Matthew Kellway

[Petitions, September 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present petitions in the House today in respect to the reduction of Canada Post services. The signatories to these petitions note that the elimination of door-to-door mail delivery will have a particularly adverse impact on seniors and the disabled. They call upon the Government of Canada to reject Canada Post's plan to end door-to-door mail delivery and increase prices, and to instead explore other options for modernizing the postal service.

[Energy Safety and Security Act, September 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to at least commend the Minister of Natural Resources for conducting himself in a dignified manner so far, unlike the Minister of Justice earlier today.

The minister is right to point out that there are points of agreement—or consensus, in his terms—and that those are around the very critically important nature of this legislation and the fact that the legislation needs updating.

Beyond that, what I am detecting very clearly in the course of this discussion over the 77th effort by the government to invoke time allocation in the House is some very substantive debate over the terms of the legislation. However, it is the points of disagreement that are emerging from this debate over time allocation that weigh against the minister's arguments in favour of time allocation today.

I would ask him to please tell the House if he, as a consensus seeker, agrees with me that this is in fact a substantive debate about the legislation that we are engaged in here and now in the House. Would he agree that the nature of this substantive disagreement over the terms of the legislation suggest that he should change his mind and withdraw the motion for time allocation on this bill?

[Petitions, September 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition to the House signed by petitioners in and around my riding of Beaches—East York with respect to the CBC.

These petitioners are anxious to see the CBC retain its status as a core cultural institution able to broadcast our nation's unique identity and linguistic realities.

The petitioners call upon the government to guarantee stable, adequate and multi-year financing for our public broadcaster so that it may continue its work in all regions of the country.

[The Environment, September 22nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday in New York City I joined hundreds of Canadians from Iqaluit to Vancouver to Halifax and hundreds of thousands of people from around the world in a peaceful, hopeful march, the People's Climate March. People from all over the world are calling for immediate action on climate change because there is no other planet, no planet B.

The world is ready to act and Canadians want Canada to play its part. Why are we not?

[The Environment, September 19th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, earlier this week we found out the government is no longer working on the oil and gas regulations it has been promising for seven years.

Also this week, the International Institute for Sustainable Development said that the Conservatives' coal regulations will have a negligible effect. So much for the Conservatives' vaunted sector-by-sector approach to greenhouse gas reductions.

Now the Prime Minister is skipping the UN climate change summit in New York next week.

Is this incompetence or do the Conservatives not yet believe in climate change?

[Petitions, September 18th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that earlier this week the Conservative government ratified the Canada–China foreign investment promotion and protection agreement.

Nevertheless, I can easily anticipate that the petitioners who signed this petition would want this House to hear that they call upon the Government of Canada to decline to ratify that agreement and to take immediate steps to limit the influence of state-owned enterprises over our democracy in the interest of ensuring that the power over Canadian laws remains in Canadian hands.

[Respect for Communities Act, June 17th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if the minister checked the order paper this evening, but he seems to be addressing a different bill entirely. As well, the problem with his remarks is compounded by the fact that he does not understand what actually happens at the InSite safe injection facility.

What we are talking about, in fact, is doing better by Canadians. As I said, addiction does not disappear because we do not have a safe injection site. These drugs exist and people, unfortunately, become addicted to them.

As the Supreme Court stated in its ruling, “Insite has been proven to save lives with no discernable negative impact on the public safety and health objectives of Canada.”

It continues, and this is important:

The effect of denying the services of Insite to the population it serves and the correlative increase in the risk of death and disease to injection drug users is grossly disproportionate to any benefit that Canada might derive from presenting a uniform stance on the possession of narcotics.

This site is about saving lives and reducing harm. Shame on the minister if he does not understand that is what we are here in the House to do.

[Respect for Communities Act, June 17th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise this evening in this quiet chamber where only New Democrats seem to want to talk about how to make a better future for Canada and Canadians.

I am talking tonight about the misguided Bill C-2, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. We are at second reading in the legislative process, but it is certainly early enough to say an unqualified no to this proposed piece of legislation.

It comes to us, into this chamber, in response to the 2011 Supreme Court decision that concluded that the Minister of Health's refusal to grant an extension to InSite's exemption under that act was:

...arbitrary, undermining the very purposes of the [Controlled Drugs and Substances Act], which include public health and safety.

Here we have Bill C-2. It is typical legislation from the government in a number of respects. First and foremost, it reflects a government unable to deal with, and unwilling to acknowledge, the complexities of real life. Consequently, it is a government unfit to govern.

It is a government that provides ample evidence of this to us every day, as with Bill C-36, the government's response to the Supreme Court's Bedford ruling, and the monkeying about with judicial appointments in response to the Supreme Court's Nadon ruling. This is a government that does not take advice from, but responds with infantile defiance to, that body in our system of government that is the guardian of basic rights and freedoms for Canadians.

