Debates of Nov. 28th, 2013

Respect for Communities Act

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, indeed, it is an honour for me to stand here to discuss this particular issue. I have done a bit of research in the past little while, as I am not familiar with the areas in question, though I have experienced living around it. I did live in Vancouver for some time.

I became interested, after reading the evidence put forward and the decision by the Supreme Court, in the issue of harm reduction. Some time ago, I was in Europe with a delegation and we were talking about harm reduction in a very broad sense. We were exploring the best practices to reduce harm in big cities and to reduce drug abuse and how we could do it in a very smart way, not necessarily punitive all the time. Of course, there has to be certain punishment involved when it comes to drug abuse, but we certainly have to enable people to put themselves in better places by reducing harm. That is where the focus should be. I heard compelling reasons as to why harm reduction should be at the centre of this.

In this particular bill, there is talk of frameworks so that these sites could exist and that there would be rules to follow in order for the sites to do what it is they do, which I believe is good work. As my hon. colleague just pointed out, though, 40 requirements in Bill C-2 for InSite to exist really straps these people into positions—

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Too bad there weren't more requirements for the Senate.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

There you go.

Basically, what we are looking at here is something that is onerous for these people to exist. We are scrambling now. Before the bill becomes law, hopefully we can engage members in debate and try to put some reason to this.

Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, would do the following:

(a) create a separate exemption regime for activities involving the use of a controlled substance or precursor that is obtained in a manner not authorized under this Act;

(b) specify the purposes for which an exemption may be granted for those activities; and

(c) set out the information that must be submitted to the Minister of Health before the Minister may consider an application for an exemption in relation to a supervised consumption site.

This is where things start to fall off the rails, as it were, because it is an incredibly overly prescriptive way of trying to reduce harm in the cities and the impact drug abuse has on all of our communities, whether they are big cities or small towns. Very few people in this country have not had the experience of seeing what heavy drug abuse can do to communities and families.

Liberals feel that the bill far exceeds the 2011 Supreme Court of Canada ruling regarding InSite. We believe this is an ideological bill from a government always opposed to evidence-based harm reduction measures, such as safe injections sites, as I talked about earlier. Safe injection sites must be part of a broader evidence-based national drug policy that saves lives, reduces harm and promotes public health. The criteria that must accompany an application as listed in this particular bill are so cumbersome that it raises serious concerns as to whether any future site could be established in Canada, as my colleague from Alberta pointed out about the 40 requirements involved here.

We support the need to consult broadly and work in conjunction with provincial and municipal governments, public health authorities, business associates, and of course, the public. The engagement with other levels of government is not just important in this particular matter, but in all particular matters these days. The idea of engaging the provinces on much broader issues seems to be lost. I cannot remember the last time this country engaged with the provinces, certainly with the head of state of each province, with the first ministers involved, to allow them, in a public manner, to engage in a national issue. This is another one of these things.

It was initially launched as an experiment that has proven to be successful. I am talking about InSite, of course. It has saved lives and improved health and communities and the incidence of drug use and crime in the surrounding area. The Vancouver police supports InSite, as well as the City of Vancouver and the British Columbia government. The minister has never even stepped into Vancouver's InSite and her legislation is based on ideology and not evidence.

Now we go back to the theme once more of evidence-based policy.

I have been here nine years and the Conservatives have been in government for about seven years. It seems to me that year after year those who work so diligently to give us the evidence upon which we can base our decisions have had numerous protests. Not just when it comes to InSite, but also in the case of the Library and Archives, the Meteorological Service of Canada, Statistics Canada. All these employees have high amounts of education and want to do their jobs in the best manner possible, yet each and every time policy seems to run away from what we consider to be evidence-based policy or at least the making of decisions and drafting of policy with the latest data and facts in mind, which are given to us by our experts.

This is just another example. Harm reduction is actually taking place in a supervised site. Now, in order for them to exist and do what they do best, we find ourselves in the situation where the government wants to strap them down. It is almost as if they want to use, I believe the term is, “regulation creep”, where the government would allow regulations to be imposed that would suffocate a particular incentive or a project, which has been successful in making our communities better.

That is the unfortunate part because when these regulations take hold, as was pointed out, the 40 criteria are going to make it near impossible for these places to exist. The Vancouver police certainly would not be happy, and the Province of British Columbia feels much the same.

Only an hour after the legislation was introduced, Conservative campaign director, Jenni Byrne issued a crass and misleading fundraising letter to supporters stating that the Liberals and the NDP want addicts to shoot up heroin in backyards in communities all across the country.

Now we have come to the nub of the issue. This is what it is all about. It is not about creating a framework for harm reduction. This is a 30-second ad or a tweet of less than 140 characters that talks about how good the Conservatives are and how bad we are. The Conservatives are chasing after this headline. Lost in the headlines would be a lot of drug abuse taking place in the dark shadows once more.

This site reduces the harm and brings it under control so that these communities can be better. It will not eradicate the issue. Nothing can eradicate the issue of drug abuse.

