Photo Credit: Vancouver Coastal Health

Lost in the shuffle amid the recent tragedy in Haiti, parliamentary drama and growing Olympic fever, a recent B.C. Court of Appeal ruling stands to reshape the way the Canadian legal system deals with addiction. On January 15, 2010 the Court of Appeal for British Columbia dismissed a federal government appeal to close InSite, Canada’s only supervised safe-injection site. The federal government is widely expected to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada, opening the door for a new approach towards Canadian policy in dealing with addiction and substance abuse.

In the 87 page ruling, Justice Huddart wrote that the court dismissed the federal government’s appeal “by reason of the application of the doctrine of interjurisdictional immunity”, which prevents a law from being applied outside of its constitutional jurisdiction. With health care professionals, academics, and courts recognizing InSite as a provider of legitimate health-care services – an area of provincial jurisdiction – the Court of Appeal found that federal drug laws prohibiting the possession of controlled substances were constitutionally unable to override the application of provincial health-care programs. The Court felt that attempts by the federal government to close InSite were an “indisputable intrusion of the federal government into the provision of medical services”.
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Women will not compete in ski jumping at the 2010 Games. Photo Credit: Media Canada

On December 22nd, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear the appeal of the female ski jumpers who wished to compete for the first time at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, ending the women’s court battle. The SCC gave no reason for its decision.

The unfortunate legacy of exclusion of women’s ski jumping from the Winter Olympics will hereby continue in Vancouver.

Upon hearing this news, my first inclination was to accept the IOC’s rationale: that women’s ski jumping lacked sufficient participation to be included in the Olympics, on a national and an individual level. Not enough gals, not enough countries, and a simple equation.

After all, this is Canada’s Olympics; our Olympics. Surely a country that prides itself on tolerance, multiculturalism and gender equity would not idly allow gender discrimination to prevail in Vancouver, the most populous city ever to host the Winter Games.
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