Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I did want to bring something to the attention of Ms. Lapointe and Ms. Henry. You mentioned the pill presses and the precursors for fentanyl. I know that one of our colleagues in the Senate, Vern White, has actually had two private members' bills moving forward, and I think he's had discussions with the minister. I think we're trying to expedite moving that forward.
I'm going to take a contrarian view. It may not be popular with this panel, but similar to Vern White, who comes to the issue and takes into account the public safety point of view, as well as focusing on treatment.
Maybe I'll start with Madam Henry.
We talked about how we don't have good statistics and that even the statistics at InSite are the questionnaire type of statistics. From its website, they say that only 7% of users of InSite actually go on to OnSite, and their statistics show that only 50% stay with the treatment. So, from their own statistics, only 3.5% go into treatment. Then we have no idea how many of them actually continue on afterwards.
You're calling for the repeal of the Respect for Communities Act. I think the situation in Vancouver is very unique, an extreme situation, including before InSite. I have visited InSite and I still find the situation there to be very extreme and very sad when you move through that area. But when you talked about communities, shouldn't they have an opinion?
I want to quote somebody who takes a different viewpoint. His name is Bill Blair. When he was a police officer—now he's a politician—he said that “They have been doing [this] in Vancouver for some years and there have been [some] issues that have arisen there. I don’t know of any place in Toronto where that couldn’t have a significant negative impact on the communities.” In discussing the education part of it, he also referred to what he called “the ambiguous messaging that comes out from a society that says you can’t use these drugs, they’re against the law—but if you do [it], we’ll provide a place for you to do it.”
Do you actually think that communities shouldn't have an opinion, shouldn't have a say? I would think that if the community doesn't support a supervised injection site, it won't be successful. Calling for the repeal of that, is that really what you think?