Okay, thank you.
Mr. Chairman, the purpose of this amendment is essentially to deal with the situation that I alluded to earlier, when provincial health ministers, who are very much closer to the ground in what's happening in their communities, may, on an emergency basis, want to request the Minister of Health to grant an exemption in a quicker way than the current application process because it may be necessary to deal with a public health emergency.
This new clause allows the minister of health in a province to request in writing to the Minister of Health that she make a section 56 exemption. It goes on then to have a couple of mechanical kinds of provisions that say that the minister shall, within three days after which she receives the request, publish the request on the departmental website. It says that the minister may, in response to a request, grant an exemption for a period not to exceed one year on terms and conditions the minister may consider necessary.
If the minister does not make a decision within seven days, then the minister is deemed to have granted the exemption on the seventh day. The minister shall, within five days after the day on which a decision is made, publish the decision on the departmental website, and the period of one year on which exemption is granted begins on the day after the exemption is granted.
Really it seeks to empower the Minister of Health to take a request directly from a provincial health minister, without delegation, and essentially grant that request almost on an interim basis. It would allow a supervised consumption site or—again I'm going to use the term used in British Columbia—an overdose prevention site to be sanctioned immediately.
Right now in this country, we have four sites in Vancouver that are operating illegally. Everybody knows it. They're actually getting funded by Vancouver Coastal Health in British Columbia. The provincial ministry of health is spending tens of thousands of dollars on these sites. Everybody is allowing it to happen, but the people who work in these sites subject themselves to legal jeopardy every single day they go to work. They're willing to take that risk because they're saving lives every day, but they shouldn't have to be at legal risk when everybody, including the federal government.... The local police forces are allowing it to happen even though the legal situation makes them technically illegal.
This gives the health minister another little tool to respond directly to a province and act on an expedited basis. Even though we're clearing up the criteria—which I congratulate the Liberal government for doing, and I'm so happy that they're doing it, since it's long overdue—you can still see that the application process for a section 56 exemption will take some significant time. It will be very difficult for an applicant to get all of that information before the minister so that the minister to comply with her duty to act. It will significantly cut it down, but I would suggest it would cut it down from years to months. What this would do is cut it down from months to weeks, or maybe it would even be quicker.
I would urge my colleagues to support this improvement to the act. It doesn't take away anything from the minister. It adds to her tool box and allows her to respond much more nimbly and quickly on an emergency basis.