Business group challenges safe injection sites in court

A local legal battle over the community’s right to be consulted on safe injection sites could have national implications and potentially delay life-saving access to harm reduction services, proponents of the sites say.

The Chinatown and Area Business Association brought a federal court application Monday, seeking to have the legal exemption allowing three community safe injection sites to function quashed.

The crux of the association’s argument is that it wasn’t properly consulted before the federal health minister signed off on three sites where intravenous drug users are able to inject themselves under supervision, allowing for overdoses to be reversed and for people to get connected with other social supports like treatment and housing.

“Consultation, we submit, consists of much more than telling someone what you’re doing,” Edward Molstad, the association’s lawyer, argued Monday, adding that none of the information that was provided was made available in Chinese. Molstad said his clients object to the three sites being

in such proximity — at Boyle McCauley Health Centre, Boyle Street Community Services and the George Spady Centre Shelter and Detox Programs — and to what he described as an untested model of operating multiple sites so close together.

Holly Mah, a director with the business association, said the community supports people getting help for their addictions, and that only having one site, at Boyle McCauley Health Centre, serve the area would be more appropriate.

“Our contention is that it’s very unfair to have three drug injection sites in the proximity of six blocks. What community can sustain this kind of burden? Where is the fairness? The procedural consultation was not fair to us whatsoever,” Mah said.

But counsel for the federal government argued the legislation puts the minister under no obligation to consult with third parties, like the business association.

“The focus of the process is for health and safety outcomes,” said James Elford, counsel for the attorney general of Canada.

He argued that the business association’s motivations were primarily economic.

Nate Whitling is the lawyer for Access to Medically Supervised Injection Services Edmonton, the group that supports the sites in Edmonton.

He argued that the trio of sites set up at pre-existing social agencies is needed to ensure 24-hour access.

“People could die if these sites are not open 24 hours,” Whitling said.

Caitlin Shane, counsel for the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, spoke to media during an adjournment.

She said her clients sought intervener status in the Edmonton case because this is the first opportunity the court has had to weigh in on the application process for opening safe injection sites.

“We need to be reducing barriers to supervised consumption services at this time, rather than introducing new barriers that aren’t contemplated in the legislation,” Shane said.

Federal court Justice Richard Mosley reserved his decision and said he expects to release it in January.