However, there are constraints on its conduct, thankfully. In this particular circumstance, the Supreme Court was clear on the constraints the government had to work within. It was section 7 of the charter in this case. To quote the court on this decision specifically:

...the Minister must exercise discretion within the constraints imposed by the law and the Charter, aiming to strike the appropriate balance between achieving public health and public safety. In accordance with the Charter, the Minister must consider whether denying an exemption would cause deprivations of life and security of the person that are not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

There we have it. No clearer an articulation can be imagined, I do not think.

Now, in defiance of that clear statement, we have a bill that will require InSite to reapply for an exemption, but under the new proposed prejudicial criteria, criteria that make no effort to hide the anti-safe injection site animus.

Under this bill:

The Minister may only grant an exemption for a medical purpose under subsection (2) to allow certain activities to take place at a supervised consumption site in exceptional circumstances and after having considered the following principles:

(a) illicit substances may have serious health effects;

(b) adulterated controlled substances may pose health risks;

(c) the risks of overdose are inherent to the use of certain illicit substances;

and so on and so on.

However, nowhere do we find, along with those principles, anything that even remotely resembles the findings of the Supreme Court in its decision, in which they said:

InSite has been proven to save lives with no discernible negative impact on the public safety and health objectives of Canada.

How does this bill make any effort on the mountain of evidence that has accumulated in support of injection sites, and InSite in particular, as mechanisms for finding a balance between public health and public safety?

The Supreme Court, in its decision, turned its mind to all the facts, to the studies that demonstrate the beneficial impacts of InSite and other like sites around the world. The evidence in favour of safe injection sites is overwhelming. Thirty peer-reviewed studies in deeply respected medical journals, the names of which we all know in this House, are dealing with InSite itself. The studies are supported by findings confirmed by research on the other 70 safe injection sites around the world.

What the studies show, and what the Supreme Court had before it for consideration, was the following: between 1987 and 1993, which is pre-InSite, the rate of overdose deaths in Vancouver increased from 16 to 200 per year. Since InSite opened, the rate of overdose deaths in East Vancouver has dropped by 35%.

One study showed that over a one-year period, there were 273 overdoses, but not a single life was lost. Over a one-year period, 2,171 referrals were made to InSite users to addiction counselling or other support services.

Finally, studies found that those who used InSite services at least once a week were 1.7 times more likely to enrol in a detox program than those who visited infrequently.

There are more studies, but let me point to one more important finding. There was a significant drop in the number of discarded syringes, injection-related litter, and people injecting on the streets one year after InSite opened.

I raise this issue not just because I know it is a particularly compelling finding for parents like me, but also because it stands in complete contradiction to the Conservatives' anti-InSite sloganeering, “Keep heroin out of our backyards”. They call on Canadians to support the bill in order to keep “heroin out of our backyards” as though, by abolishing the safe injection site, they will also abolish heroin, as though it will just disappear somehow, as though it was not there before InSite, as though it would not return if we abolish InSite.

This is ideology in the most pejorative sense of the word, a believe that is held tight, not just in ignorance of the facts but in fact in contravention of all outstanding evidence, evidence that is before the Conservatives in plain site that one cannot miss, that the Supreme Court examined in the process of arriving at its decision. Even beyond that, it is the belief that is fundamentally illogical and irrational. This, being prepared to govern a country this way, is why the Conservatives are unfit to govern.

Governing is not some blue sky project where reality changes just because we wish it is different, where heroin disappears because we close safe injection sites, where addictions go away because we do not have harm reduction programs, or climate change does not happen because we silence scientists, empty the libraries and discard the research. It is not as though the charter disappears because the Conservatives can force legislation in contravention of it through this place.

This should properly be the role of government, not to be receiving applications as though we lived in a country without section 7 charter rights, as though the issue of harm reduction was not otherwise a matter of active government concern.

For these reasons, I stand against Bill C-2.

[Youth of the Month Award, June 17th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, across my riding there are kids doing extraordinary things. They model the way not only for their peers, but for us. In recognition of what they do and in an effort to encourage them and to encourage others to follow their lead, I created some time ago the Beaches—East York Youth of the Month Award.

For the month of June, that award goes to the kids of DeSantos Martial Arts, who participated in this year's 140-kilometre walk from Toronto to Niagara Falls. It was a journey of self-discovery, but it was also a journey to raise money for both local and international school breakfast programs. We all know there are many kinds of personal journeys, but the best are those that lead us to others who need help.

A special mention goes to Marisol, Ayoka, Allison, Tristan, and Victor, who, over four long days completed the entire journey this year. For Kwan Jan Nim De Santos, Ma'am Toni, and all of the instructors at the school, thanks for teaching our kids that a black belt is just a white belt that never quit.

[Petitions, June 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition has to do with the government's proposal to build an airport on the federal lands in Durham region, which are class one farmlands. The petitioners call upon the government to rescind all plans for an airport and non-agricultural uses on the federal lands in Durham region, and to act instead to preserve the watersheds and agricultural land of this irreplaceable natural resource for the long-term benefit of all Canadians.