Return to Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy Home Page  


An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (short title given by government: Respect for Communities Act) (version française)

This Bill re-introduces an earlier Bill (Bill C-65) that was introduced in the House of Commons on June 6, 2013.  Bill C-65 was never enacted.  It died when Parliament was prorogued in the summer of 2013.
The government statement concerning Bill C-2, the Respect for Communities Act, gives the government's explanation of the purpose and effect of the Bill: 
On 17 October 2013, the Minister of Health introduced Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (Respect for Communities Act), in the House of Commons and it was given first reading.

Currently, under section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Minister has the authority to grant an exemption to undertake activities using controlled substances for a medical or scientific purpose, or in the public interest. Approximately 10,000 section 56 exemption applications are received every year, most of which are for routine activities using controlled substances from licit sources, including clinical trials, methadone treatment and university research.

Bill C-2 amends the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to, among other things,
• create a separate exemption regime for activities involving the use of a controlled substance or precursor that is obtained in a manner not authorized under this Act;
• specify the purposes for which an exemption may be granted for those activities; and
• set out the information that must be submitted to the Minister of Health before the Minister may consider an application for an exemption in relation to a supervised consumption site.
The government information (remember, this is information provided by government casting the legislation in the most favourable light) provided when the predecessor Bill (C-65) was introduced in June 2013 can be found here: English   Français

An article by Connie Carter of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, posted just days before the October 17 re-introduction of this Bill, stresses the need for supervised injection facilities. 

Bill C-2, many argue, presents an impediment to establishing such facilities under the guise of setting up a process to apply for government approval of such sites.  The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network strongly criticized (version française) the original Bill when it was introduced in June 2013.

Here are many studies and other documents about supervised injection sites provided by the Urban Health Research Initiative, a program of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.

On September 30, 2011, the nine justices of the Supreme Court of Canada had unanimously ordered federal Minister of Health to grant exemption to Vancouver's supervised injection facility, known as Insite, from the law prohibiting possession of controlled substances.  Here is the decision (version française). The Court also stated that, on future applications for exemptions by other facilities, "Where the Minister is considering an application for an exemption for a supervised injection facility, he or she will aim to strike the appropriate balance between achieving the public health and public safety goals.  Where, as here, the evidence indicates that a supervised injection site will decrease the risk of death and disease, and there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety, the Minister should generally grant an exemption."

Return to home page