Bill C-26 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to provide for minimum penalties for serious drug offences, to increase the maximum penalty for cannabis (marihuana) production, to reschedule certain substances from Schedule III to that Act to Schedule I, and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

[Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Conservative, Jonquière—Alma, QC]

moved that Bill C-26, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-26.

As members know, the Minister of Justice tabled this bill last year. It proposes a number of mandatory minimum penalties to ensure that appropriately high sentences are imposed on those who commit serious drug offences.

The bill is not about applying mandatory minimum penalties for all drug crimes. The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act contains a complex offence and penalty structure. Penalties depend on the nature of the prohibited activity and on the type of substance involved.

The most problematic and dangerous substances, such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines and morphine, are listed under schedule I. Offences involving these substances attract the severest penalties, up to life imprisonment.

Cannabis is a schedule II drug and attracts lesser penalties. It is only if at least three kilograms are involved that trafficking and possession for the purpose of trafficking is punishable by up to life imprisonment. Production of cannabis is punishable by up to seven years' imprisonment.

The least severe penalties, up to 12 months' imprisonment on summary conviction, are reserved for offences involving substances listed in schedules IV and V.

It should be noted, however, that most of the prohibited activities in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act are legal if committed by someone possessing the proper licence, permit or exemption.

For example, the marijuana medical access regulations that came into force on July 30, 2001, provide a scheme for sick individuals to apply for licences to possess or grow marijuana for medical use with the support of their doctor or, in some cases, with the support of a specialist.

As such, there are individuals in Canada who are exempted from the production offence contained in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and who are growing marijuana within their residences or in their yards. The amount of plants that the individual is permitted to produce is derived from a formula tied to the amount of dried marijuana product which the individual holder of the permit requires on a daily basis.

Some members of the House may be of the view that serious drug offences do not require a response such as the one contained in this bill. However, serious drug crime is a growing problem in Canadian cities and towns and a serious legislative approach is required.

According to Statistics Canada's Juristat, “Crime Statistics in Canada, 2004”, the rate of marijuana cultivation offences has more than doubled over the past decade, from approximately 3,400 offences in 1994 to 8,000 in 2004.

According to a study on marijuana grow operations in British Columbia, approximately 39% of all reported marijuana cultivation cases were located in B.C. Between 1997 and 2000, the total number of these cases increased by over 220%.

Although the number of individual operations in B.C. levelled off between 2000 and 2003, the estimated quantity of marijuana produced has increased from 19,729 kilos in 1997 to a seven year high of 79,817 kilos in 2003, due to the size and sophistication of individual operations.

Recent investigations by B.C. Hydro indicate the existence of up to 17,000 possible marijuana grow operations. The increase in the illicit production of marijuana has occurred not just in B.C. but across all of Canada.

There are no available national data on synthetic drug production. Available RCMP data, however, indicate a steady rise in these production operations, where the RCMP seized 25 synthetic drug production operations in 2002, 51 in 2003, 60 in 2004 and 53 in 2005.

Of the 60 operations seized in 2004, 17 were producing ecstasy and 40 were set up to produce methamphetamine. Of the 53 labs seized in 2005, 60% were producing methamphetamine and 30% were producing ecstasy.

I should add that we heard in justice committee about some of the very troubling effects methamphetamine can have on its users and about the difficulty in tackling methamphetamine production. We heard testimony on the devastating impact it can have on individuals. It is something that we should all be mindful of, because none of us, whether our communities are rural or urban, are immune from the challenge that the production of these drugs presents.

Unlike better known drugs of abuse such as heroin, cocaine or marijuana, methamphetamine presents some unique challenges. Methamphetamine is a synthetic drug. It is not dependent on cultivation of a crop. Its production requires no specialized skill or training, and its precursor chemicals are relatively easy to obtain and inexpensive to purchase.

Part of the problem is that the purchasing and obtaining of those precursor elements, which are very much legal at the moment, are some very common chemicals that many of us would use in our day to day lives, but when they are combined in the proper doses in methamphetamine labs, they can produce extremely harmful results. These factors make production of methamphetamine attractive to both the criminal trafficker and to the addicted user.

Methamphetamine also presents a threat to law enforcement authorities. They must simultaneously combat both small toxic labs and superlabs which are primarily controlled by drug trafficking organizations.

