Linda Duncan

[Respect for Communities Act, November 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the time I spent with hon. member on a previous committee.

Those are two very interesting points. On the first one, absolutely, people who are addicted to serious drugs are terrified to stop that addiction. They are addicted. That is exactly what it means, and the more serious the drug, the more serious the addiction.

That is precisely why the medical specialists, including Dr. Houston, who is a very highly recognized doctor in Alberta, are saying that this is why we need the safe injection sites. If addicts are in a back alley taking those drugs, there are no people there saying to them they can help them get off the drug and refer them to a treatment centre. There is simply someone in that back alley saying that they can get another hit next week.

On the other matter, I do not believe I said these injection sites reduced the use of drugs. What I have said is it has reduced the incidence of related diseases.

[Respect for Communities Act, November 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to rise in the House and join my colleagues in the official opposition in opposing the bill. Normally I do not read a speech, but I find that it is very important on this bill to be clear that I am conveying the actual words of medical specialists, including those from my city of Edmonton, from the Canadian Medical Association, and from the Supreme Court of Canada.

In reintroducing Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the government is flying in the face of credible, strong evidence that safe injection sites lead to improvements in public health and public safety.

The specific objective of organized, supervised safe injection sites is widely recognized to improve health outcomes and to reduce impacts to communities where drug use is already occurring, and it is important to recognize that drug use is occurring.

Bill C-2, in imposing 24 conditions on the operation of any safe injection site and then completely giving the discretion to the minister to ignore that advice and impose her decision, rather than relying on the opinions of scientists and medical experts, has a clear intent of rendering it inoperative.

The intent of a safe injection program is to directly address the problem of addiction to dangerous and illegal substances by mitigating the negative effects of such addictions while ensuring that addicts have access to support when they are ready to begin treatment to get off drugs, and it is important to emphasize. That is clearly the path we support, and that is the path of the safe injection sites.

Safe injection sites have been proven to do both of these things. The Canadian Medical Association has expressed deep concern about this legislation. It has pointed out that there is overwhelming clinical evidence to show that safe injection sites save lives, and it has called for such facilities to be included in a national drug strategy. According to the CMA:

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. In a preliminary assessment based on initial review of the Bill, the CMA is deeply concerned that the proposed legislation may be creating unnecessary obstacles and burdens that could ultimately deter creation of more injection sites.

The CMA's Dr. Haggie, then president, in response to the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, said:

While for some this is an ideological issue, for physicians it's about the autonomy to make medical decisions based on evidence, and the evidence shows that supervised injection reduces the spread of infectious diseases and the incidence of overdose and death.

Dr. Stan Houston is a professor and specialist in infectious diseases at the University of Alberta, and he has extensive experience working with HIV patient care and organizations assisting such patients. Dr. Houston expressed support for the operation of safe injection sites for a number of important health-related reasons. According to Dr. Houston:

Although exact numbers are difficult to determine, hepatitis C infection rates run rampant through intravenous drug users. At one point, more than 80 per cent of those users were infected.

He has advised that due to needle exchanges and other social services provided by Streetworks, an Edmonton support program, the rates of HIV and hepatitis C have declined. According to Dr. Houston:

HIV cases are steadily going down in drug users in Edmonton. In fact that's our biggest HIV prevention success story. HIV rates are going up in other risk groups, but they are going down in injection drug users. And harm reduction practices should get a large part of the credit.

He said that by provision of a safe, supervised location for injection, staffed by medically qualified people, the probability of engaging drug users in drug treatment is substantially enhanced. He said that the preponderance of evidence from 25 peer-reviewed reports determines that programs such as InSite improve rates of further treatment for addictions.

Dr. Houston has advised me that, to his knowledge, not one case of drug overdose has occurred at InSite since 2003. That is a lot of lives saved, lives that can be redeemed and then supported to end addiction. Should that not be the health objective?

Dr. Houston has pointed out to me that those who operate safe injection sites are not pro drug use. It is quite the opposite. Surely it is better to have addicts injecting drugs in a clean, secure place instead of back alleys. Quite logically, it is a preferable alternative to ensure public safety. He has also called for more government funding of drug treatment facilities to help end their addictions.

Dr. Houston points out that the research supports his position. The obvious question, then, is this: why is the government not willing to take the advice of Canadian doctors when it comes to dealing with a serious health issue?

In September, a total of 87 organizations experienced at dealing with addictions signed a letter to the Minister of Health, urging her to not reintroduce this bill. They included a number of Edmonton organizations that assist the homeless, HIV-infected persons and addicted persons, such as the Boyle Street Community Services, the Bissell Centre, the George Spady Centre and Street Works. Their common request to the minister was for support for increased access to supervised consumption sites similar to the InSite program in Vancouver and those in other nations, including Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands, in order that lives could be saved.

