Mr. Speaker, before giving my speech, I want to point out that this debate unfortunately has to be take place because a Conservative bill has been introduced.
This week is Drug Awareness Week in Quebec. If we have to have this debate, this week is a good time to do it.
During this awareness week, there was a morning program on Radio-Canada. Three young women roughly my age were talking about their problems with addiction, with substance abuse. These utterly brilliant, committed and dynamic young women unfortunately became addicted to drugs. Fortunately, they had the support of their families. Their families and their friends managed to help them overcome their addiction. They had the support of their communities and their families. That is unfortunately not the case for everyone.
All too often, people addicted to drugs have no family to support them. Too often, they live in the street and sleep in emergency shelters. That is why it is important to have centres like InSite. There they are not viewed as bad people. Yes, they use drugs. Drug use is an indictable offence. I am aware of that. However, I must say that addiction goes far beyond that. People should not be thrown onto the street because they are addicted to an illegal substance. InSite is important because it provides a place where those people feel accepted. The staff there want to help them overcome their addiction.
Coming back to the example of the three women who gave an interview to promote Drug Awareness Week, they all have a future; these are incredible women. They have the courage to speak publicly about their personal substance abuse problems. I know that many other women and men, young people, are in the same situation, and they all have lives to lead. If we give them hope, if we welcome them, if we give them the health care they need, we can help them escape the cycle of addiction. As a society, we have a duty to try.
Thanks to InSite, 1.7% of users are more likely to go further, to OnSite, where they can get treatment to overcome their addiction. It is not easy to overcome an addiction to drugs, particularly hard drugs. Users have to be assisted by people who are well trained and very patient. In addition, people who receive care need a lot of courage to say they are ready to go into treatment to overcome their addiction. To have that courage, they need a place where they feel comfortable, where they do not feel rejected by society, but rather accepted. When they feel accepted, when they feel that someone is listening to them and when they know that people will take care of them, it is easier for them to ask for services.
That is exactly what InSite does. Of course, it is an injection site, but it is also a health care centre for users, and who knows, perhaps one day that will enable them to overcome their addiction problem. That is the ultimate objective. The ultimate objective is not for people to continue using hard drugs, but for us to be able to help them overcome their addiction problem.
This Conservative bill is too short-sighted. We notice this problem frequently with this government. It thinks only about the immediate future. It says it does not want to encourage this kind of behaviour.
I would really like it if there were no more drugs and no more drug addicts in society. I think that all my NDP colleagues dream about this at night, but it is not the real situation.
Right now, drugs are being distributed to younger and younger people in schools and other places. People get into drug use. Social problems can lead people to use hard drugs, and then they become addicted.
The reality is that unfortunately people become addicts. At the end of the day, we want to help them recover from their addiction.
This bill presupposes that we do not want people to use drugs. We do not want to see this, so they will go and hide in the streets or back alleys. This is not how addiction problems should be dealt with. Whether we like it or not, if these people do not feel accepted by the wider community or welcomed into a safe environment, they will not want to recover from their problems.
We want this program to work. InSite is the only supervised injection site in North America. However, in Quebec there is a service called Cactus Montréal. As I am a north shore MP, it is perhaps more relevant to our local situation, but I can tell you that the people at Cactus Montréal are watching InSite and all the progress it is making. They say it is a great project and that ultimately they would like to do the same thing.
InSite is the sole progressive example of a community that got organized and found an innovative solution to this problem. However, the government is setting up roadblocks, with requirements that are completely ridiculous to make sure that they cannot even operate. This flies in the face of the Supreme Court ruling that said it was legal and that InSite should continue its operations. The court added that these facilities are completely legal under section 7 of the charter.
I want to go back over a few statistics, because I think they are interesting. I have already said that the people who go to InSite at least once a week are 1.7 times more likely to enter a recovery program. In addition, 80% of the people questioned who live or work in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside support InSite. In spite of the “not in my backyard” syndrome, people who live in that area support the project.
I have been to Vancouver a number of times. I was even accompanied by the member for Vancouver East when I went to look at the real situation there. I can tell you that InSite works. The people support it and are happy to have this innovative service that takes in people who all too often are marginalized by society.
I am urging the Conservative members to reconsider this attack on InSite and other care services, which may perhaps be outside the norm, but which are innovative and really help people who are unfortunately addicted to drugs or have other drug problems.