Certainly if evidence-based policy tells us that this is making a difference in our communities, making our streets safer, a phrase the Conservatives use all the time, why would they want to chase after a headline with a fundraising letter and a notice in Canadians' post office boxes geared toward an election campaign, when there is no election campaign? It smacks of desperation, and it is unfortunate that this is a ploy the Conservatives are using. I am not going to blame every member in the House for engaging in that. There are a lot of people on all sides of the House who, when they see it in their post office box, are obviously disappointed, and they just roll their eyes.

However, we are affected by this. We need to have a mature debate. I hope the idea of this is not to go after a headline and score some cheap political points. I say, “I hope.” We can only hold out for hope.

We support evidence-based policies to reduce harm and protect public safety. These are paramount. They should always be paramount. A 2011 Supreme Court ruling declared the Minister of Health's 2008 decision not to grant an extension of the exemption of section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which had allowed Vancouver's safe injection site, a safe consumption site, to operate since September 2003, had violated section 7 of the charter rights. That is:

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

Determining whether there has been a breach of section 7 involves a two-part analysis that courts considering potential section 7 violations must ask. First, is there a deprivation of the right to life, liberty or security? Second, if so, is the deprivation in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice? Therein lies the core of the issue.

This is about harm reduction and this about the rights of communities to reduce harm and to reduce drug abuse.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my hon. Liberal colleague, but first I would like to thank him for mentioning the importance of harm reduction so many times.

Yesterday the Standing Committee on Health was examining the issue of prescription drug abuse. Witnesses from the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Nurses Association and the College of Family Physicians of Canada all agreed that the government should correct the mistake it made in 2007 when it removed the fourth pillar from the government's anti-drug strategy, which is harm reduction.

My question is very simple. He already mentioned that the fourth pillar was eliminated from the strategy based on ideology.

Can he explain why the Conservatives and people on the right oppose the notion of helping people who are struggling, who might not yet be ready to begin treatment, and who could be helped through harm reduction strategies such as a supervised injection site?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, this is a very valid point. This issue tends to divide itself along ideological lines, not just in Canada but also in the United States and Europe. As I mentioned earlier, I went to Europe and I found that a lot of people look at the idea of harm reduction and in particular look at these supervised sites as some kind of promotional or enabling mechanism to allow people to continue their bad practices.

However, what I find, which is promising, is that when people such as the hon. colleague get in front of people who are the practitioners, the physicians, the nurses, the health officers, the people who live in Vancouver on the east side, the councillors and politicians within Vancouver, when they are exposed to the evidence I would say the vast majority of them, if not all of them, change their attitudes toward it.

There is nothing wrong with changing our attitudes toward an evidence-based policy that is put in front of us. We change our minds a lot around here. The problem is that we all fault each other for doing it.

We must look at the evidence in this case. As my colleague points out, in that committee, just listen to the people who deal with this day in and day out. Here we are as politicians making decisions based on what we read on paper, but the police of Vancouver say it is the way to go. Now if the police are saying it, there has to be something to this.

To address my colleague's question, I hope more of these right-wing ideological people get more exposed to the evidence, as he was.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think the debate is not one of ideology, it is one of understanding public policy and the nature of what a broad vision of public safety is, not only in what the member talked about in terms of harm reduction but also in the community that he is questioning, the community where such a site would be.

I mentioned to one of my colleagues earlier the fact that there is no framework right now for a supervised injection site.

Presently there are just two aspects in section 56 and they are explicitly for research and for things like using illicit drugs when sniffer dogs are being trained, et cetera. Does the member not think that there should be some framework for a site that has such a high level of risk so that communities can have the input from police, councillors, the general public, the provincial health authority? Does he not think that is something that should be necessary?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what the member is trying to say about the framework. There is no doubt it. Any plan that we want to carry out that reduces harm has to have an established framework as such.

However, the requirements in the bill, and let us talk about the bill for a moment, are so prescriptive and overly restrictive, we are starting to read between the lines that Conservatives do not want it to exist. I would not kill a mouse with a bazooka, pardon the analogy, but nonetheless, it is the only analogy I have right now, because the Conservatives are trying to take the very spirit of harm reduction out of these supervised sites with an overly prescriptive bill.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-2, an Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. In listening to the debate in the House, it is good we are having it.

Today, I would like to talk about the history of the Vancouver safe injection site, or the harm reduction site, because it adds to the debate on of how we might move forward with future sites.

If I have time, I will also talk a bit about the scientific evidence that backs up the creation and continual operation of these sites because as a science and tech critic that is something I look at quite regularly.

In looking at the history of the safe injection site in Vancouver, the theme would be local choice. I have lived very close to the site. I know people who manage the site. When I was a professor at SFU, I would take students to the site when there were no clients there. I have known people who have used the site.

Sometimes when we talk about the facility in the House, we tend to overstate what it is. I am not sure if any of my colleagues on the other side have had a chance to visit the safe injection site, but I think they would be amazed at how innocuous it is. There is a lot to look at when walking down Hastings Street because it is a very active community. However, one would walk right by the site because there are no flashing lights which say “Inject heroin here”. It is a medical facility.

When one enters through its doors, it looks kind of like a hair salon. It has maybe up to 15 stainless steel booths with mirrors in front of them, bright lights, chairs and a nurse's station so when people are injecting there they are using clean needles and are being supervised. If they overdose, they can be rescued. There is also a room where they can relax and adjust to the effects of the drug. Then they move out. It is not a scary place. It is a place of comfort for a lot of people. That is why the history of this site is so important.

