Thank you, Madam Chair.
I have been a physician practising for 22 years in central Vancouver, in the middle of the city. I have had many patients who were addicted, many patients who were in the sex trade. I have had a great deal of experience on this issue.
I wanted to put that down. I was also the federal minister responsible for the Vancouver agreement that oversaw the inception of Insite, so I am fully aware of what went into the details of it, why it was set up, and what the project was about.
The Minister of Health has referred to the rule of law. He referred to the fact that a particular police officer who worked on the drug squad had some negative things to say about Insite. I would like to quote Kash Heed, who was the commander in charge of drug policy for the Vancouver Police Department at that time. Mr. Heed is now the chief of police for the West Vancouver Municipal District. He fully supports Insite's results. He believes it has achieved its main objective, which was a decrease of public harm and an increase in public order.
The Vancouver Chinatown Merchants Association, who were opposed to the setting up of Insite at the beginning, are now fully in support of it. They have seen crime rates drop, and they feel they are able to walk their streets now, so they support it. I am speaking about the people who live in the area, who have worked on this and who know. I think the commissioner in charge of drug policy and the business community there have fully supported Insite.
However, the minister speaks very much about the fact that this has not worked. Madam Chair, you've heard that over 2,000 people died in the 1990s. Insite was not set up for every single drug user. Insite, as I can tell you, having been involved, was set up to look at a very high-risk population of users. These are the people who do not access health care services. These are the people who will not go to treatment. These are the people who have the highest incidence of infectious diseases, because of their intravenous drug use. These are the people who needed help and who were dying.
You have heard that the people accessing Insite have experienced zero deaths--zero deaths, Madam Chair. In 2005, 2,270 people went to health services withdrawal facilities; in 2006, 1,828 people attending Insite did the same thing; in 2007, 2,269 people attending Insite went to treatment and detox services. So this is not one death, Madam Chair. It depends on how you value people's lives.
The minister speaks to the rule of law. I would like to refer to Justice Pitfield's response. When Canada argued that the Controlled Drug and Substances Act, subsection 4(1), did not offend section 7 of the charter, Mr. Pitfield was clear. He said:
In the alternative, ss. 4(1) and 5(1) of the CDSA are unconstitutional and should be struck down because they deprive persons addicted to one or more controlled substances of access to health care at Insite and therefore violate the right conferred by s. 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the “Charter”) 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.
Canada argues that if s. 4(1) of the CDSA offends s. 7 of the Charter, it is saved by s. 1 as a law that is a reasonable restraint on s. 7 rights in a free and democratic society. In my opinion, the law compels the dismissal of the claim.
He also went on to suggest that in fact the principles of fundamental justice are amongst the most important in society, and any law that offends them, mainly the right to life, the principle of life and security, has been offended by the minister's proposed actions.
I want the minister to respond to me about how the ability to save one life, which the minister so casually dismisses, is an extremely important thing. Just because that life is not worth the minister's time doesn't mean it's not important.
How can a minister who is supposed to protect the people of Canada with regard to health and safety refuse to administer life-saving services to a group of people who will die if they do not get it?