The small labs produce relatively small amounts of methamphetamine and are generally not affiliated with major trafficking organizations. A number of factors have served as catalysts for the spread of small labs, including the presence of recipes easily accessible over the Internet. Indeed, the widespread use of the Internet has facilitated the dissemination of technology used to manufacture methamphetamine in small labs. This form of information sharing allows wide dissemination of these techniques to anyone with computer access.

Aside from marijuana, methamphetamine is the only widely used and widely abused illegal drug that is capable of being easily produced by the abuser. Given the relative ease with which manufacturers or cooks are able to acquire recipes, ingredients and the unsophisticated nature of the production process, it is easy to see why this highly addictive drug is spreading.

Methamphetamine has a number of impacts on users, on our communities and on society generally. The quality of life among users of methamphetamine is typically greatly diminished. Addicts may experience dissolution of relationships, social isolation, altered personality, difficulty with academics, loss of employment, involvement in crime, trouble with pre-existing mental illness, drug related psychosis and brain damage, health risks and declining physical fitness.

Furthermore, individuals may be unmotivated to seek help as methamphetamine can create seemingly high levels of energy and productivity. Communities can become vulnerable to petty crime, social disorder, associated risk to health, increase in violence and increases in large scale labs and drug trafficking.

Production operations also pose serious public safety and health hazards to those in and around production operations. These operations can result in serious physical injury from explosions, fires, chemical burns and toxic fumes. They produce environmental hazards, pose cleanup problems and endanger the lives and health of community residents.

The collateral damage of methamphetamine includes impacts on families, school staff, students, law enforcers, fire departments, paramedics, health care practitioners, businesses and property owners. These individuals experience second-hand symptoms of meth use.

First responders may experience exposure to production byproducts and may be subject to violence and aggression from addicts, or frustration and stress from inadequate resources, or judicial restraints preventing them from taking action.

Parents may also experience emotional and financial stress as a child goes through treatment, strain from missing work, fear, embarrassment, shame and guilt. The family may also encounter gang related crime, contamination, violence and disciplinary problems as the child continues to abuse the drug.

Furthermore, siblings and children may experience neglect, abuse and negative influence from family role models. Staff and students in the schools may face users with behavioural problems, classroom disruptions, absenteeism, negative peer influence, and once again, possible contamination. The stress of having insufficient resources to handle these issues is also a cause of stress.

We all know, every one of us who represents communities from coast to coast to coast, that communities in general may be exposed to violence, property damage, identity theft, decreased public safety, contamination of public areas from the disposal of cooking byproducts, and an unreliable or decreased workforce that impedes the safety of co-workers.

There are also significant health risks and costs associated with dismantling labs and removing processing agents from these locations.

As parliamentarians, we are this country's lawmakers. It is incumbent upon us to see that our laws provide appropriate and adequate measures to address serious problems. Our government has responded to the dangers caused by meth production by this bill, which proposes mandatory minimum penalties for those who produce the drug and traffic in it.

The proposed amendments to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act are not exclusively about imposing minimum penalties. The bill contains a provision allowing for certain offenders who would normally be caught by the proposed minimum penalties to be dealt with by drug treatment courts.

A drug treatment court is a substance abuse intervention model that operates within the criminal justice system. Drug treatment courts provide judicially supervised treatment in lieu of incarcerating individuals who have a substance use problem that is related to their criminal activities, for example, drug related offences such as drug possession, use or non-commercial trafficking and/or property offences committed to support their drug use, such as theft or shoplifting.

Individuals may need to meet other requirements specific to individual courts or court systems to be deemed eligible for admission. The eligible accused must choose between the drug treatment court program and traditional criminal justice processing that can result in various dispositions ranging from fines to incarceration.

Typically, formal admission into a drug treatment court program requires the individual to plead guilty to his or her charges. If an individual fails to comply or participate in all aspects of the drug treatment court program, consequences range from an official reprimand or revocation of bail to termination in the program and the handing down of custodial and/or community supervision sentences.

