, has the right to live life and to liberty and to have access to life-saving drugs and programs.

In relation to further exemptions for additional programs, this is what the Supreme Court said. It directed the following:

...the Minister must exercise that discretion within the constraints imposed by the law and the Charter, aiming to strike the appropriate balance between achieving public health and public safety. In accordance with the Charter, the Minister must consider whether denying an exemption would cause deprivations of life and security of the person that are not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. Where, as here, [referring to InSite] a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

What we have in Bill C-2 is something completely different. It ignores the direction that was provided by the Supreme Court of Canada. It has been cited by my colleague, who knows much of the constitutional law in this country. Bill C-2 will probably be deemed unconstitutional, which does not seem to bother members opposite. The point is that it not only flies in the face of the recommendations of the direction provided by the Supreme Court decision but goes against the spirit, I would suggest, of what makes us Canadian, what makes us special in the world in our ability to be generous and humane and to show compassion to our sisters and brothers regardless of their circumstances.

If we determine, as has been determined in the case of InSite, that in fact this program saves lives, reduces crime and ensures that the public is safer, then these are the types of programs that we need to make available to people. Some have suggested that New Democrats do not care about addictions, that we just want to make sure people get the opportunity to shoot up. We want to make sure that Canadians are made safe and healthy. This is the safe part and the healthy part is the supervision. Now we have to make sure that the government opposite backs up its words about commitment to addiction to ensure there is follow-up, that there are beds in detox programs and other addiction-related programs, and that there is the support to allow people, when they are ready and able, to kick whatever their addiction is, to turn their lives around and to be more healthy for themselves, their families and communities.

This is fundamental. It is a fundamental principle that has been outlined by the Supreme Court of Canada, and the government is ignoring it. Bill C-2 flies in the face of this principle. The government is going to be told again, as it was in 2008 by the Supreme Court, the B.C. Supreme Court, and the B.C. appeal court, and again in 2011 by the Supreme Court of Canada, that it is on the wrong track, pitting one type of Canadian against another type of Canadian.

We are all Canadians. The Supreme Court will protect that to ensure that this kind of discrimination is not allowed to happen.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin. It is always a pleasure to work with him. We represent the same populations in Laval. He knows full well the issues that we are facing with urban sprawl and with the drug abuse we witness in our area and in public spaces.

He touched on an important issue. We are using this debate to try and find a solution. It is a broad debate. Addiction is a very serious problem. My colleagues from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca and Drummond, along with all of my NDP colleagues who spoke before me and gave passionate speeches about Bill C-2, are trying, as I am, to prove that we need to trust science and the stakeholders involved. We need to listen to experts who have tried to drive home the point that forcing sites such as InSite to close, keeping other cities from having safe injection sites, keeping those sites from functioning, keeping experts from doing their work is really—and I do not know what word to use that would be parliamentary—a serious mistake.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-2, which was introduced by the Conservative government. I would like to start by saying that, like all my NDP colleagues in the House, I will vote against Bill C-2.

My speech will primarily rely on a very informative document that includes many scientific studies. It was authored by Richard Lessard and Carole Morissette in 2011 and concerns a request from the Montreal metropolitan area to establish a supervised injection site. The document is entitled “Toward supervised injection services - Report of a feasibility study on the implementation of regional supervised injection services in Montréal.” This document is very interesting. It discusses, among other things, what is happening in the world. More than 80 countries around the world have supervised injection sites. They are funded sometimes by the proceeds of crime that have been seized by the government and sometimes directly by the government itself. This document is therefore very interesting.

I would like to quote from this paper, as follows:

Supervised injection services (SIS) are medical and nursing services provided in response to addiction, which is a disease

Indeed the dual objective of a supervised injection site is:

...to help prevent diseases and deaths among people who inject drugs and reduce social inequalities in health that affect one of society's most vulnerable groups.

This really sums up why issues related to supervised injection sites used to be addressed by the Standing Committee on Health and why they are still presented by the Minister of Health. However, for some reason that is completely unknown to me, this bill will be referred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. The Conservatives need to give us a little more information in that regard, because all the answers they give us have more to do with health, and that is the minister in charge of this file.

I would like to point out the documented benefits of a service such as a supervised injection site. In addition to InSite, whose results formed the basis of the Supreme Court ruling, there are over 90 supervised injections sites around the world, including in several European countries as well as Australia.

Although there is a wide range of models, it is generally recognized that the service offers the following benefits: it reaches the most marginalized, high-risk people; it helps prevent overdoses and related deaths; it acts as a protective factor by providing sterile injection equipment and a safe place to inject and teaching safer injection practices, thereby helping to reduce the HIV and hepatitis C epidemics; it does not promote initiation into injection, as some members opposite claim; it helps stabilize the health status of users by providing other services such as HIV and hepatitis C screening, vaccination, primary care and referral to detox, addiction treatment and substitution programs; it relieves pressure on emergency services including ambulance transportation and hospitals by promoting on-site overdose management; lastly, it alleviates the negative impacts on public order by reducing drug use in public places as well as associated nuisances such as discarded syringes; it does not increase drug-related crime.

That has been the case at more than 90 supervised injection sites around the world. Members opposite should not try to make us feel afraid and believe certain things.

I represent a rather unique area, the Island of Laval in the Montreal Urban Community. There is a lot of urban sprawl. Montreal is very urban; Laval, which is right next door, is becoming quite urban. In the past few years, the subway from the Island of Montreal has reached our area. There are several poor neighbourhoods along the Rivière-des-Prairies and they are very close to the Island of Montreal.

One can just as easily travel from Laval to Montreal. According to Laval's public health agency, approximately 4,000 people inject drugs on Île Jésus in Laval. That is a lot of people.

At the time, it was thought that people were shooting up in the privacy of their homes. Over the years, this has changed mainly because of urban sprawl. People shoot up in public places on the Island of Laval.

I decided to consult various community organizations in Laval that have experience with supervised injections, among other things. I contacted outreach groups including TRIL, Travail de rue de l'île de Laval, and Sida-Vie Laval, which have done a lot of work in this area.

I would like to quote one of these two organizations in my speech. I recently spoke to Sida-Vie Laval. This organization agrees with the New Democrats and is strongly opposed to Bill C-2. I would like to read from an email the organization sent me yesterday:

...the impact on the health of the people who visit these centres reduces the risk of transmitting HIV and/or [hepatitis C], having another person there lowers the risk of overdose and/or cotton fever.... [W]e know that over the medium and long terms, people improve their quality of life and decrease or stop drug use. Furthermore, injection sites provide a safe and healthy place for people to inject, in the presence of doctors, nurses and qualified professionals. Drug users often become isolated and surround themselves with people who have a negative influence on them. The supervised injection site helps users take the first step towards reintegrating into society by learning to trust the professionals supporting them and to trust the health care network.

I think the organization touched on a very important aspect of supervised injection sites. The people who visit these facilities do not simply go for injections. There are nurses, doctors and other community workers there. They may go the first time for an injection and then leave, but they will return. Each time they have to see a nurse and a social worker. They will start to build relationships with these people. As they slowly build trust with these community workers, they will be able to find a way out. This is an extremely important resource for getting people off the street, getting them back on the job market and helping them reintegrate into society.

People may be aware that I am the NDP deputy critic for public safety. Public safety on our streets is extremely important to me.

I would like to point out that the Montreal police force has been quite involved in the study to set up a supervised injection site in Montreal. It is prepared to work hand in hand with all medical and community stakeholders to ensure that these locations are safe. The police force stands behind the stakeholders, the NDP, and medical services when it comes to the need for a supervised injection site and agrees that the government must not put up any obstacles for cities that want to have such a site.

It is very important to provide a location for using drugs and disposing of syringes away from the public eye. Supervised injection sites have had positive or neutral effects in terms of reducing the nuisances associated with public injection drug use.

Cites with supervised injection sites do not seem to have experienced an increase in crime or crime displacement.

There are many points I wanted to address, including the positive impact on violence against women, comments by correctional services officers, and the fact that the bill is before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security instead of the Standing Committee on Health.

Most of all, I would like to mention that the closure of sites like Canada's InSite makes our communities less safe. Ever since I was little, whenever I go to Montreal I look at the ground when I walk in the parks and on city lawns because I have found used needles on the ground.

Now that I am the mother of a little girl, I can assure my colleagues that as long as the Conservatives' policy does not change I will not be taking my daughter to play in Montreal's parks and if I have to walk on the grass in Montreal's parks, I will be looking at the ground and holding my daughter in my arms.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, this bill is another example of how completely out of touch the Conservatives are with the real world.

In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that InSite was providing essential services and that it must remain open in accordance with an exemption under section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The Court ruled that the charter authorized users to access InSite's services and that an exemption should be granted to authorize similar sites to open.

The Conservatives are disregarding this ruling. At the end of the day, this shows that they have no respect for the separation of powers or for legal authority. They have no respect for any authority other than their own and this is made clear in Bill C-2, which goes completely against the Supreme Court's 2011 ruling.

The ruling called on the minister to consider exemptions for supervised injection sites, in order to address public health and safety issues. This ruling invited the minister to consider all the aspects in light of the benefits of having supervised injections sites, rather than provide him with a list of principles upon which to base his decisions.

As usual, the Conservatives are showing no respect for a legal process that has demonstrated how important a place like InSite can be. Apparently, as I said, they do not understand the importance of the principle of separation of powers. Worse yet, they are deliberately disregarding the Supreme Court's ruling.

To add insult to injury, in addition to their lack of respect for court rulings, the Conservatives are implementing measures that illustrate their lack of empathy, and I would go so far as to say their lack of humanity. They are tough on crime when it comes to Canadians, but soft on crime when it comes to their friends. It does not make sense. The benefits in terms of harm reduction are known and proven. Ignoring these facts is nothing more than ideology.

Since this morning, the Conservatives have been focusing on their personal opinion, but, unfortunately, they have not stood up to defend their bill.

Perhaps we need to go over the facts again. I know that many of my NDP colleagues have done so, but I will go over the facts again because it is important to show how disconnected Bill C-2 is from fact.

More than 30 peer-reviewed studies published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal have described the benefits of InSite. Studies of more than 70 supervised injection sites in Europe and Australia have reported similar benefits. InSite is one of the biggest public health success stories in Canada.

The number of overdose deaths has dropped by 35% in Vancouver since InSite opened. That is a very significant statistic. It has also been proven that InSite has reduced crime, the rate of communicable disease infection and relapse rates for drug users. Once again, these are very significant statistics.

The Supreme Court established that InSite and other supervised injection sites must be granted a section 56 exemption because opening such sites:

...will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety...

I am not the only one to talk about these statistics. In fact, the Supreme Court of Canada said that it was well established that a facility like InSite reduces overdose deaths and crime.

The evidence showed that supervised injection sites effectively reduced the risk of contracting and spreading blood-borne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C. Once again, there are fewer fatal overdoses. It was also shown that InSite does not jeopardize public safety. On the contrary, it improves public safety by reducing injections in public, related refuse and violence associated with drug use.

As my colleague from Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup mentioned, where he lived before, there was refuse and he really did not want his children to see it. A place like InSite prevents that type of situation.

A 2004 study by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction indicated that supervised injection sites reach out to vulnerable groups and are accepted by communities. In addition, they also improve the health of their users and reduce high-risk behaviour. Furthermore, they reduce fatal overdoses and the consumption of drugs in public places.

That is some compelling evidence in support of supervised injection sites like InSite. However, the Conservatives have opposed this and have launched a campaign based on fearmongering and misinformation. This is nothing new. They deny the facts, disregard any opinions that contradict their own and resort to fearmongering to obscure the debate. A bill like this makes it clear that the Conservatives would rather abandon people instead of trying to rehabilitate them.

Their many justice bills—or should I call them injustice bills—all follow the same model: they ostracize, isolate and divide people. Instead of trying to address the root issue, the Conservatives tackle symptoms without ever looking for the source of the problem. Throwing people in jail without helping them reintegrate into society does not solve the problem. It simply makes things worse, since these people do not have access to what they need to reintegrate.

The Conservatives show the same lack of understanding with every problem they tackle, whether it is poverty, illness, crime or addiction. They revel in state violence instead of trying to address it. It sure makes for some good fundraising campaigns.

That is the driving force behind this bill. Instead of trying to fix a very important problem, the Conservatives are promoting a cold and violent ideology with their fearmongering, their concrete action against prevention and their disdain for justice.

In the winter of 2012, I had the opportunity to visit the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood and the surrounding area. I met with people from organizations that support people from the neighbourhood, such as women's groups like the WISH Drop-In Centre Society or the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre. These people are on the front lines and understand the reality, unlike the Conservatives, who refuse to face the facts, whether we are talking about the legal system, statistics, their own department or even the consensus of the scientific community. They ignore it all.

A number of my colleagues mentioned that earlier in this debate. The Conservatives are entitled to their own opinion. However, they need to look at facts and statistics—at reality—when they are introducing bills and governing a country. The Conservatives are showing their inability to manage the most basic government duties and their inability to govern. There is no shortage of evidence of that.

Before I finish, I would like to share some more statistics. In one year, 2,171 InSite users were referred to addictions counselling and other support services. Thanks to InSite, those people were able to get back on track. Individuals who used InSite at least weekly were 1.7 times more likely to enrol in a detox program than those who rarely visited the centre.

There has been a dramatic drop in the number of discarded needles, the amount of discarded injection paraphernalia and the number of people injecting drugs in the street.

All of those things are extremely important to remember. They prove that InSite is successful.

The NDP feels that any new legislation concerning safe injection sites must respect the spirit of the Supreme Court decision. That is not the case with this bill. I will be opposing it. The NDP believes that harm reduction programs, including safe injection sites, should be granted exemptions based on their proven ability to improve the health of a community and preserve human life. This should not be based on ideology.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to listen to my colleague from Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, because he always delivers passionate speeches. He does not do things by halves, and I commend him for his work in the House.

My question is simple. As my colleague knows, a Conservative fundraising activity was held through emails using the message “no heroin in my backyard”. That activity was based on Bill C-2, which is now before us. I wonder if the hon. member could give us his thoughts on this initiative.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, could you let me know when I have five minutes left rather than one minute? I fear that the 10 minutes I am allotted today will not leave me enough time to express how aggravating I find the government's approach to this issue.

That being said, I am pleased to rise in the House to discuss Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. I want to state clearly that the NDP will be voting against this bill at second reading. During the previous session, last June, Bill C-2 was known as Bill C-65. We are now coming back to the debate after a prorogation that was very costly for Canadian voters, as the government used it not to start on a new path, but to hide from its responsibilities during the Senate scandal.

I would like to clarify a few things for those who are honouring us by watching us on CPAC at home. Bill C-2 is a government bill. As it is now past 5 p.m., the House has already spent more than five hours debating this bill today alone, and not a single Conservative has spoken for 10 minutes in favour of the bill. Not a single Conservative has done so in five hours of debate on a bill introduced by their own government.

Like my colleague from Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, they just keep saying that supporting supervised injection sites makes the NDP an accomplice of drug pushers and who knows what. Their reasoning reflects their bad faith. According to their logic, social workers are also complicit in crime, as are the Supreme Court judges, who rejected the government's interference in supervised injection sites. Their childish, black and white thinking means that everyone in our society, except the Conservatives with their incredible ethics, is complicit in organized crime in Canada.

What is happening today is another example of the worst failure of the Conservative government: its unwillingness to fulfill its duties as the government, which include consulting. As shown by the lack of speakers and the lack of answers during question period, the Conservatives are breaking with the principle of responsible government. They are showing complete disregard for their duty to protect a vulnerable minority, in this case people who are addicted to hard, intravenous drugs. The government is disregarding the consensus among leading experts and even the decisions by the judges of our country's highest courts.

The contents of Bill C-2 and this government's attitude fit in with the Conservatives' appalling tendency to scorn what should be defended as state responsibilities, especially by a government leading a lawful society. This government will go down in the history books as being increasingly dogmatic and really, completely narrow-minded.

Bill C-2 addresses a truly sad reality. In fact, it tries to deny this reality. Politics is the art of the possible in a world that is never perfect. How can we know in an imperfect world if the decisions we make in this House as elected representatives are the best possible decisions? Well, we have to base our decisions on the real situation and implement changes that are likely to bring the least amount of harm to the largest number of citizens. That is what we are reduced to doing. It is our duty to ask ourselves if our actions and our decisions are likely to make fewer people suffer or make more people suffer.

Bill C-2 is a perfect example of a bill from a government that chooses to ignore its duty to make fewer people suffer, in spite of all the facts, in order to please the ideological perceptions of its supporters. This is evidenced by the debates and extremely negative press this government received when it launched its “Keep heroin out of our backyards” campaign. Coincidentally, this was in line with the court challenges brought against InSite.

It is important to get back to the facts, which are serious, striking, sharp and clear on this issue.

In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that InSite, which is in Vancouver and is currently the only such site in Canada, provides an essential service. It was not the NDP or the nasty leftists who said so; it was the Supreme Court.

Over 30 peer-reviewed studies published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal have described InSite as a very good thing.

As was previously mentioned, the InSite supervised injection site is located in Vancouver. Since this site opened, Vancouver has seen a 35% reduction in overdose deaths. The Conservatives have to remove their narrow little ideological glasses; they have to take them off at some point and see the world as it really is. The idea is to ensure that, beyond our ideologies, there will be fewer people who suffer as a result of our decisions. That is an idea.

Is it good news that we have to consider opening supervised injection sites in several major urban centres? No. Will not doing this cause exactly the opposite effect of what we should do, in other words, cause more human suffering? Yes. The proof is that there was a 35% decrease in Vancouver after the city started taking care of people struggling with serious addictions to intravenous hard drugs.

Vancouver has seen a decrease in crime, as well as the rate of infection of sexually transmitted diseases. This also means that the costs for a site like InSite may turn out to be zero. We need smart studies to look into this, not ideological perspectives. Indeed, if we leave these people in some back alley to inject drugs and catch all kinds of diseases, where will they eventually end up? In the health care system, that is where. These people end up costing a fortune to treat.

The Conservatives like to brag about their great economic skills, saying that they are the best in the G8, but they should take a good look and start calculating the costs of public services under their approach, which is bad.

In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the minister of health's decision not to renew the exemption and close InSite violated the rights of its patrons under the charter and that the minister's decision was arbitrary and undermined the very objectives of the Act, namely, public health and safety.

Once again, we heard the same two arguments that come back time and time again, that are completely childish and simplistic. I know my colleague is an intelligent man. I am quite sure that he is having trouble with his party’s talking notes, as we call them. He must have trouble believing the lines himself when he reads them. He must say to himself, “That cannot be right, that cannot be possible, we are not in grade 7”.

The other idea is that it would be detrimental to public safety, while even the Supreme Court concluded that such facilities were beneficial. That was clear with what happened around the only supervised facility currently in operation in Canada.

I heard another of my Conservative colleagues say that he had sent out a letter to his constituents and that most of the people who answered were against it. Among the people who worked to set up the InSite facility, the people of Vancouver, 80% of those asked who lived or worked in Vancouver’s downtown eastside supported InSite. They saw the benefit of not leaving people outside in the back lanes with all sorts of consequences—used needles on the ground and people who become ill—but having a safe area where there is a chance that some of them might recover from their addiction, or at least suffer a little less from it.

Injection drug users who go to InSite are 70% less likely to share needles. Again, it is about health and public safety. Of course, this is not a perfect solution. In an ideal world, I would like to live in a country where, for all sorts of reasons, because of the social systems, everyone has a perfect childhood and no one is addicted to hard drugs. But this is not the case. As a government, we must deal with the real situation.

The Conservatives’ hypocrisy on this issue, especially over the past few weeks, has been remarkable and incredible. The current health minister said that she did not judge Rob Ford and that she hoped he would receive some help. One week earlier, she said she wanted to ban prescriptions for heroin, which are supported by the doctors who help people who want to recover from their addiction.

Are we to understand that supervised crack houses would be acceptable to the minister, but that supervised drug injection facilities would not? Do you see how utterly nonsensical this reasoning is? Perhaps the Conservatives would agree to a supervised drug site reserved strictly for Conservatives. This is nonsense, and it must stop.

Let us make decisions based on facts and let us make sure that in Canada there are fewer, not more, of our fellow citizens who are suffering.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as a number of my NDP colleagues have done throughout the day, I will be speaking on Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

At the outset, I would like to say it is quite astonishing that this bill was introduced by a private member. It is unbelievable that a bill that has such great importance for public health was introduced by a private member and not by the government. It is also clear that this government, having introduced the bill, has no members here to defend it today. As my colleague from Trois-Rivières said so clearly, it is as though the Conservatives were a little bit embarrassed by the bill, because they are not even standing up to defend it today. That is a shame.

