Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House to represent the good people of Davenport in the great city of Toronto.
I have listened to this debate all day with great interest. It must pain the Minister of Veterans Affairs to get up and hector the opposition around an issue that he very much knows, based on his past work experience, is an incredibly complicated, complex issue that interweaves both public safety and public health. This is why we are here today, to debate this issue, but it must pain him to have to get up and try to present the ultrasimplistic description of the bill in the talking notes that the Conservatives foist upon their members, including their cabinet ministers.
What we are dealing with today from the Conservatives vis-à-vis this bill is a document that they use for fundraising. Of course, we see this time and time again with the Conservative government. They isolate refugees, limit their access to health care, and then send a fundraising letter out to see what kind of manna falls from heaven.
This reminds me of several issues that are at play in my own community. People everywhere in Canada, I think it is fair to say, want safe streets. Everybody wants to be able to walk their kids down the street and not have syringes lying around. I think it is fair to say that we like to see our streets safe. That is why it is important to have safe injection sites in Canada.
I find it amazing that we have a government that cannot brook any kind of large-scale public engagement plan when it talks about, for example, line 9 reversal in Toronto or when it talks about, for example, a nuclear fuel processing facility in the riding of Davenport, which, by the way, exists and has existed there for 50 years. Section 2.5 of its operating licence says that it must engage in a comprehensive public information program with the residents. For 50 years, very few people knew that the plant existed. Even the folks that I have spoken to, who have lived there for at least 40 years, were never once informed of what was going on in that factory.
Some folks on the other side of the aisle might start wondering why I am exposing their lack of interest in public information and public engagement. It is because they are not interested so much in that. In fact, with the line 9 reversal, they made it so difficult for people in my city to depute during those hearings that the hearings became a sham, yet the principles around public consultation for the setting up of a safe injection site are exhaustive.
Let us go through some of that. It requires a letter from the provincial minister who is responsible for health. It requires a letter from the local municipal government. It requires a letter from the head of the police force outlining any issue that it has. It requires a letter from a leading health professional organization. It requires a letter from the provincial minister responsible for public safety. It requires a statistical analysis. It requires police checks for people. It requires extensive public consultation.
All of this has to be gathered, in addition to a 90-day public notification period that the minister herself can also conduct. There are two streams of information coming in, and even then, as we can see from the bill, the minister does not have to even consider the application. In other words, once all that rigorous public engagement happens, the minister can decide whether he or she wants to even entertain the application.
I read that and I think that is very rigorous public engagement. I can tell the House that in my community, we are looking for rigorous public engagement when we are debating and considering very serious development projects in our community.
That public engagement is lacking. What is also lacking is a willingness on the part of the government to hold the relevant agencies to account to ensure safety in our communities. The reason is that it does not play well politically for the government members in their base, whereas this is a whole different story.
I want to go back to an issue that is very important in my community, and that is refugee health. We have people in our community, people living here in Canada, who cannot access health care and have to rely on volunteer doctors and nurses and donated medicine in order to deal with their illnesses. What is happening with these decisions to cut the federal interim health program for some refugees is that it is creating a public health issue as people delay care for illnesses until those illnesses get worse. Some of them are communicable illnesses. We have pregnant women who are not getting the kind of care they need because they are not able to access health care.
However, that is okay for these guys over here, because for them it is all about fundraising, as we saw very shortly after decisions were made with respect to safe injection sites, with a letter going out to the Conservative base and a website set up to scare Canadians.
That is national leadership. That is the kind of leadership that we are getting from the current Conservative government. Instead of a government that understands the complexity of issues like drug addiction, we are seeing it writ large and played out in public today. I am sure that the Minister of Veterans Affairs and members of cabinet and certainly the Prime Minister are good friends with a well-known public figure who is struggling with drug addiction right now, yet what they are trying to do is vilify people who are often poor and powerless, people who cannot access the kind of care they need. Sometimes it is folks struggling with mental health issues as well.
The debate we are having today is about safe injection sites, and it is about something bigger than that. It is about who we are as a country. It is about who we look after. It is about what the role of government is if we are not attempting to solve complex issues with rigorous consultation, with scientific fact-based arguments, with a view on public health and public safety. That is what this debate is about, that is why this is so important, and that is why Canadians who are watching it are not buying the simplistic argument that people are going to have heroin in their backyards.
I represent a downtown Toronto riding. I get people calling my office constantly, asking me what kind of programs we have to serve addicts and help them get off the street and have the streets safer. They want to see real solutions. They do not want to see another attempt by the Conservatives to divide Canadians in order to fill their party's coffers for the next election.