Randall Garrison

[Respect for Communities Act, November 8th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Gatineau for her usual clear and precise dissection of Conservative laws, which are designed, really, to deceive the public and the House. In particular, I like the fact that she has pointed out that the current government, which supposedly is against red tape and bureaucracy, is now establishing red tape and bureaucracy specifically to frustrate the establishment of these services that are so needed in communities like mine and, I know, her own.

One of the changes from the last time the bill was before the House is that this time it is being sent to the public safety committee instead of to the health committee. Would the member agree with me that this is an attempt to both divert attention from the Supreme Court decision and to create false public fears about the impact of safe injection sites?

[Petitions, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to table two of the many petitions circulating in my riding, which have approximately 1,800 signatures, that call upon the government to reopen the Centre of the Universe at the astrophysical observatory in Saanich. The petitioners cite the many years the Centre of the Universe has provided students, families, and amateur astronomers with opportunities to explore space and the role the facility and staff have played in inspiring the next generation of Vancouver Island scientists.

The petitioners call on the Government of Canada, through the National Research Council, to restore the funding for the operations of the Centre of the Universe interpretative centre, which closed in August after 100% of its funding was cut.

Residents in my riding of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca know that if the Centre of the Universe remains closed, public education, space science, and astrophysical research will be impacted profoundly. They are awaiting a response from the government to this petition.

[Respect for Communities Act, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Vancouver East for her question and I want to applaud her for her constant advocacy for safe injection sites in the Downtown Eastside.

I am a former city councillor. We had these discussions when I was on council. The council that I sat on said it was much better for us to zone for public health care services, such as injection sites, and have public hearings and get the public out to express where they would like to see these services located. My council felt it had a responsibility to take its share of those public health services and address these problems, rather than trying to leave them to the police to address or leave them to neighbourhoods where they became a problem with things such as needles in parks and school playgrounds.

Therefore, we would have been hard pressed to find people in my community who were opposed to this reasonable approach to dealing with injection drug use.

[Respect for Communities Act, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I really do suspect the government's motives with Bill C-2. I really believe it is trying to get around the Supreme Court of Canada decision, which found there was a charter right to access health services that save lives. Therefore, my hope is that when we get to committee with the bill and present the government once again with the evidence of the very positive role that safe injection sites play in communities—the very opposite of what it is alleging here, that they are somehow a threat to public safety and a threat to public health by encouraging drug use—that it will reconsider.

We know what the record is at InSite. We get far more injection drug users into treatment when there is a safe injection site where they can establish relationships with health care workers and counsellors, and establish the confidence to get the help they need to do something about their drug addiction. When we leave people on the street, it causes all the various public disorder problems that are associated with injection drug use.

[Respect for Communities Act, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to oppose Bill C-2. What the Conservatives are trying to do with the bill is quite clear, despite their pretending to do something quite the opposite. The consequences of the bill will prove to be very dire for the most vulnerable in our society and very costly for our health care system.

While the bill pretends to address public health and safety concerns about safe injection sites, in fact it has three other completely different goals. I believe 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 it aims to nullify the 2011 Supreme Court of Canada ruling in favour safe injection sites, and I believe it constitutes a further attack on the principle of harm reduction.

The question of why the government would pretend to facilitate safe injection sites is in some respects easy to answer. Conservatives know the bill flies in the face of informed public opinion, so it is necessary to create false distractions by manufacturing concern over safe injection sites as threats to public health and safety, when in fact the evidence shows directly the opposite to be true. The bill raises the spectre of neighbourhood opposition to safe injection sites when surveys show that 80% of those living and working in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside support InSite, the existing safe injection site.

Bill C-2 pretends to implement the 2011 unanimous Supreme Court of Canada ruling in the case of Canada v. PHS Community Services Society, the decision upholding the right of InSite to operate and upholding the charter rights of those who are addicted to receive health care services.