We are going to vote against this bill for number of reasons. I listened to the statements by my colleagues who know a great deal about the issue, much more than I do. The primary reason for our opposition is that the bill failed to pass the test of the courts three times. It is also regrettable that taxpayers’ money, including money from the people in Drummond, was used to challenge an initiative like InSite, while the money could have been put to good use in public health prevention activities, for instance.

Once again, it is a case of mismanagement of public money by the Conservatives. Their work is always short-term. They do not have a long-term goal.

It is important to understand that a project like InSite aims at prevention and action intended to lower the crime rate. There should be fewer addicts, and these addicts could perhaps be directed to drug treatment programs, as my hon. colleague from Laval—Les Îles said so well in his speech, which I listened to carefully. He has done excellent work on this issue.

I am also shocked to see that the Conservatives are targeting the initiatives of a group of people who are doing their best to solve current problems in their area. InSite came from a community endeavour, from actions by citizens, by community groups and the health care sector, to respond to a real need. The problem had two components, the first was blood-borne and sexually transmitted diseases, and the second was crime and the waste products from drug use found in parks.

This problem has to be addressed because, as other members have already pointed out, it is also a health problem. It should not be seen primarily as a crime issue, but as a public health issue. From that point of view, using resources like InSite to make connections between health care and drug users does not work against efforts to control crime—far from it. Facilities like InSite are indeed combating crime. They are promoting prevention and providing supervision so that people can take the drugs on which they are dependent in a safe environment. This reduces the costs generated by hospitalization, which can be very substantial in many cases. These facilities also provide supervision so that people do not end up high in the streets. They thus reduce the crime rate. They may also refer them to detox facilities or programs.

As I said, what shocks me about this bill is that it attacks a community initiative. In Drummond, fortunately, there is no need for supervised injection sites. On the other hand, a number of organizations provide resources for people in the Drummondville area affected by public health issues, substance abuse, homelessness and so on. I would be shocked to see the Conservatives attacking community initiatives in my constituency designed to reduce crime, prevent problems, and promote public health and safety in our streets. That is, unfortunately, what I heard from the Conservatives when they deigned to speak. On the rare occasions when they did speak, it was to say that the NDP is opposed to public safety. On the contrary, community initiatives like InSite promote public safety.

I will take this opportunity to emphasize the excellent work done by community workers, volunteers and prevention caseworkers in Drummond. I have met with them on several occasions in my constituency office, and I am genuinely proud of them. They do an outstanding job preventing crime and ensuring that our young people have access to sports and recreational activities, and can go to youth centres and participate in activities. Communities that want to be strong and stable have to take charge. That is why I urge the Conservatives to withdraw the bill, which is harmful and at odds with the charter, has been contested in the courts, and does not promote public health. I therefore encourage the Conservatives to withdraw this bill, and show respect for communities and workers who are doing excellent work in the field to reduce problems such as substance abuse.

Something else that bothers me is that when the Conservatives introduced the bill, they launched a simultaneous campaign. I liked how my colleague from Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup explained earlier that the campaign was childish and simplistic. The Conservative Party launched the “Keep heroin out of our backyards” campaign. The campaign would have the public believe that if we shut down places like InSite, heroin will magically disappear from their streets. That is simplistic to the point of being demagogic. It is sad to see them resorting to such arguments.

The exact opposite will happen, as many of my colleagues and I have pointed out today. People will be left to their own devices, which will lead to public health, crime and safety problems. We will also see more concerns about our young people. If we want to look after our young people and our community, we need to encourage initiatives like InSite.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

What I would like to speak to is exactly what my hon. member is shouting about from across the way, a little bit about constitutional law and the constitutional values that are impacted by this bill.

Let me begin by mentioning that in 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada, in the PHS Community Services case, did make clear that section 7 of the charter, the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice, did apply.

Health and life itself are at stake when the federal government decides to treat as criminal, under federal jurisdiction over criminal law, a health initiative by a province. This decision to treat it as criminal, and in that way not permit the provincially approved activity, occurs by way of the Minister of Health declining to grant an exemption from the ordinary application of, in this case, the CDSA, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

The Supreme Court ruled that the government had indeed violated the charter in the following terms. Let me please read the key paragraph, which is paragraph 136 of that judgment:

The Minister made a decision not to extend the exemption from the application of the federal drug laws to Insite. The effect of that decision...would have been to prevent injection drug users from accessing the health services offered by Insite, threatening the health and indeed the lives of the potential clients. The Minister's decision thus engages the claimants's s.7 interests and constitutes a limit on their s.7 rights. Based on the information available to the Minister, this limit is not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

It is arbitrary, undermining the very purposes of the CDSA, which include public health and safety. It is also grossly disproportionate. The potential denial of health services and the correlative increase in the risk of death and disease for injection drug users outweigh any benefit that might be derived from maintaining an absolute prohibition on the possession of illegal drugs on InSite's premises.

I would remind everybody in this House today that this was a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court of Canada. I would also note two key shorter passages, which I will turn to briefly, that make clear that the combination of the legal effect of section 7 of the charter and the guidance for the exercise of discretion in the CDSA itself means that ministerial discretion is not unfettered. It must be undertaken in accordance with the rule of law, which refers, of course, to both the Constitution and the statute itself.

Let me draw everybody's attention to the last sentence in paragraph 151, which says:

As always, the minister must exercise that discretion within the constraints imposed by the law and the Charter.

The court then goes on, in paragraph 152, to say:

The dual purposes of the CDSA—public health and public safety—provide some guidance for the Minister. Where the Minister is considering an application for an exemption for a supervised injection facility, he or she will aim to strike the appropriate balance between achieving the public health and public safety goals. Where, as here, the evidence indicates that a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

The court went on to order the minister to grant such an exemption in this case, which leads us, of course, to the present bill, which is, in effect, an attempt to do either an end run around the Supreme Court judgment or to perhaps even overturn and resist that judgment.

Now, it may be that the government is hoping that it can do an end run around, or even circumvent, the Supreme Court judgment by downplaying, in the new amendments to the CDSA, references to the positive health effects of a system like the injection site system and to public health, despite the fact that public health remains one of the two purposes of the CDSA. They cannot get away from that.

Also, the Conservatives have written into the act that in the final analysis, when the minister ultimately decides whether she is going to accord an exemption, this is to be done only in exceptional circumstances.

The government may think that by writing the law in this way, it would escape the scope of the Supreme Court ruling. However, the government would really be throwing the question back to an inquiry that will eventually end up in the courts over whether the amended act itself violates section 7 of the charter for totally failing to give the health of users the kind of priority that section 7 of the charter would suggest is necessary.

Here I would like to believe that the Minister of Justice has had thorough advice from his officials on the constitutionality of the bill so as to exercise the duty he has under section 4.1(1) of the Department of Justice Act.

Regrettably, we have all come to learn in the last year that the standard of review that goes on in the Department of Justice these days, and perhaps for longer than we realize, borders on the farcical. A whistleblower has come forward to tell us that instructions have been sent to lawyers to say that if there is a 5% chance that a provision or law would pass muster in the courts under the charter, then it is fine to recommend that it go ahead as being constitutional from the perspective of introducing the law.

I have no confidence at all that the mere fact that this is before the House means that some kind of analysis has been undertaken that suggests that it is presumptively constitutional. Under the current government, that is not the case.

Apart from the fact that on the face of the text it might be unconstitutional, there are two other ways in which the bill would almost certainly be found constitutionally suspect.

The first is that the very intention of a statute under our constitutional law, of course, cannot be to infringe upon a constitutionally protected right. Here, and very unusually, there is every sign that the very intent of the government is, in fact, to block approval of any safe injection site anywhere in this country.

Now, it is very rare for courts to find such direct intent to actually infringe a right, but in the situation at hand, judges will find a good deal of evidence, including in speeches made prior to this House rising for a break and in speeches made by Conservative members of Parliament. It can also be found, I would say, by inference from two things. In clause 5 of the bill, there is a listing of no fewer than 26 criteria the Minister of Health would need to consider by way of information sources if he or she was going to grant an exemption. It is not just 26; a number of these have subsections. Well over 30 separate kinds of detailed information would have to accompany an application for such a safe injection site before the minister even decided whether she was going to look at the issue.

There is also the excision of all public health references and individual health benefits from the guiding principles listed in proposed subsection 56.1(5) of the amended act.

The second thing that might cause this to be looked at suspiciously, from a constitutional point of view, is that there is a constitutional principle of fundamental justice under section 7 according to which it is unconstitutional to hold out a defence or an exemption from a criminal law prohibition if that defence or exemption is arbitrary or illusory. Such a defence or exemption is arbitrary if it is available to some but not to others. This was essentially part of the basis for the Morgentaler ruling. A defence or an exemption is illusory if nobody will be able to access the defence or exemption or where access is so uncertain or unlikely that the defence or the exemption is essentially unavailable.

On that basis alone, given the structure of Bill C-2, I would go so far as to predict that there will be courts finding that it is unconstitutional under section 7 of the charter.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to rise to speak to Bill C-2, which I believe bears the short name of safer communities act, or something along those lines.

Once we get to committee, we will likely be wanting to move an amendment at the clause-by-clause stage. I think a more appropriate new name for the bill might be “an act to make it look like communities will be made safer by spreading drug users to the alleys, parks, and backyards of our cities while simultaneously undermining public health and individuals' rights to security of the person and life itself”. To me, that would be a much better title for this bill.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleagues and apologize first off: I am really going to try my very best to freshen up the debate by presenting the same facts in a new light.

It is now clear that we have been discussing Bill C-2 for three or four hours, and I am the 12th or the 13th speaker for the NDP. Obviously, we have a shared vision of the whole thing, because that is what we have been talking about.

In the House of Commons, the place where all debates to enhance draft legislation should be held, the Conservatives are using one of two strategies: they either systematically gag the opposition, to reduce members’ speaking time in the House, or else they give us what we are getting today, nothing but silence from the Conservative members, who are probably now well aware that they have introduced a bill that is completely indefensible.

This government has lost the basic quality that allows any ruling class to claim that it is working on behalf of the people it represents. That quality is the ability to listen. I would even go so far as to say that it is especially the ability to listen.

Encased in its guiding ideology, the Conservative government is showing once again, with Bill C-2, that the Conservative way of thinking overrides reflection, analysis, any empirical findings, the desire of the majority of Canadians to do things differently, and even rulings handed down by the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court.

By way of introduction, I would like to remind members that in 2008, when InSite’s exemption was about to expire, the minister refused to renew it. The incident prompted a series of court cases that revealed how, even then, the Conservative government was on the sidelines of a society that was looking for solutions and ways to provide assistance to people who were dealing with many different issues.

To use a baseball metaphor, everyone would understand quite quickly that, after three strikes, the batter is out. However, in the Conservative ideology, that is not the case: either you believe or you die. After a defeat in the British Columbia Supreme Court, a second defeat in the B.C. Court of Appeal, and finally, a rejection of its case in the Supreme Court of Canada, the Conservatives are still ignoring the consensus among the majority of Canadians, to try to satisfy its voter base so that it will line the Conservative coffers again, I guess.

Do not forget that in 2011, this same government—elected with just 39% of the vote from the 60% of the population that voted—claimed to have been given a strong mandate. We can see that the government does not really understand what it means to consult a majority.

However, I feel it is crucial to remind the House that in 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the minister's decision to close InSite violated the rights guaranteed by the charter and that it was arbitrary, going against the very objectives of the act, particularly with regard to health and public safety.

The court based its decision on section 7 of the charter, which states that:

7. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person...

That means that even if someone uses drugs, they have the right to life, liberty and security of their person.

Continuing with the quotation:

...and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

No matter, if the law does not allow the Conservatives to do as they see fit, they will change the law. That is basically what Bill C-2 is doing. This is not the first example of this style of governance, which has practically become a trademark of this government. It seems to think that democracy and democratic institutions are a hindrance and a burden to be contended with.

While the NDP recognizes the sensitive nature of the permits granted to organizations such as InSite, we firmly believe that these decisions need to be based on proven facts and expertise.

How can the Conservatives scrap the results of no fewer than 30 studies published in journals with recognized credibility, including the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal?

How can they ignore the studies of sites similar to InSite in European countries and in Australia, which are not exactly developing countries? How can they push under the carpet the very telling results obtained by InSite? There is only one answer to all these questions: you have to see things in absolute terms and reduce complex problems to a simplistic black and white. For the Conservatives—I have said this about numerous bills, and it remains applicable today—everything is black and white. The good guys are on one side and the bad guys on the other; white on one side and black on the other; drug users on one side and sober people on the other; better still, the Conservatives on one side and the rest of the world on the other.

The campaign launched a few hours after Bill C-2 was introduced is a wonderful illustration of this narrowness of mind. When a slogan like “Keep heroin out of our backyards” is used, you quickly understand that for those opposite, the ability to offer a measured response to a many-sided problem is completely non-existent. It is the not-in-my-backyard argument to the power of 10.

If my remarks were designed to convert my friends opposite, it would be rather like a voice crying in the wilderness. However, through the media, I know that some people are trying to gain a clearer idea about this bill and the pros and cons associated with a facility like InSite. The silence of the Conservatives with regard to their own bill readily demonstrates the paucity of facts underlying their position.

I will take the liberty of quoting a few statistics to show the benefits of an approach like InSite's to public and individual health and the impact on public safety, which is often the blockbuster argument.

Between 1987 and 1993, the number of deaths by overdose in Vancouver rose from 16 to 200 a year. If that is not enough to indicate a problem requiring a solution, I have to wonder what it would take. In Vancouver East, however, since InSite opened, the rate of deaths from drug overdose has fallen by 35%. A reduction of 35% from 200 deaths means some 70 deaths avoided in a few short years.

Over a one-year period, moreover, 2,171 users of InSite’s services were referred to addiction counselling. That means a similar number of people who may get off the streets and resolve their problems, because they have been taken in hand by community resources.

While we cannot quantify it, there has been a significant drop in the number of discarded needles on the streets or in parks. This contributes to the safety of all citizens, particularly children who often play in parks.

A number of studies have focused on the negative impact of injection sites such as InSite, but none was able to show evidence of harmful effects on neighbouring communities.

Moreover, studies conducted by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction show that supervised injection sites have significant benefits. For example, they reach out to vulnerable groups and they are accepted by communities. That is indeed the case. Of course, some educational efforts are necessary, but it is possible.These sites also help improve the health of people who use them and they reduce drug use in public places. If that is not a major component of public safety, I wonder what we are talking about. As I mentioned, these sites also reduce overdose deaths.

However, it does not take a rocket scientist to see that the Conservative logic puts in place procedures aimed at deterring the individual or the organization from fulfilling the stated mission or objective, if they want to open such a centre.

In this regard, Bill C-2 is no exception to the methodology developed by the Conservatives, as in the case of employment insurance for example. Accessibility is cut back, controls border on the inquisition, and it is increasingly difficult to have individual rights recognized. The result is that people get discouraged by all these obstacles and they simply get out of the system. This may improve statistics, but it does not address the situation of workers or, in the case of this legislation, of people struggling with substance abuse.

Since I am running out of time, I will move on to the conclusion right away.

Obviously, I am adding my voice to those of my NDP colleagues to strongly oppose this government's approach and this foolish binary vision of the world.

While the Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides that all people are born equal, we know that we cannot hide behind such a declaration to avoid seeing our reality.

Our society is made up of individuals with very diverse life experiences, and our ability to live together harmoniously rests on being able to extend our hand to those who suffer, without passing judgment on the events that led them to this situation.

I will be voting against Bill C-2.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by making it clear that the NDP and I oppose Bill C-2. The bill is a thinly veiled attempt to arbitrarily shut down InSite. Beyond Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Bill C-2 would make it next to impossible to open a safe injection site anywhere, no matter how desperately a community may need one, no matter how much suffering exists.

It is not pleasant to think about intravenous drug use. However, it exists, and it is happening on a scale that makes it a public problem in need of a public solution. Bill C-2 is a move in the wrong direction and will only exacerbate the problem further.

There are approximately 100,000 Canadians who say they have injected themselves with drugs like cocaine, heroin, OxyContin, and crystal meth. Bill C-2 does nothing to help Canadian drug addicts. It does nothing to address this as a public health issue.

Though the short title of the bill is “respect for communities act”, we must make no mistake that this legislation will hurt our communities. The title is the usual Conservative Orwellian newspeak, meant to pretend that the government is acting positively. If Bill C-2 is passed and communities that need supervised injection sites cannot build them, where does the government want drug users to go? There certainly has not been any real answer articulated on that question.

Let me tell members about the impact that Bill C-2 will have. It will push drug users into our communities, into the alleyways, on to our town streets, and into our neighbourhood parks. There will be nowhere else for addicts to go but to the public spaces in our communities.

One year after InSite opened, there was a significant drop in the number of people injecting on the streets and much less injection-related litter, such as discarded syringes. If for no other reason than to keep intravenous drug users off the streets of our communities, we need supervised injection sites like InSite. The element of protection that these sites provide is not just for the drug users but for the community at large.

We must also remember that supervised injection sites facilitate contact between drug users and those specialists who can help them to get off drugs or become sober. InSite has proven that its frequent patrons are one and a half times more likely to eventually enrol in detox programs.

Standing in the way of supervised drug injection sites means standing in the way of helping people to get sober and kick dangerous habits. Therefore, I wonder why the government is so hostile to supervised drug injection sites. Does it want an increase of unsupervised drug users? Perversely, could it be that the government wants to fill its prisons with drug addicts? For those who mindlessly support the prospect of more prisons, the prospect of more full prisons must be quite satisfying.

Bill C-2 does nothing to stop drug use or encourage sobriety. It does not deter Canadians from injecting themselves with drugs. Denying Canadian drug addicts access to supervised injection sites unfortunately denies the people who use drugs a safe and clean way of doing so. We do not have to condone drug use to see the benefit of supervised injection sites. We must face reality. Drug addicts use drugs. The least we can do is to reduce the harm around this activity and try to steer addicts toward help. They deserve this offer of help. There is no such thing as a throwaway human being.

It is not an exaggeration to say that access to facilities such as InSite is a matter of health and safety, life and death. Let me remind members that in 2011 the Supreme Court ruled in support of InSite. The Supreme Court told the federal government that it could not inhibit safe injection sites from operating. The ruling was based on section 7 of the charter. Therefore, according to the Supreme Court of Canada, legislation such as Bill C-2 is against the fundamental right to life, liberty, and security. The people in this chamber demand those rights for themselves. Why on earth would they deny these rights to others?

Elsewhere in the world, safe injection sites operate in 70 cities in six different European countries and Australia. Safe injection sites reduce harm. They improve a community's public health, reduce disease and have absolutely no negative impact on public safety. In fact, they enhance public safety, all the while preserving human lives. These are the lives of people who are someone's brother or sister. They are people who were once beloved children, cherished family members. They were not always drug addicts. These are the lives of people who deserve to be saved and respected and who deserve to be healthy and safe.

Vancouver's Downtown Eastside has been described as home to as many as 5,000 injection drug users. Despite being drug users, these 5,000 people remain Canadians, much to the chagrin of the current government. Even if we do not agree with their life choices and drug use, the government must not abandon them. They are Canadians. They are human lives, and they are vulnerable. If their government is able to help, it is morally obligated to do so. However, Bill C-2 does not help; in fact, it hinders.

In Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, InSite has made a positive difference. Human lives have been saved since InSite first opened. The number of accidental drug overdose deaths has been reduced by 35. Those who use InSite once a week have been shown to be 1.7 times more likely to enrol in detox programs than those who visit infrequently. Injection drug users who use InSite are 70% less likely to share needles. Reduced needle sharing is an internationally recognized best practice to reduce the rate of HIV-AIDS and various other diseases. Finally, InSite patrons are more likely to seek medical care through the program, which results in fewer emergency room visits and improved health outcomes. It might also be of interest to the Conservative government that fewer emergency room visits equal cost savings to our health care system.

This is just a smattering of InSite's positive impact. This impact has been proven in over 30 peer-reviewed studies, published in journals like the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal. Further, the experts at the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Nurses Association are also against Bill C-2.

I implore the government to listen to the science, to Canadian doctors and nurses, and abandon Bill C-2.

InSite does good work. It must be allowed to continue to operate. More than 80% of people surveyed in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside want it to continue to operate. Will the Conservative government listen to the only community in Canada that currently has a supervised injection site? Will it listen to the people of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and respect what they want because they support InSite?

We can only ask why the government refuses to respect the scientific and medical communities that support safe injection sites. Why does the government want to abandon those who have been so vulnerable and unfortunate as to become drug addicts? Why does the government not understand that safe injections sites are part of a community harm reduction strategy? Such sites improve the community for everyone who lives alongside drug users.

Bill C-2 goes against all scientific evidence and experts who show that supervised injection sites reduce harm. The bill goes against the charter and the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Conservative government goes against the moral obligation to reduce harm to drug users.

