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.