Mr. Speaker, I would first like to congratulate the member for Mississauga—Brampton South on her appointment as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health.
Here we are debating the first bill. The bill could be more properly named the anti-public safety bill because it is very stacked against public safety. Despite what the member has just said, if one looks at the bill and examines it very closely we can see that it is designed to prevent any safe injection site from ever being able to operate.
I would like to ask the member if she knows anything about InSite, the only safe injection site we have in Canada, which is operating in Vancouver, or how it operates. Is she aware that it went through all of the municipal requirements that she just talked about? As a former city councillor, I am very familiar with public notification, input, and so on. I wonder if she is aware that InSite went through a vigorous process of public scrutiny, city council looking at the application, and so on. In fact, it is now very well accepted in the community. Has she ever visited the facility? Does she know what goes on there?
If the member thinks the municipal process is a good process, then why not let these applications be dealt with at the municipal level? Why does it require that the minister have all these criteria in effect so that she can turn it down?