Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of his speech, my colleague said that the Conservatives wanted to divide Canadians with this bill. That intrigued me. I would like him to explain what he meant.
House of Commons photoWon her last election, in 2015, with 31% of the vote.
Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act December 8th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of his speech, my colleague said that the Conservatives wanted to divide Canadians with this bill. That intrigued me. I would like him to explain what he meant.
Yukon and Nunavut Regulatory Improvement Act December 4th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, this bill stinks of paternalism. I have noticed that many of the Conservatives' first nations bills have had the same stink, especially when they have to do with first nations women.
Has my colleague noticed this as well?
Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 2 December 4th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, I am very curious about his definition of transparency. The bill is 460 pages long and amends dozens of laws, including some that have nothing to do with the budget
For example, not so long ago, the House was studying Bill C-585, which would have left refugees without a dime for months upon their arrival in Canada, which was not very encouraging. Furthermore, debate was cut short. The bill was withdrawn and, even though it has nothing to do with the budget, included in this budget implementation bill. Moreover, debate on the budget, and therefore on the bill, is being limited. Is that transparency? Is that his definition of transparency?
Housing December 2nd, 2014
Mr. Speaker, I have a question to ask during question period. A girl can try.
Again, community agencies are knocking on the NDP's doors because they feel abandoned by the Conservatives. The minister told us that all the money for fighting homelessness has been spent, but, on the ground, we are hearing a very different story. The agencies submitted their applications. They have not received a response and their deadlines are fast approaching.
When will these agencies get clear responses to their funding requests?
Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 2 December 2nd, 2014
Mr. Speaker, the House recently studied the member for Pickering—Scarborough East's Bill C-585. The bill would have given the provinces permission to establish a minimum period of residence to obtain access to social assistance. Refugee claimants are very worried about this because they could end up getting no financial support while waiting for their claim to be processed.
It seems that the bill has been withdrawn. At any rate, the member did not show up, so the bill was dropped. Then, however, it was buried in the omnibus budget bill, and this is our only opportunity to talk about it. I would like to know what my colleague thinks of that.
Respect for Communities Act December 1st, 2014
Mr. Speaker, of course there must be consultation; that is clear. However, if we frighten business owners by telling them that there will be more drug addicts in their area, of course they will say no during consultations. They have to be told the real facts. This has to be based on science, not on scare tactics.
Respect for Communities Act December 1st, 2014
Mr. Speaker, first of all, I never suggested anything like that.
Secondly, I will give an example. My sister was a smoker from a very young age. Every year, every day, I told her she should stop smoking, but she never quit. Then one day she suddenly decided to quit and has not smoked since.
Supervised injection sites can offer people support. I agree completely that substance abuse is a scourge that destroys lives. However, addicts can get help at supervised injection sites. Eliminating these services will not make substance abuse go away; quite the contrary. It is important to provide services to people in order to be able to help them quit when they are ready. Only then will there be no drugs in the streets and no syringes in parks.
Respect for Communities Act December 1st, 2014
Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me the opportunity today to talk about Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
I would like to begin by thanking my colleague from Vancouver East for her speech and her work on this file. The member's rigour, and especially her compassion, are a real inspiration to me, and I wanted the House to know that.
Personally, I think this bill is not only a thinly veiled attempt by the Conservative government to put an end to supervised injection services in Canada, but also a direct attack on this country's institutions and a blatant lack of respect for them too. Driven by their regressive and sanctimonious ideology, the Conservatives are utterly incapable of relying on simple facts to make the important decisions they have to make as a government.
Like many of my constituents in the Montreal community of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, I am deeply concerned about drug addiction and its negative repercussions. As such, this bill is obviously of great interest to me.
It should be understood that I rise here today not only to argue against passing the bill in its current form, but also to set the record straight, since the Conservatives have been deliberately denying the facts and doing everything in their power to twist them.
The facts, which I am going to talk about in the House today, have been studied by numerous researchers; the Supreme Court of Canada relied on these facts to render its important 2011 decision stipulating that the supervised injection services offered by InSite in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside could legally and legitimately be offered to injection drug users.
Bill C-2 is based on the Conservatives' presumption that the services offered by organizations like InSite pose a risk to public safety. However, in its 2011 decision, which the Conservatives decided to violate by means of this bill, the Supreme Court of Canada clearly ruled that it was not simply a question of public safety. Indeed, that decision called on the government to consider exemptions to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act in an effort to reconcile health and public safety considerations.
Once again, the Conservatives decided to do things their way and draft their bill by putting their ideology ahead of the principles established by the Supreme Court. They are making the process for obtaining an exemption from the law so complex that it will create a disincentive to opening new centres. By way of evidence, they decided to send the bill to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, where they brought in a series of police officers, whose work is obviously to fight drug trafficking, and representatives of groups with ties to the Conservative Party. In so doing, they deliberately disregarded the entire public health aspect of this issue. If that is not a rejection of the Supreme Court and its rulings and proof that the Conservatives are blinded by their ideology, then it can only be contempt, in my opinion.
The comments by the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness alone are enough to show that all of their decisions are based on this ideology. In fact, in response to my questions at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, he said:
Basically, opening a supervised injection site leads to an increase in criminality, an increase in police resources and an increase in social disorder. That has been proven and that is reality.