Yet in its “principles”, Bill C-2 makes no reference to public health and no reference to any of the principles on which the Supreme Court of Canada decision was based. This indeed is a bill that will result in litigation, as its intent seems to be an end run around the Supreme Court decision on safe injection sites. Cynics might even say the government might welcome endless litigation, which would not only delay new safe injection sites but also consume the scarce resources of organizations that have a different view from the government on how best to address the addiction crisis in our communities.

The Conservatives also know that the false concerns about public health and safety that Bill C-2 raises will appeal to their narrow base who believe with a near religious fervour and a clear disdain for evidence that being tough on crime will somehow solve addiction problems.

Let me talk a little about each of these three not-so-hidden aims of Bill C-2: shutting down safe injection sites, getting around the Supreme Court ruling and destroying harm reduction programs. Bill C-2 pretends to facilitate the licensing of safe consumption sites, while instead creating a long list of criteria for licensing and setting up a system without any requirement for the timely disposition of those applications. The bill lists 26 criteria on which applications will be judged, literally A to Z in that section. It establishes long timelines for public consultation on an application, but imposes no timelines on the minister for actually making decisions.

Perhaps my greatest concern about the bill is the ultimate discretion granted to the minister. In the bill, the minister “may” grant a permit for a safe injection site that has met all the criteria, when in fact what I believe the bill should read is that the minister “must” grant a permit if the criteria are met.

As I said, Bill C-2 purports to implement the 2011 unanimous Supreme Court of Canada ruling in favour of safe injection sites. In this decision, the Supreme Court of Canada clearly found that safe injection sites save lives. The court ruled that the existing site should remain open with a section 56 exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

The court ruled that InSite users have a charter right to access the service and that similar services elsewhere should be allowed to operate with an exemption. The court did not say we need a new bill and a new process.

Finally, Bill C-2 pretends to be about public health and safety, when it actually aims to dismantle an important harm reduction program. It ignores the very evidence that exists on the positive impacts of InSite. More than 300 peer-reviewed scientific studies have demonstrated that safe injection sites effectively reduce the risk of contracting and spreading blood-borne diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C, as well as reducing deaths to zero from overdoses. In a study conducted over a one-year period, there were 273 overdoses at InSite. None of these resulted in fatality.

Bill C-2 also ignores the real savings to both health care and public safety budgets that come from safe injection sites. They ignore the real savings in terms of reduced demand on first responders and emergency rooms with the reduction in overdoses, and they ignore the increased number of clients who actually get into treatment programs as a result of visiting save injection sites.

My colleague from Vancouver East pointed out in her speech on Bill C-2 last week:

Dr. Evan Wood, a renowned scientist who works for the B.C. Centre of Excellence in HIV/AIDS, points out that one of the important aspects of a safe injection site is that, given that each HIV infection costs on average approximately $500,000 in medical costs, [InSite] has contributed to a 90% reduction in new HIV cases caused by intravenous drug use in British Columbia, which is why the B.C. government has been such a strong supporter of the program.

When the evidence is clear, how can we proceed with a bill such as this, which intends to frustrate the creation of new safe injection sites? Unfortunately, I believe Bill C-2 is part of the Conservative agenda to eliminate harm reduction programs. We saw this agenda begin in 2007, when the government removed the term “harm reduction” from the list of goals of Canada's national drug strategy.

I am standing here today because there is a need for action to address the crisis in overdoses in my own community that the provincial health authority, social service agencies and local police are trying to address. The most recent B.C. Coroner's Report from October 2012 found that there were 44 deaths from illicit drug use on Vancouver Island in 2011, with 16 of those occurring in greater Victoria. This makes Vancouver Island the region with the highest rate of deaths related to illicit drug use in British Columbia at 7.88 per 100,000 residents.

According to the Centre for Addictions Research at the University of Victoria, this makes the local per capita death rate nearly 30% higher than that in the Lower Mainland. If people need evidence of the positive impact of InSite versus a community such as mine, which does not have access to a safe injection site, they should keep that figure in mind. There is a 30% higher death rate from overdoses on Vancouver Island than where a safe injection site exists in the Lower Mainland. The need for action in my community is very clear, yet Bill C-2 would take away the best tool for responding to this health crisis. It would take a safe injection site off the table for my community.

