Federal Health Minister Tony Clement has given a 16-month reprieve to Insite, Vancouver's supervised injection site. Clement announced that the federal exemption for Insite is being extended to December, 2007.

His announcement came after an outpouring of support from community groups, scientists, the civic and provincial governments, the Vancouver police, and even Stephen Lewis, the UN secretary general's special envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa.

On the same day that Clement made his announcement, the federal NDP issued a news release accusing him of "plotting to close the heralded safe injection site". "If Tony Clement wanted to keep Vancouver's safe injection site open, he wouldn't have travelled to Sweden--a country with no safe injection site and one of the most restrictive drug policies in the E.U.--looking for excuses to close Insite," Vancouver East NDP MP Libby Davies said in the release. 

Earlier today, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users announced via the Pivot Newswire that it had gone to court to try to keep Canada's first supervised injection site open. VANDU stated that if Conservative government let the exemption expire on September 12, VANDU would seek an "interim constitutional exemption".

VANDU's lawyer, John Conroy, said in the news release that the organization would have preferred to wait for an exemption. “However, the refusal of the Minister to make a timely decision has forced us to act,” Conroy said in the release.

VANDU planned to argue that criminal laws regarding heroin possession violate Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees liberty and security of the person. Conroy was unavailable to comment on whether or not the court case will proceed.

This isn't the first time that a group has gone to court citing constitutional arguments to ensure the provision of health services. In 2004, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously upheld an appeal by the B.C. attorney general regarding the government's right not to fund services for autistic children.

Justices in the B.C. Supreme Court and B.C. Court of Appeal had previously ruled that the B.C. government had violated Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (equality rights) by not covering Lovaas therapy under the medical plan. Lovaas is an intensive behaviour therapy for autistic children, which costs between $45,000 to $60,000 per year.

Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin ruled that Lovaas was outside “core services” required under the Canada Health Act. She did not address Section 7 of the Charter because it “was raised only fleetingly in written and oral submissions”.