Mr. Speaker, what this bill really does, and Canadians should know this, is make it now entirely a matter of the federal Minister of Health deciding whether or not an InSite location would be opened in the country.
That is the truth of it. The member knows it. The effect of this is actually quite dangerous. Here is how the government referred to this question in the Speech from the Throne. I think was difficult for the Governor General to even utter these words. It callously referred to the addiction question as “loopholes that allow for the feeding of addiction under the guise of treatment“.
That is more than disappointing. I am sure it is disconcerting for a lot of Conservative MPs who know the truth of the matter.
Here are a couple of facts I would like to introduce into the debate for the member to respond to. If we look at the Vancouver east InSite location, there were only 30 new cases of HIV in 2006, as compared to the 2,100 new cases of HIV in 1996. We know it costs $600,000 over a lifetime to treat HIV infection in the health care system. That is one thing I would like the member to address.
We also know that 87% of InSite's clients suffer from hepatitis C, another terrible, difficult chronic disease. It costs a fortune to treat these conditions.
Why would the government make it more difficult for us to act coherently in a public health fashion by taking this traditional partnership approach away from the provinces, taking it right up to the office of the Minister of Health, subject to the vagaries and ideology of a government that clearly does not subscribe to science?