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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 39

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 2, 2022 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 39 - Mar/2/22
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)
Madam Speaker, in reflection, whether it is the Prime Minister, as the member just pointed out, or ministers of health of this government, members of the Liberal caucus, my colleague from the north, members from British Columbia or members from the province of Quebec, it is safe to say that in all regions of our country we have recognized that this is a national public health crisis that we are talking about. At the same time, we recognize that it is a public health issue. We have consistently said that through the years. I can remember being in the opposition benches when I talked about the importance of supervised safe injection sites, citing Vancouver as an example. We saw different levels of government, first responders and many different advocates dealing with the types of issues that we are talking about coming together and ultimately setting the stage to say that it is a health issue and that we need to work collectively together in order to be able to take on that issue. We have seen great success. It has already been referenced today that no one has actually died of an overdose at one of these supervised safe injection sites. We are talking about well over two million visits in a year. We have to be aware that we are not talking about the odd person who has an addiction. There are people with serious addictions living in all of our communities, and that is why we talk about it being a public health crisis. It is a health issue, and—
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Context: House Hansard - 39 - Mar/2/22
Mr. Tom Kmiec
  • Mar/2/22 7:56:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely correct in her reading of the act. It is actually the same reading that I have, and I referred to “Meetings in private”, which is in subsection 62(4) of the act. What I was basically implying, and will say now, is that the best portion of the committee, the one I think the public will be most interested in, will be the discussion of the orders and regulations internally that the government was using, passing and referring to. That is the thing the public wants to know about the most, and that is the thing that will be kept secret and will be private. The next part is that I do not know how the committee will be able to report on it in an actual, physical report. It may be able to make allusions to it and infer certain things, but it will not be able to specifically say and construct an image of what happened between February 14 and February 23.
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