The safe injection site was created in Vancouver because there was a policy problem that emerged in the late eighties and early nineties where hundreds of bodies were being pulled out of hotels in the downtown east side. I know this because I had spoken with Senator Larry Campbell, who was the coroner. He said that he would go into hotels in the downtown east side and would pull dead bodies out. This was happening over and over again, mainly because of overdoses.

The mayor of Vancouver at the time was Philip Owen. He was in the Non-Partisan Association, which is the name of the party. It is a coalition of federal Liberals and federal Conservatives. He was a three term mayor at that point. I would describe him, and I think he would agree, as a very Christian man. He has a predilection for ballroom dancing, but is a deeply religious man who, as mayor of the city, felt that he had to address this. What had happened simultaneously was that a number of addicts had started the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, which was an unofficial safe injection site. Mayor Philip Owen, who was a good policy maker, decided to meet with those people and ask them what their problems were. I do not want to speak for him, but some of the questions he was facing were some of the questions my colleagues on the other side have. The idea of providing a safe site for people to inject clashes with the values they hold.

Philip Owen is a brave man. He commissioned a study on harm reduction and put it through council as official policy. It was voted through Vancouver city council. I believe the party then kicked him out as leader. It said that there were people with other ambitions who decided to move against him. It became the main debate of the 2002 civic election in Vancouver, which featured Larry Campbell, who had moved from coroner to mayoralty candidate, versus Jennifer Clarke, another mayoralty candidate. The debate throughout that whole election was about this safe injection site.

Larry Campbell ran for a party called COPE that had really never in the history controlled an absolute majority on council. He won, and that is why we have InSite today. Larry Campbell championed this cause, won an election on it, convinced all the local area residents and merchants, police, emergency services, that this was necessary and, as we heard, in 2003, this site was created.

The bill is problematic because it is too prescriptive.

If we listen to the story about how InSite was developed in Vancouver, it was a local choice. However, these local choices sometimes need some flexibility in terms of development. The are really driven locally anyway.

If we look at the funding of who provides these facilities, this is also co-operative and negotiated. We have federal, provincial, municipal agencies. We have police forces. We already have the local community negotiating. I can tell members that if a local community does not want a safe injection site, it will not get it, whatever federal regulation because it is solely driven by a local policy problem.

What now we have in Vancouver I think has been around the world in other places too. It is not like we invented this in Vancouver. We borrow from other places around the world. We have a facility where people can go and inject their drugs safely, under supervision, and then get on with their lives.

Heroin is a bugaboo. It is an illegal substance. However, I think the question that Philip Owen would have asked himself is what the alternatives were. I think the other side perhaps would prefer abstinence.

If somebody is a heroin addict and has perhaps other mental health issues and has a low income, it is very difficult, impossible actually, to safely go from being a heroin user to a non-heroin user overnight, especially because there are hardly any facilities for that person to do it.

It is about management. That is really what these sites do is help manage these problems that keep people alive.

My core belief is an idea called “intrinsic equality”, meaning that everybody's life is worth the same. Wayne Gretzky is not worth five drug users. Everybody's life is worth the same. It is found in many religions, but I am not coming at it from a religious perspective, but more of a philosophical perspective; all lives are of equal worth.

I think this is the problem Philip Owen would have faced. I believe life, in his perspective,would have been a sacred thing that is worth protecting. “If I do not go forward with this policy, people are going to die. Can I have that on my conscience?” I think the answer was no. This safe injection site is a simple policy solution to manage our problem that could not be eradicated.

It is a very mature way of looking at things and I am very grateful.

It is not for every community because there is not the need. This is why a local community choices are so important.

I would have believed the bill was a genuine attempt if the other side had not tried for so many years to shut down the safe injection site in Vancouver, indeed, writing fundraising letters about how it was shutting it down and so forth.

If this had been entered much earlier in the debate, it would have been something I would have considered,. However, my colleagues are right, that this is not a genuine attempt to open this debate. It is disappointing.

Again, I would ask my colleagues to reconsider, to visit the site themselves to see how innocuous it is and how it is helping people and bringing the community together in a positive way, in a community that is suffering greatly at times.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for sharing a lot of the history of InSite. It is fantastic to hear how that unfolded and how we ended up with the site in Vancouver.

One of the interesting things we are hearing from the other side is a lot of talk about communities and how communities need to have their voices heard. We are representing the community. The member comes from the community where this site is located.

Once upon a time, I had the opportunity to live in the Vancouver area, in the city of north Vancouver, and worked in the downtown east side quite often. I would see individuals on the street in the 1990s with needles in their arms. One of the things that the social workers and the folks in the downtown east side would say was that they wished they had a facility where they could at least monitor these people to ensure they were not dying and give them an opportunity to know that treatment was there, where they knew they could step into a building, not feel judged, do what they had to do safely and then be offered treatment if they were ready for it. InSite is doing that.

Could my colleague comment on that?

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my grand colleague from Sudbury, who I enjoy working with on the industry committee.