These dedicated and highly respected community organizations point out that supervised consumption sites have been proven to decrease overdose, death, injury, and risk behaviours associated with HIV and hepatitis C infections; to increase access to health care for marginalized people; to save health care costs; and to decrease open drug use and publicly discarded drug use equipment, which is one of the issues communities usually raise.

I urge the minister to respond to their request to sit down with them to learn from their direct experience in dealing, on a daily basis, with people battling addictions and seek effective solutions to both assist those addicted and increase public safety.

There are obvious medical, social and psychological costs associated with a single HIV infection. If nothing else, one can appreciate the cost savings derived from preventing HIV infection. Directly because of the introduction of a needle exchange program in Edmonton, reduced rates of infection among drug addicts have been reported for both HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C, while in the same period rates have increased in other high-risk areas.

If we are truly serious about tackling the issue of drug addiction and the attendant health risks to the entire Canadian population, as parliamentarians we have an obligation to base our decisions on appropriate program or regulatory responses, sound science, and research results. Surely this should be the basis for all good public policy.

As the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network concluded from a detailed study, “many of the arguments against are ill-conceived or overstated, and are outweighed by the likely benefits of safe injection facilities”. It reports that there is an ethical imperative to at least support the trial facilities given the unacceptable harms currently experienced by drug users and the general community, and the potential for these sites to eliminate or reduce at least some of the harms. It advises that a refusal to establish these critical sites may be deemed to violate human rights obligations under international law or potentially subject governments to negligence suits. It is important to observe what they are advising us.

It is important to observe and respect as well the unanimous ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada in favour of the continued operation of InSite and right of access to similar facilities.

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court stated in that unanimous decision:

Where, as here, a supervised injection site 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, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

In closing, by shutting its eyes to the evidence and seeking to put as many barriers in the way of communities opening their own safe consumption sites, the government is risking the lives and health of Canadians. Let us not forget that if it were not for the Supreme Court, lnSite would have been closed.

I urge the Minister of Health to withdraw this bill and begin a serious consultation on how we can decrease addiction to illegal drugs in Canada and the attendant health and social costs.

[Respect for Communities Act, November 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his speech on Bill C-2. It is very important that all members of the House stand up and be counted on the bill, which essentially is thumbing its nose at the Supreme Court of Canada.

As my colleagues have previously said in the House, we have this repetition of a policy of the government ignoring the Supreme Court of Canada. We saw it with the Wheat Board, we saw it with endangered species, and now we are seeing it with a critical health matter dealing with people's unfortunate addiction to drugs. What is particularly reprehensible is that, in reading the bill, we see that its clear intent is to prevent the establishment of any further drug injection sites. That runs directly contrary to what Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin said in the Supreme Court ruling, which was:

Where, as here, a supervised injection site 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, the Minister should generally grant an exemption.

I wonder if the hon. member could speak to that and speak to the calibre of intervenors in that Supreme Court case, showing the strong support from the medical establishment in favour of supporting injection sites.

[Girls' Education in Afghanistan, November 20th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to share that on November 1, Calgarian Janice Eisenhauer, volunteer executive director of Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, was awarded the Lewis Perinbam Award for international development. The award recognizes her tireless volunteer efforts for 15 years in supporting access to education for women and girls in Afghanistan. Canadians are rightly proud of this work to raise awareness of human rights and the importance of education as a pathway to peace in Afghanistan.

This year the organization launched a new fundraising campaign, the lantern fund, based on an Afghan proverb that a teacher is the candle that burns to enlighten others. Experience has shown that when we invest in the education of female students, we contribute to the development of an entire society. The goal is to raise $2 million over five years to sustain teacher training programs in rural Afghan communities.

Today, on the UN day of the child, I call on the government to commit to supporting this peace-building initiative through improved quality of public education for Afghan children.

[Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, November 19th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, in going through Bill C-3, I found some oddities. It is my understanding that currently in this country, one of the petroleum products being discussed for piping and potential tanker shipping from the west coast, and potentially also from the east coast, is raw bitumen, yet when we look at clause 58 in part 5 on the Canada Shipping Act, “oil handling facility” does not include the loading or unloading of bitumen.

That raises the question of how carefully the government looked at the legislation. Did it simply take international conventions and reproduce them? I am increasingly seeing serious issues.

The member has raised the concern about the lack of consultation on the development of the bill. The bill itself, in proposed section 167.2, provides for the preparation of oil pollution emergency plans. There is absolutely no provision for public consultation.