I have one last question. Why the rush? It was surprising to see Bill C-2 as the first bill the Conservative government brought forward for debate in the second session of the 41st Parliament. Yes, it would help re-establish its tough-on-crime credentials, but more importantly I suspect the Conservatives are in a rush to bring in this new law to head off the opening of new safe injection sites, as there are some applications for section 56 exemptions that are quite advanced. What they want to do is change the law and send the applicants back to the drawing board under this new legislation with its long delays and near impossible criteria.

The real threat to public health and safety in my community turns out to be the narrow ideological agenda of the Conservative government, which ignores the evidence of the real contribution that safe injection sites make to public health and safety. It has already sent a fundraising letter to its base talking about donating to the Conservatives to help them keep drugs out of our backyards. Ironically, of course, that is exactly what safe injection sites do. They move drug use off the streets and out of our backyards into a safer setting for both those who are injection drug users and our communities as a whole.

New Democrats are opposing the bill at second reading and sending the bill to the Standing Committee on Public Safety. I would say this is another piece of Conservative propaganda around safe injection sites. Why is the bill not going to the health committee where it belongs? This, as the Supreme Court of Canada pointed out, is clearly a health issue and not a public safety issue. The NDP will be calling witnesses in committee to bring the evidence, once again, to the attention of Conservatives of the very positive role that safe injection sites play in both public health and safety. The very fact that the Conservatives have chosen to send the bill to the public safety committee illustrates to me their intention to distract the public by characterizing safe injection sites as a threat to public safety rather than an important health measure that would save both lives and money.

[Foreign Affairs, October 31st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it is less than 100 days until the Olympic Games open in Sochi, but Canadians are very concerned about the impact of Russia's new anti-gay laws.

Russia has already arrested and expelled non-Russians under these so-called “gay propaganda” laws.

Will the Minister of Foreign Affairs appoint a special consular officer to assist LGBT athletes and spectators in Sochi to ensure that all Canadians can take part, freely and fully, in these Olympic Games?

[Killer Whales, October 24th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, time is running out to save the southern resident killer whales. These most magnificent creatures not only hold an iconic place in first nations culture, they also drive our tourism industry. Most importantly, orcas are a key indicator of ecosystem health. That is why I am tabling today a motion calling for an action plan to protect this endangered species under the Species at Risk Act.

Over the past year, I have met with local stakeholders to develop an action plan with broad-based local support that will address key threats the orcas are facing. This motion calls for research and monitoring funding from the federal government, implementing programs to decrease chemical pollution in the Salish Sea, improving chinook enhancement programs, and measures to reduce noise levels and other disturbances orcas face on a daily basis.

We have waited for the federal government to act since 2003, when the southern resident killer whales were first listed as endangered. Since then, their numbers have dropped to just 81. We must act now to save these whales, which not only inspire us with their beauty but remind us all of the fragility of the ecosystem that sustains life in and around the Salish Sea.

[An Act to Bring Fairness for the Victims of Violent Offenders, October 18th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in favour of Bill C-479 at second reading. I look forward to discussing the bill further in the public safety committee. We look forward to the bill going to committee, as there is much in the bill that members from both sides of the House can support.

Despite the extreme rhetoric we sometimes hear from the government, let me restate the obvious: no one party in the House has a monopoly on the concern for victims. We do have a difference with the government on how best to serve victims and how best to make sure there are fewer victims of crime in the future, instead of taking stories ripped from sensational headlines and then suggesting what look like simple fixes without any consideration of the actual evidence underlying those headlines or of the unintended consequences of those seemingly simple solutions. This is an approach that we reject. I am not accusing the member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale of having done that in this case, but it is something we see too often on the other side.

