Bill 892

By Joel Goldenberg
The Suburban

St. Laurent Liberal MNA Marwah Rizqy has introduced Bill 892, to ban supervised injection sites for drug addicts near elementary and high schools and daycare centres. The law would ban such facilities within 150 metres of such educational institutions in Montreal, and within 250 metres of the institutions elsewhere in the province.

“The bill states that the government may, by regulation, determine the services that constitute supervised consumption services and provide other standards relating to the location of supervised consumption services,” she told the National Assembly. “The bill gives organizations that offer supervised consumption services at the time of its assent a period of two years from the date of its assent to comply with the prohibition it introduces.”

Rizqy posted on X that “many of you have written to us to ask for legislation to ensure that supervised drug consumption centres are not set up near schools and daycares. I stood up in the House to challenge the Legault government on this issue a year ago. Last September, Premier Legault finally admitted that we cannot ask children to live with intoxicated people. The parliamentary session is coming to an end, and the Liberal Party of Quebec is offering this bill to the government. You can even erase my name, the important thing is to legislate promptly. For a Quebec that has the good and safety of its children at heart.”

The QLP posted that “the ball is now in the CAQ’s camp.”

Lionel Carmant, the Social Services Minister, says he plans to introduce a similar bill next spring. “We’re already working on it with the legal affairs department,” he told reporters. “I’ve already said that, yes, we want to reduce distances, but we also want to facilitate access to care for drug addicts. We will study what [Rizqy] has presented to us, but we want something a little broader.” n