We must not give up on people, even if they seem to have given up on themselves. Without solutions to address substance abuse, we must at least try to implement harm reduction strategies.

We must not abandon people, particularly when they are in despair. Without a solution to drug addiction, we must, at the very least, try to implement harm reduction.

For these reasons, the New Democratic Party and I oppose Bill C-2.

As a sideline, the Heinz company just announced the closure of its plant in Leamington. U.S. Steel is shutting down in Hamilton. In my town of London, Ontario, we have lost far too many good-paying jobs. Despite all that, the Conservative government chooses to assault the vulnerable instead of focusing on the economy and the good jobs that we need to support families and communities.

I rest my case.

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

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

The bill before us today brings into sharper focus what is happening under this Conservative government. This bill is driven solely by ideology and completely ignores the facts. That is nothing new for the Conservatives. Bill C-2 is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to put an end to supervised injection sites.

As we have seen routinely for some time, this government has no qualms about introducing bills that disregard recent rulings by the highest court, the Supreme Court of Canada. In fact, in 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that InSite provided essential services and had to remain open under the exemption set out in section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The Court also ruled that the charter authorized users to access InSite services and that the provision of similar services should also be authorized under the same exemption.

In addition, a number of studies published in major scientific journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the British Medical Journal, describe the benefits of the InSite supervised injection facility.

We have noticed over the past few years that the Conservatives are not fond of scientists who express their opinions, particularly when those opinions are critical of the Conservatives or when they go against the Conservatives’ ideology.

A government’s mission is not to muzzle scientists or to gag members of the House of Commons a record number of times. The government’s role is to take note of the facts and, on the basis of those facts, make the best decisions for Canadians. With Bill C-2, the government is again falling into the embarrassing trap of grandstanding and ignoring facts that clearly prove that supervised injection facilities like InSite have a wide range of benefits for the general public.

Just a few hours after introducing Bill C-2, the Conservatives launched a campaign called “Keep heroin out of our backyards”, designed to rally grassroots support and, once again, to fuel the public’s unfounded fears about safety. I am really looking forward to hearing the arguments they make to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

Let us just take a few moments to think about this seriously. Are the Conservatives really so keen on magical thinking that they believe that, if InSite were closed, heroin use would automatically disappear? I hope their cognitive reasoning is a little more advanced than that. The reality is that, after the closure of supervised injection facilities, heroin use would not disappear but would once again be widespread in neighbourhoods and could at that point become a real danger for the general public. This is the exact opposite of what the Conservatives are claiming.

This is a fact. Let us forget the Conservatives’ ideological inflexibility that results in the exact opposite of what they claim, and talk about the facts, the real facts, about InSite and the positive benefits of supervised injection facilities.

The InSite project was set up as part of a public health initiative by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and a number of other community partners following a 12-fold increase in the number of overdose deaths in Vancouver between 1987 and 1993. Over that seven-year period, the Vancouver area also saw a disturbing increase in the rate of blood-borne diseases, such as hepatitis A, B and C and HIV/AIDS, among injection drug users.

In 2003, InSite secured an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act for activities with medical and scientific applications, in order to provide services and conduct research into the effectiveness of supervised injection facilities.

In 2007, the Onsite Detox Centre was added at the same location.

In 2008, InSite's exemption expired. The Minister of Health denied its application for renewal, in a portent of the bill now before this House.

The Minister of Health's decision triggered a series of court cases, following which the British Columbia Supreme Court found that InSite had to be given a further exemption. The Conservative government appealed that decision, but lost its appeal in the British Columbia Court of Appeal, which also found that InSite should remain open.

Finally, in 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Minister’s decision to close InSite violated its clients’ charter rights, was arbitrary, and was contrary to the very purpose of the Public Health and Safety Act. In the NDP, we believe that government decisions should be made in the best interests of the public, and not in accordance with an ideological stance.

Evidence has shown that supervised injection sites are effective in reducing the risk of contracting and spreading blood-borne diseases and overdose-related deaths. It has also shown that such sites are not bad for public safety and that in many cases, on the contrary, they promote it by reducing drug injection in public places, the associated violence, and the waste materials that result from drug use. They also make it possible to strike a fair balance between public safety and public health and to connect users with the health care and drug treatment services they need in order to escape the hell of drug use.

In this case, the facts are clear and unequivocal. Between 1987 and 1993, before InSite opened, the number of overdose-related deaths in Vancouver rose from 16 to 200 a year. Since it opened, the number of overdose-related deaths in east Vancouver has fallen 35%.

For our Conservative friends who believe that InSite is a dangerous place that poses a threat to the public, here are some more facts. Over a one-year period, 2,171 InSite users were referred to addiction counselling and other support services. People using InSite's services at least once a week are almost twice as likely to enrol in a detox program than those who visit only occasionally.

There was a very significant drop in the number of discarded needles, injection-related waste materials and people injecting themselves with drugs, just in the year following the opening of InSite. It was found that 80% of respondents living or working in Vancouver's downtown east side support InSite. A number of studies have looked at the possible negative impact of InSite. Not one produced any evidence of harm to the community.

The facts are clear. An initiative like InSite is a step in the right direction in terms of public health and public safety. In contrast to what the Conservatives claim, it gets drugs off our streets and moves them to supervised sites where people are attended to and strongly encouraged to explore the possibilities for drug treatment and social reintegration.

That is why we will be voting against Bill C-2, which is based—as is all too often the case on the other side of the House—on magical thinking, rather than facts.

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.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is clear that this government has always governed with blinkers on and consults neither the public nor the appropriate experts.

We also know that Bill C-2 flies in the face of the Supreme Court's 2011 decision, which called upon the minister to consider exemptions for supervised injection sites as a way to reconcile public safety and health issues.

As we can see, the Conservatives have no respect even for the Supreme Court. We therefore hope that they will come to their senses, look at the facts and change their position on Bill C-2.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy today to talk about Bill C-2, formerly known as Bill C-65.

I am pleased to have an opportunity to denounce this bill, which is intended to terminate the operation of supervised injection sites: nothing more, nothing less. It is in direct opposition to a decision the Supreme Court handed down in 2011.

This is a bill that betrays the irrational ideology of the Conservatives, who believe that repression is the only way to deal with this scourge.

We are not the only people in the world to have considered this issue. There are more than 70 cities worldwide that have supervised injection sites. They are found mainly in Europe and Australia. In Canada, there is but one supervised injection site: InSite, which opened in 2003.

In order to use the services of InSite in Vancouver, users must be at least 16, sign a user agreement, comply with a code of conduct and not be accompanied by children. Users bring their own substances, and the staff provide clean injection equipment. Emergency medical aid is available if required, and expert staff are on site to provide health and social service support.

In addition to providing services to drug users in order to minimize the impact on their health and on public health, InSite conducts research on the effectiveness of supervised injection facilities.

This injection site has already demonstrated its effectiveness by significantly reducing deaths by overdose. It is estimated that overdose deaths in Vancouver have decreased by 35% since the site opened. In addition to reducing overdoses, the facility helps to reduce the rates of communicable diseases among injection drug users. I am referring to hepatitis A, B and C and HIV/AIDS, for example.

Ever since it was established by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and its community partners, this public health project has generated controversy. Those who believe only in repression saw it as an encouragement to use drugs.

At first, the site was able to open because it was given an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to operate for medical and scientific purposes. In 2008, the exemption for InSite expired and the health minister denied InSite's application to renew it. This decision triggered a series of court cases, which led to the B.C. Supreme Court decision that InSite should be granted a new exemption. The federal government then appealed this decision. One after the other, the B.C. Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the closure of InSite violated the rights of its patrons under section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which provides that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

I would like to quote from the 2011 Supreme Court decision effectively demonstrating the Conservatives' bad faith in this case, as follows:

[The minister's decision to close InSite] is arbitrary...because it undermines the very purposes of the CDSA—the protection of health and public safety.

I would also like to quote another excerpt from that decision:

The infringement at stake is serious; it threatens the health, indeed the lives, of the claimants and others like them. The grave consequences that might result from a lapse in the current constitutional exemption for Insite cannot be ignored.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court decision does not just concern InSite. It opens the door to new similar sites, and I quote:

On future applications, the Minister must exercise that discretion within the constraints imposed by the law and the Charter, aiming to strike the appropriate balance between achieving public health and public safety. In accordance with the Charter, the Minister must consider whether denying an exemption would cause deprivations of life and security of the person that are not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. Where, as here, a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

This ruling by Canada’s highest court has led public health agencies throughout the country, including the Agence de la santé et des services sociaux de Montréal, to consider opening supervised injection facilities.

After being turned down twice by the courts, the Conservatives are now trying to get around the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as the Supreme Court judges, by using Bill C-2 to amend the act.

The Conservatives are acting in a way that is just as reprehensible as the bill itself. Some people go so far as to say that this is hypocritical.

As we saw in this House during the previous session of Parliament, the Conservatives’ strategy is plain: to increase the number of requirements that supervised injection sites will have to meet before the department will grant an exemption. These many requirements will make it much more difficult for agencies to open supervised injection facilities in Canada. The Conservatives are so ideologically pigheaded that it is pathetic.

In this House, my colleagues have often heard me say how important it is to base political decisions on fact. Unlike the Conservatives, I have looked at the facts. I have found that 80% of the people questioned, who live or work in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, support InSite, primarily because there has been a significant drop in the number of needles discarded and the number of people injecting drugs on the street.

I can cite other figures and percentages. The rate of overdose deaths in East Vancouver has fallen by 35% since InSite opened. It has also been noted that injection drug users who go to lnSite are 70% less likely to share needles. In one year, 2,171 Insite users were referred to addiction counselling or other support services. Unlike repression, lnSite does not marginalize drug users and does not force them into isolation. These are figures that I think are pretty convincing.

There are more than 30 peer-reviewed studies, published in major scientific journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal, that describe the benefits of InSite. Furthermore, there are other studies that show the positive impacts of more than 70 supervised injection sites that are similar to Insite.

In summary, I think that the science and the evidence are quite clear: supervised injection sites promote public health because they reach vulnerable groups and are accepted by the community. They make it possible to improve the health of their users and reduce high-risk behaviour, in addition to lowering the number of overdose deaths and reducing drug use in public places.

Above all, I believe that safe injection sites make it possible to strike the appropriate balance between public health and public safety. Furthermore, the sites give people who need help access to the necessary health services, such as primary health care and drug treatment services.

Front line workers have been clear: supervised injection sites are necessary. Pivot Legal Society, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition issued a joint statement about the bill, which reads:

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

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

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her speech.

I wonder if she could provide some figures that support our position on Bill C-2. Can she talk about the fact that such sites reduce harm as well as the risk of people injuring themselves? Can she tell us about people who agree with our position?

[Sana Hassainia, NDP, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin my speech, I would like to set the record straight. Are the Conservatives aware that, in September 2011, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of InSite? The court noted the effectiveness of the site and the very need for it in Vancouver's east side. I do not understand why we are still debating a law that will ensure that these kinds of organizations will not be able to exist in Canada.

Let us put this in context. We should begin by talking about what is happening in that Vancouver neighbourhood—and many other Canadian cities, I might add—and then try to understand why a place such as InSite is critical to the safety of the neighbourhood and why it is beneficial.

Vancouver's downtown east side is home to some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our country. There are nearly 4,600 intravenous drug users there, which represents approximately half of the entire city's intravenous drug users. That is significant. That proportion is not at all reflective of the actual size of the neighbourhood, which is very small and has few houses. There are various factors that contribute to the high concentration of drug users in that area of the city. We could talk about the numerous rooming houses, the deinstitutionalization of people with mental health issues, the effects of drug policies throughout the years and, of course, the availability of illicit drugs on the street.

Before InSite came about, the things you could see on the streets were mind-blowing: people sitting on the ground or sitting on steps, putting on a tourniquet and shooting up. That was a common occurrence in this neighbourhood. Drug addicts come from all kinds of backgrounds, but the one thing they have in common is that they all had difficult childhoods or experiences that led them to drugs. Anyone walking through that neighbourhood, including children, would come across dirty needles.

The researchers who came up with the idea of InSite thought long and hard about how to create a site that would address all of these problems. InSite was developed as part of a public health project by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and its community partners, in response to a twelve-fold increase in overdose-related deaths in Vancouver between 1987 and 1993. At the time, the Vancouver area was seeing huge increases in the rates of communicable diseases, such as hepatitis A, B and C, and HIV, among injection drug users.

InSite first received an exemption in 2003 for conducting activities for a medical and scientific purpose, under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, so it could provide services and conduct research on the effectiveness of supervised injection sites. Section 56 of this act gives the minister the authority to approve facilities that use drugs for a medical and scientific purpose or for a law enforcement purpose. In 2007, the drug treatment centre OnSite was added to the facility.

In 2008, InSite's exemption under section 56 expired, and the Minister of Health rejected InSite's renewal request. This decision sparked a string of legal challenges leading to the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruling that InSite should be granted a new exemption. The federal government brought the matter to the B.C. Court of Appeal, which also ruled that InSite should remain open. Finally, in 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the minister's decision to close InSite violated the charter rights of its clients and was “arbitrary, undermining the very purposes of the CDSA, which include public health and safety”.

The court based its decision on section 7 of the charter, which states: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice”. The court stated:

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

The Supreme Court ruled that InSite and other supervised injection sites must be granted a section 56 exemption when the opening of such sites “will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety”. After this decision was handed down, public health authorities and agencies in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal began planning to open supervised injection sites.

Why are we here debating this issue when we clearly did not need to come back to it? We are doing so because once again the Conservatives decided to change a law so that it reflects their ideology. They came up with a deeply flawed bill that is based on an anti-drug ideology and false fears for public safety. This is another attempt to rally the Conservative base, as evidenced by their “Keep heroin out of our backyards” campaign that started mere hours after Bill C-2 was introduced in Parliament. This bill will make it almost impossible to open safe injection sites and will put heroin back in our neighbourhoods.

The NDP feels that decisions about programs that could benefit public safety should be based on fact and not ideology. Evidence has shown that supervised injection sites effectively reduce the risk of contracting and spreading blood-borne diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C, and reduce deaths from overdoses. Evidence has also shown that these sites do not negatively affect public safety and that, in certain cases, they promote it by reducing the injection of drugs in public, the violence associated with such behaviour, and drug-related waste. 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.

This bill imposes a far too heavy burden on communities, which would have to prove what the benefits of such a site would be and could then still be denied an exemption. As the Supreme Court pointed out, this bill brings us back to the arbitrary decision made by the minister against InSite in 2008.

The NDP believes that any legislation introduced by the Conservative government must respect the Supreme Court ruling and strike a balance between health and public safety.

This bill flies in the face of the 2011 decision, which ordered the minister to consider granting exemptions for supervised injection sites in order to strike a balance between public health and public safety. That decision ordered the minister to examine all the evidence in light of the advantages of supervised injection sites, rather than coming up with a long list of principles on which to base decisions.

In closing, I would like to add that the NDP believes that any new legislation regarding supervised injection sites must respect the spirit of the Supreme Court ruling, which this bill does not do. We believe that harm reduction programs, including supervised injection sites, should be granted exemptions based on evidence that they will improve public health and save lives, not on ideology.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his presentation and, in the same breath, say that it saddens me that since the beginning of our debate on this topic, not a single government member has risen to present the government's position on this bill.

I would like know whether my colleague has noticed the same thing. In the bill on environmental assessments, for example, the government did everything it could to reduce the deadlines in order to allow party cronies to move forward with their projects as quickly as possible. However, when it comes to Bill C-2, the government puts up as many obstacles as possible in order to prevent projects from moving forward in communities that are prepared to welcome sites such as InSite. Has the hon. member noticed the same thing?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to the bill, which was formerly Bill C-65 and is now Bill C-2.

The bill is on something about respect for communities, but that is not really what is going on here. It is an attempt to undermine a Supreme Court decision by putting in rules and regulations, which the Supreme Court has asked the government to do, that would make it virtually impossible to actually abide by the Supreme Court decision, which says that these places should be permitted to exist.

Once again, we have a government that ignores facts, statistics, and evidence. This is a government, do not forget, that wanted to eliminate evidence by closing down such things as the long form census and the Experimental Lakes Area. The Conservatives do want there to be evidence. They do not want Canadians to know what they are up to by there being evidence of what might happen.

We have a government that acts, time and again, in opposition to evidence-based decision-making. It acts in opposition to science-based decision-making. It acts in opposition to decision-making that is for the public good. Instead, its actions seem to be knee-jerk reactions that give the Conservatives opportunities to raise money to get elected and to continue this practice of doing things that are not in the interest of the public.

This is yet another example of an action by a government that is attempting to raise alarm bells for citizens about what might or might not happen in their neighbourhoods.

So far, only three communities I am aware of have actually asked for the authority the bill would grant, albeit without going through some pretty steep hoops. They are Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa.

My riding is in Toronto, in one of the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Ontario. It is against that context that I want to talk about why it is the NDP believes that the bill is completely wrong-headed. In fact, the bill would be defying the Supreme Court ruling.

The Supreme Court ruling directed the government to come up with mechanisms to allow these things to happen. Instead, we are getting a bill that would make it well-nigh impossible for a community, a public health agency, doctors, and respected members of a community to actually put in place a safe injection site where public harm and harm to individuals would be reduced.

If the Conservatives are opposed to reducing harm, why are they in government? The whole point of us being here is to try to reduce harm. However, the bill would actually increase it in places where we should be trying to reduce it.

The government has taken its cue, based on the questions I have been hearing so far today, from the notion that people do not want one of those things in their neighbourhood. Well, I walk in the park in my neighbourhood. It is a big, beautiful park on the banks of the Humber River, and there are needles in that park from drug users who have not had a safe place to inject, and therefore they litter the ground. One cannot walk safely in my little park, because there is no place for harm reduction in my neighbourhood. There is no harm reduction place where people can go to inject the drugs safely.

An addiction is recognized by medical authorities, the public, insurance companies, and even the reputable sources of disability recognition as, in fact, a disability, not a crime. It is not something to be looked down upon. We need to find ways to help individuals who have addictions.

One way to help these individuals, which has been successfully promoted in Vancouver, is a safe injection site. It is a place where it has been found that harm is reduced for the public, both the individuals who are addicted and the public at large, by providing them with a place they can go to safely inject themselves with what we otherwise understand are dangerous drugs.

We would all love it if these things did not exist, but they do exist. They exist in a manner in which the outcome of the use of these drugs in unsupervised ways, in unsafe ways, has led to significant increases in other diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C. Who is going to look after those individuals when those diseases get the better of them? Those diseases will eventually get the better of those individuals, and it is the public, not the individuals themselves, that will pay for their health care.

We are dealing with a government that is preaching about the government having to watch every penny. Here is a situation in which the taxpayer, which Conservatives claim to be on the side of, will end up paying more because of this shortsighted bill. The taxpayer will have to look after the individuals who eventually come to hospitals and medical facilities as a result of diseases we could have prevented and limited had we been dealing with them in a more proactive way early on, when these individuals started to inject themselves unsafely.

We should be doing more to try to deal with the addictions themselves. As we have seen in the press very recently, in a big and public way, addictions are a real problem for individuals in my city. One of the first things that happens to addicts is that they deny it. They do not have a problem.

I was a union representative for many years, and many were the individuals who claimed they had no problem. Some we were able to help. Some got treatment. Others did not, and unfortunately, they became a burden to the health system first, and then, in some cases, they passed away. Those individuals were a burden on society, not because they were not able to get the help they needed but because they denied that they had that problem in the first place.

The same is going to be true of individuals who are seeking help at the safe injection sites. Some of them do not believe they have a problem. How are we going to convince them to get help unless we lead them to the help? That is part of what the safe injection sites do. They provide a safe place where addicts can get counselling and where they can get attention from nurses and doctors. They can therefore be exposed to the help to get them free from their addictions.

That kind of thing is being asked for by the City of Toronto as part of its request to the federal government. In fact, the City of Toronto will be speaking on this matter when the bill goes to committee, because it has recommended that the Board of Health make a submission to the federal government to register its opposition to Bill C-65. This is a recommendation from the medical officer of health of Toronto, by the way. It will also recommend the development of a more feasible CDSA exemption application process for supervised injection services, in consultation with relevant provincial public health, public safety, and community stakeholders, including people who use drugs.