What we do understand in the NDP is the importance of utilizing our correction system to prevent additional Canadians becoming victims in the future. Clearly, what Canada needs is a properly funded correction system where offenders receive the treatment they need, whether for addictions or mental illness or some other problem, and where they can also access training and education opportunities necessary for their successful reintegration into our communities. If not, offenders will find themselves back in the same circumstances as before and, therefore, are likely to reoffend, creating even more new victims in the future.

Conservatives often focus on the understandable feelings of some victims that the justice system ought to be more punitive and ought to provide a greater sense of retribution, or they focus on those victims who believe that toughness is the solution for crime. However, in doing so they miss the more fundamental feeling expressed by nearly all victims. The one concern that all victims have in common is that no one else should have to go through what they have gone through. That is the central and common concern of every victim, whether it is expressed through surveys or testimony that has been given at the public safety committee.

For New Democrats, and I believe for most Canadians, there is a concern that we not lose the balance in our justice system between the need for punishment and the common good of increased public safety that we can achieve through rehabilitation. That balance is placed in jeopardy when we fail to fully consider the consequences of reforms like those suggested in Bill C-479. That is why we look forward to further study and analysis in committee.

However, that balance is placed in even greater jeopardy by the government's penny-wise and pound foolish approach to public safety budgets. The consequences of this failure of the Conservative government to adequately resource the correction system will unfortunately be seen down the road in additional victims.

Therefore, we in the NDP are supporting sending Bill C-479 to committee, but with some reservations. This is primarily because there are many provisions here that are of clear benefit to victims and indeed have already become part of normal practice in the corrections and parole system. We agree it is a good idea to entrench these rights for victims by placing them in legislation. Among these are the right for victims or family members to be present at parole hearings. I appreciate the member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale suggesting that technology has made some new improvements possible in this area.

We also believe that entrenching in law the necessity of consideration of victims' statements in the Parole Board of Canada's decisions regarding release is an important victim right. We also believe that entrenching the right to various manners of presenting input to the Parole Board, again reflecting new technology, is an important thing to put in legislation. The right for victims to know the information that has been considered by the Parole Board in its review of offenders is also something we can support entrenching in legislation. We can also support the obligation to provide transcripts of parole hearings to victims and their families, not just to offenders as happens now. Finally, we can support ensuring the right to be notified when an offender is going to be out of custody, on parole, on temporary absence or on statutory release. That right to a notice is certainly something that is very important to be legislated and not just part of current practice.

We have some serious concerns about some other sections of the bill that may have unintended consequences. I am not questioning here the good intentions of the member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, nor reflecting on the moving testimony from victims of crime in his riding that he just provided to us. However, given the importance of parole in providing structure and supervised transitions back into society and the importance of using the parole system and things like temporary absence to allow corrections to test the readiness for release of offenders in a structured and controlled situation, we will be asking some serious questions at committee about some provisions of the bill.

Others share our concerns about the unintended consequences on our parole system that might result from Bill C-479. We look forward to hearing from those people or groups, which include the John Howard Society, the Elizabeth Fry Society, and even the former victims' ombudsman. They have all expressed publicly this fear of some unintended consequences; again, none of them is questioning the good intentions of the mover of the bill.

If the consequence of some of the provisions Bill C-479 is to deny access to parole, which is so necessary for safe release back into our communities, this consequence would place the public in what is ultimately a much more dangerous situation: a situation in which offenders are being released without any supervision and without any testing of their readiness for release.

For these reasons, and out of these concerns, we will likely be asking for amendments to the bill.

We also wonder, as I mentioned in the question to the hon. member, how this bill would relate to the new victims' rights bill that the government announced again in this week's throne speech, and we will once again be asking questions about the unintended consequences of this pattern we have seen in the House of Commons of amending the corrections act and the Criminal Code piecemeal through various private members' bills. It makes it very difficult to predict the consequences of all these individual pieces of legislation that are being introduced.

