Mr. Speaker, the member is obviously suffering from suspense with respect to the bill. I inform him, with great pleasure, that we support the bill. However, I find it almost laughable that the member had the audacity to say in the House that the government has done things for HIV-AIDS.
I am so angry about what the government has done to the Insite safe injection site in Vancouver. The Insite safe injection site is part of a system that saves lives. Even the police, the mayor, the premier and the medical personnel want it in Vancouver. It reduces crime, saves lives and money and reduces health care costs. Why do we know this? Because it has been peer reviewed and published in The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, not once but several times.
What do the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health say about that? They say “we don't have the evidence, we don't know if this works”. That is bunk and it is nonsense. If the government has an ideological approach to saving the lives of people who have substance abuse problems, it should come right out and say it, rather than trying to maintain some sort of fiction that it cares about these people.
If the government were interested in these people, who live in east Vancouver and across our country and who have substance abuse problems, in particular injectable drug problems, and if the government wants to reduce the incidence of death, mortality, morbidity, HIV, hepatitis C, hepatitis B rates and other problems in this population, then why does it not extend for five years the Insite safe injection site?
Why do the Conservatives not put this in as part of an integrated harm reduction policy across the country and work with other cities that want to have this? Why did they close it down? Why did they not support the access health care system in my city of Victoria, British Columbia? Why did they not give the $150,000 to a program to deal with the inner city problem in Victoria and with a situation that affects individuals who live on the street, have psychiatric problems, substance abuse problems, brain injury problems and others? The provincial government of British Columbia has given a couple of million dollars to it.
Why did the government not put a pathetic $150,000 aside to help these people in an access health care system that does not have a safe injection site involved in it? We have a huge problem in Victoria of people living on the street, people who have substance abuse problems, people who are homeless, people who are brain injured, people who have psychiatric problems. It is an embarrassment that the government rejected this. I ask that Conservatives change their mind and invest in this and support the Insite safe injection program.