Thank you. I'm a little nervous. The last time I was dressed like this in front of people like you, the last thing I heard was “guilty as charged”.
I appreciate the chance to give testimony regarding Bill C-2, but I'm also confused. I thought the Supreme Court of Canada's decision of September 30, 2011, finalized the issue of supervised injection sites. The court decided that supervised injection sites were legal and constitutional. I guess the present government feels it can sidestep the highest court's decision, and because the legal route has now closed, it will regulate supervised injection sites out of business.
One only has to read the three judgements, those of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the appellate court of British Columbia, and the Supreme Court of Canada, to feel the spirit in which the courts framed the supervised injection site issue within the laws of Canada. What those judgements specify is that supervised injection sites are a medical issue and should be treated as such.
I know the decisions do not sit well with the Conservative government, and it wishes to shut down supervised injection sites, stating it supports the treatment of drug addicts over harm reduction initiatives. This is incredibly misleading, as the government does not support treatment either. The Auditor General's report of 2002 showed 95¢ of every dollar the government spends on the illicit drug issue goes to enforcement, leaving only 5¢ for everything else, including treatment. This does not sound like support to me. In fact, it makes me feel the federal government doesn't care about the most downtrodden of its citizens.
I realize drug addicts seem to be the new pariahs and the only outcome is jail or the cemetery, but I believe from personal experience that everyone counts.
I'm a 58-year-old man who presently has five years of sobriety. Before that, I was a street-entrenched polydrug addict using heroin and cocaine, which very few people supported even though I was a noted advocate for the rationalization around the drug issue, which was documented in the Genie Award-winning documentary Fix: The Story of an Addicted City.
I know the following seems counterintuitive, but it was the building of relationships with the medical staff at Insite that allowed me to take the first step, that being detox. I relapsed the first few times, but through perseverance by the staff at Insite and myself, I now live a straight life. It proves that anyone can change.
This change is what everyone in the downtown eastside really wants. This is not a party drug consumption place where people smoke a couple of joints on a Friday night. These streets are filled with people who have experienced incredible trauma in their lives and are just trying to cope.
I recall the story of a 19-year-old girl I met at Insite. She said it was her birthday. I said happy birthday to her, but she indicated that birthdays were incredibly sad to her. I asked why. She bluntly stated that on her 10th birthday, her father passed her around sexually to her three uncles. I was left speechless. How does anyone cope or recover from something so horrible? This is just one of many stories in the downtown eastside of Vancouver. I do not care what anyone says: that girl deserves whatever treatment is needed, including supervised injection.
Sometimes I wonder if those opposed to our centre actually know the full extent of the work we do there. I think we do a disservice in Canada and Europe by the names we call our sites. “Drug consumption rooms” in Europe and “supervised injection sites” in Canada are very descriptive phrases, but only describe a very small part of the services we offer.
In Canada at Insite our model is similar to the “drogenhaus” treatment centres in Germany. These are multiple-floor treatment centres where the higher up you go, the more involved is your treatment.
On the first floor at Insite we have the supervised injection room, but also a chill room where we can observe people both before and after injection, a health room where nurses on site can triage, and also two staff members who circulate among the users and try to hook them up with whatever services might be needed.
I have seen these staff members get housing for people, get them to health care, and in one case go so far as to get a person a bus ticket home, which we know had a very good outcome.
On the second floor is the detoxification centre. It is ironic that for a government that only believes in treatment, it took Insite, the supervised injection site, to open the first new detox in Vancouver in decades that I'm aware of.
It is the third floor that is critical. It is the transitional housing unit. Let me explain.
Most people can detox from a drug they are using in 7 to 10 days, but most long-term treatment centres require 30 days clean before they will admit someone. This left us with a 20-day gap, where the person leaving detox typically had to go back to the same environment that caused them to seek detox in the first place. The transitional housing unit therefore allows the person to stay in a treatment environment until they can get into long-term treatment centres. Bridging this three-week gap has been the most important service that I have seen, second only to the critical initial intervention that is the supervised injection. The results of all this have been documented in many scientific journals.
As for the science behind supervised injection sites, I can quote ad nauseam the scientific and medical published papers in support of Insite. In fact, there are over 60 published papers in support of Insite and I have yet to see one that does not support the work being done there.
In Bill C-2, Canadian Police Association president Tom Stamatakis is quoted as saying that in his experience, supervised injection sites “lead to an increase in criminal behaviour”. This is not backed up by science. Papers in both Canada and Europe suggest the exact opposite. Again, it seems counterintuitive, but again I believe the relationships between the drug users and the staff at Insite have a lot to do with this. While purely anecdotal, I have seen a great resurgence in those who visit Insite. It's like they have realized that somebody actually cares about them, and therefore, they want to care about themselves. This is certainly the first step to reclaiming their lives.
I think the government should be assisting, not putting up roadblocks, when helping communities with problems surrounding the drug issue. Supervised injection sites are not the only answer, but they certainly have a part to play with the street-entrenched drug user. Supervised injection sites hold out the first line of treatment and we should be doing everything possible to replicate the successes of Insite.
We do not support putting up supervised injection sites if all the supports are not in place. We also strongly believe that this is a medical issue and has to be treated as such. While enforcement is part of every discussion on the drug issue, it should not be weighed more heavily than any other part. We should also use this discussion to talk about more traditional treatment protocols. More detox centres are needed, as well as transitional housing units and long-term treatment centres.
This brings me to another dilemma. Why is the government tossing aside the law and the science regarding this issue? Is it based purely on the moral aspect of this issue? If this is, they are again wrong. There have been over two million injections at Insite, with 4,000 medically intervened overdoses, yet not one life has been lost. This goes in the face of Bill C-2's assertion that only one life per year is saved.
This brings me to the fact that I surely hold the higher moral ground. I choose to help the most disenfranchised in our communities. The only comparison I can think of is the lepers of biblical times. Their communities also shunned them. But as now, so was it then, and there are some who have chosen to help. I will close with this: If Jesus were alive today, he certainly, most certainly, would support supervised injections sites.
Thank you.