In the summer of 2010, Maclean’s magazine published an astonishing story about the RCMP’s approach to supervised-injection sites.
It outlined how the previous autumn, the Mounties and the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS were in discussions to hold a joint news conference.
There, they would each “declare their agreement that research shows the ‘benefits’ and ‘positive impacts’ of supervised injection sites for intravenous drug users”, according to journalist John Geddes.
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The senior Mountie in B.C. at the time-then deputy commissioner Gary Bass-reportedly told Dr. Julio Montaner that RCMP headquarters in Ottawa would not permit the news conference to go ahead.
The B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS subsequently filed a complaint to the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP. This concerned the Mounties’ efforts to discredit the centre’s research.
Maclean’s reported that the allegations didn’t go anywhere because the commission claimed that the complaint went beyond its mandate.
There’s no documented evidence that Stephen Harper played any role in convincing the RCMP to withhold support for peer-reviewed research into supervised-injection sites.
Stage was set for overdose crisis of 2016
Several years later, the Harper government introduced legislation making it far more difficult to open supervised-injection sites in Canada.
According to this law, these sites had to be approved by local police forces.