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The federal government's opposition to Insite, Vancouver's supervised-injection facility, has long baffled Canadian scientists, health professionals and social workers. Now, Canada's Health Minister has managed to perplex an international audience as well.
Visiting Mexico City for this week's International AIDS Conference, Tony Clement appeared on Tuesday at an event to promote a new World Health Organization guide on fighting HIV-AIDS. Mr. Clement's mere appearance qualified as an endorsement of the document, and he explicitly praised it. But he then proceeded to embarrass WHO organizers by reiterating his opposition to safe-injection sites - claiming that facilities such as Insite condone drug use and are tantamount to "harm addition."
Although wrong-headed, this position would at least be consistent if the Conservatives were opposed in principle to all harm-reduction measures aimed at allowing drugs to be used more safely. But they are not. The government supports needle-exchange programs, which Mr. Clement defended this week. It has simply decided, as Mr. Clement put it in Mexico City, to "draw the line" at supervised injection.
Mr. Clement has declined to explain his rationale beyond hyperbole such as this week's proclamation that the government is "not prepared to allow people to die." If anything, Insite - which has succeeded in referring a significant number of addicts to treatment programs - does even less to encourage continued addiction than the handing out of needles. In the process, it provides medical support that helps prevent overdose deaths, and ensures that dirty needles are properly disposed of rather than being strewn on the streets.
Although the costs of Insite are relatively low, it would be one thing for the federal government to decide that its funds would be better directed toward rehabilitation and other programs aimed at ending addiction altogether. But the Conservatives have gone much further than that. In attempting to end the exemption from federal criminal laws that allows Insite to function - efforts that now involve appealing a B.C. Supreme Court ruling - they are attempting to thwart British Columbia's government from formulating its own response to a serious public health crisis.
This is particularly strange, given that the Conservatives make much of their respect for provincial jurisdiction. But as Mr. Clement demonstrated this week, logic is sorely lacking in the government's position on harm reduction.
