politicians – This Magazine

What are Canadian politicians saying about supervised injection sites?

Erica Lenti — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 15:43:48 +0000

Vancouver’s Insite facility. Photo courtesy of Vancouver Coastal Health.

Ottawa: The feds

“I’ve made it very clear to my department that there should be no unnecessary barriers for communities who want to open supervised consumption sites.”—Jane Philpott, federal health minister

Progress report
Bill C-37 was tabled in December 2016 to simplify the process of opening safe injection sites across the country. It is currently in its second reading.

Vancouver: The epicentre

“We have over a dozen people a month dying in Vancouver this year [in 2016] of overdose deaths.”—Gregor Robertson, mayor

Progress report
In the city’s Downtown Eastside, Insite, North America’s first supervised injection site, has been operating since 2003. Vancouver Coastal Health has also applied to operate two new sites, a response to the growing opioid crisis in the city.

Toronto: The big city

“There’s no magic bullet to stop fatal overdoses. Treatment, prevention, harm reduction, and enforcement are all part of the solution. but supervised injection works.”—Joe Cressy, city councillor

Progress report
The province has agreed to back and fund three safe injection sites in the city, though they will take several months to open.

Winnipeg: In the middle

“What I have heard is the need for greater [long-term] treatment facilities to help our citizens who are affected by addictions, that is the number one focus for the families I’ve met with.”—Brian Bowman, mayor

Progress report
Bowman says safe injection sites are not on the city’s agenda. But 46 percent of Winnipeggers are in favour of the sites, according to a Postmedia poll.

Calgary: Out west

“We have to have a very serious conversation on what works and doesn’t work…. there’s no more time for buck-passing.”—Naheed Nenshi, mayor

Progress report
Both the mayor and police chief roger cha n support safe injection sites as part of a wider drug strategy. meanwhile, Calgarians are split on the issue, according to a Postmedia survey, with 41 percent opposed to the sites.

This45: Andrew Potter on democracy researcher Alison Loat

Graham F. Scott — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:45:07 +0000

Alison Loat. Photo courtesy Samara Canada.

Canadians are giving up on their political system. Voting participation is at historic lows; the number of people who vote for the winning party is now routinely outpaced by the number who don’t vote at all. Most young people don’t vote—63 percent of people under age 24 didn’t cast a ballot in 2008—and that bodes ill for the future of Canadian democracy.

Alison Loat, director and co-founder of Samara Canada, is determined to get to the bottom of this increasing political disengagement.

Samara, based in Toronto, was founded in 2008 and has since been dedicated to the study of how Canadian citizens engage, or don’t, with their democracy. Their most attention-grabbing project so far was a series of “exit interviews” with former members of parliament, which uncovered a wide variation in what, exactly, MPs think their jobs are. The foundation has also hosted a series of talks on the future of journalism, and the role it plays in shaping civic life.

“The hope is to create a bit of a community,” Loat says, to “tell the stories of Canada in a compelling way so that citizens will engage with them.”

Loat is currently developing Samara’s next project, the Democracy Index, a report card on the health of Canadian politics and civil society. Expect a few “Needs Improvement” marks—dismal youth voter turnout, for instance—but Loat says the purpose of the index is also to highlight the things that are working well. The point, in the end, is to get citizens talking about the democratic system of which they are a part. “Any way that I can creatively influence and help the development of this country,” Loat says she’ll do it. “Because I think it’s a great place to live.”

— Victoria Salvas

Andrew Potter Then: This Magazine This & That editor, 2001. Now: Features editor at Canadian Business magazine. Author of The Authenticity Hoax (McLelland, 2010) and co-author of The Rebel Sell (Harper Collins, 2004).

Victoria Salvas is a freelance writer and former This Magazine intern.