It's changing the goalposts in the middle of the game here, Mr. Chair.
I think it's very ironic that when the NDP motion tried to change the short name of the bill, currently labelled as Respect for Communities Act, we weren't allowed to do it according to the rules of the committee, because the bill had to be substantially changed in order to change the name of the bill. Not a comma in this bill has been changed.
Mr. Chair, I wish to say that this shows a lack of respect for the communities. The people who are addicts in those communities, the people who are the most vulnerable, the people who have died from overdose deaths in the downtown eastside year after year, which became such an absolute shame, are part of these communities that this government purports to have respect for. They show very little respect.
We brought forward witnesses, Mr. Chair. This bill will be intruding on provincial jurisdiction, municipal jurisdiction, and jurisdiction of local police forces and of the medical and nursing professions in that area, and yet this bill did not allow people from the province, especially the Fraser Health Authority, which has been running InSite for a while, to be able to come and present. They were not allowed to be here as witnesses because of the shortening of everything we do in order to ram things through. They weren't here, and yet of all the people we should be listening to, it should be them. The VPD drug enforcement officer at the time, Kash Heed, should have been able to come and say what the drug scene and the crime scene and the open drug scene caused in Vancouver at the time and how it changed remarkably after InSite.
To me, Mr. Chair, having been here for 21 years, I just feel that what happens here, with no bill coming before committee ever, or only rarely, being altered, it makes a joke of committees. It makes a joke of looking at the idea of talking about a bill and changing it, because no amendments are accepted by this government. I think it flies in the face of democracy. It flies in the face of the democratic institution. It flies in the face of the role of any all-party committee in this House when members tend to vote in ways that do not show they've actually heard a word the witnesses have said. The witnesses could speak until the end of time and there would be no change in the thinking here.
It's a rubber-stamp committee, and I just want to make sure this is clearly stated from me—