Mr. Speaker, if I were to say that there is a system we can use to reduce the number of deaths and communicable diseases in a community, to reduce health care costs and drug use in public places, people would say that is absolutely fantastic and we should do it right away. Tomorrow, even.
Well, there is such a system. There is something that can achieve all of those goals: supervised injection sites like those found around the world, including the well-known InSite in Vancouver.
The bill we are debating today would stop that from happening. It would stop us from reducing the number of deaths, the incidence of communicable disease, health care costs, crime and drug use in public places. That is it in a nutshell. Nobody is asking about the real purpose of the bill, which is to shut down InSite and prevent similar sites from opening.
I am having a very hard time understanding what the Conservatives want. Do they want more sick people, more hepatitis and AIDS cases in our communities? Do they want more crime? Is that really what they want?
People in my riding, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, want fewer sick people, less crime and fewer problems. My riding certainly has drug use issues, but we also have a range of solutions. People working for CACTUS, L'Anonyme, the CSSS network and EMRI have great initiative. However, if we can do more, in consultation with the community, to prevent death, crime and disease, we should do more.
Consider drug use in public places. In Laurier—Sainte-Marie, I have picked up needles lying in the streets, needles that kids could have played with. Do we not want to try to avoid that kind of thing? I do not understand. I am not the only one who thinks that these sites deserve a strictly regulated place in Canada; the Supreme Court thinks so too.
Let us consider the facts. This all started in 2008 when InSite's exemption under section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act expired.
The InSite exemption expired, and the Minister of Health denied the organization's renewal request. The case obviously went to court. It first went to the Supreme Court of British Columbia, which ruled that InSite should receive a renewed exemption. The Conservative government of course did not agree. It appealed, and the case went to the British Columbia Court of Appeal, which ruled that InSite should remain open.
The case then ended up before the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled that the minister's decision to shut down InSite violated the rights of its clients as guaranteed under the charter. This is what the court had to say about the decision:
It is arbitrary, undermining the very purposes of the CDSA, which include public health and safety.”
I think that is rather clear and no one can claim that it was a partisan decision. The court based its decision on section 7 of the charter, which states that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person, and that an individual can only be deprived of those rights in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.
The court also declared that:
The infringement at stake is serious; it threatens the health, indeed the lives, of the claimants and others like them. The grave consequences that might result from a lapse in the current constitutional exemption for InSite cannot be ignored. These claimants would be cast back into the application process they have tried and failed at, and made to await the minister’s decision...
The Supreme Court determined that InSite and other supervised injection sites must be granted the exemption provided for in section 56, since the opening of such sites 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...
I raise this point because people often express concerns whereby opening such a site will have an impact on public safety. Studies and previous experiences in Canada and elsewhere have shown that there is no negative impact on public safety. In some cases, it even has a positive impact on public safety, by reducing, as I was saying, the injection of drugs in public, the violence sometimes associated with drug use and the discarded drug paraphernalia associated with illegal drug use.
The Supreme Court of Canada was very clear, as were the B.C. Supreme Court and the B.C. Court of Appeal. Obviously, the Conservatives decided they wanted to circumvent the Supreme Court decision with this new bill. The Conservatives claim to like the rule of law, but they are not really willing to respect it when it does not agree with their ideology. This has nothing to do with facts and reality, it really is a matter of ideology. They do not have any justification to refuse to allow other sites to open or InSite to continue operating.
The Supreme Court was clear. If a site can cause harm to a community, it can be banned. That is official. However, this harm must be demonstrated and not just a product of unfounded fears. This is true and I will say it again, people are sometimes afraid. However, we should look at Vancouver and examine what is happening around InSite. Fully 80% of the people who live and work in the area around InSite support the project. This is quite impressive. We see the same numbers when we look at what is being done in Europe. People who live in the neighbourhoods of these projects and who can see the results show overwhelming support for this type of initiative. Obviously there must be a balance between health and public safety, but we can have both at the same time.
I quoted the Supreme Court of Canada quite often. Indeed, I think it very often hands down very carefully reasoned decisions. It is still our Supreme Court. The judges spend considerable time analyzing the issues and thinking them through.
However, the Supreme Court is not the only party defending the usefulness of safe injection sites. The Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Nurses Association have both criticized the government for introducing Bill C-2.
According to the Canadian Medical Association:
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.
The Canadian Nurses Association had this to say:
Evidence demonstrates that supervised injection sites and other harm reduction programs bring critical health and social services to vulnerable populations—especially those experiencing poverty, mental illness and homelessness...A government truly committed to public health and safety would work to enhance access to prevention and treatment services—instead of building more barriers.
As you can see, all this bill does is create obstacles.
At new supervised injection sites, preparing an application will be such a cumbersome process that it may dissuade applicants from even opening a file. Department officials told us that if an applicant mistakenly forgets to include something, the application could be automatically denied. Even if an applicant manages to obtain all of the documents needed for the application, if the application is perfect, iron-clad from start to finish and has the community's full support, the minister always has the option of arbitrarily denying it.
The NDP feels that decisions about programs that could benefit public safety should be based on fact and not ideology. That is why I will be voting against this bill.