I wonder if the member thinks it would be worthwhile in the review at committee to have people who reside in communities in the three coastal areas come to talk about concerns and proposals they have for the improved development of the bill to ensure that their voices are heard.

[Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, November 19th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague has a deep love of his constituency, which would potentially bear the brunt of the major risk of proposed tanker trafficking of raw bitumen.

The member raises a lot of cogent points. One of the most important ones is the abject failure of the government to respond to even its own officers' recommendations. The commissioner for sustainable development has made recommendation after recommendation for either improving the legislation or improving the monitoring and enforcement of that legislation.

The question is this: why is the government not responding to those independent recommendations coming from the leading experts in the country?

Deeply troubling is the emasculation of federal environmental legislation, which I am very privileged to have had a part in preparing.

Scientists and technical people and even the industry are deeply troubled with the direction in which the government is going. Throne speech after throne speech and budget after budget have been clear. The government's intention is to fast-track resource extraction. What it has promised is balanced development.

However, in committee yesterday, we heard from the MPMO, which is a body created relatively recently specifically to override all environmental protections and fast-track. It was very clear in its presentation that it no longer really saw its role as this double one of both ensuring efficient reviews and ensuring they were effective, in other words, ensuring the environment was protected.

Evidence of that is found in the Center for Global Development report issued yesterday, which stated that Canada had dropped from 12th to 27th place out of 28 wealthy nations in the world, for our environmental record. That tells us right there.

How can the Canadian public have confidence in the government? It is one thing to enact legislation that would put into effect an international convention; it is another thing to actually put into place the mechanisms that would ensure Canadian safety on the three coastlines.

[Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, November 19th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, again, it is my pleasure to rise to speak to this bill. As my colleagues have pointed out, we are supporting sending the bill to committee. Our preference would have been that the bill go to committee before second reading. That would have provided, in the custom of the House, ample opportunity for amendments. There is a particular concern that the government is not open to amendments coming from the opposition.

In the interest of Canadian safety and in the interest of the public and the security of our three coasts, we certainly encourage the government to take seriously recommendations from witnesses, recommendations made by the opposition, and the amendments that we might put forward.

For the record, I would like to share with the House a number of the measures that the New Democrats have called for to ensure the safeguarding of Canada's seas and coastlines. They include: reversing the cuts to the Coast Guard; the closure of Coast Guard stations; the scaling back of services; cancelling the cuts to the marine communications traffic service centres in Vancouver and St. John's; cancelling the closure of B.C.'s regional office for emergency oil spills responses; cancelling the cuts to Canada's offshore oil, gas and industry research centre; reversing the cuts to key environmental emergency programs, including oil spill response for Newfoundland and Labrador and British Columbia; reinforcing the capacity of petroleum boards to handle oil spills as recommended by the environment commissioner who reports to Parliament; and requiring the Canadian Coast Guard to work collaboratively with its U.S. counterparts.

Additional recommendations were made by the official opposition in response to what the communities were calling for with growing concerns about the potential for oil spills. Of course we have offshore oil activity on our eastern coast, and there have been proposals for offshore in British Columbia, thus far not moving forward. The biggest risk being posed is tanker traffic, if the government in its wisdom decides to support any of the recommendations by the National Energy Board for the shipping of raw bitumen and other products to the coast and shipping by tanker.

I would like to bring to the attention of the House the experience I had in the past when I was the chief of enforcement for Environment Canada. I became the chief in the wake of a very serious aeronautics accident in northern Alberta, which tragically killed a number of people, including the then leader of the Alberta New Democrats, Grant Notley.

To its credit, the then government, the Mulroney government, brought together a team in treasury board and justice personnel to take a look at Crown liability and to make clear, to all of the federal regulatory authorities, their responsibilities and liabilities where they failed to adequately inspect and enforce federal laws.

It is a deep concern to me that the government in its wisdom has not seen fit to table an enforcement and compliance policy and strategy, coupled with this legislation. If it is in fact sincere about improving our capacity to reduce the risks of spills and the capability to respond, I would certainly encourage the government to step up to the plate and do so.

Of equal concern is the fact that I understand it has appointed a three-person panel to look into marine safety. The wise thing would have been to wait until the recommendations came from that panel before tabling a bill. One would presume that it will come forward with useful recommendations.

I would like to raise a couple of specific provisions. Part 2 of Bill C-3 adds a new section 6(1), which gives complete discretion to the Minister of National Defence or an officer so appointed to exempt any persons or facilities from liability under the statute. There is no provision for any consultation whatsoever. It is complete discretion. That is a little worrisome given the issue at hand.