He is exactly right. It is important to know that this facility is not just a place where addicts go, inject and then leave. It is also a place where they can get help. If we talk to people who are or have been heroin addicts, the last thing they want to do is continue with this. They do not want to be heroin addicts. It is not something that they choose; it is usually because of depression or other reasons why people get addicted to these drugs. They desperately want to be able to manage their problem to get their lives back under control and, ultimately, reduce their dependency.

That is exactly what facilities such as this do. They give people options that they do not think they had. They keep people alive. They stop people from taking water out of mud puddles and injecting it into themselves.

It really is a win-win and it saves significant amounts of money, if that is important. It should be a consideration.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his insight, no pun intended, into what has proven to be quite a successful community engagement in Vancouver.

I would challenge anybody in the House to find any drug user who does drugs because he or she wants to or because it would be a good time. Most, if not all, drug users are people who have scars, wounds and things in their lives that they want to hide from.

It seems to me that any legislation on this level should be coming from the perspective of how we can help organizations like this integrate into the community. How can we help organizations like this work with the community so they can serve the community, as opposed to putting up barriers and making it more difficult for organizations like this to exist?

I would like my hon. colleague to comment on that.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the questions are good today and I really hope they add to the debate.

Safe injection sites, again, are a flashpoint for debate just because they are new. They are new because people's thinking on them has started to change, mainly because of the great scientific evidence that we have had. Again, these are peer-reviewed studies that are in international scientific journals which stem from the work that has been done in the Vancouver site, as well as sites all around the world.

We have to pay attention to this evidence, because people are suffering. It is not just the people who are immediately affected by addiction, it is the communities. If we were in the downtown east side before the safe injection site was put in place, we would see a community that was in real pain and chaos. After the safe injection site, it is not totally fixed, but the harm has been reduced.

That is really the key here. When we went from thinking about it as a criminal matter to a health matter, that was when the debate started to change and we had a more mature debate about it. I hope we can do that in the House.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I sit on the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health, and yesterday we were considering a somewhat similar issue, namely how to prevent prescription drug abuse.

Witnesses included health experts from the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Nurses Association and the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

These three organizations are the best of the best and represent thousands of health professionals across Canada in all provinces and territories, including urban communities, which struggle with problems of abuse of both prescription and non-prescription drugs, and rural areas. We must not bury our heads in the sand—drugs are everywhere in Canada.

In Saguenay and Chicoutimi, where I grew up, it was said there were both fewer drugs and fewer kinds of drugs, in comparison with major cities like Montreal and Quebec City. In reality, I knew people who used when I was in high school. In short, we should not delude ourselves: drugs are everywhere in Canada.

Until 2007, harm reduction was the fourth pillar of the national anti-drug strategy. The Conservative government unfortunately decided to remove it to focus only on prevention, treatment and enforcement of Canadian laws.

By removing the harm reduction element, the Conservative government has turned a blind eye to an entire category of people, and I am referring to those who are addicted to hard drugs. These people are caught in a downward spiral and feel they are trapped in a hole where their world becomes darker and darker every day. Although they may want to escape from drug abuse, they are not prepared to do so. These people are not mentally or physically able to take the initiative to seek treatment for their addictions.

However, the NDP and I—and I assume the Liberals agree as well—believe that we should not abandon these people. They are Canadians. They may be our brothers, our sisters, our children, adults or parents. No one should be left behind in Canada.

That is why I insist that the Conservative government, or the next government in 2015, which I hope will not be Conservative, put harm reduction back in the national anti-drug strategy.

This is the second time that I am speaking about Bill C-2. For several days, the Conservatives have been really criticizing Canada's only supervised injection site, InSite, which is located in Vancouver. I would like to know what exactly is so bad about it, other than the fact that they want to scare people with campaigns against heroin.

For example, the Conservative government recently launched an Internet campaign called, “Keep heroin out of our backyards”. If we ask parents with children, or even adults without children or single people if they want heroin near their homes, no one would say they want heroin in their neighbourhood, or their downtown or their rural area, except maybe for those who do not understand the issue.

No one wants to promote the use of heroin and hard or soft drugs in Canada, although the Liberal party wants to promote soft drugs. The NDP is more concerned with the marginalized. Drug addicts are marginalized and we must help them.

Yesterday, the Standing Committee on Health heard from some excellent witnesses from the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Nurses Association, and the College of Family Physicians of Canada. I asked all of them the same question. I asked them if they believe that the government should put harm reduction back in the national drug strategy. They all answered yes.

I would like to ask the Conservatives if they have any expertise in health. Harm reduction can only be achieved if we take care of people with serious drug problems. We cannot make them see reason by simply telling them to stop using drugs. We have to help them.

Places like InSite help by taking in heroin addicts and giving them clean needles. If those addicts are on the street and they share needles, cases of hepatitis A, B and C and HIV will increase and it will cost Canadians and the provincial health care systems dearly.

Supervised injection sites take in drug addicts, but they bring their own drugs. I want to reassure the public that the government is not buying drugs for the people who uses these sites.

There are nurses and therapists at these sites to help the addicts get off drugs. They take the addicts as they are and guide them, not necessarily to a cure, but to a light at the end of the tunnel.

