Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, everyone. I appreciate this opportunity to appear before you today.
It's a pleasure to be here.
By way of introduction, my name is Bryan Larkin. I'm the serving chief of the Waterloo Regional Police Service. I've been a police officer for 24 years. I sit as a member of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police drug abuse committee. As well, as a community builder, I've had the opportunity to serve as the chair of the board of directors of the Stonehenge Therapeutic Community, which is a residential drug treatment centre that provides a full spectrum of addiction services, including supported housing, for Waterloo and Wellington counties. This opportunity, coupled with my policing experience, has provided me tremendous insight into the social challenges and the impact of substance abuse in our communities.
CACP president Clive Weighill of the Saskatoon Police Service and I would like to express our sincere appreciation to this committee for allowing us the opportunity to contribute to this important community safety and well-being discussion, which ensures local community input into decision-making on potential safe injection sites within our communities. On behalf of Chief Weighill, I'd just like to make a quick statement.
As law enforcement leaders, we always focus on ensuring the safety of our communities. Our officers are the most vulnerable among us. We are dedicated to the protection and security of the people of Canada. Likewise, our colleagues in the Canadian Armed Forces proudly serve Canadians by defending our values, interests, and sovereignty, both at home and abroad, and we'd like to join in mourning their loss.
We've all been shaken by the recent tragedies in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and here in Ottawa. It was truly an unprecedented week for all first responders, but, as is typical with Canadians, such tragedies bring out the best in our people, our leadership, and our collective resiliency. Parliamentarians and staffers from all political parties are to be commended. Through a moment of terror to uniting in resolve, you each provided incredible leadership and have demonstrated that we will not be deterred, nor will we continue to stand still. We will move on as Canadians do.
We'd also like to recognize the House and Senate security staff, including one of our own CACP members, Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers. We'd like to make that statement before getting into this important discussion.
As many of you are aware, the CACP, through its 20 committees related to public safety and justice, contributes extensively to the House and Senate committees. For your own background, the CACP represents in excess of 90% of the policing community in Canada, which includes federal, first nations, provincial, regional, and municipal police leaders and services. Our mandate is clear: it is the safety and security of all Canadians through innovative police leadership.
In 2007 the CACP adopted a drug policy that was developed through our drug abuse committee. This policy sets out the position of our CACP members on this very important national issue that has a direct impact on Canadians and our communities on a day-to-day basis.
I'll give you a brief overview of the CACP drug policy. Our strategy is balanced. We believe in a balanced approach to the issue of substance abuse and abuse within Canada. It consists of prevention, education, enforcement, counselling, treatment, rehabilitation, and, where appropriate, alternative measures as well as judicial diversion of offenders in order to ensure appropriate support as well as to counter Canada's drug problems.
Our mission is very clear. Our goal is to transition to a healthy lifestyle in order to provide a second chance at life. We believe in a balanced continuum of practice distributed across each component. In addition, the policy components must be fundamentally lawful and ethical, must consider the interests of all, and must strive to achieve a balance between societal and individual interests. We believe that, to the greatest extent possible, initiatives must be and should be evidence-based.
The CACP supports the principles being established as a part of this bill, in particular the need to balance public safety with public health. In fact, that is the future of community well-being. The future of community safety is more collaboration and enhanced integration.
The CACP is not making a specific statement with regard to supervised consumption sites. Our position is that the decision to support or not support supervised consumption sites is a local community issue. It must be localized.
We are pleased to see a clear process that will provide criteria for community consultation prior to a decision being made by the Minister of Health. As all of you know, there are 90 safe consumption sites across the world, two of them in Canada, and we would concur that there's no one unique or cookie-cutter approach. The needs, the demands, and the impacts vary from community to community.
Bill C-2 establishes 27 criteria that an applicant must meet before a supervised consumption site is granted by the Minister of Health. One of these criteria requires that the applicant make contact with and obtain the input of local police services, as noted in proposed paragraph 56.1(3)(e):
a letter from the head of the police force that is responsible for providing policing services to the municipality in which the site would be located that outlines his or her opinion on the proposed activities at the site, including any concerns with respect to public safety and security.
I want to thank and acknowledge and applaud the inclusion of such.
Again, the CACP maintains a neutral position on the actual merits of safe consumption sites. Our focus is on public safety and security. This is why we believe that while law enforcement is an integral part of the decision-making process, we are simply one stakeholder. We are one partner. It is the greater community response that is required. It is the collaboration that is the spirit that builds healthy and strong communities in Canada.
We want to reiterate that every community is unique, and that is reflected, we believe, in the spirit of the bill.
Thank you very much. Merci .