The Board of Health urges the provincial government to fund the integration of supervised injection services on a pilot basis, but they cannot do that if the federal government will not give its permission. That is what we are up against. We are up against a government that, as evidenced by the questions I have been hearing so far, is fundamentally opposed to the existence of these things anywhere. It has put into the bill such blockades or walls to get over that it will be virtually impossible for any of the cities in our country to create a supervised injection site with permission from the government.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the campaign site, it reads:

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

The government did a good job of scaring people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...arbitrary, undermining the very purposes of the CDSA, which include public health and safety. It is also grossly disproportionate: the potential denial of health services and the correlative increase in the risk of death and disease to injection drug users outweigh any benefit that might be derived from maintaining an absolute prohibition on possession of illegal drugs on Insite’s premises.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

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

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

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

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

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

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

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

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

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

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

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

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

The court did rule that the minister's decision to close InSite violated its patrons' charter rights and that the minister's decision was “...arbitrary, undermining the very purposes of the CDSA, which include public health and safety.”

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

Further in the case, the court said that

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

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

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

...the Minister must exercise that discretion within the constraints imposed by the law and the Charter, aiming to strike the appropriate balance between achieving public health and public safety. In accordance with the Charter, the Minister must consider whether denying an exemption would cause deprivations of life and security of the person that are not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

The court continues a little further on,

Where, as here, a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't want one anywhere near my home.

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

It continues:

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

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

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

I will keep going:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(The House resumed at 12 noon.)

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

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The court also declared that:

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

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

decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety...

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

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

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

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

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

According to the Canadian Medical Association:

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

The Canadian Nurses Association had this to say:

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

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

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

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

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That section says:

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He means our policy. He went on to say:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It further stated:

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

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

On future applications, the Minister must exercise that discretion within the constraints imposed by the law and the Charter, aiming to strike the appropriate balance between achieving public health and public safety. In accordance with the Charter, the Minister must consider whether denying an exemption would cause deprivations of life and security of the person that are not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. Where, as here, a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Canadian Nurses Association stated:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-2, which was previously introduced as Bill C-65 at the end of the last parliamentary session. However, it was one of the bills that ended up in parliamentary limbo, with the prorogation requested by the Conservative government. It has therefore come back as BillC-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Mr. Speaker, as is my custom as the justice critic for our party—and having been one yourself, I am sure you will understand—I am looking at this bill as a lawyer. I will not claim to be an excellent lawyer, as I have heard the member for Ottawa—Orléans do in the House, but nevertheless I will have nearly 30 years of experience as a lawyer next year.

This very important bill has quite a striking title: An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. I looked at what it was amending and what it would be changing, because I like to understand what we are trying to do in the House.

The bill basically amends section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which I will read. That really enlightened me about the problem we have and often go through in the House. Prior to the proposed Bill C-2, section 56 provided the following:

The Minister may, on such terms and conditions as the Minister deems necessary, exempt any person or class of persons or any controlled substance or precursor or any class thereof from the application of all or any of the provisions of this Act or the regulations if, in the opinion of the Minister, the exemption is necessary for a medical or scientific purpose or is otherwise in the public interest.

This short provision seemed relatively clear to me. Everyone in the House agrees that we want to regulate certain drugs and other substances, especially really hard drugs. I therefore wanted to know how the government was amending section 56. I encourage hon. members to read this atrocity. It is truly a legal atrocity. The original provision was five lines long. Now I have lost track of how many pages it is. When I say that it is many pages long, I mean that I could probably spend the next 18 minutes of my speech in the House reading out the changes that this government is trying to make.

In Canada v. PHS Community Services Society, the nine Supreme Court justices rendered a unanimous decision that was a major slap in the face to the government. The Supreme Court told the government that its actions were inappropriate.

This bill is the Conservative government's response to the Supreme Court of Canada. In its ruling, in very plain and clear language, the court said that InSite provides essential services and should remain open under the exemption set out in section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The court ruled that users were entitled to access InSite's services under the charter and that the delivery of other similar services should also be granted an exemption under that section.

The court therefore provided an unequivocal response to what was happening. There is no denying that this was seen as a victory in Vancouver.

No one wants to provide easy access to drugs. No one wants to tell people to go ahead and shoot up and that we will have a big party and sing Kumbaya. That is not at all the issue. This technique was tested and implemented. It has been shown that supervised injection sites have positive effects and result in fewer overdose-related deaths. These sites have even helped people to overcome their drug addictions.

However, this ideological government decided to simply ignore the lesson given by the Supreme Court in Canada v. PHS Community Services Society—a decision that, I repeat, was rendered by 9 out of 9 judges on September 30, 2011.

I encourage hon. members to read the new version of section 56 that will exist if the House passes this bill. It is an atrocity.

I will spare the House subsections 56(1) and 56(2). Instead, I will focus on subsection 56.1(3). I will not be talking about subsections 56.1(1) and 56.1(2), your honour. Excuse me, Mr. Speaker; I have court on my mind. Perhaps I am psychic, Mr. Speaker, and someday you will be a judge.

Subsection 56.1(3) reads as follows:

56.1(3) The Minister may consider an application for an exemption for a medical purpose under subsection (2) that would allow certain activities to take place at a supervised consumption site [we know what the government is trying to do here] only after the following have been submitted [members will be shocked]:

(a) scientific evidence demonstrating that there is a medical benefit to individual or public health associated with access to activities undertaken at supervised consumption sites [that will be easy enough to demonstrate];

(b) a letter from the provincial minister who is responsible for health in the province in which the site would be located that;

(i) outlines his or her opinion on the proposed activities at the site,

(ii) describes how those activities are integrated within the provincial health care system, and

(iii) provides information about access to drug treatment services, if any, that are available in the province for persons who would use the site;

(c) a letter from the local government of the municipality in which the site would be located that outlines its opinion on the proposed activities at the site, including any concerns with respect to public health or safety;

(d) a description by the applicant of the measures that have been taken or will be taken to address any relevant concerns outlined in the letter referred to in paragraph (c);

Paragraph (e) is about the head of the police force.

I am trying to read quickly because it would take all day to read out what applicants would have to prove in order to be granted an exemption.

56.1(3)(f) a description by the applicant of the proposed measures, if any, to address any relevant concerns outlined in the letter referred to in paragraph (e);

To understand these provisions, anyone seeking to provide a service that the Supreme Court has declared necessary to the health and safety of certain individuals would need legal and addictions experts. Good job.

56.1(3)(i) a description of the potential impacts of the proposed activities at the site on public safety, including the following:

(i) information, if any, on crime and public nuisance in the vicinity of the site and information on crime and public nuisance in the municipalities in which supervised consumption sites are located,

I will skip directly to paragraph (m).

56.1(3)(m) relevant information, including trends, if any, on the number of deaths, if any, due to overdose—in relation to activities that would take place at the site—that have occurred in the vicinity of the site and in the municipality in which the site would be located;

(n) official reports, if any, relevant to the establishment of a supervised consumption site, including any coroner’s reports;

I will not discuss paragraphs (o) and (p). I will skip to paragraph (q).

56.1(3)(q) a financing plan that demonstrates the feasibility and sustainability of operating the site;

Now I will go on to paragraph (t). I am skipping some points because they are all more things that have to be proven to the minister.

56.1(3)(t) information on any public health emergency in the vicinity of the site or in the municipality in which the site would be located...

Previously, section 56 read as follows:

56. The Minister may, on such terms and conditions as the Minister deems necessary, exempt any person or class of persons or any controlled substance or precursor or any class thereof from the application of all or any of the provisions of this Act or the regulations if, in the opinion of the Minister, the exemption is necessary for a medical or scientific purpose or is otherwise in the public interest.

I would like to go back to subsection 56.1(3). I will spare you the rest of the bill. I am at paragraph (y).

56.1(3)(y) if any of the persons referred to in paragraph (w) has ordinarily resided in a country other than Canada in the 10 years before the day on which the application is made, a document issued by a police force of that country stating whether in that period that person

(i) was convicted...

Now I will go to paragraph 56.1(4)(a):

56.1(4)(a) evidence, if any, of any variation in crime rates in the vicinity of the site during the period beginning on the day on which the first exemption was granted under subsection (2) in relation to the site and ending on the day on which the application is submitted; and

(b) evidence, if any, of any impacts of the activities at the site on individual or public health during that period.

This goes on for pages and pages. If the government just wanted to say that it does not want any supervised injection sites, it could have simply said so, instead of having us read all this legal gibberish that will not even pass the necessary legal tests, especially considering the Supreme Court's decision in Canada v. PHS Community Services Society. That decision, I repeat, was like a big slap in the face to the Conservative government: nine to zero. The court told the government that what it was doing was wrong and that it was jeopardizing public safety. Yet, this government professes to champion public safety. It engages in all these little schemes that seem to please its militant supporters. It is sending all the wrong messages regarding the benefits this bill will have.

Reading this bill sends the message that as soon as it passes and comes into effect, in some big cities like Vancouver, for instance, which already has a program that works very well, Canadians will be in danger, much more so than before this legislation. Big cities like Ottawa are taking part in this debate. It is a divisive issue. This government really likes to pit people against one another and especially to run fundraising campaigns. That is what really turned me off about this bill, when I saw the government had used this bill to do some fundraising.

Since I am an opposition member, I am sure people will say that I am pro-terrorist and pro-pedophile, and I will probably be pro-drugs in a few minutes. There will probably be a statement by some member based who listened to my speech and who will say that I am encouraging people to inject hard drugs, which is absolutely not true.

I trust the specialists and the scientists who tell us that this approach is effective and that we must not let people use drugs in our neighbourhoods or in the woods where children can find dirty needles on the ground and prick themselves with them. That can cause all kinds of problems. This situation needs to be controlled in some way, so that we can deal with the serious problem of drug addiction and try to refer these people to services that can help them get out of the hell of drug addiction that no one wishes on anyone.

This government is introducing this bill and it will be challenged again. I guess a decision of nine to zero is not enough for this government. We are going to have to say again and again that what the government is doing will cause serious problems for our public safety. What the government is doing is not fair, and it is certainly not a smart move in terms of public health. No matter which way we look at it, it seems incredibly obvious to me that this is a bad decision.

I repeat: the Conservatives need to read. We are always being told by our opponents across the way that we do not read. On the contrary, we read. In fact, this may be the difference between us: we do not read only the notes prepared by the Prime Minister’s Office. We read our own documents and those that are put forward in the House. We read the bills as they are presented, and we cannot believe it.

The Conservatives claim that these sites encourage people to take drugs and that this is something we must not do, but that is not the goal of supervised injection facilities. What they are meant to do is remove drug addicts or people with problems from public areas that might be frequented by children.

Yesterday, I went to speak to young university students about political life. I went along Sparks Street—I am sure everyone here is familiar with it—and there was a young man lying on the ground. Another person came along and I listened to their conversation.

It was a social worker who went to see this young man. Nobody was paying any attention to him and he was lying on the ground. The social worker went to see him and asked if he was all right. He began talking to him.

In our society, there are people dealing with all kinds of problems. We cannot simply ignore them all and act as if they do not exist. They exist, and we must take care of them, and take care of them the right way.

In its ruling on Canada v. PHS Community Services Society, handed down on September 30, 2011, the Supreme Court said that this was a safe approach to dealing with this issue. I repeat that the decision was made by nine judges to zero. This means it was not a majority decision; it was a unanimous decision. No less than public safety and public health are at stake.

Supreme Court rulings cannot be challenged. I appreciate that the government does not seem to be showing much respect when I see the mess that it made with the latest appointment to the Supreme Court. Nonetheless, there is a limit to how much disrespect can be shown for another pillar of our democracy.

The government is responding to the unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court in 2011 with Bill C-2. This is absolutely appalling. It is disrespectful of our duties and obligations as legislators in the House.

I will stand proudly and vote against this bill, and I will support my colleague’s amendment. I commend the member for Vancouver East on her remarkable work on this issue, along with all my colleagues from British Columbia.

It is also an issue that is starting to make headlines in Ottawa. When Bill C-2 is passed, I will not be able to guarantee the people in my riding that they will be any safer in the streets.

In conclusion, in addition to the fact that this bill amends section 56, which was very clear, the most appalling thing about this bill is that it is going to be called the Respect for Communities Act. This is Conservative grandstanding at its best. Unbelievable.

I read section 56 and then I read the amendment that goes on forever. No one will be able to meet these criteria. Then I looked at the title and I could not believe my eyes. Then I listened to the speech by my colleague from Vancouver East, who said that they had raised funds on the backs of people with serious problems in our society. You cannot get any cheaper than that.

The House resumed from November 4 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.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon we will finish debating today’s motion from the New Democrats.

Tomorrow, we will resume the second reading debate on Bill C-2, the Respect for Communities Act.

After Remembrance Day and a week of work in our constituencies, we will return here with a continued focus on protecting Canadians.

On Monday, November 18, I expect we will continue debating Bill C-2. If MPs discuss that bill with their constituents, I expect they will endorse the bill, which gives communities input on decisions on drug injection facilities that could have a real impact on those communities.

Before question period on Tuesday, we will resume the second reading debate on Bill C-3, safeguarding Canada's seas and skies act. Following question period, we will take up Bill C-5, offshore health and safety act at second reading.

On Wednesday, the House will start debating Bill C-11, priority hiring for injured veterans act, which the Minister of National Defence introduced this morning on behalf of the Minister of Veterans Affairs. This is a bill that both honours those who serve and advances employment opportunities for the disabled. It is a very fitting bill to be introduced this week, Veterans' Week, and I hope that all hon. members will join together in passing this bill quickly at second reading so it can be reviewed at committee and ultimately become the law of this land.

Finally, the hon. member for Papineau had a chance earlier this week to put forward a fresh new idea for governing Canada, any idea in fact, but he did not. However, do not worry, the Liberals are going to get another chance to give us an idea, some policy idea other than simply the legalization of marijuana, just one new idea. We might suggest an idea on continuing Canada's economic leadership. That will be on Thursday, November 21, which shall be the fourth allotted day set aside for a Liberal opposition day.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Potter, for being with us again.

My first question is about how the work we're doing in this study potentially relates to the strategy. As I think all members are aware, because of prorogation we were set back by a month, so we have not actually completed our report and were unable to have it fit in before your recommendations go to the ministers' meeting.

At this point, I guess, here's my question. When we do get the report...? Again, we're probably going to have another delay, because Bill C-2, instead of going to the health committee, is going to be referred to this committee, and legislation takes precedence, so we'll be set back even further.

I'm concerned about how the work we've invested in this study can be most effectively communicated to you at Public Safety to be considered as part of the strategy that's being developed.

Respect for Communities Act

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will say from the start that there is no argument. We are unequivocally opposed to Bill C-2 as there is no reason for the bill. What the bill seeks to do is deny a high-risk group of patients access to proven life-saving health care services. That is what it will do. That alone is unconscionable.

We are looking at a bill that is trying to refute all of the evidence that has been gathered with regard to safe consumption sites, which is what InSite in Vancouver is. It is the only one in Canada.

However, I would like the House to know that there are 90 safe consumption sites around the world, in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark and Australia. Switzerland introduced safe injection sites in 1986 as a public health harm reduction model. Since 1986, the evidence has been mounting and clearly shows that safe injection sites achieve exactly what they are meant to achieve. They reduce patient harm and decrease the number of patient deaths. They decrease the number of new cases of diseases such as HIV-AIDS, hepatitis C, as well as many other diseases transmitted through needles. Therefore, health and the reduction of morbidity were two things.

Switzerland, since 1986, and the other countries in Europe that have done this also show a reduction in public harm. There is order as well as less criminal activity. For example, the number of break-ins to get money to buy drugs was reduced. This has been proven since 1986. It is not something that someone just dragged up last year and decided this was what they wanted to do because they thought it was a good idea. This has been proven. It is because of that kind of evidence, in 90 sites around the world, that we in British Columbia decided to have a clinical trial. We did not just look at it and say we would do it. It was done by way of a clinical trial.

I want members to know that I was there when this began. I want to give credit to Philip Owen, the mayor of Vancouver, who was sick and tired of what was happening in his city with the number of deaths and the increase in break-ins, petty crimes and muggings that went on just to feed a habit. He decided to go to Europe to see what was going on there. We used to have something called a city caucus at the time wherein government and non-government members of Parliament, the provincial legislature and city councils came together to discuss problems that were common to the city of Vancouver. When this topic came up he said, “We have to work together”.

I was designated the minister responsible for the Downtown Eastside at the time by Mr. Chrétien. We had the NDP minister for communities who was designated to be in charge of that file, and we had the mayor. Together, the three levels of government did extensive public consultation with community groups, the police, the RCMP and businesses in that area in order to form the Vancouver agreement in 2000. One part of the Vancouver agreement dealt with this particular public nuisance at the time, in terms of crime and public health problems.

We are not talking about criminal activity alone. Rather, we are talking about addiction. An addiction is a chronic and relapsing health condition best served and treated by evidence-based public health care. That is what this is all about. Since 1986, 90 safe injection sites in many countries around the world had given us the evidence that prompted us to suggest in the 2000 Vancouver agreement that this is what would happen.

I came back to the federal government and brought this forward. There was a great deal of agreement around the table. The evidence was compelling. Then there was an election. When we came back in 2003, the federal government, through section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, agreed to a pilot project run by the University of British Columbia and clinicians in the area, who were experts from the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.

As I said, evidence was at the heart of what we were doing. We did not want to translate things from Australia and Europe into Canada. We did not know if that was going to work, so we said “let us do our own pilot project”. It was funded and put together, and the pilot project proved without a doubt that InSite not only saved lives, but reduced mortality and reduced the spread of HIV-AIDS and hepatitis C. InSite also increased people's desire and ability to get help. They were a very high-risk group of users, people who never went to doctors and did not want to go to nurses or any kind of institution. It was found that these people sought detox. It was found that they wanted to be helped.

We replicated everything that was shown in Europe and Australia. In other words, we found that it worked in British Columbia, without a doubt. It is not only that. It is not just the British Columbia study that we are talking about. What happened was that peer scientific groups around the world checked the evidence from InSite. They looked at it, they analyzed it and they all agreed that it was authentic.

I just want to give the House a little background about the reality of this problem. In 1988, there were 39 deaths due to overdose from intravenous drug use in Canada. In 1993, there were 357. I know that some people may decide that those 357 deaths were okay because they happened to be drug users, people who were the most vulnerable because they lived on the streets, or because they committed petty crime. That must have been okay in some people's minds. It was not okay in the minds of the federal government of the day, the provincial government of the day in British Columbia, the municipal government of the day in British Columbia or the Vancouver Police.

It is interesting to note that of those overdose deaths, 50% of them occurred in Vancouver. British Columbia actually only carried about 14% of the population, yet 50% of those deaths were in British Columbia, most notably in Vancouver. In 1997, as a result of the escalating death rate and escalating disease, the chief public health officer of Vancouver, John Blatherwick, decided to call a public health emergency in the city of Vancouver.

I just wanted to talk about HIV for a second. I wanted to paint a picture of what was then and why people felt it was essential to move forward on this issue. In 1989, there were 120 new cases out of 100,000 in Canada. After InSite, in Vancouver alone, this had dropped to 31. In the rest of Canada, the number of new cases remained the same.

That is evidence, folks. We do not have to be a scientist to figure out that this is evidence, when we look at the number of deaths that were brought down and when we look at the number of diseases such as HIV-AIDS that were actually prevented in this area.

I am talking about what we saw and what happened as a result of InSite. InSite was so successful that within a year a half, the people who were running InSite formed a facility above it, called OnSite, where 25 beds were there for immediate detox. If anyone here knows about addictions, they know that when someone wants to quit or they feel moved to quit, if they do not get in somewhere then and there, they go right back to drugs in two days' time. This is the truth about people who are addicted. OnSite was there so we could say “right on, up you go”. That is what has been shown with this.

If anyone in the House can stand up and say that this is not an important piece of evidence in terms of deaths, morbidity and the spread of HIV-AIDS, and if anyone thinks it is funny and hilarious that people should die and that no one should care, and that this was not an absolutely essential thing to do, given that the chief public health officer felt that it was an emergency, then that person is callous. I am hearing laughter on the opposite side of the House. I do not think that this is funny at all. I had many patients who were addicts. Their lives were ruined. I have seen those people begin to have hope and begin to live new lives again.

This is evidence. This is what a government is supposed to do: care about all of its citizens, not just the ones it likes.

This is not something I stand to say because I happen to have been the minister for the Downtown Eastside and the minister for the Vancouver agreement. What I am saying is that across the country we know that many municipalities want to have safe injection sites because they have the problem. They have seen the evidence. The evidence was agreed upon by international peers. Scientific communities around the world agreed upon this. This is going on. There are 90 safe injection sites around the world.

I am repeating this because this is not some little pitch that the government is trying to stop. It is denying people the right to life. All of those 395 people who died of a drug overdose in that year. I think most of us believe that their lives were worth saving and the lives of subsequent people are worth saving. When the number of drug overdose deaths went down so dramatically after InSite, this is something that the government should be considering.

