Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his speech. I always enjoy them. I particularly liked the part about the ideological bent, but I want to go to the charter side of things. When this year is done and we have all these year-end reviews about what happened in the news, I think two words will come to mind: charter challenge.
Here we find another bill that runs up against the charter under section 7, in the pursuit of life, liberty, and security of the person, which is a fundamental justice. It is a fundamental right for people to preserve their health in a situation where they find themselves wanting to get help. This is about harm reduction.
What bothers me is that it would not be so bad if the argument from the government was that there were problems with this particular site in the way it administers the plan and so forth. The minister has the discretion to get rid of it. However, the argument is fundamentally, “not in my home town”, “not in my backyard”. For some reason, the Conservatives have used this as a defence. In addition to that, what is even more insulting, is that they use it to raise money to win the next election.
I would ask my colleague, have we gotten to the point where all the evidence pointing to harm reduction has been so lost that the goal is only to win the next campaign and to fund raise?