I listened carefully to what Ms. Mattison said, and she's quite right.
As a lawyer, I love saying this: I think the Supreme Court of Canada was wrong. What they said in the bill here—she's quite right—is “regulatory structure”. That's the wording of the Supreme Court, but the words that then illuminate what they were referring to make it clear that they're not talking about the regulatory structure in terms of regulations.
I changed the word—and I don't care which word it is—because under the current bill, when it says that an applicant has to include information on the “regulatory structure in place to support the site”, what does that mean? I'll tell you that as a lawyer, the first thing I would look for is the regulatory structure. I'd be looking at the municipal bylaws and the provincial structure.
That's not what the Supreme Court was talking about. To me the chance of an applicant saying, “Regulatory structure—I'm going to have regard to the Supreme Court decision to find out what was meant by regulatory structure” is pretty remote.
I'll just read for the committee what the Supreme Court said:
It is a strictly regulated health facility
—this is speaking about Insite—
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.
Then it goes on to talk about other things. You see, what they were talking about when they said “regulatory structure” was the internal regulatory structure of Insite. That's why I thought it would be more clear to say to an applicant, “Tell us what administrative structure you have in place to support the site.” I thought it would be clearer and avoid confusion if applicants knew that this was the information they were being called upon to furnish.
I don't really believe it's necessary to respond to Mr. Webber's very strained analogy of pipelines, but I will say just a few things.
If Mr. Webber wants to leave the impression that I'm trying to ram through supervised consumption sites over the heads of communities that don't want them, he's absolutely mistaken and is misleading this committee and anybody listening. If he intends to say that I don't think the community's support or opposition to these sites is relevant, he's absolutely mistaken. My amendment specifically retains expressions of community support or opposition. I believe that's important. That's why I've been arguing that the minister should take that into account.
I was clearly just trying to say that the burden isn't on an applicant to furnish that information. If he listened to my argument, he would be quite happy, because an applicant who wants a site is quite unlikely to submit expressions of community opposition. Sorry, but he just voted against his own statement. My amendment would allow a community to put information to the minister about community opposition. He voted against my amendment to do that, so I think he's not quite clear on what we're talking about here.
Finally, I want to say here's a difference between the New Democrats and the Conservatives. We view the addiction and opioid crisis to be an issue of health, not an issue of morality or an issue of ideology. I want a proper administrative structure and application process for pipelines and for supervised consumption sites, but here's the difference. People are dying right now. People are dying today. In his province, in Alberta, Albertans are going to die today, and you know what? Their lives could be saved if we had supervised consumption sites, but he and his party are opposed to them.
The question I have for him is, why does he want to block health facilities that save Albertans' lives? He's content to let them die? Well, I'm not.