I have some greater awareness of the necessity for expanded aerial surveillance. This certainly arises when we are talking about dealing with marine spills and the inspection of tankers coming into our three coasts. I had the honour, when we had the program for members of Parliament, to spend a week with our armed forces, to spend it with the SARs, the search and rescue teams, on the east coast of Canada. That included flying with the surveillance airplanes, which communicate with the ships going into our ports.

It became very evident to me and my colleagues that we were in need of giving greater attention to improving surveillance ability and to very dated aircraft, both airplanes and helicopters.

In part 4, dealing with the Marine Liability Act, proposed section 74.28 prohibits the entry into a port without a certificate issued under the act. There are various provisions. The certificate is issued by Canada if the ships are owned by Canada, but probably in the vast majority of cases these oil tankers will be owned by some other foreign national. It raises the question of at what point in time officers will be able to stop those ships if they are already in port and if we will be stuck with tanker ships that are not seaworthy. There are a lot of big issues that merit discussion in committee, including the capacity, staffing, and training of officers to intercede in all of these ships.

I see the need for the tabling, simultaneously, with an enforcement compliance strategy. Are we, as the government likes to say, “shovel-ready” to enforce these new provisions if they come into effect? What is the capacity on the coast? There have been a lot of cuts to enforcement and scientific agencies.

As I mentioned, we would appreciate getting the report from the three-person Tanker Safety Expert Panel. It would be very helpful to the review by the committee. We cannot ask the government the obvious question, because it is not standing up and being held accountable for the bill, but I am curious to know what marine law experts it consulted with. It is very important that we know our law is well-founded and that the provisions of the convention that are brought forward actually reflect what is stated in law. In proposed subsection 74.4(3), the power to make regulations, there is absolutely no requirement to consult experts in the field, to consult on the potential impact to communities, or to consult military experts.

The proposed provisions to amend the Canada Shipping Act are very interesting to me. I come from a province where there is a several-hundred-fold percentage increase in the rail shipping of raw bitumen. There are two major terminals now being built in Alberta that will allow for 24-hour loading and movement of rail-loaded cars with bitumen. I would have thought at the same time the government would have come forward with legislation to ensure that when we set up these terminals, we would ensure we would have greater provisions to prevent incidents and respond to spills. A decade ago, there was the largest freshwater spill of bunker C oil in Lake Wabamun. The response was a complete disaster by both the federal and Alberta governments. I would like to see similar action by the government in all ways that we are shipping petroleum products to improve safety.

[Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, November 19th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour and pleasure to rise and speak to Bill C-3. It is yet another omnibus bill and an omnibus bill that, frankly, our party would have been happy to support had it included many of the additional measures needed to improve aviation safety and the shipping of oil along our three coastlines.

Bill C-3 amends a number of statutes, including the Aeronautics Act, the Canada Marine Act, the Marine Liability Act, and the Canada Shipping Act, 2001. These are very important measures. They are definitely worth a lot of discussion and consultation well in advance so that we can ensure that the bill is comprehensive.

Mr. Speaker, I am having a little bit of trouble concentrating, because there is a lot of conversation on the other side. I am wondering if they could take it outside.

[Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, November 19th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for sharing his time with me. He is a very eloquent speaker in the House and an extraordinary chair.

As with the issue raised by my colleague, I remain extremely puzzled. The Conservative government prorogued Parliament because it told the public that it was going to reconfigure and have a whole new agenda. However, bill after bill is being tabled that is exactly the same legislation that was brought forward before the government prorogued.

One would have thought that if the Conservatives wanted to reconfigure and rethink their legislative agenda, this would have given them ample opportunity to consult and confer with the public, potentially impacted Canadians on the three coasts, and the official opposition. We have offered to recommend additional amendments and measures that could be taken to ensure greater marine and aviation safety.

I wonder if the member could speak to our complete puzzlement that none of the Conservative members seem to think that safety in aviation and the response to oil spills are matters worth debating.

[Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, November 19th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her speech on this important matter.

Yes indeed, our party has agreed to support the bill being sent to committee for discussion. I wonder if the member could speak to this. I know she has worked in the military, and in the military there is a lot of attention given to ensuring that military personnel are properly staffed and trained for any initiative or mission.

Something that troubles me with the repeated actions of the Conservatives is that they table laws to amend the Criminal Code, introducing new provisions to regulatory statutes and now matters dealing with very serious issues including aeronautic safety and marine spills, yet they have not simultaneously tabled a policy and strategy for ensuring improved enforcement and compliance or for staffing and training to ensure these measures are lived up to.

I wonder if the member could speak to that.