Madam Speaker, the legislation that the Conservative Party brought in was forced upon that government after fighting Insite in the Supreme Court of Canada. Instead of listening to the evidence and working with health professionals, a decision by that member's government forced Insite to spend millions of dollars going to the Supreme Court of Canada to establish that supervised consumption sites save lives. In that decision, the Supreme Court identified five factors that ought to be met before a community permitted the opening of a supervised consumption site. The Conservatives took that Supreme Court decision and they exploded those five factors to 26, and a number of those factors have absolutely nothing to do with health.
For those of us who view addiction as a health issue, for those of us who view the operation of these clinics as being pivotal to saving lives, I will point out that not a single person has died in a supervised consumption site facility in this country. As my former colleague Libby Davies used to say, “dead addicts don't get recovery”.
From a health point of view, when a community wishes to have such a site we should focus on criteria that would help to address the health issues there.
It is not a question of finger-pointing; it is a question of establishing facts. The previous Conservative government slashed Health Canada's budget for addictions treatment by 15%. It did nothing about the CBSA's problem in being unable to open 30-gram-or-under envelopes. The Conservative government fought supervised consumption sites in this country right to the Supreme Court of Canada.
I will take no lectures from the Conservative Party about how to save lives in the opioid crisis.