Thank you, Chairperson and honourable members.
I'd like to begin by saying that this is a bad bill. From a legal perspective, the bill is a hyperbolic response to a subtle point of law. It will likely not withstand constitutional scrutiny, and it invites an expensive and pointless charter challenge.
As a representative of the Pivot Legal Society, an organization that uses the law to address the root causes of poverty and marginalization in Canada, this bill will restrict access to a proven health care service, which will result in needless human suffering for some of the most vulnerable Canadians.
I would like to use some of my time to correct something that the Minister of Health said in her remarks on Monday. She spoke about the necessity of this bill, and she said that Bill C-2 was required because of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision. With respect, the minister is mistaken.
I propose to briefly outline what the Supreme Court of Canada said to show that Bill C-2 is a significant departure from the guidance of the court and to outline some of the consequences of this bill coming into force.
I don't believe that this committee needs background about the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, but I should say that it is a blanket criminal law. Exemptions under section 56 suspend the action of that law for certain purposes, and it's in this exemption that Insite currently exists. In a section 56 exemption, the law is suspended.
The Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness talked last week about the 101 places where drug users could act illegally. But, contrary to what he said, in technical terms, the act is suspended, not broken.
In the Supreme Court of Canada case PHS v. Canada, which is the court case about this section, there were a number of very clear findings: that a supervised injection service is a health service; that people who inject drugs are exposed to a number of harms as a result of their illness, to the extent that their charter rights are engaged; and that the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, as we've heard many times, has a dual purpose: one is to protect public health and the other is to protect public safety. Also, the minister's discretion must be exercised within the parameters of the charter, and she must balance this dual purpose.
In the context of Insite—and significantly, this is the point of the PHS decision—when there is not evidence of a public safety threat, exemptions must generally be granted. They're presumptive, nearly, and to ensure that the minister's discretion in balancing did not lead to arbitrary decision-making, there were five permissive factors, which are very narrow, and the minister must consider them if they're available. That is all that is required.
What Bill C-2 does is a significant departure from that. It answers the requirement that exemptions generally be granted, which the court directed, with a presumption in the bill that exemptions will generally be withheld. It ignores the requirement that the CDSA is a balancing bill that requires aspects of public health and public safety by framing the question of supervised injection service as a narrow public safety issue, and only in a negative way. It also expands the court's five permissive factors into 26 impossible criteria, which will lead to a limiting of the availability of this necessary health service.
With respect, Bill C-2 is more about this federal government's distaste for this kind of health service than it is about anything the court said. The results of this are problematic and unconstitutional. The effect of Bill C-2 will be to frustrate the application process for health care providers and restrict access to supervised injection services and approvals for future centres.
For the reasons that are set out in my brief which is before you and for those following at home can be downloaded from the parliamentary website, the bill perpetrates a number of head-on assaults to other constitutional provisions that are the legal backbone of this nation.
This is important for two reasons. There are two sets of consequences that will flow from this bill, and the first is legal. Bill C-2 will not withstand constitutional scrutiny. It will invite an extensive and pointless charter challenge and a long series of litigation on a point of law that is already settled, under a legislative framework that is arguably worse than the one the Supreme Court of Canada condemned. If the Insite decision was a question about how the charter rights of drug users were violated by an initiative to prevent access to supervised injection services, it is difficult to see how this is not exactly the same thing.
The second public health outcome of Bill C-2 is arguably more important. Passing Bill C-2 will have devastating and unconscionable consequences for the most vulnerable of Canadians who are members of our community. The barriers the bill presents to accessing life-saving health care will allow a heartbreaking public health emergency to continue under a law and order agenda and expose patients and communities to infection, to suffering, and to death.
I live three blocks away from Insite in Vancouver's downtown eastside. On Thanksgiving weekend, when healthier Canadians were sitting down and eating their turkey suppers, a narcotic opioid drug called fentanyl was being passed off by street dealers as heroin. It is indistinguishable to users, but it is an order of magnitude more powerful than heroin.
As a result, on Thanksgiving Monday there were 10 overdoses; on the Sunday before, there were 16, and there were five the following day, all of these at Insite. Nobody who overdosed at Insite died. Unfortunately, some people did die. I understood that it was two. One was a young woman. One was a man named Tony Snakeskin. I hear from my colleague Mr. Wilson that there were in fact four. These people died because they were alone and they did not have access to medical care.
This is a question not just for Vancouver but for all of our communities. In the summer of 2014, the Agence de la santé et des services sociaux de Montréal investigated 83 cases of overdoses. Twenty-five of them were fatal. In other neighbourhoods across the country, thousands of people have died, and countless more will die if they do not have the access to supervised injection services that the court said was required.
To conclude, I will say that Bill C-2 is contrary to what the court ordered. It is unconstitutional, and it will allow people to die.
As I just mentioned in English, the Minister of Health told you the the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Canada (Attorney General) v. PHS Community Services Society requires you to pass this bill. With respect, I must tell you that she is wrong.
What the decision indicates is that the rights of drug users are protected by the Charter and the minister must grant an exemption to allow supervised injection sites.
Bill C-2 could result in useless legal proceedings because the government cannot tolerate the existence of this kind of care. While we wait, our neighbours will die. It is unconstitutional and we cannot countenance anything of the kind.
The bill says quietly that the federal government does not value the lives of people who use drugs and people whose lives would be saved by this service.
Subject to your questions, those are my submissions.