Pubdate: Mon, 13 Apr 2015
Source: Metro (Ottawa, CN ON)
Copyright: 2015 Metro
Contact:  http://www.metronews.ca/Ottawa
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4032
Author: Steve Collins
Page: 13

POLITICIANS AGREE TO IGNORE THE EVIDENCE WITH BILL C-2

There was rare harmony between our federal, provincial and local
politicians last week as they gathered to announce the feds'
$62-million contribution to the Ottawa River Action Plan.

The infrastructure upgrade, which will reduce the filth flowing into
the Ottawa River, is pretty uncontroversial. Who favours pollution?

And who doesn't like to see our officials from different levels and
parties play nice? Depends what they're playing at.

Pierre Poilievre, the federal minister responsible for our region,
later talked to Metro to tout the investment, but also to defend Bill
C-2, The Respect For Communities Act, passed by the House of Commons
last month, which raises new barriers to opening supervised injection
sites for intravenous drug users.

The new requirements include a sheaf of letters from the area's police
chief and other officials, and Poilievre pointed out that his
government was responding to local concerns, since our mayor and
police chief oppose such facilities in Ottawa.

Leave aside for a moment how this solicitude for local sensibilities
doesn't extend to, say, the controversial monument to the victims of
communism. Mayor Watson has called the memorial a "blight" that's been
thrust upon us with zero consultation. The importance of the mayor's
opinion grows in direct proportion to how well it dovetails with that
of the Tories.

And never mind the mountain of evidence from Vancouver, where the
Insite facility has drastically reduced overdose deaths and infectious
disease. Or the numerous studies suggesting it could work here. Like
last year's analysis from Simon Fraser University that two supervised
injection sites in Ottawa would cost $4.4 million to operate but save
us $5-million from prevented HIV and hepatitis C infections alone.
That's apart from stopping overdose deaths, of which we clock one
roughly every ten days in Ottawa.

What about the people pointedly not asked for their
input?

"We run a drop-in every week in the downtown core," complained
Catherine Hacksel of the Coalition for Safer Consumption Sites in
Ottawa (CSCS). "People are using drugs in public places and are
unstably housed and we don't see any city councillors visiting us or
contacting us or asking us our opinion."

She thinks the feds have done a masterful job of framing a health
issue as a criminal one and exploiting stigma against drug users,
instead of addressing the copious evidence that harm reduction works.
Case in point: C-2's requiring criminal record checks on employees of
an injection site. That eliminates a lot of former users who want to
help others become former users.

"The reality is people who have been there, which a lot of the time
includes having a criminal record, are people who understand what drug
users are going through," Hacksel said. "They're really much better at
connecting with people who are marginalized because they know how it
feels."

She worries C-2 will further slow down the response to an ongoing
emergency.

"The longer it takes to get a site open, the more days pass and the
more people die=C2=85To me, it's very personal because these are my frien
ds."

Co-operation is not always a virtue, and our governments deserve no
credit for working together to ignore the evidence and the sick.
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MAP posted-by: Matt