The government fought InSite on moral grounds, on ideological grounds, but certainly not on evidence because it did not have a leg to stand on if it looked at the evidence. The evidence was compelling, but the government did not look at it. It had an idea that this was morally wrong, all these people were shooting up heroin and we were letting them shoot up, and all this kind of judgmental attitude toward citizens of Canada who are vulnerable. They are vulnerable. They are in need of help by the government. They are in need of a good, solid public health response to addiction.

I want to say this is our public health, yet the bill brought in by the Minister of Health is going to be sent to the public safety committee, not the health committee. We see that the whole issue of public safety was served, not only here but in the 90 safe injection sites in countries of the world. This showed the most important thing, which was that law order and order prevailed. The number of petty crimes went down. The number of people shooting up in the streets went down. The number of people who were begging and being a public nuisance went down. Law and order was served. This is an important piece, as well, if all the government thinks about is law and order and not about people and not about compassion and not about public health.

The government spent millions of dollars taking this case through the courts. When the British Columbia courts agreed that this should happen, that this is evidence-based and the evidence is compelling, and when the Supreme Court of British Columbia agreed that the evidence was compelling, the government took it straight to the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada said the evidence that it listened to was compelling and said that while the federal government had it in its power to deny access, in fact, it was something that it should not do because ethically this would deny section 7 of the charter, which is the right to life, liberty and security of the person. If a person going to die and something would help him or her, that is security of the person. That is life. This is a government that likes to talk about caring about life, but it does not care about certain lives. Some lives are not worth it, as far as the government is concerned.

Now, the government is building a case beyond what the Supreme Court asked. The Supreme Court said, yes, we should consult. This is not consultation; this is legislation. Consultation is to go around and talk. When we started InSite in Vancouver, the city, the province, the federal government, the police and the communities all agreed to do so. Sixty-five per cent of people, at the time, supported InSite in Vancouver because they saw the harm that was being done.

Finally, before I finish, my colleague in the NDP brought forward a motion that the bill be not brought to second reading. I want to say that I support that motion because the bill is not in the best interests of public health and it is not in the best interests of the most vulnerable Canadians.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first I want to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the exuberant, energetic member for Newton—North Delta.

This issue affects us all, but perhaps more particularly those of us who are lucky enough to be parents. I live in a fairly densely populated urban area, where our children ride around on their bikes and play with their friends in the sandboxes in the park or with neighbours in the lane behind our house. One of our fears as parents is that they might get their hands on drugs or on needles, which could prick them and give them very serious diseases.

As a community and as a government, how can we act to ensure that our streets, lanes and parks are safe for us all and for our children, who are not always very well informed about these kinds of dangers?

A place like InSite in Vancouver is a good example of how we can work together to enhance public safety while improving public health. The two are not mutually exclusive. They go together.

I much prefer to have someone inject drugs in a safe place rather than an unsafe place where there a risk of violence and a risk that objects may be left behind that can potentially harm our children.

One might think the idea of a centre where people can get help in injecting drugs is counterintuitive. Why help someone who injects an illegal drug that endangers his or her health? It is counterintuitive if the question is put that way.

However, sometimes in life, after in-depth studies and scientific tests are conducted, or after the facts are checked, what seems counterintuitive just may work. There are some fairly simple examples of that. A metal boat, for example, is counterintuitive because metal sinks, and yet it works. Another completely counterintuitive notion is that the earth is round, because everyone might initially think it is flat. However, that is not true; it is round.

The most important thing when it comes to public health is that we rely on facts, studies and evidence. That is also true of supervised injection sites, like InSite in Vancouver, which other municipalities would like to set up to combat substance abuse and addiction and enhance public safety.

Over 30 studies published in major scientific journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal, describe the benefits of a centre like InSite in Vancouver. Furthermore, other studies show the positive impact of more than 70 supervised injection facilities across Europe and Australia.

Why not look at the positive experiences, such as the fact that these sites really help people, that they reduce the number of needles on the streets, that they decrease violence and that they reduce the number of deaths from drug overdose?

This is an important debate because people’s lives are at stake. In Vancouver, before InSite was set up, there was a 12-fold increase in the number of people who died from a drug overdose between 1987 and 1993. Twelve! Dozens of people died because of their drug addiction. Since InSite opened, the number of people who died from a drug overdose has dropped by 35%. The facts are clear. Injection facilities can save lives.

Unfortunately, in order to satisfy their electoral base, with a purely ideological perspective based on fear and prejudice, the Conservatives are trying to lock these successful experiments up so tightly that no other municipality in Canada will be able to set up this type of proven facility.

We have clearly seen the lengths they will go to to please some of their electorate. Just a few hours after introducing Bill C-2, the Conservative Party launched a campaign called “Keep heroin out of our backyards”, which made people believe that stopping the establishment of a supervised injection facility would improve public safety, while in fact the exact opposite is true.

It is a shame that they are trying to score points in the polls by using an issue that affects public health and people’s lives. Furthermore, the Conservatives’ position in Bill C-2 goes against a 2011 Supreme Court ruling. This is not exactly insignificant. The Supreme Court ordered the minister to consider granting exemptions for supervised injection facilities in order to strike a balance between public health and public safety. In our view, the Conservatives should respect the spirit of this ruling and move in the direction shown by the Supreme Court.

I would like to quote from a few documents. In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that the minister’s decision to shut down InSite was a violation of its clients’ charter rights, that the decision was arbitrary and that it undermined the purpose of the law, which includes public health and safety.

The Supreme Court based its decision on section 7 of the charter, which says that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. The Supreme Court said the following:

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

We need to protect those who suffer from addiction and direct them to programs that can help them get off drugs. There are undeniable facts, and I want to mention some of them because it is important to rely on facts, not fear.

In one year, InSite referred 2,171 hard drug users to addiction counselling and other support services. That is more than 2,000 people who were referred through a process to help them escape their situation and their misery.

People who use InSite's services at least once a week are almost twice as likely to enter a detox program as those who visit the centre rarely or not at all. Visiting the centre therefore encourages people to seek the help of health care professionals in resolving their situation.

Just one year after InSite opened in Vancouver, there was also a substantial decline in the quantity of needles and drug-related waste discarded by people injecting drugs on the street.

Why would anyone want to prevent other municipalities in Quebec and Canada from adopting this tool, which has proven itself here in Canada and in Europe and Australia? Why indeed, except in an unfortunate attempt to please a certain Conservative electorate that, in wanting to do the right thing, is preventing us from moving forward?

We are all opposed to the use of hard drugs, but it is important to understand that we must support and help these people, not adopt a solely repressive vision. That vision will not help us improve public health or make our streets and laneways safer.

I would emphasize that the NDP is not the only group that has adopted this view. Most nurses' and physicians' associations support our position: here we have something that has proven itself, something that saves lives and improves public health and safety.

I therefore call on the Conservative Party to take off its blinkers, look at the facts, read the studies and amend Bill C-2 so that we can live in safer communities.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to surprise you: Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, is not in the interests of public safety.

Despite the assertions of the hon. Minister of Health, if we take a close look at this bill, we can see that it aims to prevent supervised injection facilities from functioning. The health minister wants to tighten the criteria for injection facilities in Canada.

However, according to the new rules, those who wish to open an injection facility must first give consideration to the opinions of local community groups and police services and obtain support from municipal and provincial authorities.

With their so-called democratic consultations, the Conservatives say they are worried about the welfare of their fellow Canadians, without giving any consideration to opinions expressed by the people most directly involved. The people who are addicted to drugs and other substances belong to Canadian society just as much as anyone else. We are not only talking about places where drug addicts are going to inject heroin and use other illegal drugs, but safe and hygienic places where they can do so under medical supervision.

That is what InSite in Vancouver has been trying to do for the past 10 years. It is a safe, health-focused place where people inject drugs and connect to health care services to treat disease and infection. They also have access to addiction counselling and treatment, as well as housing and community supports.

Under the leadership of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, InSite is striving to decrease the adverse health, social and economic consequences of illicit drug use. With Bill C-2, the government is limiting the beneficial actions of such supervised injection sites, which work to integrate people with addictions into society.

Let us recall once again that this debate went as far as the Supreme Court, which decided that InSite was a very important health facility. I would like to quote a key excerpt from the Supreme Court's decision, since the bill that is before us today is supposedly based on that decision. Here is what the Supreme Court of Canada had to say:

Where, as here, a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

The court therefore ruled that InSite should remain open under the exemption set out in section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. It is important that all new legislation pertaining to these sites take into account the Supreme Court of Canada's decisions. These findings indicate that supervised injection sites reduce the harm associated with the use of illicit drugs. They must therefore be subject to exemptions. Given this solid evidence, why are the Conservatives still refusing to take into account the facts that have been presented? The bill reduces the possibility that such sites will be set up by requiring the submission of a great deal of evidence and many documents related to the financial viability of the site, the need for it in the community and its potential impact on public safety.

Bill C-2 jeopardizes the public safety it claims to defend. Supervised injection sites reduce the presence of used needles in public places and reduce the spread of disease simply because they are medical facilities supervised by trained personnel.

The argument made by the Minister of Health is therefore invalid and once again constitutes a false pretence to hide the real motive: to strengthen a Conservative ideology by ostracizing a certain segment of the population.

I would like to strengthen this argument. The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, and Pivot Legal Society criticize the bill's negative impacts. A statement published in June when the government tabled Bill C-65 mentioned that this is “a bill that aims to make it even more difficult for health authorities and community agencies to offer supervised drug consumption services, such as Vancouver’s Insite, to Canadians who are among those most at risk of HIV infection and fatal overdose”.

The official opposition considers the government's initiative a deeply flawed bill based on an anti-drug ideology and false fears for public safety. This is another attempt to rally the Conservative base, as evidenced by the “Keep heroin out of our backyards” fundraising drive that started hours after Bill C-2 was introduced in Parliament, but by endangering supervised sites, this bill will actually put heroin back in our neighbourhoods. This is why this bill has been described by the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition as “...an irresponsible initiative that ignores both the extensive evidence that such health services are needed and effective, and the human rights of Canadians with addictions”.

The evidence has demonstrated that safe injection sites effectively reduce the risk of contracting and spreading blood-borne diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C, and death from overdose. It has also been shown that they do not undermine public safety and in some instances have proven to promote it by reducing public drug-injecting, reducing violence associated to it, and reducing drug-related litter.

Safe injection sites, therefore, strike the balance between public health and public safety. The government and all members of the House have a public responsibility to see Canadians with drug addiction problems as citizens in need of medical treatment, not as criminals. We have the responsibility to offer them assistance, primary health services, and addiction treatment.

There is evidence that allows us to say that supervised injection sites have promoted entry into treatment for drug dependence. One study published in 2006 mentioned that those who use InSite services at least once a week were 1.7 times more likely to enrol in a detox program than those who visited infrequently, and in 2010, 5,268 people were referred by InSite to other social and health services. The vast majority of them were for detox and drug dependence treatment.

As the Canadian Medical Association stated:

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

Lastly, supervised injection sites could cause problems for some people because along with these sites come people with substance abuse problems and drug addictions. However, seeing the issue from only that one angle would be misinformation, pure and simple.

I presented a number of points that the government needs to take into account before amending any legislation dealing with supervised injection sites. For all of the reasons I mentioned, the official opposition opposes Bill C-2, which is designed to put an end to centres that not only help a certain segment of the population both medically and socially, but also protect communities.

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

Mr. Speaker, before I start my presentation, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with my colleague from LaSalle—Émard.

I am very proud to rise in the House today to oppose Bill C-2 and to support the very important amendment presented by my colleague from Vancouver East. I would like to thank and congratulate her, first for presenting this amendment, and also for the work she does in representing her constituents in the riding of Vancouver East. We have seen in this chamber that she cares about all her constituents, whether they are the most vulnerable or from different walks of life. My colleague knows very well what is at stake with Bill C-2 because, in her riding, there is a major problem when it comes to people living with addictions. Unlike the health minister of this and former governments, she has visited InSite. She does a good job, and I would like to congratulate her.

To be frank, I am disappointed to have to speak to Bill C-2 today. We should not have to deal with such a bill, particularly given the very clear decision rendered by the Supreme Court in 2011. Supervised injection sites, such as InSite in Vancouver, are an important way to guarantee better public health and safety, and the closure of such sites would be detrimental to those who benefit from these services.

Unfortunately, we are dealing with a new and fairly underhanded attempt by the Conservative government to violate the Supreme Court's 2011 decision. The government is trying to meet its objective of closing InSite in Vancouver, and to make it impossible to open any new sites.

Before I became an MP, I earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Université Laval. During my studies, I spent some time learning about addictions, including alcohol and drug addictions. Today, the harm reduction approach is scientifically recognized, and many of that approach's techniques are currently being used by the scientific and medical community. They produce proven results.

InSite in Vancouver is a very practical and effective application of the harm reduction approach, which was unfortunately rejected by the Conservatives in 2007 when they reviewed the national drug strategy. They decided to simply do away with the harm reduction approach, despite scientific evidence and conclusive data showing how effective it is. As someone with a degree in psychology and expertise in that area, I am extremely disappointed to see the Conservatives ignoring proven scientific studies that show the importance and the effectiveness of supervised injection sites such as InSite.

If the bill is passed as it exists today, there will be a long and tedious list of criteria that new supervised injection sites will have to meet in order for the minister to grant them an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. These criteria will make it extremely difficult to open new supervised injection sites, even though there is a demand for them. Other municipalities in the country are considering setting up such sites to help people with addictions—people who deserve our support and compassion—and to give them access to the resources they need to overcome their addictions. These resources are offered at InSite when people make use of those services.

In fact, more than 30 studies, some of which were reviewed by peers in the scientific community, were published in renowned, highly esteemed journals. I am talking about The New England Journal of Medicine and the British Medical Journal. We should not disregard these authoritative sources, which have described at length the benefits of supervised injection sites, more specifically, the benefits of InSite in Vancouver, the only supervised injection site in Canada at this time.

Studies have also looked at the more than 70 similar supervised injection sites in Europe and Australia. Those studies show similar results. They were able to prove that the supervised injections sites are a major breakthrough in terms of public health, that they provide important benefits and must continue to exist in order to provide their services under appropriate supervision.

The most ironic thing I have heard so far in the Conservatives' comments is that to them, closing supervised injection centres, which help people with addictions and give addicts a safe place to use the substances they need, is a way of protecting children and families. The Conservatives are suggesting closing these sites and sending addicts back into the streets instead of giving them an enclosed space that would be out of sight from children and mothers who are going shopping or running errands.

We will end up in the same situation Vancouver was in at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. At the time, between 1987 and 1993, the number of deaths by heroin overdose went from 16 a year to 200 a year. However, with the arrival of InSite, the overdose death rate was reduced by 35%. That is significant because they also managed to reduce the waste that comes from drug use, including the problem of used needles. In addition to reducing waste, they also managed to reduce the spread of disease among those who inject drugs. Having fewer people share needles means fewer cases of hepatitis A, B and C and of HIV-AIDS.

To put this in economic terms the Conservatives will understand, this is a way to significantly lower our health care costs. However, last week I heard one of the parliamentary secretaries tell us that our emergency rooms offered the best care available to treat these people.

I had the opportunity to attend meetings of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security for a few weeks last session. We were looking at how to reduce demand for police and health care services in order to save money on public safety, while still maintaining the most effective public services possible.

One thing we heard from many police chiefs from across the country was that police forces, social services and health care services should work together to avoid revolving door situations, in which people end up on the street, then back in the ER, then back on the street, and so on. That is a huge burden on our health care system and costs taxpayers a lot of money, considering that health care is available in the community and can truly help people living with addictions.

I think it is completely ridiculous that the Conservatives are once again trying to circumvent a Supreme Court decision to guarantee public safety and security for Canadians, not only those living with addictions, but also the Canadian families who may have to deal with problems involving addicts.

One way to improve the quality of life in our communities is to offer appropriate services to people living with addictions, and that is what centres like InSite do.

Mere hours after introducing the bill, the Conservatives launched a fundraising campaign among party members, encouraging them to keep heroin out of their backyards. That is misleading.

Members joined this campaign and perhaps even donated to the Conservatives thinking, somewhat naively, that this bill was intended to enhance public safety. However, the Conservatives failed to tell them that, as a result, people living with addictions would have to go back out on the street to inject themselves rather than using the InSite services. When people use these services, they are often referred to detox centres and manage to finally attain the lifestyle of abstinence that the Conservatives would like them to have. However, the Conservatives are now closing the door in their faces and asking them to fend for themselves and to go back out on the streets in full view of the children, families and mothers doing their grocery shopping.

This bill makes no sense at all. This is indisputable evidence of the backward nature of the Conservatives' anti-drug program. They are willing to completely discard an evidence-based approach that has been proven to reduce harm, for the sole purpose of pleasing their base. I find this really disappointing.

I again thank my colleague for the amendment she proposed. A bill like this should never go to second reading.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech by my colleague opposite who said that the NDP does not support this bill as it pertains to regulating drug use.

The NDP finds that Bill C-2 flies in the face of the 2011 Supreme Court ruling. The NDP believes that harm reduction programs, including supervised injection sites, must be based on evidence that they will improve public health and save lives, not on ideology.

We are talking about supervised sites, sites that will prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as hepatitis A, B and C, HIV-AIDS, and others. How can we reach injection drug users in the future without these supervised sites?

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

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to stand here today and address Bill C-2. Canadian families expect safe and healthy communities in which to raise their children. That is why our Conservative government is moving forward with the respect for communities act to ensure that parents have a say before any drug injection sites open in their communities and the most rigorous criteria apply.

Why is this necessary? It stems from the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in 2011, which rendered that any application for a supervised injection site must, among other factors, be considered with an understanding of the circumstances in the community that had led to the need for a site, as well as the opinions of the community in which it would operate.

However, the court was also clear in its ruling that it was not “an invitation for anyone who so chooses to open a facility for drug use under the banner of a “safe injection facility”. That is why the government is acting on this Supreme Court ruling. Given the inherent risks in using dangerous and addictive drugs obtained on the street, exemptions to use them at a supervised injection site should be granted only in exceptional circumstances, once rigorous criteria have been addressed by an applicant.

Specifically, the bill would amend the existing Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the federal statute that restricts the usage of dangerous and addictive drugs. Under this act, activities involving controlled substances, including possession, import, export, production and distribution, are prohibited, except as authorized through an exemption obtained through section 56.

As I just said, we believe that exemptions should be granted only in exceptional circumstances and subject to rigorous criteria. That is why this bill, the respect for communities act, would divide section 56 into two distinct categories. Street drugs, or illicit substances, would have a section specific to supervised injection sites. Applications to use illicit substances at such a site would need to address rigorous criteria before such an application would even be considered by the Minister of Health.

One of the criteria an applicant would have to address would relate to the treatments for the proposed site's users. The applicants would have to provide letters from their provincial minister responsible for health, describing their opinion on the proposed activities, how the activities would be integrated in the provincial health care system and any treatment services that would be available in the province for individuals who would use the site. An application would not be considered by the Minister of Health without this information. In addition, an applicant would have to provide a description of the drug treatment services available at the site, if any, for persons who would use this site and the information that would be made available to them in relation to drug treatment services available elsewhere.

These criteria demonstrate that our Conservative government takes the harm caused by dangerous and addictive drugs very seriously. We need to support those in need with treatment and recovery programs. Drug treatment and recovery programs must be focused on ending drug use.

That said, I would like to take this opportunity to inform the House of other actions the Government of Canada is taking to address dangerous and addictive drug use.

In 2007, we launched the national anti-drug strategy. The strategy's goal is to contribute to safer and healthier communities by reducing and eliminating illicit drug use in Canada. Like the bill before us today, the national anti-drug strategy is designed to protect public health and maintain public safety. That is why its three pillars are prevention, treatment and enforcement.

Today, I would like to focus specifically on the treatment aspect of the national anti-drug strategy and outline some of the services that are part of it. The strategy supports innovative approaches to treating and rehabilitating those with illicit drug addiction who pose a risk to themselves and the community. Health Canada also works to increase access to and improve the quality and effectiveness of addiction services for first nations and Inuit youth and their families. Specifically, it aims to enhance treatment and support for first nations and Inuit people, support treatment programs for young offenders with drug-related problem, enable the RCMP to refer youth with drug-related problems to treatment programs and support research on new treatment models.

While responsibility for the delivery of most treatment and rehabilitation services remains with provincial and territorial governments, the Government of Canada recognizes the importance of continued investments in drug treatment programming and works closely with the provincial and territorial governments and other key stakeholders. Our end goal is always to help treat and end the scourge of drug addiction that plagues communities and families. The drug treatment funding program is one such example of this multilateral approach. This program supports provincial and territorial governments, as well as other stakeholders, in making strategic investments in three key areas.

The first area is through the implementation of evidence-informed practice. Health Canada supports the uptake of best practices such as continuous knowledge development and information sharing to improve service delivery.

