Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (short title: Respect for Communities Act), was introduced in the House of Commons on 17 October 2013 by the Honourable Rona Ambrose, Minister of Health. It was referred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security on 19 June 2014, and was reported back to the House of Commons without amendment on 18 November 2014. The bill passed third reading in the House of Commons on 23 March 2015 and received first reading in the Senate on 24 March 2015.
Bill C-2 was previously introduced in the 1st Session of the 41st Parliament as Bill C-65, which died on the Order Paper when Parliament was prorogued on 13 September 2013. At the time, Bill C-65 was awaiting second reading in the House of Commons.
Bill C-2’s most noteworthy clauses provide for amendments to section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA). Section 56 deals with the conditions under which the Minister of Health may consider granting an exemption from the application of any provisions of the Act or its regulations for medical or scientific purposes or any other purpose in the public interest. The amendments to section 56 focus specifically on exemption requirements for the operation of supervised consumption sites in Canada. The term “supervised consumption site” will be used throughout this paper when referring to the bill (this term is defined in new section 56.1(1) of the CDSA – see section 2.1, “Interpretation (Clause 5),” of this Legislative Summary). Other sources referred to in this paper, including the Supreme Court of Canada, instead use the term “supervised injection site” or “safe/safer injection site.”
1.1 Overview of Supervised Injection/Consumption Sites
According to the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse,
safer or supervised injection sites are specialized facilities that provide injection drug users with a clean, safe, unhurried environment. Sterile injection equipment is provided and health care and social service professionals are available to deal with health issues, provide counselling, and facilitate access to detoxification and treatment programs [available on site or elsewhere]. Supervision is provided by health professionals trained in low-risk injection techniques and overdose intervention.
Organizations in other jurisdictions, including the European Union’s European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, refer to supervised injection sites as drug consumption rooms, which they define as “professionally supervised healthcare facilities where drug users can use drugs in safer and more hygienic conditions.” Drug consumption rooms aim to address the public health and community problems associated with specific populations of drug users; in particular, injectors who consume in public or other high-risk situations.
The establishment of supervised sites for injection drug users arose from concerns in the 1980s regarding the rapid spread of blood-borne pathogens such as HIV and hepatitis C among injection drug users. The sites reflect a harm-reduction approach to drug abuse, which focuses on interventions that seek to reduce or minimize the adverse health and social consequences of drug use without requiring an individual to discontinue drug use. The harm-reduction approach to drug abuse sees many drugs users as being unwilling or unable to abstain from drug abuse at any given time and, consequently, there is a need to provide them with options that minimize the harm and/or risks caused by their continued drug use. These risks include overdose, infections, the spread of communicable diseases and contaminated litter. It is also important to note that harm-reduction approaches do not exclude abstinence-based approaches that focus on the discontinuation of drug use. Rather, they aim to serve as a bridge to treatment and rehabilitation services.
（Source：LIBRARY OF PARLIAMENT）
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