A number of other problems are associated with living in the world of drugs, such as homelessness and prostitution, which people enter into in order to pay for drugs. When a person spends their entire paycheque—if they have one—on drugs, then they cannot put $300 or $500 aside for housing. When people are deeply into drugs, they are no longer able to work. They leave the job market and end up on the streets.

Do my Conservative colleagues want people with drug problems to be on the street? The answer is no. The slogan for the Conservatives' campaign is “Keep heroin out of our backyards”. I agree. I do not want people to use drugs and leave needles in the parks in my neighbourhood. No one wants that, but we have to help those people.

The Canadian Medical Association has this to say about Bill C-2:

Supervised injection programs are an important harm reduction strategy. Harm reduction is a central pillar in a comprehensive public health approach to disease prevention and health promotion.

I would ask the Conservative Party to think about that before the upcoming vote on this bill.

I will now share a quote from the Canadian Nurses Association:

Evidence demonstrates that supervised injection sites and other harm reduction programs bring critical health and social services to vulnerable populations—especially those experiencing poverty, mental illness and homelessness.

A government truly committed to public health and safety would work to enhance access to prevention and treatment services—instead of building more barriers.

I have to wonder what is behind this. Why have the Conservatives been fighting since 2007 to block any approaches and treatments based on harm reduction?

There may be an answer, and I think it is important to share. Bill C-2 is part of the Conservatives' greater plan to bring all government programs and policies in line with their own anti-drug and abstinence ideals. I am also against drugs, but the Conservatives' methods are unsound and will have consequences for the Canadian public.

The Conservatives are slowly eliminating all the ways for Canadians to safely access supervised injection sites and for people with terminal cancer to access medical marijuana, for example. I think it makes sense to enable these people to ease their suffering.

In conclusion, the Conservatives' plan will undo all the progress that has been made in public health and will nullify the benefits that communities have experienced from harm reduction programs over the past 20 years. I thank the Conservative government for setting Canadians back and abandoning them. That was sarcasm, by the way.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when I was young, my father was a teacher at Samuel Hearne Senior Public School. The school engaged in regular community cleanups as part of its civic engagement with its local community. Of course, this meant going into different parts of the neighbourhood to clean up discarded trash. Something very serious happened during one of those days: my father, while picking up a pile of garbage, was pricked by a discarded syringe.

This was the late 1980s. I was nine or 10 years old at the time, and that was really my first experience in discovering things such HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and other communicable diseases, which my father then had to get tested for because of that discarded syringe.

I would like to ask the member about the harm reduction and increased safety in communities that could be reached by having supervised injection sites available for intravenous drug users so that they could get clean syringes and not be discarding them in alleyways, parks, and other public spaces where teachers or children could be harmed by them.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my NDP colleague for that excellent question.

I have met his father and he is a remarkable man. As a citizen, teacher and mentor for the young people in his class, he has made an effort to protect the environment, and I am grateful for that. I am also grateful that he is teaching our young people good values, such as taking care of their neighbourhoods and society and picking up litter.

The government intends to close down supervised injection sites. I know that there are no safe injection sites in the riding represented by my colleague. A number of cities in Canada, such as Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal, are interested in opening such sites. Eventually, perhaps he will be interested in having such a site in his area of the country. If Canada prevents supervised injection sites from opening, what happened to the hon. member's father will happen again. Drug addicts are not going to put their dirty needles in the nice little yellow waste receptacles found in hospitals and other secure areas. They are going to leave them on the street. People who want to do their part for the environment or people who pick up litter and empty garbage cans will get pricked. This could be tragic for families. Was the needle infected? Could it make me sick or kill me? I do not wish that on anyone.

I am asking the Conservative government to think about the families that could be affected by dirty needles.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord for his excellent remarks and for his excellent work as the NDP's deputy health critic. He knows his stuff.

His arguments as to why Canada should have supervised injection sites are based on facts. I find it unfortunate that the Conservatives' arguments are based on their ideology and prejudices. What is more, they are unable to provide any scientific evidence or point to any scientific studies that show that supervised injection sites are harmful and detrimental to public safety.

I would like my colleague to elaborate on the importance of supervised injection sites. Their importance has been scientifically proven, through various studies. I would like to hear what he has to say about those studies.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

The hon. member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord has 45 seconds to respond.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my NDP colleague for her good question. It gives me an opportunity to talk about statistics and the research that has been done on this topic.

A 2008 study conducted by Boyd et al. concluded that 80% of the people questioned who live or work in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside support InSite. A scientific survey was conducted and, according to the study, 80% of people agree with the site. That leaves 20% who do not agree, but the majority of people support this type of site.

In addition, since the site opened, Vancouver has seen a 35% decrease in overdose deaths. The Conservatives should stop and think about that statistic. Do they want overdose deaths to increase by 35%? That is what will happen if the government moves ahead with Bill C-2.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity today to speak to Bill C-2. Members will know how unusual it is for a member in my position in this House to actually get a chance to speak at second reading to any of the legislation. This is a particularly important piece of legislation, and I am pleased to stand here and urge that, when this piece of legislation goes to committee, the Conservative members should actually take on board significant changes, in a departure from current practice. In fact, the most important and significant change that could be made would be to withdraw this piece of legislation altogether.