The second is in strengthening the evaluation and performance measurement capacity and activities. While all jurisdictions collect performance information pertaining to their treatment, services and programs, the type and nature of the data collected as well as the approach to data collection and analysis vary considerably. With the funding in this area, projects are in place to identify and standardize best practices, evaluation and performance measurements.

Third, the program supports linkages and exchange among the funded projects. This is an essential element of the work undertaken in the first two investment areas and includes enhancing knowledge sharing and disseminating lessons learned. For example, in some of these projects, work is under way to implement knowledge-exchange mechanisms for concurrent mental health and substance use best practices. Other tools are also being developed to improve linkages between the specialized addiction sector and other health and community service providers.

Since 2007, this program has provided over $100 million in funding to provinces, territories and key stakeholders.

To highlight one particular project in Alberta, community agencies that serve youth were supported by providing a manual and curriculum to improve staff skills around basic addiction, counselling and screening practices as well as mental health knowledge. The result of this project demonstrated that community service providers improved their skills and confidence in evidence-based addiction practices. In addition, at-risk youth had greater access to addiction information and basic services through the community agencies that they frequented.

Another approach has been taken by Saskatchewan, a project enabled services directed at youth by building upon a strong pre-existing framework. Through these services, individual assessment plans are developed followed by brief interventions and referral to more formal services. Through community partnerships, the project is tracking the impact of its services and moving youth into recovery programs. The program provides between 30 to 50 brief interventions every month with between 200 to 335 participants.

Additionally, as part of the national anti-drug strategy, our government provides almost $10 million annually to improve access to quality addiction treatment services for aboriginals. These investments are targeted in four key areas: improving the quality of services by increasing access to certified training and supporting treatment centres to become accredited; increasing the effectiveness and relevancy of services by supporting these centres to re-profile or strengthen services in response to recognized service gaps; improving access to services by piloting community-based multidisciplinary teams to provide comprehensive additions and mental health services to aboriginal communities; and a comprehensive review renewal process for first nation addiction services carried out in partnership with first nation communities and leadership.

Our government remains committed to addressing dangerous and addictive drug use through the national anti-drug strategy and will continue to invest in prevention and treatment. The respect for communities act is consistent with this strategy and, once more, it takes action in the wake of the Supreme Court decision ensuring that parents have a say before drug injection sites open in their communities.

To me, this is an important point in the bill. It gives local law enforcement, municipal leaders and local residents a voice before a permit is granted for supervised drug consumption sites. Communities must have a say.

All told, the bill would provide the Minister of Health with the information necessary to balance public health and public safety considerations, including how the proposed site would fit within a province's overall approach to treatment services.

Why the NDP, through the motion of the member for Vancouver East, is seeking to kill this bill is beyond me. What NDP members are saying through their motion is that they are against giving parents a say before drug injection sites open in their communities, that they are against the Supreme Court's ruling on this matter and that they are against ensuring that addicts are provided the treatment and support they need at these sites.

I urge all members of the House to vote in favour of the respect for communities act and give the Minister of Health the tools she needs to do her job.

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

Mr. Speaker, I really do suspect the government's motives with Bill C-2. I really believe it is trying to get around the Supreme Court of Canada decision, which found there was a charter right to access health services that save lives. Therefore, my hope is that when we get to committee with the bill and present the government once again with the evidence of the very positive role that safe injection sites play in communities—the very opposite of what it is alleging here, that they are somehow a threat to public safety and a threat to public health by encouraging drug use—that it will reconsider.

We know what the record is at InSite. We get far more injection drug users into treatment when there is a safe injection site where they can establish relationships with health care workers and counsellors, and establish the confidence to get the help they need to do something about their drug addiction. When we leave people on the street, it causes all the various public disorder problems that are associated with injection drug use.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to oppose Bill C-2. What the Conservatives are trying to do with the bill is quite clear, despite their pretending to do something quite the opposite. The consequences of the bill will prove to be very dire for the most vulnerable in our society and very costly for our health care system.

While the bill pretends to address public health and safety concerns about safe injection sites, in fact it has three other completely different goals. I believe the bill aims to shut down InSite, the supervised injection site in east Vancouver, and to prevent any other supervised sites from operating. I believe it aims to nullify the 2011 Supreme Court of Canada ruling in favour safe injection sites, and I believe it constitutes a further attack on the principle of harm reduction.

The question of why the government would pretend to facilitate safe injection sites is in some respects easy to answer. Conservatives know the bill flies in the face of informed public opinion, so it is necessary to create false distractions by manufacturing concern over safe injection sites as threats to public health and safety, when in fact the evidence shows directly the opposite to be true. The bill raises the spectre of neighbourhood opposition to safe injection sites when surveys show that 80% of those living and working in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside support InSite, the existing safe injection site.

Bill C-2 pretends to implement the 2011 unanimous Supreme Court of Canada ruling in the case of Canada v. PHS Community Services Society, the decision upholding the right of InSite to operate and upholding the charter rights of those who are addicted to receive health care services.

Yet in its “principles”, Bill C-2 makes no reference to public health and no reference to any of the principles on which the Supreme Court of Canada decision was based. This indeed is a bill that will result in litigation, as its intent seems to be an end run around the Supreme Court decision on safe injection sites. Cynics might even say the government might welcome endless litigation, which would not only delay new safe injection sites but also consume the scarce resources of organizations that have a different view from the government on how best to address the addiction crisis in our communities.

The Conservatives also know that the false concerns about public health and safety that Bill C-2 raises will appeal to their narrow base who believe with a near religious fervour and a clear disdain for evidence that being tough on crime will somehow solve addiction problems.

Let me talk a little about each of these three not-so-hidden aims of Bill C-2: shutting down safe injection sites, getting around the Supreme Court ruling and destroying harm reduction programs. Bill C-2 pretends to facilitate the licensing of safe consumption sites, while instead creating a long list of criteria for licensing and setting up a system without any requirement for the timely disposition of those applications. The bill lists 26 criteria on which applications will be judged, literally A to Z in that section. It establishes long timelines for public consultation on an application, but imposes no timelines on the minister for actually making decisions.

Perhaps my greatest concern about the bill is the ultimate discretion granted to the minister. In the bill, the minister “may” grant a permit for a safe injection site that has met all the criteria, when in fact what I believe the bill should read is that the minister “must” grant a permit if the criteria are met.

As I said, Bill C-2 purports to implement the 2011 unanimous Supreme Court of Canada ruling in favour of safe injection sites. In this decision, the Supreme Court of Canada clearly found that safe injection sites save lives. The court ruled that the existing site should remain open with a section 56 exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

The court ruled that InSite users have a charter right to access the service and that similar services elsewhere should be allowed to operate with an exemption. The court did not say we need a new bill and a new process.

Finally, Bill C-2 pretends to be about public health and safety, when it actually aims to dismantle an important harm reduction program. It ignores the very evidence that exists on the positive impacts of InSite. More than 300 peer-reviewed scientific studies have demonstrated that safe injection sites effectively reduce the risk of contracting and spreading blood-borne diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C, as well as reducing deaths to zero from overdoses. In a study conducted over a one-year period, there were 273 overdoses at InSite. None of these resulted in fatality.

Bill C-2 also ignores the real savings to both health care and public safety budgets that come from safe injection sites. They ignore the real savings in terms of reduced demand on first responders and emergency rooms with the reduction in overdoses, and they ignore the increased number of clients who actually get into treatment programs as a result of visiting save injection sites.

My colleague from Vancouver East pointed out in her speech on Bill C-2 last week:

Dr. Evan Wood, a renowned scientist who works for the B.C. Centre of Excellence in HIV/AIDS, points out that one of the important aspects of a safe injection site is that, given that each HIV infection costs on average approximately $500,000 in medical costs, [InSite] has contributed to a 90% reduction in new HIV cases caused by intravenous drug use in British Columbia, which is why the B.C. government has been such a strong supporter of the program.

When the evidence is clear, how can we proceed with a bill such as this, which intends to frustrate the creation of new safe injection sites? Unfortunately, I believe Bill C-2 is part of the Conservative agenda to eliminate harm reduction programs. We saw this agenda begin in 2007, when the government removed the term “harm reduction” from the list of goals of Canada's national drug strategy.

I am standing here today because there is a need for action to address the crisis in overdoses in my own community that the provincial health authority, social service agencies and local police are trying to address. The most recent B.C. Coroner's Report from October 2012 found that there were 44 deaths from illicit drug use on Vancouver Island in 2011, with 16 of those occurring in greater Victoria. This makes Vancouver Island the region with the highest rate of deaths related to illicit drug use in British Columbia at 7.88 per 100,000 residents.

According to the Centre for Addictions Research at the University of Victoria, this makes the local per capita death rate nearly 30% higher than that in the Lower Mainland. If people need evidence of the positive impact of InSite versus a community such as mine, which does not have access to a safe injection site, they should keep that figure in mind. There is a 30% higher death rate from overdoses on Vancouver Island than where a safe injection site exists in the Lower Mainland. The need for action in my community is very clear, yet Bill C-2 would take away the best tool for responding to this health crisis. It would take a safe injection site off the table for my community.

I have one last question. Why the rush? It was surprising to see Bill C-2 as the first bill the Conservative government brought forward for debate in the second session of the 41st Parliament. Yes, it would help re-establish its tough-on-crime credentials, but more importantly I suspect the Conservatives are in a rush to bring in this new law to head off the opening of new safe injection sites, as there are some applications for section 56 exemptions that are quite advanced. What they want to do is change the law and send the applicants back to the drawing board under this new legislation with its long delays and near impossible criteria.

The real threat to public health and safety in my community turns out to be the narrow ideological agenda of the Conservative government, which ignores the evidence of the real contribution that safe injection sites make to public health and safety. It has already sent a fundraising letter to its base talking about donating to the Conservatives to help them keep drugs out of our backyards. Ironically, of course, that is exactly what safe injection sites do. They move drug use off the streets and out of our backyards into a safer setting for both those who are injection drug users and our communities as a whole.

New Democrats are opposing the bill at second reading and sending the bill to the Standing Committee on Public Safety. I would say this is another piece of Conservative propaganda around safe injection sites. Why is the bill not going to the health committee where it belongs? This, as the Supreme Court of Canada pointed out, is clearly a health issue and not a public safety issue. The NDP will be calling witnesses in committee to bring the evidence, once again, to the attention of Conservatives of the very positive role that safe injection sites play in both public health and safety. The very fact that the Conservatives have chosen to send the bill to the public safety committee illustrates to me their intention to distract the public by characterizing safe injection sites as a threat to public safety rather than an important health measure that would save both lives and money.

The House resumed from October 18 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.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, it is the custom in the response to this question to actually answer about the business of the House. That is what I will focus on, rather than the business of our party convention, which I am sure will be a very successful conference. Good things always happen when we get together as a party.

We will conclude this week with the debate on second reading of Bill C-5, the offshore health and safety act.

Next week we will focus on families and building our communities. Families are the cornerstone of society. Over the coming weeks and months, our government will continue to support and protect families through a number of important bills.

We will continue to tackle crime, increase support for victims, and ensure communities are kept safe from criminals. We want Canadians to live in safe and healthy communities in which they can raise their children.

Therefore, on Monday, before question period, we will resume the second reading debate on Bill C-2, the respect for communities act. That debate will be continued next Friday.

After question period Monday, we will take up the second reading debate on Bill C-3, the safeguarding Canada's seas and skies act.

Wednesday will see us return to the third reading debate on Bill C-7, the Canadian museum of history act.

Thursday, November 5 shall be the second allotted day, which will go to the Liberals, I understand. This will be an opportunity for the hon. member for Papineau to tell us, and all Canadians, the next plank of his policy vision for Canada. So far, we have seen his penchant for pot, as well as his star economic adviser claiming that someone's job prospects are pre-determined by his father's job. However, we have not heard any economic ideas as yet.

Thursday, November 7, shall be the third allotted day, which will see a New Democratic motion considered.

In closing, let me echo the words of the hon. member for Pickering—Scarborough East, which I know he scripted himself: happy Halloween.

Motion No. 2

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I must say that proroguing is very commonplace. Every government has done it to come back and restart. There was a very short period of prorogation. Not supporting this Bill C-2 would cause months of starting all over again on these very important bills.

We heard the member speaking about Bill C-54. This is an extremely important bill, and it has to move through quite quickly to protect citizens. How important does the parliamentary secretary think it is for those members to support this bill?

Respect for Communities Act

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca.

This is the first time I have spoken in the House since Parliament was prorogued. I would therefore like to take a moment to say hello to my constituents and tell them that I am ready to return to the House and I look forward to participating in the debates. I am also pleased to speak about health because I am now a member of the Standing Committee on Health and this is an issue of particular interest to me.

That being said, I was very surprised this morning to see the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health give the first speech, since the government had decided to send this bill to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security for review. There is a slight imbalance in that respect. Of course this bill is related to the health and public safety of Canadian communities; however, it would have made sense for it to be examined by the Standing Committee on Health. I wanted to take the time to say that.

I am pleased to speak to Bill C-2 or former Bill C-65 today. Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act is a very thinly veiled attempt by the Conservatives to put an end to supervised injection sites. They want to give the minister more power, as we have already seen with immigration and other portfolios. This government wants to hold all the power.

If we add a long list of criteria that must be met in order for a supervised injection site to be opened, we will end up not having any more such sites. Right now, there is one such site in Canada called InSite, which I will talk about a little later. This bill shows that, sadly, we are still dealing with a very ideological government that puts its own thoughts and values ahead of scientific facts. We know that the Conservative Party is very anti-drug. Of all the Conservative bills, this one is aimed at pleasing the Conservative base by proposing to eliminate drugs in Canada.

It is unfortunate, because this bill will not have the effect they want. There was a big Conservative campaign this summer called “Keep heroin out of our backyards”. It is a shame, but heroin exists. Like all other Canadians, I am against it and I would love to be able to say that it no longer exists, but it does. There is a problem.

Deciding not to address this problem or not to create health centres to deal with it will not solve the problem. That is very irresponsible. By preventing communities from building supervised injection sites, the government is saying that instead of putting all injection drug users in one place so they can get clean syringes and be supervised, it would rather have them shoot up in churchyards, in parks where children play and in schoolyards. That is what the Conservatives are telling us.

Personally, I would rather know that there is a supervised injection site in my neighbourhood than know that these people who are unfortunately using drugs could be anywhere. That is what I understand from this bill. Supervised injection sites do not provide drugs. Earlier I heard a Conservative member say that they do, but that is untrue.

People who use these sites go there with their drugs and ask the people there to help them with their injections so that they can have clean equipment and access to experienced staff who can help if they overdose or if there is a problem.

This is a huge health problem. The government has made huge cuts to healthcare. We are talking about $31 billion in cuts. The government should take this seriously. I think these injection sites can help with prevention. We can try to prevent diseases and stop them from spreading instead of having hospitals treat countless cases of AIDS or hepatitis A, B and C.

Currently in Canada, there is one supervised injection site, namely InSite, in Vancouver. I would like to talk about what InSite does. Facts and figures can really help people understand what a supervised injection site does. People often have unfounded biases or preconceived notions about this.

To use these services, users must be 16 years old, sign a user agreement and follow a code of conduct. This is clearly not a place with a free-for-all philosophy. Not at all. There is a code of conduct and a focus on safety. Obviously, patients cannot have children with them.

InSite is open during the day, seven days a week, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It has 12 injection stations. Users bring their own drugs. Drugs are not provided.

Nurses and paramedics who supervise the site provide emergency medical assistance if necessary. Overdoses can occur. Personally, I prefer that this be done in a supervised injection site with trained staff rather than out on the streets.

Once users have injected their drugs, their condition is assessed before they are sent to a post-injection room and before returning to the streets. If there is a problem, they will be treated by a nurse. Staff members also provide information on health care, counselling and referrals to health and social services. Users can then be referred to Onsite, which is located in the same building as InSite. This is a place that provides detox treatment.

Some of my family members have had to go to drug treatment centres, so I know that they are essential. When people are struggling with this problem, they often have no choice. I am not saying that 100% of addicts are going. There are those who, sadly, want to stay on drugs, and that is very unfortunate for them. However, there are some who want to try to get clean.

I find it very interesting that in one year, 2,171 InSite users were referred to addiction counselling or other support services. I think this is very positive. If the 2,200 people who were referred for drug treatment had injected their drugs on the street, they would not have received this service.

In 2006, Wood et al. published another interesting statistic: those who used InSite at least weekly were 1.7 times more likely to enrol in a detox program. Once again, this shows the influence that InSite has had on people who use the service.

In addition, the rate of overdose-related deaths in Vancouver East has dropped by 35%. This means that one in three lives were saved thanks to a centre like that.

I know that some Conservatives will say that they think it is bad for communities. My colleague just asked a question. Of course, no one wants this in their backyard. I live in a very cool little neighbourhood in Lachine. If someone told me that such a centre existed near my house, I might have some concerns at first, and that is only normal.

That being said, when asked, 80% of the people who live or work in that area of downtown Vancouver support InSite. Furthermore, the number of discarded needles and injection paraphernalia and the number of people injecting drugs in the street dropped dramatically one year after InSite opened. These are all positive aspects.

In closing, I do not have enough time to laud it properly, but an organization in my riding called Head & Hands in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce does some work with people who are unfortunately addicted, and it distributes injection paraphernalia. Once again, the entire Notre-Dame-de-Grâce community supports this. Since the organization's inception in the 1970s, crime has decreased and the number of people using detox services has increased. I think that is important.

Of course I will be opposing this bill, because I think we need these supervised injection sites in our communities in order to reduce crime and help people who are suffering from addiction.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Mr. Speaker, as His Excellency the Governor General put it so well in the Speech from the Throne earlier this week, “Canadian families expect safe and healthy communities in which to raise their children.”

Dangerous and addictive drug use has a major impact on public health and public safety in communities across Canada. The impact that these drugs have on our communities is often severe and the cost to our health and justice system significant. Our government takes seriously the harm caused by dangerous and addictive drugs. These drugs can tear apart families, lead to criminal behaviour and ultimately destroy lives.

The bill before us today addresses this challenge through, among other measures commented on by my honourable colleagues, ensuring that residents and parents have a say before drug injection sites open in their communities. In addition to this, I think all members of the House can appreciate that dangerous and addictive drug use requires a multi-pronged approach to be successful. That is why, as part of our national anti-drug strategy, our government has been focused on preventing our children and youth from using drugs in the first place and strongly deterring existing use of harmful and addictive drugs.

This strategy is our government's comprehensive response to fighting dangerous and addictive drug use in Canada. The goal of the strategy is to contribute to safer and healthier communities through coordinated efforts to prevent use, treat dependency and reduce the production and distribution of illicit drugs. This strategy has three pillars: prevention, treatment and enforcement.

Since its introduction in 2007, our government has invested significantly in this area. Under the prevention action plan, our government invested $30 million over five years in a targeted mass media campaign to raise awareness among youth aged 13 to 15 and their parents about the dangers of illicit drugs. The mass media campaign saw impressive results and 25% of parents who recalled one of our TV ads took action by engaging in discussions with their children about drugs. Results from the campaign also identified an increase in the proportion of youth who said they knew about the potential effects of illicit drug use on relationships with family and friends.

Also, under the prevention action plan, Health Canada delivers the drug strategy community initiatives fund. This contribution funding program supports Canadian communities in their collective efforts to address concerns related to health promotion and the prevention of illicit drug use among youth aged 10 to 24. This fund provides approximately $10 million annually in support of a wide range of provincial, territorial and local community-based initiatives to address illicit drug use among youth. It also promotes public awareness of dangerous and addictive drug use and its harmful impacts.

Another key impact is the drug treatment funding program. This program provides funding to provinces, territories and key stakeholders to initiate projects that lay the foundation for systemic change leading to sustainable improvement in treatment systems in their jurisdictions. This initiative is a great example of our government's commitment to reduce and prevent the use of illicit drugs across the country.

The bill that we are debating here today, the respect for communities act, is consistent with our government's approach to addressing dangerous and addictive drug use in the national anti-drug strategy.

At the federal level, there are several legislative tools that play an important role in maintaining public health and public safety, including the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. This act has a dual role: to prohibit activities with controlled substances while allowing access to these substances for legitimate medical, scientific and industrial purposes. The amendments that we are proposing through the respect for communities act would help ensure that residents and parents have a say before drug injection sites open in their communities.

Section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act gives the minister the authority to grant exemptions from the application of the act or its regulations for activities that, in the opinion of the minister, are necessary for a medical or scientific purpose or otherwise in the public interest. For applicants applying for an exemption for the use of controlled substances obtained from licit sources, the process to obtain a section 56 exemption would not change. Most applications reviewed by Health Canada are exemptions of this nature.

