Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and I want to thank the ministers for coming here with the officials.
I find it very interesting that in both ministers' presentations, not a single word was mentioned about the addict, the patient, and what harms are being done to the patient. If you read the Supreme Court ruling, and I have it here in front of me, on page 147 it says that in six years, overdose deaths increased from 16 to 200 in the downtown eastside. Anybody would agree that this is a huge increase. The chief public health officer of the City of Vancouver also called “epidemic” the rise in HIV/AIDS, the rise in Hepatitis C, and the rise in endocarditis that went on in that neighbourhood for those users. It was because of this and because all of the other attempts to deal with drug addiction had failed that the three...and I quote from the Supreme Court ruling, “Insite was the product of cooperative federalism. Local, provincial and federal authorities combined their efforts to create it”. The Vancouver police supported InSite. In fact, the Supreme Court said, “Parliament has attempted to balance the two competing interests of public safety and public health.”
It surprised me that neither minister tried in their statements, nor in this bill, to balance those two competing interests.
The minister talks about the horrible life of drug addicts, and how we know no one wants to see their children.... I practised medicine for 21 years. Many of my patients came from the downtown eastside, and I know that so far we have not been able to do anything. InSite brought down deaths completely, and helped these people to be able to go to areas where they could get the care, the treatments, and the rehabilitation they needed.
So I would like to hear the Minister of Health tell me what she plans to do in keeping with good public health practices that have been proven, not only from InSite, but from the six European communities and Australia that now have between them about 70 safe injection sites because of evidence that it works. What does the minister plan to do to help all the addicted people who are currently facing huge public health issues and death?