Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Vancouver East for putting this motion forward for the emergency debate tonight. It is a very important consideration and I am glad that the House has taken the time to reflect on what is happening on the downtown eastside of Vancouver.
I also want to pick up on a theme that the member for Vancouver East mentioned a few moments ago. It is about the sense of community that exists on the downtown eastside of Vancouver. I think that often people have the sense that this is just a place of despair, a skid row area that does not have a sense of itself as a community, where people do not care for each other and where neighbours do not pay attention to what is happening with other neighbours.
My experience of the downtown eastside is exactly the opposite of that. People there are very much a community. It is very much a neighbourhood. People there do express incredible values of support and care for each other.
It is also a place of activism, where people take an interest in what is happening in their neighbourhood and are willing to organize, to fight and to stand in solidarity with each other to seek change and a transformation of the life that they know in that area.
It is a place of very difficult problems but also of great hope. I hope we never lose track of that.
The debate tonight is about the recent study which showed that Vancouver's aboriginal drug users on the downtown eastside were twice as likely as non-aboriginal users to be infected with HIV. This is certainly an issue that is of very great concern to all of us who know that neighbourhood, who know people who live there and who have friends and relatives who live there, but who also want to see an appropriate social policy in Canada.
The study showed that 18.5% of aboriginal men and women who injected drugs such as cocaine and heroin became HIV positive, compared with 9.5% of non-aboriginal intravenous drug users. There obviously is a particular issue here in this neighbourhood that is affecting the aboriginal community disproportionately.
Over the course of the night, we have heard about many aspects, many reasons and many theories about why that might be, but one of the things in this debate that has disappointed me is the sort of underlying assumption that we have limited resources with which to address problems like this.
We talk about how we live in a wealthy and well-to-do society and about how we have many advantages in this society. We here also know that the government is running surpluses. I find it a little hard to talk about surplus, about government having more revenues than it is spending on programs, when we have needs like those that exist on the downtown eastside of Vancouver and when we have needs like those that exist in the aboriginal communities across Canada.
It is clearly a misnomer to say that there is a surplus in the government coffers when needs like those that exist among the aboriginal community in Vancouver, among intravenous drug users and among people who are living with AIDS and HIV go unaddressed. I think it is absolutely unjustified to pursue huge tax cuts for profitable corporations, for banks and oil companies, when these kinds of needs exist in our community. How can we possibly justify giving breaks to profitable corporations, to the wealthy, when these kinds of needs exist in our communities and go unaddressed?
How can we do it? There seems to be no rationale in cutting the fiscal capacity of our federal government to the tune of $190 billion over six years when these kinds of needs exist in our community. Surely we should be considering the capacity of our government to assist citizens by dealing with the problems in our social infrastructure in Canada.
Many times tonight we have heard the Conservative members talk about the need to provide economic opportunity. I do not think anybody would disagree with the idea that it is an important facet, but are we to do that at the expense of addressing the important social needs of our communities?
Are we to do that and not recognize that it is hard to take advantage of an economic opportunity when people do not have a roof over their head, or when there is no food on their plate, or when they cannot dress decently to go for a job interview, or when their teeth are so bad that no one would hire them in the first place, or when they cannot get the treatment they need for mental illness, drug addiction, HIV-AIDS, tuberculous or hepatitis? These are all things that I think beg the question slightly.
We should be providing these services. We should be looking at these programs. Throwing money at a problem does not always solve it either. But to say that we have limited resources in the circumstances in which we live here in Canada and in the circumstances that our government operates is absolutely wrong.
There are a couple of things that I wanted to talk about specifically tonight during this debate. One is the whole question of drug policy. I think it has been proven very clearly and definitively that the kinds of drug policies that we have that stress enforcement and criminal sanction against drug users is completely ineffective. It does not solve the problem or address the problem of drugs in our society.
I wish we had taken advantage of the history that we have with the alcohol prohibition movement and learned lessons from that.
Mr. Speaker, I am reminded that I am splitting my time with the member for Burnaby—New Westminster.
We should have learned something from alcohol prohibition. When it was in force in the United States, we saw exactly the same kinds of problems we see now with drug prohibition in Canada. We see the same kinds of addiction issues. We see the same kinds of gang related crime issues. We see the same kinds of family dislocation and community dislocation.
We even see the same kind of danger in neighbourhoods when stills exploded in people's garages and basements as we see with grow-ops and meth labs in our neighbourhoods now. I think we could have learned from that experience. I think it has been clear and definitive.
Another issue that I want to talk about that I think bears on what is happening on the downtown eastside in Vancouver is the whole approach to harm reduction. In Vancouver we have been championing the four pillar approach to dealing with drug addiction and drug issues in the city: prevention, treatment, enforcement and harm reduction.
Harm reduction is always the pillar that seems to be the hardest fought and certainly with the current federal government. In Vancouver this approach is not controversial. I think, widely, people accept that this is the right way to deal with the crisis around drug addiction and drug use in Vancouver. We know that we need every aspect of that four pillar approach, but we particularly need harm reduction approaches.
Years ago when needle exchanges were first proposed, Vancouver was one of the first places to set up a needle exchange. That was controversial in the beginning. I think the appropriateness became very clear in Vancouver of ensuring that those people who were addicted to injection drugs had clean works to use, so that they were not spreading disease and were not harming themselves by that practice. The needle exchanges have proven very successful in saving lives and preventing the spread of disease in Vancouver.
We also have a very important project in Vancouver that should be a permanent feature of our approach to dealing with drug addiction in our community. That is in the Insite safe injection site. We know that Insite has been saving lives. We know that it has worked and it is effective in its goals.
We know that providing a clean and safe environment for people who are addicted to injection drugs and where there are medical staff to supervise and assist, and also provide referrals to treatment and other kind of health care has improved the circumstances of hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the city of Vancouver.
We also know that it has been studied by independent analysts. We have had over 25 studies of the Insite facility. The studies have shown that it is meeting its goals, that it is effective in reducing harm and saving lives, yet the federal government still looks for another study. It is looking for an excuse to not renew its licence permanently.
The short term licence renewals that we have are affecting the ability to deliver an appropriate service in our community. I think there is widespread support for the service and short term licence renewals should not continue. We need to make sure that the government reverses its policy there and gets its act together when it comes to dealing appropriately with Insite.
The whole issue of housing is one that I think is absolutely crucial in all of this. People who do not have a roof over their head, who are homeless and living on the streets also have severe health problems. They are not going to receive the assistance they need in dealing with their addiction issues. We know that the housing programs of this country are sorely lacking. There is no national housing program in Canada.
We had to fight tooth and nail to see the homelessness program renewed in the last couple of years. This program is coming up for renewal again in the next few months. All of these things will contribute to the health of the community in Vancouver. I appreciate having had the opportunity to speak on this issue tonight.