I did not really understand why he was talking about that, because I explained to him and to another minister who was there that some people from a low-income housing unit in my riding organize a clean-up every spring. I participate in the clean-up with my team. We clean up the area, which includes removing needles from a nearby park. A supervised injection site could help make this less of a problem. At least this helps back up what I am saying.
If the government truly wanted to make this a public safety issue, I would suggest that a supervised injection site in a neighbourhood like Hochelaga-Maisonneuve would help reduce harm.
I want to take this opportunity to invite the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and the Minister of Health to come take a walk in a park in Hochelaga with their children, so they can understand why some parents back home are afraid of letting their children play outside and why some groups go through the parks in the morning to ensure that there are no needles lying around.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court ordered the government to take public health into account when making decisions about services similar to those offered by InSite. Accordingly, we must recognize that the health of intravenous drug users is cause for alarm.
In Montreal, 68% of users have hepatitis C and 18% are living with HIV. Not only are these serious life-threatening diseases, but they also represent an enormous social cost in terms of health care alone.
According to the statistics, when specialized addiction prevention services can prevent even just one case of hepatitis C or HIV infection, they automatically make their annual budget cost effective. That says a lot. Furthermore, we cannot ignore the fact that between 2006 and 2009, 72 injection drug users died of overdoses in Montreal.
Just like the mayor of Montreal, SPVM police officers, the public health branch and several community groups in my riding and across Montreal, and in light of scientific studies—which rely on facts to reach conclusions—I believe that supervised injection sites are a vital means of tackling the problem in the interest of both public health and harm reduction.
Contrary to what the Conservatives think—since they have such a hard time acknowledging scientifically proven facts—this is not an opinion. There are many well-documented scientific arguments that weigh in favour of supervised injection sites. Centres in Barcelona, Sydney and Vancouver, which have existed for years, are good examples. The list of benefits is impressive: harm levels have been reduced or have remained the same, the number of intoxicated people wandering the streets has dropped sharply, the number of users has stabilized and so on.
It would take a fairly regressive ideology to keep someone from seeing the fact that safe injection sites are an effective and affordable health care service. Some of those in blind opposition to this include the witnesses invited by the Conservatives to appear before the Standing Committee on Health. What a circus.
On one hand, the government refused to invite important witnesses who made it known that they were interested in appearing before the committee and who could have explained to us the public health aspects of injection sites and the benefits they provide from a harm reduction standpoint. Those witnesses include the Canadian Association of Nurses in AIDS Care and the Canadian Bar Association, which represents 37,000 members across the country. This is what that association had to say in its submission:
However, other parts of the Preamble reflect a continued emphasis on prohibiting illicit drugs. This approach ignores overwhelming historical and current evidence that prohibition drives the drug supply underground and increases violence and deaths associated with drug activity and overdoses. Not only dangerous, this approach has proven expensive and ineffective, even after decades and endless public funds to allow it to succeed. The CBA and many others have argued for a harm reduction approach to instead be used in dealing with illegal drugs and addiction.
That is exactly the opposite of what the Conservatives are saying.
Worse still, they invited organizations espousing an unabashedly Conservative ideology to appear, such as Real Women of Canada, an organization I definitely wish to dissociate myself from even though I consider myself to be a real woman. That organization was obviously invited for the purpose of discrediting studies that recognize the benefits of InSite and supervised injection services in general.
Not only did the witness attempt to discredit the studies, but she went so far as to accuse the researchers of professional misconduct. She was lucky to be given immunity during her testimony. That immunity is obviously not intended to give witnesses a chance to say whatever they want.
What does it say about the credibility of an organization that has appeared before the Supreme Court more than once to plead that a fetus is a person and has the right to life, but is unable to see that an addict is also a person with the right to life?
In its ruling, the Supreme Court recognizes that addiction is an illness and that drug addicts are citizens who have the right, like everyone else, to life, health and security, which are constitutional rights guaranteed under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Our role as a society is not to lecture people, but rather to show them compassion and help them in order to give them the best possible options.
When it comes to supervised injection services, the days of Conservative bigotry are over. It is time for our country to show compassion toward injection drug users and give them the health care they are entitled to.
Housing December 1st, 2014
Mr. Speaker, it would be nice to get some real answers during question period, for once.
Community groups are worried about the change in direction for the homelessness partnering strategy. When asked, the minister herself confirmed that all of the money would be spent during phase two of the HPS. However, the projects must be completed by March 31, 2015, and many have not yet received the money.
Are the Conservatives trying to save money at the expense of the homeless yet again?
Mabe Canada November 27th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, in 2012, 737 workers in the Mabe Canada appliance plant in my riding, Hochelaga, learned that they would lose their jobs and that production would gradually be moved to the United States and Mexico.
After 60 years, the plant closed its doors for good last June, and the employer promised to protect the workers' pension fund.
However, on Monday, some 200 angry employees gathered in front of the closed-down plant to express their displeasure following Mabe Canada's announcement in August that it had declared bankruptcy.
Now, in addition to losing their group insurance, they have seen their pension benefits slashed by 22%, which is the equivalent of$35 million in worker savings.
The federal government has a responsibility here. It could make pension funds a priority when a company goes bankrupt. If the Conservatives are unable to keep good jobs here, it seems to me that they could at least take action and protect the workers' savings in the event of bankruptcy.