Let me go back and review some of the history of how it is that we find this piece of legislation before us, as was described by my friend earlier, the member for Burnaby—Douglas. Vancouver is the site of North America's only safe injection drug site. It is absolutely a sign of progressive, science-based decision-making within the municipality of Vancouver and also within the province of British Columbia.

The InSite safe injection site in Vancouver, just to put it bluntly, bottom line, saves lives. That is what matters. The InSite safe injection drug site in Vancouver does not promote drug use; it does not increase the number of people in the criminal element, but it seeks to save the lives of those who are so unfortunate that they have become users of illegal drugs.

To cover some of the history, we know this whole area of public policy is known as “harm reduction”, and a safe injection drug site is designed to assist people get to care, get to help and avoid overdoses. The studies that have been done make it clear on any empirical analysis that this is cost effective, saves lives and is in the interest of public health. It has been found to work as a system. Safe injection drug sites have been found in studies by international agencies—the United Nations drug and illegal substances organization, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the World Health Organization and others—to have the kind of approach in harm reduction that works and saves lives. The specific data from the InSite site in Vancouver confirm all this.

Why do I bother to mention all of that? It is because the current bill before us, Bill C-2, really goes back to a failed effort by a previous minister of health in 2008 to shut down the InSite centre by refusing to extend its licence. As one can imagine, a centre that allows the safe injection of otherwise illegal substances does require an exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Back in 2008, the then-minister of health, currently the President of the Treasury Board, decided not to extend its licence. This was a decision taken in the absence of facts. It was taken in essentially a fact-free zone in which, unfortunately, too much of the legislation from the current administration resides. In this fact-free zone, it did not matter that InSite was saving lives; it mattered only that it involved illicit drugs and that there might be some scope here on an ideological basis, going along with an agenda that is generally described as “tough on crime”. In this case, it would be tough on people who have been unfortunate enough to become drug addicts.

Going back to the 2008 decision, that gave rise to several court cases that ultimately were resolved in the Supreme Court of Canada in a case of Canada (A.G.) v. PHS Community Services Society. The decision of the Supreme Court of Canada was handed down on September 30, 2011. What the court said was that the services of this InSite drug facility, for which the minister of health had refused to provide an extended exemption under the act to allow the site to continue to operate, were found by the Supreme Court to reduce health risks.

Further, the court said:

On future applications, the Minister must exercise that discretion—

This is the discretion the minister has to allow exemptions under the act. Then it continues:

—within the constraints imposed by the law and the Charter, aiming to strike the appropriate balance between achieving public health and public safety. In accordance with the Charter, the Minister must consider whether denying an exemption would cause deprivations of life and security of the person that are not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

Those are very strong words from the Supreme Court of Canada. First, it said this harm reduction safe drug injection site in Vancouver was in the public interest and was necessary because it reduced health risks. In other words, the Supreme Court found on all the evidence that this safe injection drug site saved lives. It further found that, if the minister is looking at exemptions in future cases, the minister must turn his or her mind to the question of whether denying such an exemption would cause deprivations of life and security of the person and that there must be an appropriate balance between public health and public safety.

If there were a good-faith effort in Bill C-2 to find an appropriate balance between public health and public safety, then this piece of legislation would not have emerged. There is no attempt at balance here. Bill C-2 is, pure and simple, an attempt by the current ideologically driven administration to do indirectly that which the Supreme Court will not let it do directly. This is a convoluted attempt to make it impossible, or virtually impossible, for future ministers to approve any more exemptions to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to allow for safe injection drug sites.

Let me share with the House why I say that this is not a good-faith effort to find balance. This is a disguised attempt to shut down safe injection drug sites. In other words, it is an attempt, through the legislative process of this place, to let people die when we know how to save people's lives. That I find unconscionable.

If we look at subclause 56.1(3) of the act, which requires the minister to examine any application for an exemption—in other words, a permit to allow such a site to exist—it starts with a review for 26 different criteria. More than two dozen different criteria must be provided to the minister. Ironically—and I think we will all find this ironic—the first is scientific evidence. It is only by ignoring the scientific evidence that this particular administration wants to shut down such sites.

Scientific evidence must be provided, as well as letters from all and sundry, such as the police chief and local government. There must be surveys to consider what kind of local litter problems there are in the community. They must have statistics pulled together, which is again ironic from an administration that has shut down access to many statistics. It is a long and convoluted process.

I found the most stunning requirement was not the financing plan of how this would be self-sustaining, but at the early stage when anyone is applying to run such a site, the applicant must provide the name, title, resumé, relevant education and training of the proposed responsible person. In other words, before someone can even get permission to run such an operation, that person has to have staff ready and on site, and all of their qualifications must be put forward to the minister. Not only that, but the applicant has to have run extensive checks on the possibility that in any previous jurisdiction in which the employees have ever lived, they may have run afoul of the law.

On top of all the specific conditions and requirements for an applicant, there is the general (z) provision, which is “any other information that the minister considers relevant for the consideration of the application”. In other words, on top of these multiple onerous requirements before an application can even go to the minister, the minister can make up anything else that he or she feels like asking the applicant to provide.

If that was it, we could say it is important in any community to ascertain that the people who are running safe injection drug sites know what they are doing, that they are competent, that they have considered all the evidence and that it would be welcomed in the community. That is not necessarily unreasonable, but there is no balance. All the factors go against saying yes.

