I don't believe that circumstance is common around the country. Vancouver's Downtown Eastside is unique. It's one of the poorest postal codes in the entire country. It has a high percentage of drug users.
Insite has operated there for the last 12 years, and very successfully. They've had many, many drug overdoses on their premises with zero loss of life. That's another arrow in this harm reduction quiver. The police in the area are very supportive of efforts of this kind. These are not problems that are really solvable by police action. These are public health issues, and we have to start thinking about them as public health issues.
I'd like to comment further that certainly this bill could have been broader, but we were looking for something that we could achieve with a very strong consensus. I know that one of the most common charges is possession for the purposes of trafficking. I'd love to see that in there, but if we put that in there, I'm not sure we would have the continued support of the government. Right now we have support from everybody throughout the House, pretty much, as far as I can tell.
It's a very strong first step.