Insite

By Todd Coyne, Vancouver Sun

 

The majority of British Columbians support Insite, North America's first legal drug injection site, and oppose the federal government's attempts to close it.

 

That's according to a nationwide poll by Angus Reid released Wednesday showing that 68 per cent of respondents in B.C. support Insite and its services for drug users in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, while 30 per cent oppose Insite and two per cent were undecided.

 

B.C. was the only province in which Insite had majority support, while opinion in most other provinces was largely split or on the fence.

 

By Peter McKnight, Vancouver Sun

 

Imagine if the federal government opposed a scientific statement seeking to improve community health and safety by calling for the incorporation of scientific evidence into health policies.

 

People around the country would be outraged, and rightly so, since by failing to use the evidence at its disposal, the government would be placing everyone's health and safety in jeopardy.

 

Yet strange as it may sound, this is precisely what the Conservative government is doing. This week the feds once again displayed their hostility to evidence-based health policy when they refused to support the Vienna Declaration.

 

Xtra News

 

Word from Vienna today that a group of about 50 activists staged a die-in and shut down the Canadian booth in the exhibition hall at the International AIDS Conference yesterday.

 

The protest came in response to the Harper government's ongoing refusal to support safe injection sites and other harm reduction measures adopted by the Vienna Declaration. Harper's delegates refused to sign the declaration on Monday.

 

"Given that some of the recommendations outlined in the Vienna Declaration are inconsistent with Canada's National Anti-Drug Strategy and current federal drug policy, Canada will not support the document," Charlene Wiles, of the Public Health Agency of Canada, wrote in an email, according to the CBC.

 

By Mark Iype, Postmedia News

 

A report card issued by the HIV/AIDS community in Canada sent a strong message to governments at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna on Tuesday, saying current strategies for fighting the deadly disease are putting lives at risk.

 

In the report presented by HIV-positive activists, researchers, AIDS organizations and human rights and HIV/AIDS lawyers, Canada received a failing grade in recognizing the needs of women and girls to protect themselves from HIV and to manage HIV infection.

 

In Canada, the number of infected women continues to rise from just over 11 per cent of new infections prior to 1999 to over 26 per cent in 2008, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

 

Interview with Dr. Evan Wood by Am Johal, Worldpress.org

 

Dr. Evan Wood is director of the Urban Health Research Initiative, research scientist at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and associate professor at the Department of Medicine of the University of British Columbia. Am Johal interviewed him in Vancouver.

 

Am Johal: You were involved with drafting the Vienna Declaration ahead of the 2010 AIDS conference scheduled for Vienna. Can you outline its basic premise and why this was released at this time?

 

By Kirk Makin, Globe and Mail

 

The future of a unique, supervised drug-injection site in Vancouver will be decided in the Supreme Court of Canada.

 

The Court said Thursday that it decide whether the federal government has authority to shut down the Downtown Eastside clinic - the first such clinic in North America to allow addicts to inject themselves with prohibited drugs under a nurse's supervision.

 

The case has turned into an important jurisdictional struggle between the province and federal governments.

 

In January, the B.C. Court of Appeal decided 2-1 that the province has jurisdiction over Insite for Community Safety since it provides addicts with health care, which is within provincial jurisdiction.

CBC News

 

Canada's top court has announced it will hear the federal government's appeal in relation to Vancouver's supervised drug-injection site.

 

Earlier this year, the B.C. Court of Appeal dismissed an attempt by the federal government to shut down Insite, the provincially funded facility on the city's troubled Downtown Eastside, and ruled the injection site has a constitutional right to exist.

 

The case has raised important questions about the division of powers between Ottawa and the provinces, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said in January.

 

The federal government is appealing the B.C. Court of Appeal ruling on the basis that there was one dissenting opinion.

 

By Murray Dobbin, Rabble.ca

 

rabble.ca columnist Murray Dobbin details the harm Prime Minister Stephen Harper is doing to the political and social fabric of Canada in a new essay commissioned by The Council of Canadians. This article is an excerpt taken from the essay, the ninth in a 10-part series on Harper's assault on democracy..Insite is the first supervised safe injection site in North America and describes itself as "...a safe, health-focused place where people can go to inject drugs and connect to healthcare services -- from primary care to treat disease and infection, to addiction counseling and treatment."