Madam Speaker, obviously we have wider philosophical disagreements about whether somebody using dangerous hard drugs really should be considered in the same category as other health care services. We can have a longer discussion about supervised injection sites specifically. Again, my view is, and I do not have a problem saying it, that we should be focusing our efforts and resources on things to get people off of drugs, such as rehab, more investments in chemical detox, and these kinds of things.
I am very supportive of those kinds of investments. Of course, generally speaking, more of that activity happens at the provincial level, but there is a role for the federal government as well. I see the importance of that and I am happy to advocate for it. I do think, though, it does not follow that if we believe action is needed, we need to take power away from local communities in terms of determining the process of that action.
Communities, families, local governments, and provincial governments are compassionate and seized with this problem, so taking authority away from them to be engaged with their communities is not an effective way to address this crisis. We should, in fact, be doing more to mobilize the knowledge and experience of communities and families in terms of building the kinds of strategies that are going to address specific issues in specific areas.
The response that makes sense in one community may not be the same as the response that makes sense in another community. When an external group makes an application, and all it has to do is provide some general information to the government about whether the community was supportive or opposed with no timeline prescribed, I do not think that is an effective way to engage the community to actually respond to the problem.