Mr. Speaker, in the last portion of the debate, my colleague said that if it working, they fix it again. I have a different take on that.
I remember, in the government of Mike Harris, an education minister, John Snobelen. He actually had the gall to say, in regard to education, that we have to create a crisis so we can come in and fix it. We have to break what is working so that we can go in and fix it.
When I look at the front bench across the way, it reminds me that the Minister of Finance, the President of the Treasury Board, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs were all principal players in that government and are bringing that kind of approach to the federal level.
I am rising today to oppose Bill C-2. What Conservatives are trying to do with the bill is clear. I have to give them credit for the level of political camouflaging contained within the bill.
It is clear that the measures in the bill would hurt some of the most vulnerable in our society and would be very costly to our health care system.
There is another very troubling and repeating pattern with the government. Why do we even have a Supreme Court ruling in this case? It is because the government challenged the right of InSite and safe injection sites to exist. The Conservatives do not believe in them. They do not want them. They want to make it as onerous as possible, which is the purpose of this legislation.
The member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore stood and asked if we are against community consultation. It is ridiculous to try to camouflage the deep flaws in the bill with statements like that. Of course we are in favour of consulting Canadians and communities about what goes on in their neighbourhoods. That is exactly how governments should work. However, the government, time and time again, ignores that basic principle when we are talking about resource development, environmental protection, and the safety of Canadians. It is like asking if we are against oxygen. No one is against oxygen. We would not be here without it.
The bill pretends to address public health and safety concerns about safe injection sites. In fact, it has three other completely different goals. Very simply, the bill aims to shut down InSite, the supervised injection site in east Vancouver, and to prevent any other supervised sites from operating. I believe that it aims to nullify and circumvent the 2011 Supreme Court of Canada ruling in favour of safe injection sites, and I believe that it constitutes a further attack on the principle of harm reduction.
Harm reduction is critical to dealing with issues of substance abuse. We have to reduce the harm so that people can be in a position to gain quality of life and have the strength to overcome the tremendous challenges that come with addiction.
In Toronto, we have one of the country's foremost centres for dealing with addiction and mental health. It is called CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. I would like to read its submission to the Toronto Board of Health in July in regard to supervised injection sites. It said:
Supervised Injection Services are another public health approach that can reduce harms associated with injection drug use. Research from around the globe has shown that these services are associated with several benefits to injection drug users including reducing behaviours associated with HIV and Hepatitis C infections, lowering risky injection practices, reducing overdoses, and increasing referrals to treatment and other health services.
I will stop there for a moment and repeat that last part: “and increasing referrals to treatment and other health services”.
I will bring up a business analogy, and of course, the folks across the way love those. Anyone who has run a business knows how much harder it is to get a new client in the door than it is to keep an existing one. Part of the purpose of safe injection sites is to get people in the door so that they can be given access to the other services that are going to make them healthy and productive members of our society, at lower cost. That is what is really funny about the bill. It is going to cost Canadians millions of dollars in future court challenges, in future health care costs, and in the destruction of communities, because these services will not exist.
The submission by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health to the Toronto Board of Health in July 2013 continues:
In addition, Supervised Injection Services do not increase crime and disorder in the surrounding neighbourhood and actually reduce other problems like public drug abuse and discarded injection equipment.
That is pretty clear and simple. It is very basic. It does not increase crime or disorder in the surrounding neighbourhoods and actually reduces problems such as public drug use and discarded injection equipment. It helps to actually keep our communities safer, the communities that have these kinds of problems.
With respect to discarded injection equipment, when I was a child of nine or ten, my father was a teacher in Scarborough at Samuel Hearn public school. Every year around environment day, they would engage in community public cleanups. They would go out into the neighbourhood and do a fabulous public service and help keep their neighbourhoods clean.
They were in an alleyway, about a block away from the school, behind Danforth Avenue near Pharmacy, cleaning up trash. My father was wearing work gloves, but they did not have the thickness that would be required to stop a needle from piercing. He picked up a pile of garbage and was pricked by a discarded syringe from a drug user.
As a nine or ten year old, it is very hard to fathom and understand what follows from that. What followed was that my father had to be tested for HIV, for hepatitis, and for other infectious diseases. That created months of concern and anguish in our family, not knowing whether he had picked up a transmissible or communicable disease and whether he would be facing horrific health challenges in the future.
We were very fortunate that in the end, all the results were negative, but the cost to the health care system, the cost to our family in having to deal with it, and all the uncertainty that followed was a direct result of the fact that there were discarded needles on the ground. Will safe injection sites eliminate this problem completely? Of course not. There is no silver bullet. However, they will be a big part of reducing the harms in our communities.
I also remember, not so long ago, when a Starbucks in Toronto, at John and Queen, installed a safe disposal box for needles in their bathroom. There was an absolute uproar from Conservatives. “You're encouraging drug use. People will now go to that Starbucks to shoot up”. No. What was happening was that people were already going to Starbucks and shooting up and throwing needles in the garbage can. The staff, at the end of the day, would have to pick up that garbage and put their lives at risk because of stupid, inconsiderate policies brought forward by people on the other side. This trend continues to this day. Never let an argument get in front of ideology. Absolutely not.
The submission by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health continues:
Given the difference in geography and culture of drug use amongst cities, experiences from these Supervised Injection Services are not simply transferrable to other cities such as Toronto. However, there is evidence to suggest that a Supervised Injection Service could be beneficial to Toronto, though further research involving the development of a pilot Supervised Injection Service would be needed to confirm. With that in mind, CAMH supports the development of a pilot Supervised Injection Service in Toronto. As a teaching hospital dedicated to care, research and education in mental health and addiction, CAMH would be happy to work with other partners to play a role in the evaluation of the pilot service and offer treatment to those in need.
Treatment is what is important and critical here. It is the treatment people would receive going to these safe injection sites, the kind of treatment that would help get them off the streets and help reduce the harm to them, their families, and the community. It would reduce the amount of drug addiction that exists in our communities, and it would help more people have a better quality of life and fulfillment and be active and participating members of our communities.
