Honourable members, the Drug Prevention Network of Canada is pleased to support Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, known as the respect for communities act.
So-called safe injection sites, which are hubs for illegal and anti-social behaviours, will not be welcomed by neighbourhoods if these operations are simply thrust upon them. Asking the promoters of this failed and woollen-headed experiment to answer some serious questions before building their empire at the expense of local integrities is the very least we can do as a democracy. We applaud the current administration for this initiative.
Let's look at pieces of the bill and at the real evidence, not the questionable studies presented by the very people who built Insite.
A report by the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS on harm reduction programs and Insite released last summer, for example, is not science; it's public relations. Authors Julio Montaner, Thomas Kerr, and Evan Wood have produced nearly two dozen papers on the use of Insite. They have been awarded more than $18 million of taxpayer money in recent years. Predictably, they boast of good results in connecting addicts to treatment, but convincing evidence is not only lacking, it's non-existing.
The current campaign reports significant reductions in drug overdoses, yet the Government of British Columbia selected vital statistics and health status indicators show that the number of deaths from drug overdose in Vancouver's downtown eastside has increased every year, with one exception, since the site opened in 2003.
In addition, the federal government's own advisory committee on drug injection sites report only 5% of drug addicts use the injection site and 3% were referred for treatment. I believe that's terribly high. There is no indication the crime rate has decreased as well as no indication of decrease in AIDS and hepatitis C since the injection site was opened.
Claims of success for Insite made in The Lancet, the famous British medical journal, in 2011 were challenged vigorously in a 15-page heavily documented response and by addiction specialists from Australia, the U.S., and Canada and by a former Vancouver Police Department officer who worked the downtown eastside for years.
In “A Critical Evaluation of the Effects of Safe Injection Facilities” for the Institute on Global Drug Policy, Dr. Garth Davies who is a Simon Fraser University associate professor wrote:
However, the methodological and analytic approaches used in these studies have not been scrutinized to any significant degree. Previous studies are compromised by an array of deficiencies, including a lack of baseline data, insufficient conceptual and operational clarity, inadequate evaluation criteria, absent statistical controls, dearth of longitudinal designs, and inattention to intrasite variation. [...[ In truth, none of the impacts attributed to SIFs can be unambiguously verified.
Ladies and gentlemen, here is exactly what happened. The three good doctors were originally working on HIV/AIDS, and they did something curious because it had an unintended consequence. They resolved the problem of HIV/AIDS in a wonderful way, and their work is magnificent, but they put themselves out of work, so they turned their attention to addictions using the same template to get money and to support what they believe and so on. It's the old journalistic story of follow the money.
I had dinner a few months ago with somebody who used to work at Insite, and he said that he had to quit because he thought the place was evil. I said we agreed on that but why did he think it was evil? He told me it was because he had seen the so-called researchers counting one addict five times. He'd seen this several times. He has also seen so-called researchers interviewing an addict moments after the addict has just shot up. Now I ask you all when you leave this committee meeting, please go to the local hospital and go in a room where somebody is in a coma and try to interview them and see what that's like, because that's what you will get when you talk to someone who has just shot up.
Dr. Colin Mangham, who is on the board of directors of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, has been a researcher in this field since 1979. He said:
The proposal for Insite was written by the same people who are evaluating it – a clear conflict of interest. Any serious evaluation must be independent. All external critiques or reviews [of the Insite evaluations], there are four of them — found profound overstatements and evidence of interpretation bias. All of the evidence — on public disorder, overdose deaths, entry into treatment, containment of serum borne viruses, and so on — is weak or [entirely] non-existent and certainly does not support the claims of success. There is every appearance of the setting of an agenda before Insite ever started, then a pursuit of that agenda, bending or overstating results wherever necessary.
Let's look at the bill itself. Under proposed new subsection 56.1(3), the minister “may consider an application...after the following priorities have been established”, and I will just refer to two of them: “(a) scientific evidence demonstrating...medical benefit...”. Well, we submit to you that there is no such legitimate clear, clean, and independent evidence. Quite the contrary, nothing has changed. The very idea that giving addicts a place to shoot up will help them in any manner shows an extraordinary lack of understanding of the issue of addiction.
Let me make this very simple and very clear. What do addicts want? Addicts want more. The don't want more tickets to ball games. They don't want more children. They don't want more bicycles. They don't want more violin lessons. They want more drugs. That's what they want, so an addicted man or woman may inject under a nurse’s supervision, but two hours later, that same addict is back in the alley doing what he or she knows how to do. Why? The addict's life is not about a quarter of a gram of inert white powder; it is about a culture and a way of living.
Going back to the criteria, “The Minister may consider an application...”, proposed new paragraph 56.1(b)(iii) says “provides information about access to drug treatment” centres. Oh, that this were so. I happen to know every treatment centre in British Columbia and most in Canada because of the work I do, and in spite of Mr. Wilson's passionate testimony, let me give you my passionate testimony. I have yet to hear of one addict—one—being referred to a treatment centre. I haven't met him. I haven't heard of her. I don't know their names because it doesn't happen. I know all the people who run treatment centres and they will all tell you that they've never had an addict being referred from Insite.
You see, Insite is not about recovery. The good doctors who built it actually don’t believe in recovery. They think that abstinence is a fantasy. The provincial health authorities don’t support abstinence-based recovery, and these are the very people who whisper in the ear of the provincial health minister. All of these people want to give addicts free needles, free crack pipe kits, free heroin, methadone, lessons on wine making for alcoholics, and comfy places to shoot up. Insite, you have to understand, is the tip of the iceberg. It is the flagship for a very dark philosophy that says, “You, my boy, are hopeless, so we're going to keep you pacified and pray that you will not break into our condos and cars”. You can see how this arrogant and misguided approach is working, how elegantly it fails to enhance the lives of either addicts or communities.
The sad truth, ladies and gentlemen, is this. In my province, the poor get methadone and the rich get private treatment clinics. I happen to work at one of those rich private treatment clinics.
On proposed new paragraph 56.1(3)(i), item (iii), “the presence of inappropriately discarded drug-related litter”, I have a friend who owns a building in the downtown eastside. She's trying to run a business there, and she has been fighting with the City of Vancouver for two years asking if it would please remove those damned blue boxes from the back alley, and the City said, no, that's where the addicts are going to throw their needles.
I don't know if you're aware of this, but I don't know of any addicts who are up for good housekeeping awards, so my friend who owns this building and is trying to conduct a regular business down there regularly has needles all over the place and human body waste. You ask communities if they are ready for that and if they are prepared to host that kind of lunacy, and ask the good doctors who promoted this madness to establish one of their projects next to their homes.
Finally, I want to make a comment about two opponents' responses in the House. The Honourable Judy Sgro, a Liberal from York West, said when this was being debated in the House, “The only success I have seen so far, which is limited, is the safe injection site in Vancouver.” Well, the good member is right. Her views are extremely limited. All she has to do is go to any city in Canada, and there are hundreds and hundreds of wonderful prevention or treatment programs operating—not as many as we could have, but there are many of them, so if that's the only thing she has seen, that's the only thing she has seen.
The Honourable Libby Davies, the NDP member for Vancouver East—