However, then we come to subclause 56.1(5), which is really putting the kibosh on any new site because the minister may only grant an exemption for a medical purpose if the applicant has taken into account certain principles.

Paragraphs 56.1(5)(a) to 56.1(5)(f) list principles that all go toward a thought process that leads to no. They must take into account that illicit substances may have serious health effects, that there are health risks, that there is a risk of increasing organized crime and that organized crime profits are part of the drug trade. There is no mention once that the minister should take under his or her consideration the fact that safe injection drug sites save lives. It is not even in the list of possible considerations for a minister. Therefore, after all the considerations are received and after all the hurdles to opening such a site, the list of principles under this act lead any minister to be forced toward saying no.

In other words, this bill is not about balance. This bill is a disguised prohibition on doing what the Supreme Court of Canada said we must do.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my hon. colleague on saying exactly what is in this bill.

From my days as a municipal councillor, I know very well what to do to ensure that nothing happens in a community. There have be enough conditions and requirements to make it impossible.

It is a disguised attempt in saying, yes, these sites are welcome and we recognize a problem, when clearly that is not the direction. At the end of the day, the government wants to make sure there are no other sites like this.

These sites are clearly what is needed when we look at the studies on harm reduction and what is needed in our country. Our whole war on drugs of which I have been very supportive is not working, regrettably, in the way that we have been addressing it, in the U.S., in Europe and in Canada. We need to look at doing things differently.

Harm reduction has started with this clinic. I visited this clinic many years ago when it first opened. I was uncomfortable with the whole idea, but I went and visited. I talked to people in the Vancouver area. I really became convinced that, whether I wanted it or not, we have to accept that there is a problem, we have to try to fix it for those who need our help and we have to look at harm reduction for those particular people.

This clinic is one of the things we need to have in particular areas of the country. I would like to ask the member if there are other opportunities across Canada where she thinks these kinds of facilities should be located.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, clearly the term she used is part and parcel of this, the “war on drugs”.

There has been a war on drugs in North America for decades now. If we are taking a body count, we are losing. Organized crime is winning. That is not what any of us wants.

I have some exposure to those people who have been so unfortunate as to become addicted to illegal drugs, and only by the grace of God has it not been close to my family. However, friends of my kids and my grandkids are at an age where they could be exposed to these drugs.

Nobody in this place wants more people to be exposed to illicit drugs. Nobody wants to see the profits of organized crime go up. However, if we look at the track record of the so-called war on drugs, we will see that it is failing.

Let us try harm reduction. Let us save the lives of people who can come to a safe place and then have access to the kinds of assistance, therapy, supports and counselling that get them off drugs for good. Let us not pretend we are doing something while we turn a blind eye to their suffering.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hard-working member across the way for her interventions.

I do have a question for her. The purpose of this bill is to highlight the importance of consultation. In fact that is what the Supreme Court has said, that we have to have proper consultation. That is what the bill is asking for. Those are the changes, that we have adequate consultation before we have a new supervised injection site in Canada.

We have one in Vancouver, but if there were to be others, they would require consultation. Would the member oppose having consultation? If she does, what does she suggest replaces consultation?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think any of us would be against consultation.

These are sensitive issues, and I think we need more dialogue, not the kind of tactics that divide. I saw in one of the press stories that there was a fundraising appeal from the Conservative Party saying that the opposition members want to bring illicit drugs into communities so that people would be shooting up in neighbourhoods. That is unhelpful. I would not attribute those kinds of comments to my friend across the way at all.

What we need to have is that kind of conversation in which everybody is brought into the picture. For instance, in downtown Victoria we have problems with illicit drug use. We have people who are addicted and who get help through a fantastic facility in Victoria, Our Place. It is not a safe injection drug site, but it provides services, help and respect to people who are living on the streets.

Anything that provides a point of contact, respect and help to people who need help is of value. I think that can be discussed in a kind of enlightened fact-based respectful communication. Certainly some people may object within a community, but we should have consultation.

What is wrong with this bill is not that it involves consultation; it is that it creates a structure that makes it almost impossible under the way the law is written, given the principles the minister must consider, for a minister to say yes when a minister should.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising in the House to join with my colleagues in opposing Bill C-2.

To be quite honest, I am extremely disappointed that the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Vancouver East was rejected. It is very unfortunate. She put forward an amendment that was sensible, reasoned and based on scientifically proven facts. Unfortunately, Conservative ideology has once again prevailed over science and reason. We are debating yet another seriously flawed bill that reflects the Conservatives' outdated thinking and prejudices. Falsely touted as legislation that will protect Canadian families, Bill C-2 is designed to violate the Supreme Court's 2011 decision regarding safe injection sites.

I think it is important to note that at the time, the Supreme Court ruled that the minister's decision to close InSite, in Vancouver, violated the rights—as guaranteed in the charter—of InSite's clients and that the minister's decision was arbitrary and undermined the very purposes of the act, which include public health and safety. The Supreme Court also ruled that the minister's violation was very serious. It endangered the health and lives of the clients as well as people in similar situations. The Supreme Court also stated that InSite and other supervised injection sites should be granted an exemption as provided for under section 56 of the act when a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety.

