Mr. Speaker, before I start I would like to offer my sincere thanks to the member from Hamilton, not only for an insightful addition to this debate but also for the passion and the compassion that he brings to the debate, qualities that are so lacking on the other side.
So unwilling are Conservatives to defend this legislation that they will not speak to it. Time and time again an opportunity comes to speak to the bill and to justify their actions today and the day previously, but they stay silent. They have nothing to say.
Here is the challenge for them: it is that they have no evidence to support the decisions they are making in this legislation. It has become so cynical for the Conservatives that the first and virtually only thing they did after writing the bill was to use it as a fundraiser. They drafted legislation that negatively affects Canadian society, municipalities, and the police forces that do their work on our behalf, and then immediately sent out a fundraiser to raise funds for the Conservative Party.
That is what they use Parliament for. That is what they think legislation and law-making has become. It is to raise a few more bucks.
That is what they have done with the bill. They do not debate it. They do not defend it. They do not offer up any evidence.
One would think that a party that says it is interested in good governance and providing some sort of sanity in the way we make policies would have one scrap, one piece of paper in this place that produces so much paper, that would actually identify why they think this is a good idea and what is it based upon.
Let us deal with some of the facts.
Such radicals as the Canadian Medical Association think that safe injection sites work. Such radicals as the Nurses Association have testified that the bill is bad for Canada, along with such radicals as conservative and progressive mayors consistently in the city of Vancouver, which has the only safe injection site in Canada. Those people, regardless of their political affiliation, have taken up this cause and realize that harm reduction can only happen if we practise harm reduction.
The Conservatives take a knee-jerk ideological approach to this issue with no compassion whatsoever. They yammer and they heckle across the way, but they do not have anything to support their view on this issue. All they have is some cynical, cheap attempt to win a few votes and get some cheap dollars in a fundraising initiative, rather than supporting the city of Vancouver, British Columbia as a province, and the other municipalities that are looking to grapple with this intractable issue of drug abuse and addiction in our communities because their path has not worked so far.
We know that addiction rates drop at two times the level for those who have participated in the InSite program in Vancouver. If the Conservatives are actually interested in getting drugs off our streets, why not clean up the addicts? Why not help them out? We know this program works to do that. Why not do it? Do they have a better suggestion?
Of course they do not. Their suggestion is to put them in prisons, where they have six times the access to illegal drugs that they would have on the street. That is the Conservatives' agenda. That is the result of the Conservatives' agenda.
Those are facts. The Conservatives are entitled to their opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts. Those are the facts of the matter. There has been a one-third drop in the rate of death due to overdose in the city of Vancouver over the last 10 years since this program has started. There are 35% fewer people dying as a result of drug overdose, and the Conservatives talk about standing up for communities and protecting communities.
Which communities are they talking about? Are they talking about any of those people who are likely to die as a result of shutting down and preventing any safe injection sites? Those folks do not count as community. They are not Canadians. They do not matter in the Conservatives' world.
It is a deeply cynical point of view. It points to a government that is so wedded to an ideology that it refuses to listen to anybody, including doctors, police, nurses, and municipal leaders of this country. All of those people do not matter in the mix in creating the bill, none of them.
One would think that one Conservative would get up here today and offer some sort of fact-based decision-making. Conservatives decide on something based on their ideology and then present legislation that is only intended to raise money. It is only intended to wedge out a few more votes for their cynical purposes rather than to deal with the issue at hand.
If they want to deal with drug addiction in this country, then let us deal with it.
Conservatives defy the Supreme Court of Canada in its ruling. So much for respect for the courts. The Supreme Court ordered the government to do something about this, and it has done the opposite. It is disgraceful.
There is not right and left on this one, there is right and wrong. The Conservatives are wrong on the bill. New Democrats will stand up against them every single time.