Mr. Speaker, I am going to surprise you: Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, is not in the interests of public safety.
Despite the assertions of the hon. Minister of Health, if we take a close look at this bill, we can see that it aims to prevent supervised injection facilities from functioning. The health minister wants to tighten the criteria for injection facilities in Canada.
However, according to the new rules, those who wish to open an injection facility must first give consideration to the opinions of local community groups and police services and obtain support from municipal and provincial authorities.
With their so-called democratic consultations, the Conservatives say they are worried about the welfare of their fellow Canadians, without giving any consideration to opinions expressed by the people most directly involved. The people who are addicted to drugs and other substances belong to Canadian society just as much as anyone else. We are not only talking about places where drug addicts are going to inject heroin and use other illegal drugs, but safe and hygienic places where they can do so under medical supervision.
That is what InSite in Vancouver has been trying to do for the past 10 years. It is a safe, health-focused place where people inject drugs and connect to health care services to treat disease and infection. They also have access to addiction counselling and treatment, as well as housing and community supports.
Under the leadership of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, InSite is striving to decrease the adverse health, social and economic consequences of illicit drug use. With Bill C-2, the government is limiting the beneficial actions of such supervised injection sites, which work to integrate people with addictions into society.
Let us recall once again that this debate went as far as the Supreme Court, which decided that InSite was a very important health facility. I would like to quote a key excerpt from the Supreme Court's decision, since the bill that is before us today is supposedly based on that decision. Here is what the Supreme Court of Canada had to say:
Where, as here, 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, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.
The court therefore ruled that InSite should remain open under the exemption set out in section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. It is important that all new legislation pertaining to these sites take into account the Supreme Court of Canada's decisions. These findings indicate that supervised injection sites reduce the harm associated with the use of illicit drugs. They must therefore be subject to exemptions. Given this solid evidence, why are the Conservatives still refusing to take into account the facts that have been presented? The bill reduces the possibility that such sites will be set up by requiring the submission of a great deal of evidence and many documents related to the financial viability of the site, the need for it in the community and its potential impact on public safety.
Bill C-2 jeopardizes the public safety it claims to defend. Supervised injection sites reduce the presence of used needles in public places and reduce the spread of disease simply because they are medical facilities supervised by trained personnel.
The argument made by the Minister of Health is therefore invalid and once again constitutes a false pretence to hide the real motive: to strengthen a Conservative ideology by ostracizing a certain segment of the population.
I would like to strengthen this argument. The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, and Pivot Legal Society criticize the bill's negative impacts. A statement published in June when the government tabled Bill C-65 mentioned that this is “a bill that aims to make it even more difficult for health authorities and community agencies to offer supervised drug consumption services, such as Vancouver’s Insite, to Canadians who are among those most at risk of HIV infection and fatal overdose”.
The official opposition considers the government's initiative a deeply flawed bill based on an anti-drug ideology and false fears for public safety. This is another attempt to rally the Conservative base, as evidenced by the “Keep heroin out of our backyards” fundraising drive that started hours after Bill C-2 was introduced in Parliament, but by endangering supervised sites, this bill will actually put heroin back in our neighbourhoods. This is why this bill has been described by the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition as “...an irresponsible initiative that ignores both the extensive evidence that such health services are needed and effective, and the human rights of Canadians with addictions”.
The evidence has demonstrated that safe injection sites effectively reduce the risk of contracting and spreading blood-borne diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C, and death from overdose. It has also been shown that they do not undermine public safety and in some instances have proven to promote it by reducing public drug-injecting, reducing violence associated to it, and reducing drug-related litter.
Safe injection sites, therefore, strike the balance between public health and public safety. The government and all members of the House have a public responsibility to see Canadians with drug addiction problems as citizens in need of medical treatment, not as criminals. We have the responsibility to offer them assistance, primary health services, and addiction treatment.
There is evidence that allows us to say that supervised injection sites have promoted entry into treatment for drug dependence. One study published in 2006 mentioned that those who use InSite services at least once a week were 1.7 times more likely to enrol in a detox program than those who visited infrequently, and in 2010, 5,268 people were referred by InSite to other social and health services. The vast majority of them were for detox and drug dependence treatment.
As the Canadian Medical Association stated:
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.
Lastly, supervised injection sites could cause problems for some people because along with these sites come people with substance abuse problems and drug addictions. However, seeing the issue from only that one angle would be misinformation, pure and simple.
I presented a number of points that the government needs to take into account before amending any legislation dealing with supervised injection sites. For all of the reasons I mentioned, the official opposition opposes Bill C-2, which is designed to put an end to centres that not only help a certain segment of the population both medically and socially, but also protect communities.