On Sept. 30, 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of Vancouver’s Insite, North America’s first legally authorized safer injection site. It was the culmination of a years-long struggle to open – and then keep open – one health facility that could help address the crisis of HIV and of overdose deaths among people injecting drugs. In response, the then-government flouted the ruling by passing an egregious new bill to create multiple bureaucratic barriers to getting a ministerial exemption to operate such services. The result is that in 2016 it is harder than ever to legally establish such services.