Naturally, this decision contradicted the Conservatives' obvious desire to get rid of anything that could even remotely resemble a supervised injection site. Bill C-2 is another attempt to satisfy this desire, even though many scientific studies have proven that supervised injection sites like InSite are beneficial. Studies have also proven that these sites do not represent any risk to public safety and that they actually tend to enhance public safety in our neighbourhoods.

Scientific evidence has shown that supervised injection sites can effectively reduce the risk of contracting and spreading blood-borne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C, and also help decrease overdose-related deaths.

Supervised injection sites are consistent with a harm reduction approach, an approach that Canada took until 2007, when the Conservatives decided to impose their abstinence ideals at the expense of the public, even if it risked the lives of people struggling with addictions.

I think it is rather ironic that we are debating Bill C-2 to get rid of supervised injection sites so close to December 1, World AIDS Day. Yesterday, the Canadian AIDS Society was handing out red ribbons, like the one I am wearing proudly today. My Conservative colleagues went to pick up ribbons and wore them proudly, but today they are here in the House continuing to push their partisan agenda. They are still doing everything they can to get rid of supervised injection sites. They are directly undermining the work done by health care professionals to eradicate epidemics of blood-borne diseases like AIDS.

While talking yesterday with representatives from the Canadian AIDS Society, I learned that some parts of Canada are currently facing an actual AIDS epidemic. For example, in Saskatchewan, the HIV infection rate is almost three times higher than the national average. These figures are disturbing. One factor that contributes to the spread of HIV/AIDS in certain parts of Saskatchewan is unfortunately injection drug use.

Having sites like InSite would be a very effective way to reduce the incidence of this disease, in addition to reducing overdose deaths, as I mentioned earlier.

However, rather than directly supporting the efforts being made to eradicate this epidemic, the Conservatives are trying to prevent the opening of new sites and depriving vulnerable Canadians of the services and support they actually need. Rather than helping these vulnerable people, the Conservatives are using them to raise funds from their voter base. Honestly, this is one of the most disgusting things I have seen this government do, while hiding the truth from its base.

The Conservatives tell their voter base that this bill will help keep heroin out of their backyards. This is totally false. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. If people no longer have a place where they can go, receive medical care and get the help they need, in addition to having a safe place, inside, to use the drugs they are unfortunately addicted to, where will these people go? They will go into the streets and the parks and near schools.

In recent weeks, we have heard a number of Conservative members say they care about Canadian families and they want to protect mothers, children, widows and orphans. Really, they are simply fearmongering in order to fill their coffers in preparation for the next election and using vulnerable people in our society to do so. Those people really need our help; they certainly do not need the contempt this government is showing them every day.

Frankly, I cannot believe the Conservatives are waging such a fundraising campaign in our society. It is beyond comprehension and furthermore, based on a campaign of fear and prejudice, with no basis in fact. The Conservatives are trying to address some legitimate concerns of the people they represent.

Quite honestly, each and every one of us has people in our riding who are worried about supervised injection sites. These are legitimate concerns that must be addressed. We must not react by fearmongering or encouraging prejudice and scorn towards people with substance abuse problems. Instead, we should be using our resources to try to solve the problem. We need to ensure that people can get the support they need, as well as easy access to resources to help them treat their addiction.

That is exactly what is happening at InSite. People have direct access to health care professionals who are there to help them in case of any problems or to simply provide advice. They have access to social workers and can be referred to detox centres.

Research has shown that in addition to reducing overdose deaths in Vancouver by 35%, which is significant, people who use InSite's services are almost twice as likely to enrol in a detox program. They are also more likely to have access to the resources that will help them turn their lives around and overcome their addiction. However, we have to go to them. To simply say that services exist, without making them easily accessible to the people who need them most, does not guarantee access and will not have the desired effect on public safety.

I do not have any children yet, but I can picture myself taking my children to a park one day and watching them discover discarded needles that might expose them to communicable diseases. I do not want that to happen. No one does.

However, that is what we might see happening in our streets as a result of the Conservatives' decision. People will no longer have a safe place to go to. They will have to go back to what used to be standard practice in neighbourhoods across the country, when people would shoot up here and there in the street, in the lobbies of commercial and residential buildings, near schools and in parks. Unfortunately, that is what we can anticipate if Bill C-2 passes as is. I hope it does not.

I am totally against passing such a bill. I hope that the Conservative Party members will listen to reason and understand the message from social organizations, health professionals and people who work with addicts daily and know their reality.

These people and these organizations dispense with prejudice and false, backward ideology, and focus instead on research and proven clinical trials. That is what we should be basing our decisions as parliamentarians on. The government should rely less on ideology and more on facts. For that reason, I hope that Bill C-2 will be defeated.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech on this matter.

I would like to address clause 5 of this bill and review the six criteria that the government wants to impose for new or existing sites such as InSite.

Paragraph c) states:

The risks of overdose are inherent to the use of certain illicit substances

It is very clear. However, studies by InSite show that overdoses have decreased by 30% in the Vancouver neighbourhood where InSite is located.

Does my colleague have anything to say about that and about the important contribution that new sites could make to a community's safety?