BILL TOO HIGH

Re: “MP abstains on C-15,” June 11-17

As the executive director of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society and
a Graduate Research Fellow for the Centre for Addictions Research of
B.C., I was honoured to be one of the researchers and experts invited by
the House of Commons Justice Committee to comment on Bill C-15, the
Conservative Party’s mandatory minimums drug bill.

As I told the committee, Parliament will not pass another bill that has
a greater potential to harm Canadians than this failed and expensive
approach to reducing substance use. For evidence of this threat to human
rights and public health we only need to look south of our border.
Mandatory minimum sentences have made our American neighbour the biggest
jailer nation in the world, with over 2 million of their citizens behind
bars. But I don’t really blame the Conservative Party for this debacle;
it would be naive to expect anything but ideological and ill-considered
legislation from the Conservatives on complex issues like gay rights,
the environment or substance use. However, while the NDP and Bloc
Quebecois rallied their troops to strike down this bill, the Liberals
sat on their hands, leaving their moral and ethical principles at the
doors of Parliament for short-term political gain.

Despite the good intentions and actions of Dr. Keith Martin, his party
had every occasion to kill this legislation and to put forward an
evidence-based strategy to substance use focused on public health, and
informed by harm reduction and human rights. Canadians want and deserve
drug policies based on science and compassion, not fear and
misinformation, and by supporting this bill the Liberals have cursed us
with years—perhaps decades—of harmful and dangerous policies that will
inevitably lead to a rise in HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C in both the prison
and general population, waste untold millions in taxpayer money on court
and prison costs, and move us ever closer to an unwinnable U.S. style
“war on drugs.”