What is being proposed is a new approach to deal with the exemption applications involving the use of illicit substances, which are typically street drugs. Under this new regime for illicit substances, the proposed legislation includes a section specific to supervised injection sites.

These changes are in line with a Supreme Court of Canada decision handed down in 2011 and codify the court's ruling that community opinions must be considered by the Minister of Health with regard to supervised injection sites. The court stated that its decision is not a licence for injection drug users to process drugs wherever and whenever they wish, nor is it an invitation for anyone who so chooses to open a facility for drug use under the banner of a safe injection facility.

The Minister of Health must also verify that adequate measures are in place to protect the health and safety of staff, clients and also the surrounding area.

The court identified five factors the Minister of Health must consider when assessing any future exemption applications in relation to activities at a supervised consumption site involving illicit substances. The specific factors outlined by the court that must be considered in making the application under an exemption include evidence, if any, on the following factors: the impact of such a site on crime rates; local conditions indicating a need for such a site; the regulatory structure in place to support the site; the resources available to support its maintenance; and expressions of community support or opposition.

Our government respects the court's ruling on this matter and used these factors as a guide in drafting the bill before us today. Under the proposed approach, an applicant would have to address rigorous criteria when applying for an exemption to undertake activities involving illicit substances at a supervised consumption site. Demonstrating a benefit to an individual and public health is an important factor in making this decision. For example, the applicant would have to provide scientific evidence demonstrating that there is a medical benefit associated with access to the supervised injection site.

In addition, the applicant would have to provide a letter from the highest ranking public health official in the province outlining his or her opinion on the proposed site.

A letter would also be required from a provincial minister of health outlining his or her opinion on the proposed site as well as an explanation as to how this site fits into the provincial health care regime.

Understanding the potential public health impacts that a supervised consumption site might have on a community in which it exists is also important. Under the proposed approach the applicant would have to provide a report on the consultations held with the relevant provincial licensing body for physicians and nurses as well as those with local community groups. If any relevant concerns are raised by community groups with respect to impacts on public health or otherwise, the applicant would have to provide a description of the steps taken to address these concerns. Once all the information has been submitted, including, if applicable, an explanation of why there is a lack of information or evidence for certain criteria, the Minister of Health would consider the application.

The proposed changes clearly set out the criteria applicants must address when seeking an exemption to undertake activities involving dangerous and addictive drugs at a site. The information the applicant would have to provide in support of the criteria would directly relate to the public health and public safety considerations surrounding such activities.

In addition to all the information the applicants must provide, the respect for communities act would require that all applications that would seek to renew previously granted exemptions also include evidence of any changes in public health impacts and crime rates within the community since the first exemption.

I urge all members of the House to support this legislation that would help ensure that residents and parents have a say before drug injection sites open in their communities. This assurance is the least we can provide for Canadians who will be residing in areas that are set to see a rise in crime and addictive drug use.

Let the burden of proof lie on those who would seek to provide spaces for addicts to use these dangerous, illegal and addictive drugs.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to have the opportunity to participate in this debate today. I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe.

One of our government's top priorities is to keep Canadian families safe. We have delivered on this commitment time and time again during this Parliament, and we are building on the success through the bill before us today, the respect for communities act. The bill details proposed amendments to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, a piece of legislation that exists to protect public health and maintain public safety.

Substances that fall under the act include dangerous and addictive drugs that can have horrible impacts on Canadian families and their communities. Currently, under the act activities involving controlled substances, including possession, import, export, production, and distribution, are illegal except as authorized under an exemption obtained through its section 56 or its regulations.

This section gives the minister of health the authority to grant exemptions from the application of the act in order to respond to unanticipated situations or a legitimate activity using a controlled substance that is not provided for in the regulations.

These exemptions may be granted if in the minister's opinion the exemption is necessary for medical or scientific purposes, or is otherwise in the public interest. An exemption is required in emergency or unanticipated situations. An example would be the Red Cross needing to have access to controlled substances for natural disaster relief efforts.

We know that substances obtained illicitly often contribute to organized crime and increase the risks of harm to health and public safety, especially when those substances are unregulated or untested. This can have a profound impact on our families and on the communities in which we live. Given this, any exemption that allows for the use of controlled substances obtained from illicit sources should only be granted under exceptional circumstances.

In order to demonstrate these exceptional circumstances, applications for exemption should be subject to specific, clear criteria. Only by addressing rigorous application criteria would the Minister of Health have the information required to be able to balance effectively the public health and public safety needs of a community.

Our government is therefore proposing a new approach that would separate the exemption authority found at section 56 into two regimes, one for the use of licit or legal substances and a second for activities using illicit substances, which oftentimes amount to street drugs. This new approach would provide further transparency for applicants seeking to conduct activities involving the use of these street drugs at a supervised injection site.

For applicants who are applying for an exemption to use controlled substances obtained from legitimate sources, the process to obtain a section 56 exemption would not change with the passage of the bill. It would remain as it is.

Currently, Health Canada receives a significant number of exemption applications each year, most of which are for routine activities such as clinical trials or university-based research. These activities involve controlled substances obtained through legal sources, such as licensed dealers, pharmacists, or hospitals, and as I stated, the exemption process would not change for these applicants. What is being proposed in Bill C-2 is a new approach to deal with exemptions involving activities with controlled substances that are obtained through illicit sources.

There is a very high risk associated with the use of these substances for individuals and for communities, so it is important that public health and safety concerns be balanced and that relevant information be considered thoroughly to determine whether or not an exemption should in fact be granted.

In a 2011 Supreme Court of Canada decision the court identified five factors that the Minister of Health must consider when assessing any future section 56 exemption applications to operate a supervised injection site. The legislation would amend section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to include a section specifically on supervised consumption sites and codify rigorous and specific criteria that builds upon those factors identified by the Supreme Court. Once the bill is passed, an applicant seeking an exemption to undertake activities with illicit substances at a supervised consumption site must address these criteria before the Minister of Health would consider such an application.

One of the factors established by the Supreme Court of Canada in its decision relates to the need for the applicant to provide evidence of community support or opposition for any future sites. It is this element of the court's ruling that is particularly crucial when evaluating the merits of the bill before the House today. That is a key point.

Recently I read in the Ottawa papers about a local group that wants to apply for an exemption in order to build a safe injection site in the Sandy Hill area. Without passing any kind of prejudgment on its merits, I do find it concerning that this group thinks that by accelerating its application it can avoid consultation with the community at large.

I would like to dwell on that point for a brief moment. Our government is seeking passage of legislation that would help ensure that communities have a say on the use of street drugs in their neighbourhoods, and an organization is so opposed to this principle that it is trying to circumvent that very issue. Let me assure the House that our government will ensure Canadian communities get the respect they deserve through actions that include the passage of this very legislation. Government needs to hear from those Canadians who will be living and working near sites where addicts will be using dangerous and addictive drugs. It is that simple.

Given this, the respect for communities act provides opportunities for community and stakeholder input related to their support or opposition to a proposed supervised consumption site. In this new approach, the Minister of Health would have the authority to post a notice of application once an application is in fact received. This would provide for a 90-day public comment period. This public comment period provides an opportunity for members of the community to make their views known to the Minister of Health and any relevant feedback would be taken into account in the consideration of the application.

This consultation process is an essential part of the legislation. We need to know what those living, working or going to school near the potential supervised consumption site think of the proposal. We need to know their opinions.

Under this new approach, the government will also require that applicants provide letters outlining the opinions and concerns of key community stakeholders who are important to the success or failure of that site. For example, valuable input and local perspectives will be sought from the provincial ministers responsible for health and public safety, the head of the local police force and the local public health professional in the province. In these cases, the applicant would be required to provide a letter from the stakeholder indicating their opinion on the proposed activities.

I did not misspeak on that particular issue with regard to the respect for communities act. I did say when dangerous and addictive drugs are sold. An important factor for members to consider with the bill is that it provides for consultations, notices and data of all sorts in this application process. However, at the end of the day these sites will not supply addicts with the illicit drugs they are abusing. They will have to bring these substances to the centres themselves through buying them on the street, in effect creating a lucrative market for drug dealers.

I will be voting in favour of the bill. It is common sense for Canadians to be consulted when centres for dangerous and addictive drugs are looking to open down the street from our families in our communities.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have been very clear that the Liberal Party supports consultations, and those kinds of consultations took place before InSite's ribbon was ever cut.

We support consultation. We support involving the community. What we do not support is a veto by a small number of vocal voices that are acting on a “not in my backyard” basis or on the basis of a very narrow focus on the fact that the drugs that are being used at these sites are illegal, ignoring all of the preponderance of evidence that this is healthier for the community, safer for the community, and saves lives.

Bill C-2 is unworthy of the hon. members opposite. The evidence is very clear that these facilities are positive for the community as well as for those with the illnesses that require their services.

It is not my time to be asking questions at this point in the debate, but I would say that if there is anything inflammatory, it is actually the Conservative member's party campaign director who, an hour after this bill was tabled, sent out a fundraising letter with the statement that Liberal and NDP members want addicts to shoot up heroin in backyards of communities all across the country. How is that for crass political undermining of the very interests of justice, of undermining the health and well-being of community members?

That is shocking. It speaks to the Conservative government's strategy with respect to this bill and why it is pushing forward with it despite all the evidence that it is the wrong way to go.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to speak to Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. It is truly sad that this is the first bill being introduced by the government. It is as though this bill would really be in the public interest, when clearly it is one that would be harmful to people who need our help the most.

Bill C-2 was formerly Bill C-65. Bill C-65 was killed by prorogation. Perhaps one positive thing about the prorogation is that it delayed the conclusion of a bill that would be harmful to many Canadians.

Specifically, this legislation would amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to, among other things, 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 the act. It specifies the purposes for which an exemption may be granted for those activities; and it sets 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.

What does that actually mean? Let us put a human face on this. This legislation is really about human beings. It is about family members, brothers and sisters, sons, daughters, mothers and fathers, who suffer from the disease of addiction to drugs, a disease that has no geographic boundaries, no social boundaries, no economic boundaries but is found in communities across Canada, a disease that often ties into factors that are beyond the control of the person suffering from the disease—for example, mental illness or childhood abuse. Let us bear in mind that these are human beings, that these are family members.

I am proud of the leadership that was taken by the City of Vancouver more than a decade ago. The mayor of Vancouver and other people who wanted to address the challenges faced by people with drug addiction on the streets of the Downtown Eastside created a safe consumption site, formerly called a safe injection site. This site, called InSite, has been operating in Canada pursuant to a section 56 legal exemption since 2003. Proponents of the site include the Portland Hotel community services society and the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users. These organizations challenged the federal Conservative government's refusal to continue the legal exemption to InSite in 2008, and this challenge was taken all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

In 2011, the Supreme Court declared that the health minister had violated the charter of rights of people who need access to such a health facility and ruled in favour of the exemption, ordering that this exemption to the act be granted a continuation by the federal health minister.

Bill C-2 is just the government's latest attempt in a long series of attempts to shut down any effort to open a safe consumption site elsewhere in Canada. For clarity, we should really be calling this bill the “banning of safe consumption sites act”.

Bill C-2 is an ideological bill from a government that has always opposed evidence-based harm reduction measures such as safe consumption sites. These safe consumption sites must be part of a broader evidence-based national drug policy, which would save lives, reduce harm and promote public health.

The Liberal Party of Canada does support the need for broad community consultation with respect to the establishment of any safe consumption site, which is exactly how the Liberals participated in the establishment of Canada's first safe consumption site in the Vancouver Downtown Eastside.

Liberals consulted broadly and worked in conjunction with provincial and municipal governments, public health authorities, business associations, and the public. InSite was the product of co-operative federalism, a concept not well known to the current Conservative government.

There were a number of authorities and stakeholders that combined forces in their efforts to create it. It was initially launched as an experiment that has proven to be successful in saving lives, in improving health, and in decreasing the incidence of drug use and crime in the surrounding area. In fact, not a single injection overdose fatality has occurred with InSite, a safe consumption site, which is one reason the Vancouver Police support InSite. InSite is also supported by the City of Vancouver and the British Columbia government.

In contrast, the current health minister has never even set foot in Vancouver's InSite facility. Her legislation is based on ideology, not on evidence.

One piece of evidence of harm reduction from InSite is in the most recent annual research on the incidence of HIV and the HIV virus. Only 30 new HIV cases were found in the Downtown Eastside. That is remarkable, because in 1996, we had 2,100 new cases of HIV in the Downtown Eastside. Compare that: 30 new HIV cases versus 2,100 new HIV cases. That is the kind of reduction of harm and all the attendant social and economic costs that this facility has provided.

The current Conservative government has been trying to shut down that facility and now wants to prevent those facilities from opening in other communities. The Liberal Party does not support Bill C-2, clearly. As Liberals, we support evidence-based policies that reduce harm and protect public safety. The bill would do neither of those things.

As I previously said, the Vancouver safe consumption site has proven to be effective not just in reducing HIV infections but in reducing crime and in protecting public safety in the area surrounding the facility.

Unfortunately, the bill would raise the criteria to establish a new safe consumption site to such an extraordinarily high level that it would be nearly impossible for any future consumption site to be established in Canada. That could mean that InSite will remain the only safe consumption site in Canada. Other cities that want to open a safe consumption site would be virtually prevented.

I just want to go back a bit to why the Supreme Court ruled that the government had to provide a continuation of the permission for the safe consumption site, InSite, to continue.

The case was based on a violation of the claimants' section 7 charter rights. Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. Determining whether there had been a breach of section 7 involved a two-part analysis by the court. The court considering any potential section 7 violation must ask, first, whether there is a deprivation of the right to life, liberty, or security of the person, and second, if so, whether the deprivation is in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

The Supreme Court found that both conditions had been met, and I will quote the Supreme Court's ruling:

The Minister's decision thus engages the claimants' s.7 interests and constitutes a limit on their s.7 rights.

This is a decision to try to shut down InSite. Continuing the quote:

Based on the information available to the Minister, this limit is not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. It is arbitrary, undermining the very purposes of the [Controlled Drugs and Substances Act], which include public health and safety. It is also grossly disproportionate: the potential denial of health services and the correlative increase in the risk of death and disease to injection drug users outweigh any benefit that might be derived from maintaining an absolute prohibition on possession of illegal drugs on Insite's premises.

It is very clear that the Supreme Court forced the federal government and the federal health minister under the Conservatives, to allow InSite to continue operating as a matter of justice, and that is in addition to all the other health and public safety benefits that evidence has shown this facility provides. The Supreme Court ordered the minister to grant an exemption to InSite under section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Now we have a new bill that is trying to take another route to undermining these kinds of services to human beings that actually help their ability to get off drugs and improve their safety while they are still in the grip of their addictions.

In the last 20 years, supervised injection services or safer consumption sites have been integrated into drug treatment and harm reduction programs in western Europe, Australia, and Canada, and they have saved lives. The Toronto drug strategy has provided an excellent review of the research on these services and has found that programs such as safer consumption sites reduce overdose deaths, reduce needle sharing and HIV and hepatitis C infection, reduce public drug use, do not cause an increase in crime, and even increase use of detox and other treatment centres. What is not to like about these results?

The government's bill is based entirely on ideology and not on evidence. It is based on unsubstantiated beliefs that are unsupported and contradicted by overwhelming scientific consensus. Let me outline a few of the problems with Bill C-2, and there are many.

Bill C-2 creates an unnecessarily cumbersome application process for an exemption for what is foremost a health care service. As the Toronto medical officer suggested in a recent report:

The requirements of the bill...stretch beyond the scope and spirit of the Supreme Court of Canada ruling. The requirements will pose significant barriers for health services applying for an...exemption [from the act].... The likelihood that an applicant can obtain letters of support from all required bodies is low.... The required consultation process is beyond the capacity and budget of most community based health services.

Bill C-2 focuses on public safety at the expense of public health. It is an approach that runs counter to the Supreme Court of Canada's emphasis on striking a balance between public safety and public health and it ignores comprehensive research showing that safer consumption sites do not negatively affect public safety and do support better public health.

The bill requires that staff working at such a site obtain criminal record checks. This requirement will effectively discriminate against potential staff or volunteers who have a history of drug crime. This is of concern, because the involvement of peer workers in these services is critical to their success. People who have gone through this tragic disease and have managed to beat it and come out the other side are the very kind of counsellors who can help people still in the grip of the disease of addiction.

Bill C-2 did not involve any consultation with provincial health authorities, nor with key professional bodies, including the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Nurses Association.

This is a health issue. These sites are a health benefit. Canada's primary health associations were not consulted. In fact, the Canadian Nurses Association is very concerned about this bill. They are concerned about what the meaning of broad community support is in the bill and whether one group's opinion could outweigh that of several other groups. It is not clear in the bill.

The Canadian Medical Association supports evidence-based harm reduction tools, such as safer consumption sites. In a statement, the CMA stated:

The CMA's position is founded upon clinical evidence. Bill C-[2], it would appear, is founded upon ideology that seeks to hinder initiatives to mitigate the very real challenges and great personal harm caused by drug abuse.

These are doctors saying that the government is hindering their efforts to mitigate the harm experienced by human beings with the disease of addiction.

A study co-authored by Dr. Julio Montaner, who is an international leader in HIV/AIDS research, found that there was a 35% reduction in overdose deaths following the opening of InSite. That is a 35% reduction in overdose deaths in the community of the Downtown Eastside following the creation of a safer consumption site. These are all important indicators of the sense it makes to allow these sites.

Bill C-2 is trying to prevent more sites from opening. It requires groups to seek letters of opinion from civic and provincial authorities and essentially vetoes the provision of health care services by organizations that may have a vested interest, through a narrow mandate regarding the use of illegal drugs. Such organizations may not be aware of the broad spectrum of other issues for which these safer consumption sites are so beneficial. Those vetoes may prevent a site from going ahead.

Bill C-2 also specifies that a report on the consultations within a broad range of community groups must be included with an application. The Liberals believe in community consultation. The bill provides a 90-day period during which the minister may receive comments from the general public on any application for an exemption. That is concerning. Will a single person's comment then be used as an excuse to scupper a safe consumption site?

Public consultation is an important component of establishing these sites, but the two sections I have been describing give undue emphasis to the opinions generated in public consultations. That can potentially allow a vocal “not in my back yard” minority opposition. It could enable that NIMBY factor to halt the implementation of lifesaving health services, services that reduce HIV infections, deaths, and other harms in the community.

Why is the Conservative government doing this? It is about politics. Unfortunatley, it is recognized as being about scoring political gain over justice and scoring political gains over health benefits. The clearest indication of this is that only an hour after the legislation was introduced back in June, the Conservative campaign director, Jenni Byrne, issued a crass and misleading fundraising letter to supporters stating that the Liberals and NDP want addicts to shoot up heroin in backyards in communities all across the country. Send us money, said Jenni Byrne, the Conservative.

The intention of the Conservative government is clear. It lost the gun registry as a way to misinform the public and raise funds for their campaigns. Now it wants safer consumption sites to play that role so that it can undermine the actual truth and the people suffering from this disease in order to raise money for the Conservative Party. That is not okay, and this bill must not go ahead.

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.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it has been interesting to listen to the parliamentary secretary present the bill today. It is very important that we look back at the history of this case and begin with the Supreme Court of Canada decision in 2011, because it has been referenced a lot. If we can just remember, InSite, as I mentioned earlier, did go through a rigorous process to establish itself in the city of Vancouver and has been a very successful operation in saving people's lives, preventing overdoses and improving public safety in the neighbourhood. Of course, it was challenged all the way by the Conservative government and it did end up at the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled that InSite was a very important health facility. I want to quote a very key part of its ruling because the legislation that is now before us is supposedly based on this ruling.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruling said:

On future applications, the Minister must exercise that discretion within the constraints imposed by the law and the Charter, aiming to strike the appropriate balance between achieving public health and public safety. In accordance with the Charter, the Minister must consider whether denying an exemption would cause deprivations of life and security of the person that are not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. Where, as here, a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

That is what the Supreme Court of Canada said. What was the government's response to that? Reading from the press release that the Minister of Health issued June 6 when the bill was first introduced, she began by saying, “Our Government believes that creating a location for sanctioned use of drugs obtained from illicit sources has the potential for great harm in a community”.

There was nothing in this press release and in fact when one reads the bill, there is nothing in it that strikes the balance that was referenced by the Supreme Court of Canada for public health and public safety. From the very beginning, from the get-go, it has been very clear that the bill is a stacked deck. It is designed to frustrate and to make it virtually impossible for any safe injection site to be established in this country.

One has to ask the question: why is the government so biased on this issue? Why have Conservatives refused to consider all of the evidence that has been put before them? We just had the recent situation, a very similar case where the Minister of Health overruled her own experts on an application that was approved to provide heroin maintenance in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in the inner city. It was quite astounding to see that the minister ignored all of the evidence, overruled her experts, stepped in, intervened and made it clear that this special application, which had been approved by her officials, would not go ahead.