With respect to the hon. member, I wonder how we know at this point whether there are contradictions between his bill and the victims' rights bill. Certainly on this side we cannot know, because we have not seen the text of that bill. I hope he has; I hope he was fully consulted and I hope that there are no contradictions.

However, when we have multiple pieces of legislation before the House of Commons amending the Criminal Code and amending the corrections act at the same time, it becomes very difficult to deal with.

Once again, I would like to restate our support for strengthening victims' rights in our justice system and to once again say I do look forward to discussing the bill in committee.

I want to go back to the point that I raised at the beginning—that is, this difference between New Democrats' approach to crime and corrections and the government's approach to crime and corrections.

On our side of the House, we have been emphasizing again and again that we have to properly fund the corrections system if we want to prevent there being future victims of crime in our society.

One of the things raised in question period earlier in the House today is the ongoing failure of the government to properly fund mental health programs in our corrections institutions. The Correctional Investigator's recommendations in 2008 were not followed up on until 2010 by the minister and not even put in force until 2011. Now we have a new Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness who is faced with the situation of the Corrections Commissioner appearing at the inquest for Ashley Smith and openly saying that he does not have the resources to address problems of mental illness in the prison system.

Therefore, one of the things we will be asking the new Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness about when we get the opportunity is what he is going to do about this crisis in mental health treatment in our prisons, a crisis that has been brought to the attention of the government again and again since 2008. The most recent report from the Corrections Investigator focused on the plight of aboriginal women with mental illness in our corrections system, the lack of programs appropriate to their needs, and the lack of support for those programs within the corrections system.

I am emphasizing that instead of the government's tough-on-crime agenda, which seems to make sense only if we look at the surface of things, we have to have a much deeper understanding of the causes of crime and a much larger commitment to addressing the needs of those who are in the corrections system in order to make sure they do not reoffend.

We hear from the other side that we are interested in coddling prisoners. That is not what this is about. It is about taking a hard-headed approach to the what the real causes of crime are in this country and what the real solutions are to the problems faced by victims.

I would urge the government to pay more attention to the corrections system and the needs of those people who are in that system, not because we like the people in the system, although some of them are there for reasons that may not be their own responsibility because of addictions or mental illness.

In any case, we have to pay more attention to those needs, and we have to stop introducing legislation that increases mandatory minimum penalties, because those take away the discretion of judges to keep some of those people with mental illness and addiction problems out of the correction system.

Having done that, the government has created for itself a dilemma. It has increased the prison population. It has increased the number of people with those special needs in the prison system. Therefore, it has to provide the resources for that system.

To come back to the bill, we will be supporting the bill and having it sent to committee. We will be supporting many of the specific provisions of the bill that enhance victims' rights. We will want to take a good hard look at any unintended consequences for the parole system.

I thank the member once again for his speech today and for his introduction of this bill, and I look forward to dealing with it in committee.

[An Act to Bring Fairness for the Victims of Violent Offenders, October 18th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale for his very moving presentation on the bill, and also to say that we do appreciate his motivations for bringing the bill forward, and I will be saying some more in my own remarks in a few minutes about our support for the bill.

I have one question for the member. Given the throne speech this week, and the announcement by the government that it will be introducing a comprehensive victims' bill of rights, was he personally consulted about the preparation of that bill of rights? Will there be any problem with trying to proceed with his private member's bill at the same time we are having a government bill come forward that deals with many of the same issues?

[Respect for Communities Act, October 18th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the hon. member was as surprised as I was this morning to see the change in the committee to which this bill is being referred.

In its previous incarnation, it was to be sent to the health committee, and this clearly is, after the Supreme Court decision, a health matter. Now, suddenly this morning, we learned that this bill is being sent to the public safety committee. This gives the appearance that the Conservatives are trying to create fear around this issue by implying that somehow safe injection sites are a threat to public safety, when in fact we know that their impact is exactly the opposite.

I wonder if the member was as surprised as I was to see this reassigned to the public safety committee.