Pubdate: Wed, 24 Aug 2016
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Page: S1
Copyright: 2016 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Andrea Woo

OTTAWA TO LEAVE INJECTION-SITE LAW AS IS

Philpott Says Effects of Respect for Communities Act - Introduced in 
2015 - Being Monitored, Leaves Door Open to Changes If Needed

Canada's Health Minister says Ottawa has no plans to repeal 
Conservative government legislation that harm-reduction advocates say 
makes opening new supervised-consumption sites unduly onerous - if 
not impossible.

British Columbia's Health Minister, provincial health officer and 
others say the Respect for Communities Act puts unnecessary obstacles 
in the way of a proven health intervention.

Overdose deaths are at a record high in B.C., having surpassed 433 as 
of July 31 - a 74 per-cent increase over the same period last year.

Asked about the legislation in Vancouver on Tuesday, federal Health 
Minister Jane Philpott reiterated that the Liberal government 
supports harm reduction, and supervised-consumption sites specifically.

However, it does not plan to revisit the legislation immediately.

"There are other communities that are using the mechanisms in place 
to be able to apply to open similar sites," Dr. Philpott said.

"We have made statements in the past to say that we are continuing to 
follow how that is evolving under the current legislation, and if 
there is a requirement for changing the legislation, we'll certainly 
be looking at that possibility."

The minister acknowledged that opioid-related deaths are an 
"escalating problem in a number of provinces" and said she has 
corresponded with B.C. Health Minister Terry Lake about the matter.

"We have already indicated some of the measures that we are going to 
take as a federal government.

"We introduced a five-point plan that I announced a couple of months 
ago that talks about better public-health education, better support 
for providers, addressing access to unnecessary opioids, expanding 
treatment options, including harm reduction."

Critics have said the act, which received royal assent in June, 2016, 
a deliberate effort by Stephen Harper's government to block 
facilities where people can ingest their own drugs using sterile 
equipment and under the supervision of medical staff.

The Conservative government had fought Insite, the only public 
supervised injection site in North America, all the way to the 
Supreme Court of Canada, which in 2011 ordered it to stop interfering.

The legislation contains more than 27 conditions for those seeking 
approval of sites, including holding extensive community 
consultations; collecting data and other information on crime, public 
nuisance and inappropriately discarded drug paraphernalia in the 
vicinity of the site; and conducting criminal-record checks for every 
staff member going back 10 years, which can prevent recovered addicts 
from being peer-support workers.

Vancouver Coastal Health's application package for renewal of 
Insite's permission to operate used to be about an inch thick, and 
its application under the act is four inches thick. Completing the 
application used to take several weeks; it now takes several months. 
The health authority spent about $15,000 preparing its most recent 
renewal application, and paying staff to do the work to complete the 
new requirements added another $15,000 to the cost.

Perry Kendall, B.C. provincial health officer, said the requirements 
build a case for denying permission to such sites.

"The Supreme Court judgment basically said that you would expect, as 
a rule, that [approval] would be granted by the minister of health if 
there was evidence that there was a health problem, and there would 
be no social harms from opening such a site," Dr. Kendall said in an 
interview on Tuesday.

"The Respect for Communities Act basically says that [approval] will 
only be granted in exceptional circumstances. So the act is designed 
to run against the spirit of the Supreme Court judgment."

Overdose deaths have surged in B.C., driven in large part by the 
growing prevalence of illicit fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, being cut 
into street drugs. Most recent figures from the B.C. Coroners Service 
show that fentanyl is detected in about 60 per cent of all illicit 
drug overdose deaths.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom