In Vancouver, the formerly scheduled closing date for Insite, that province’s safe and supervised injecting room facility, has come and gone, due to its life extension by Justice Ian Pitfield of the British Columbian Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, the ideologically driven Canadian federal government isn’t taking no for an answer, and despite British Columbian police, Vancouver Downtown Eastside small business, and provincial political support, the Harper administration still intends to take the case to the British Columbian Court of Appeal, and then probably all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court, the court of highest jurisdiction in that country.

It’s a war of ideology versus pragmatism and current constitutional safeguards for the existence of the facility, given that its closure would represent the loss of ‘life, liberty and security’ of IV drug users who might otherwise turn to crime, sex work, risk dirty needle use or face injury and death from substance-abuse related health problems. However, defenders of the facility are confident of the facility’s ultimate survival and defeat of the federal Health Minister Tony Clements, who seems solidly wed to an absolutist prohibitionist ideology that has no time for evidence-based harm reduction and risk minimisation practical public health care.

Recommended:

James Keller: “Battle over Insite expected to go to Supreme Court”: Globe and Mail: 03.07.08: http://www.globeandmail.com