What was most disturbing was to see that both of these cases, the safe injection site bill and also the application for heroin maintenance, within 24 hours, became a fundraising letter for the Conservative Party of Canada. Imagine that government legislation and an intervention and interference by the minister is catapulted and turned into a fundraiser for the Conservatives' base. I find that really alarming and it illuminates for us what this debate is really about. It is about creating an environment of fear. It about creating an environment of division. It is about creating an environment based on them and us. It is about an environment that the Conservatives want to escalate that demonizes people who use drugs and people who are facing serious addiction issues.

The parliamentary secretary made some references to the bill. When we actually read through the bill to see what is required, it is quite incredible. First of all, the parliamentary secretary said that the minister must consider criteria that are laid out as part of a submission for an application to set up a safe injection site in any particular community. However, clearly what the bill says is that the “Minister may consider an application” once the application has been submitted and the criteria met. It is not even that she must then look at it, but she may. Even the discretion takes place at that level.

When we look at the criteria in the bill it literally goes from (a) to (z). There are 26 different criteria considerations that are so onerous and so stacked that they would make it virtually impossible to even meet the criteria laid out in the bill.

For example, it requires a letter from the provincial minister who is responsible for health. It requires a letter from the local municipal government. It requires a letter from the head of the police force, outlining any issues that it has. It requires a letter from the leading health professional organization. It requires a letter from the provincial minister responsible for public safety. It requires a statistical analysis. It requires police checks for people. It requires extensive public consultation.

All of this has to be gathered in addition to a 90-day public notification period that the minister herself can also conduct. There are two streams of information coming in, and even then, as we can see from the bill, the minister actually does not have to consider the application. Once this information has been gathered, there is further consideration in the bill, subsection (5), that lays out that the minister may only grant an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act after having considered the following principles. I think these principles clearly lay out the government's intent.

The principles are:

illicit substances may have serious health effects;

adulterated controlled substances may pose health risks;

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

strict controls are required...;

organized crime profits from the use of illicit substances;

and criminal activity often results from the use of illicit substances.

What I find really curious about these principles on which this bill is based is that there is absolutely no mention of public health. There is no mention of preventing overdoses. There is no mention of preventing serious infections, like HIV/AIDS or hepatitis C. There is no mention, no principle of ensuring basic public health or protecting public safety.

What are the principles about? Clearly, they are about frustrating any application and giving the minister so much room that she can easily turn down any application, if she even decides to consider it in the first place. We attended the briefing that the government gave on the bill, and in that briefing it was made very clear that, if the criteria are met, the application may be considered but it will not necessarily be approved.

We find this bill offensive, and we will be opposing it. Clearly the bill does not live up to the spirit and the intent of the Supreme Court of Canada ruling. It is designed to frustrate that ruling, and in fact I would suggest that there will probably be ongoing legal challenges about this legislation. This bill is designed to create a situation where everything will run in the government's favour to not even consider applications or, if it does, to simply turn them down based on the principles it has outlined.

Let us just take a couple of minutes to talk about the one case that we do have in Canada, which is called InSite in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Setting up InSite was probably the most important health measure that has ever been undertaken in this country. It took years for it to be up and running. It went under incredible local scrutiny. There was opposition.

In Vancouver today, not only do the police support the safe injection site, but so do local businesses, the board of trade and municipal politicians. In fact, I think members would be hard pressed to find anyone in Vancouver who would actually dispute the value and the importance of this particular facility that is located on East Hastings Street.

The facility has been scrutinized and has been the subject of 30 scientific studies and reports. It has gone through enormous evaluation.

However, what I think is most important is that if we actually visit the place, we can see for ourselves what work is being done and how important it is to provide a safe, medically supervised environment for people with serious addiction issues to get off the street and to be in an environment where they are safe, where they are taken care of and where they can make contact with health care professionals.

I have seen that because most of the people who use this facility are my constituents. I know many of them personally.

What I find really just incredibly disappointing is that no ministers of health have had the courage, or even just the reasonable wherewithal, to actually visit InSite to find out for themselves what is going on.

So, all of this rhetoric, all of this bias that the Conservatives show is based upon an ideology that they are perpetuating. It is not based upon either experience or first-hand knowledge. It is not based upon consideration of the incredible body of evidence that now exists. It is simply based upon a political position that they have staked out because they think it caters to a Conservative base.

I find that really quite abhorrent, in terms of how we approach public policy in this country.

I do not know how much money has been spent on all of the litigation involving InSite. It is probably in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yet, this facility in Vancouver has survived. It has survived all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada and is still continuing to operate.

In fact, just a few weeks ago it celebrated its 10th anniversary, and I use the word “celebrate” because it was a celebratory event. To see the people in the community who have become part of the clientele of InSite, to see the people who are actually still alive, who are better off, who are doing better, who are better connected, who have a health connection—these are very important things. Without InSite, many of those individuals would likely have died of overdoses.

However, is there anything in the bill that would address that, the simple basic human fact that InSite is part of the solution, not part of the problem? We do not see anything in the bill on those issues.

I know that the government has come under intense scrutiny and criticism from a number of organizations across the country, which of course it has ignored. For example, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition and the Pivot Legal Society issued a statement in which they made it very clear that:

People who use drugs are entitled to needed health care services just like all other Canadians. It is unethical, unconstitutional and damaging to both public health and the public purse to block access to supervised consumption services which save lives and prevent the spread of infections.

I think that is it in a nutshell. What we are talking about here is public health. It is about community safety. It is about people giving people very basic access to health services. Yet, we would never know that by looking at this legislation; we would never know that by reading the minister's press release; and we would never know that by listening to the rhetoric we have heard from the government side on this bill and on the issue generally.

The Canadian Medical Association issued a press release when the bill first came out, in June, in which it said:

...the CMA is deeply concerned that the proposed legislation may be creating unnecessary obstacles and burdens that could ultimately deter creation of more injection sites.

Dr. Evan Wood, a renowned scientist who works for the B.C. Centre of Excellence in HIV/AIDS, points out that one of the important aspects of a safe injection site is that, given that each HIV infection costs on average approximately $500,000 in medical costs, InSight has contributed to a 90% reduction in new HIV cases caused by intravenous drug use in British Columbia, which is why the B.C. government has been such a strong supporter of the program. That is from an article he wrote in The Globe and Mail in June.

We also have Dr. Mark Tyndall, who is the head of infectious diseases at the Ottawa Hospital. He says:

Supervised injection sites will be opened in Canada and the government will be challenged for its callous and misinformed policies through legal avenues and whatever else it takes to do the right thing. Thousands of Canadians, the poor, the addicted, the mentally ill, our brothers and sisters, are depending on us.

These are just a few of the opinions and analyses that have come in from people who have studied this issue over and over again.

We need to understand that if this bill goes through, not only would it prevent other safe injection sites from being set up in Canada—and we do know that there is a great interest in Toronto, Victoria and Montreal—but it would also have an impact in Vancouver. As the parliamentary secretary pointed out, the current exemption permit for InSite will be up in March 2014, so it too will have to go through this process. Given the incredibly ridiculous and absurd criteria and considering the stance of the government, we can see that approval is very unlikely, or it will be very difficult to get.

What does that mean? It means that a place that has been operating successfully for 10 years, that has been well accepted in the community and that went through all of the approval processes will potentially be shut down, and people will be turfed out on the street. It means people will die of overdoses. It means we will see open drug use on the streets. It means we will see greater pain and suffering in this community, and the whole community will be impacted by that.

I want to keep coming back to the most basic point of this whole debate, and that is that a safe injection site is not some kind of bogey man or some kind of scary place; it is simply a health facility. It is a health facility that provides a service that helps people who are facing very difficult addiction issues. It provides a safe, medicalized and supervised environment. It helps people get into treatment. It helps people get off the street. Most important, it stops people from dying of overdoses.

Does that mean anything to these Conservatives? Do they even care that people are dying? What they want to do is vilify those people. We heard the parliamentary secretary. She talks about her mother and somebody else's mother walking down the street. This is about creating fear in local communities. Maybe that is the reason, as my colleague has pointed out, that this bill is going to go to the public safety committee, because the Conservatives want to have it viewed only through a lens of law and order, as opposed to a needed, necessary and essential public health approach that is about public health and public protection for people, not only the drug users but the community as a whole.

This bill that we have before us is the antithesis of a public health approach. What is this bill really about? It is about fear. It is about dividing people. It is about demonizing people. I find that really offensive because we are talking about individuals. Drug use cuts across all classes. It cuts across people of all different political persuasions. So we have to examine whether this bill is something that would hurt not only the existing safe injection site but the potential for others across the country that would save lives.

I will finish my remarks by moving a motion. I move, seconded by the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: this House decline to give second reading to Bill C-2, an Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, because it:

(a) fails to reflect the dual purposes of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) to maintain and promote both public health and public safety;

(b) runs counter to the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in Canada v. PHS Community Services Society, which states that a Minister should generally grant an exemption when there is proof that a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and when there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety; and

(c) establishes onerous requirements for applicants that will create unjustified barriers for the establishment of safe injection sites, which are proven to save lives and increase health outcomes.

(d) further advances the Minister's political tactics to divide communities and use the issue of supervised injection sites for political gain, in place of respecting the advice and opinion of public health experts.

[Eve Adams, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, CPC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to our government's respect for communities act, which would help to ensure the health and safety of our communities.

Our government has always maintained the principle that Canadians deserve a voice in how their country and their communities are developed and protected. The legislation before us today proposes to entrench this belief into law regarding supervised injection sites and is guided by a ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada in 2011.

The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act provides the legal framework for the control of substances that include dangerous and addictive drugs. Because of the potentially harmful nature of these substances on the health and safety of our communities, there need to be guidelines around their use. The respect for communities act helps to strengthen that framework and entrenches elements of the Supreme Court's 2011 ruling into law.

The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act prohibits the possession, import, export, production, and distribution of controlled substances. However, there are certain situations when there may be a legitimate activity that involves the use of a controlled substance. These include activities by researchers, law enforcement agencies, and health professionals. The act has the capacity to allow for these activities under section 56.

In its ruling, the court affirmed that it remains the Minister of Health's authority to exercise discretion in granting section 56 exemptions and noted that its decision was not an invitation, for anyone who chooses, to open a facility for drug use under the banner of a safe injection facility. This ruling was unique in that it touched upon illicit substances and their application with regard to supervised injection sites. No such provision exists in the current wording of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Given what we know about the serious risks associated with the possession, use, and production of illicit substances, exemptions to undertake activities with them should be granted only in exceptional circumstances and only once rigorous criteria have been addressed by the applicant seeking to conduct such activities.

The court included five factors in its 2011 ruling that it indicated the minister must consider when assessing an application to undertake activities at a supervised injection site. These factors include evidence, if any, on the following: the impact of such a site on crime rates; local conditions indicating a need for such a site; the regulatory structure in place to support the site; resources available to support its maintenance; and expressions of community support or opposition, which is quite critical indeed.

The bill being debated here today would codify these factors into law and provide a mechanism for the minister to receive the information needed to properly assess any such applications. The proposed approach would add a new section to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that would deal specifically with exemptions for activities involving the use of illicit substances. This section would also establish the rigorous criteria an applicant would have to address before the minister would consider an exemption for activities involving illicit substances at a supervised consumption site.

I would like to use the remainder of my remarks to explain some of the information applicants would have to provide when applying for an exemption under this new regime for activities involving illicit substances at a supervised consumption site.

In order to have an application for an exemption considered by the Minister of Health, an applicant would have to address all of the criteria included in the bill before us today in the application. This would give the minister the information needed to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling on the decision-making process. This information would obviously have to be provided before an application to undertake activities at a supervised injection site could be considered.

First, the applicant would be required to provide evidence that there was a need for a supervised consumption site.

This evidence could include such information as the number of persons who consume illicit substances in the vicinity of the site and in the municipality in which the site would be located; relevant information, including trends, if any, on the number of persons with infectious diseases that may be related to the consumption of illicit substances; and finally, relevant information, including trends, if any, on the number of deaths, if any, due to overdoses in relation to activities that take place at the site.

The applicant would also need to provide a description of the potential impacts of the proposed activities at the site on public safety. Information about crime, public nuisance, public consumption of illicit substances, or the presence of inappropriately discarded drug-related litter, such as used needles, would need to be provided, along with any law enforcement research or statistics on public safety.

There would also be a requirement to provide information on how the applicant would mitigate the risk of illicit substances being diverted from the proposed site. The applicant would have to describe the measures to be taken to minimize the possible diversion of controlled substances or their precursors as well as the risk to the health, safety, and security of all persons at the site. This could include criminal record checks for key staff members and careful record-keeping on the disposal, loss, theft, and transfer of controlled substances and precursors.

The applicant would also have to provide a letter from the head of the local police force for the area where the proposed site would be located. This letter would describe his or her opinion on the proposed activities and any concerns related to public safety and security. The applicant would also be required to indicate any proposed measures to address concerns identified by the head of the local police force.

The applicant would have to provide a letter from the provincial minister responsible for health describing his or her opinion on the proposed activities and how the activities would be integrated into the health care system. The letter should also identify any available treatment services for individuals who would use the site.

The applicant would also have to provide a letter from the local government of the municipality where the site would be located describing his or her opinion on the proposed activities at the site. This would include any concerns, again, about risks to public health or safety. If any relevant concerns were noted in the letter, the applicant would have to provide a description of the measures that had been or would be taken to address them.

The applicant would also have to include a report on the consultations held with relevant community groups in the municipality where the site would be located. This report would provide a summary of the opinions of the community groups about the proposed activities, copies of all of the written submissions received, and a description of the steps that would be taken to address any relevant concerns that were raised.

Once all of the information was submitted, including, if necessary, the explanation of why there was a lack of information or evidence for certain criteria, the Minister of Health would be able to consider the application. The minister could also ask the applicant to provide additional relevant information, as required, to help in the decision-making process.

These application requirements for supervised consumption sites are in line with the Supreme Court of Canada's decision and would enable the Minister of Health to make informed decisions on supervised injection sites. Combined, they form the heart of the respect for communities act. They would ensure that Canadian communities are given a voice when any such application is made.

Given the importance of understanding the potential impacts supervised consumption sites may have on the communities in which they exist, the proposed legislation would also provide an opportunity for the Minister of Health to call for public input during a 90-day comment period. It is crucial that members of the community, those individuals who will live and work in the same vicinity as the proposed supervised consumption site, have the opportunity to provide feedback. These are the individuals who would be most impacted by this type of local decision, whether it is the mother pushing a stroller down the street toward the park as an individual who has taken drugs comes out from the supervised consumption site, or whether it is the senior citizen walking the dog down that very same street. Surely these individuals ought to have an opportunity to express their comments.

In assessing an application for an exemption for activities involving illicit substances at a supervised consumption site, the Minister of Health must exercise discretion by balancing both public health and safety. The approach outlined in the respect for communities act would strengthen our laws and give our government the tools we need to follow through on the ruling made by the Supreme Court of Canada. I urge all of my hon. colleagues to support the bill and to work toward its speedy passage.

In the remaining time allotted, if I might digress, I would like to speak a bit to some of my experience as a former municipal councillor. There is a similar consultation process undertaken by communities when any development application is brought forward. As an example, for the sake of this debate, let me cite an elegant four-storey, live-work development being brought in. The proposed tenants are a creative florist and a creative architect who propose to have their shops down on the main floor, and these proprietors would live upstairs.

Before this type of development could take place in my community, the applicant would need to submit a number of items that the municipality would consider. These items would then be circulated to all sorts of bodies within our community, including utilities, Bell, Rogers, and our local airport authority. Schools would be consulted, both on traffic patterns and the availability of school space in the area. All of this information from these external groups would then be gathered and assessed by professional planning staff in our municipal department. They would then make a recommendation to elected councillors and the mayor. All of that information would be available during a public, open, evening meeting. However, long before that public, open meeting ever took place, I would have a local community meeting. I would never drive my constituents down to city hall. I would go to a local school gymnasium or a local church basement and present the application to them.

The applicant would be required to have a number of consultant studies done before this application was even circulated in the community. For example, we could require a shadow impact study. The applicant would have to go out and hire a technical consultant and engineering firm that would then model the shadowing impacts on neighbouring residences' backyards and front yards. They would model for us so that the community could see the shadow impact throughout the day. It would show the impact it would have on the neighbouring homes as the sun rose and set. We would then require them to model what it would look like throughout the course of the year, as the days were shorter or longer, and the impact it would have on residents in the community.

This is a very fair thing to require. I think there is a general consensus nationwide, and certainly in Ontario, that individuals who have already chosen to make their homes in a community ought to be consulted before something new comes into their community. These are the individuals who have helped to build the fabric of that community. They are the ones who define the character of the community. These are the moms and dads and children who come out and volunteer and clean up our green spaces. They are the ones who have fund-raised to build the local arena. They are the individuals who have perhaps lived in the same neighbourhood in the same community for generations. They are the ones who have offered their sweat, their toil, and their vision to build the neighbourhood they would like to live in. When they pop their heads out the front door and look down their sidewalk, the impact of what that streetscape looks like, what the walk to their school looks like, and what the walk to their local grocery store looks like will impact them each and every day.

Therefore, if we have these types of requirements before we allow what by anyone's estimation might be a lovely four-storey development to come into a community, surely it is only reasonable that we would seek the input of local police enforcement officers and local community members before we would allow an illicit drug consumption site to be erected in a community.

Let us remember what this site is actually doing. Individuals are not taking prescribed medications within these sites. They are going out and illegally purchasing illicit drugs. No one knows the contents of those drugs. The addict does not know the contents of those drugs. When the addict walks in with those drugs and is then injected under supervision, even those offering the supervision do not truly know the content of those drugs. That individual then leaves the premises hopped up to do as he or she would. This addict may hang out on the sidewalk or wander down to the local park or the front of the grocery store as our mothers may be trying to walk down that very same street. Surely our mothers ought to be consulted about the impact this will have on their local community.

We also have a number of schools in each and every community. The schoolchildren and their moms and dads ought to be consulted before one of these types of facilities is erected in their community.

We do a lot of debating and a lot of talking here in the House of Commons. We all value an excellent dialogue, a good conversation and a healthy debate. It is incumbent on us to ensure that we allow for that same type of conversation, that same dialogue, to exist within our communities when something of such significance is imposed upon them.

I am very proud to stand in support of Bill C-2 and to support our government, our Minister of Health and our Prime Minister in bringing the bill forward.

[Kellie Leitch]

moved that Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, with regard to election reform legislation, I think it is clear that there has been a continuing stream of submissions from important panels, including the Chief Electoral Officer. I know the minister is taking all of this into account and wants to make sure that all the considerations are taken into account so we have the best possible legislation in place for the next election. I look forward to that being introduced in the House and hopefully being supported by all sides of the House.

Second, on the question of the Senate, we are awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court on the reference on our legislation, which has been in the House and which was opposed by the opposition parties, to allow for Canadians to have a say in who represents them in the Senate and to establish term limits. All Canadians who have been elected to the Senate have been appointed by the Prime Minister thus far. There have been a number of them and we hope there will be more in the future. We look forward to the Supreme Court's decision on the Senate, at which time we will act in that regard.

It is great to see you and all other members of Parliament here today. I know that the Conservatives had a hard-working and productive summer in their ridings and are anxious to get back to work here in Ottawa.

As we begin a new parliamentary session, I take pride in the fact that already this year—between January and June—we have passed 37 new laws, already matching our government's most productive year in office.

In fact, since we formed a majority government in the past session of Parliament, 61 government bills have reached royal assent. It is a very productive and orderly approach. I plan to continue what has been a productive, orderly and hard-working Parliament and to build upon this success through the many exciting initiatives that have been outlined in the throne speech.

In a moment the House will start debating government Motion No. 2, about which my friend asked, a motion to facilitate business here in the House this fall, including our principle-based proposal for reinstating all business where it left off in June.

Tomorrow, we will start the second reading debate on Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which was introduced this morning.

On Monday, before question period, we will start second reading on a bill to be introduced tomorrow. Hon. members will note that the long title as printed on today's order paper is identical to the one borne by the previous session's Bill C-57.

Monday afternoon the House will consider a ways and means motion, notice of which will be tabled, related to budget measures. Following that, the House will resume consideration of government Motion No. 2, should debate not continue today.

On Wednesday, the House will first consider a ways and means motion, the notice of which will also be tabled, in relation to certain housekeeping amendments found in last session's Bill C-61, the offshore health and safety act. After that vote we will debate the budget implementation legislation flowing from Monday's ways and means vote. That debate will continue for the balance of the week.

Finally, Tuesday, October 22, shall be the first allotted day.

Respect for Communities Act

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Minister of Health]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)