There are a number of key facets of a well designed and implemented drug treatment court model. These include: early identification of those who meet the program eligibility criteria; access to treatment programs that integrate evidence based practices of the offender and substance abuse treatment to meet individualized needs of participants; extensive ongoing judicial contact with each participant; intensive supervision and drug testing to monitor and ensure abstinence from all intoxicants; positive reinforcement for compliance; partnership among other drug treatment courts and community based organizations; continued education for those involved in the field to promote effective operations; the use of a non-adversarial approach in the court system to ensure public safety as well as the rights of program participants; and comprehensive evaluation to monitor program objectives and measure efficiency.

That is something we should also all agree on. We want to have programs that work. If a program does not work, then obviously there is something wrong with it and we need to take a serious look at it. If a program does work, then we should encourage participation in that program.

Compared to traditional criminal justice approaches, the intent of a drug treatment court is to permit motivated clients to avoid incarceration and other sanctions and to allow them access to treatment service more quickly due to dedicated services and resources. It is also to encourage clients to remain in treatment until completed, through intensive and frequent monitoring and supervision by the court. Obviously, our number one goal for those who are addicted to drugs is to treat them and have them become contributing members of society once again.

Participating in a drug treatment court program is intensive and demanding. It includes court attendance up to twice a week, random urine testing, and attendance and treatment from daily to weekly as clients progress through the program. At some sites there is a primary treatment provider, for example, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, whereas at other sites there are various community agencies providing primary treatment services.

Drug treatment courts have a great deal of promise. We will be monitoring their effectiveness. This proposed legislation has been drafted in such a manner as to ensure that drug treatment courts would not be negatively impacted by this important bill.

Canadians demand that the criminal law provide adequate penalties for those who engage in serious drug crime. This bill responds to that demand and provides tough, yet fair, mandatory minimum penalties. I urge all members of the House to support these measures.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the government supports the drug courts. I am certainly supporting the government in that respect.

When the hon. member says we should choose mechanisms that work, he should remember the stats used today that the restorative justice record was 38% to 45% failure, whereas the regular system was 73% failure. I hope the government will revisit that and stop trying to eliminate restorative justice.

Perhaps the member could reply to the concerns of two organizations. The first one is Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy. Today I had two students in from McGill from that organization and they were opposed to the reduction in harm reduction programs and support from the government and the general philosophy of the government against harm reduction. Perhaps the member could speak to that.

The second organization is the Canadian HIV-AIDS Legal Network which said that the statement that mandatory minimum sentences for drug offences will make our streets safer is a myth. It said that the detailed 2002 examination conducted for the Department of Justice concluded that mandatory minimum sentences are least effective in relation to drug offences, and noted that drug consumption and drug related crime seems to be unaffected in any measurable way by severe mandatory minimum sentences. It said that jurists and scholars from across the political spectrum have said there is no evidence that any form of mandatory sentence is effective for drug offences.

Could the hon. member address the concerns of those two organizations?

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, in response to the hon. member for Yukon, another Liberal member from the provincial government in Ontario, a former justice minister, famously said about a year ago that the Liberal approach to crime was stuck in the summer of love. What we have seen, even from the type of questions that we get, is that there is such a hesitancy on the part of members opposite to get tough in any way on crime.

Our bill strikes what I think is an extremely reasonable balance between all of our goals, which is to help people who are addicted to drugs, but to get tough on those who are producing drugs, who are distributing drugs, who are putting drugs into our communities.

We all represent, as the member for Yukon said, from coast to coast to coast, communities in Canada, both rural and urban, that are struggling with drug problems and young people who are addicted to drugs. We want to cut this off.

I would have to ask, is what we are doing now working? The approach that is soft on people who produce drugs, soft on people who distribute drugs, a system that says there is no or very little consequence to a person's actions, that the person can commit a serious crime involving drugs and perhaps not go away to jail, is that working? That is not the message we want to be sending to society or to our young people. We have to show that we will be tough on those who produce methamphetamines in labs in our country.

I commend to the member the stats that I gave that show an alarming rise in methamphetamine labs, both small labs and superlabs. Individuals are taking legal substances, cooking them up and creating a very harmful and in some cases deadly concoction that has a devastating impact for those who are addicted to methamphetamine, preying on the most vulnerable. I say there should be no tolerance in our society for those who would operate a meth lab and have this product eventually wind up in the hands of our young people.

We have to be caring. We have to show compassion for those who are addicted to drugs. This bill does that. We also have to get tough on those who would produce drugs and put this scourge on to our communities, both rural and urban.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague, the parliamentary secretary, made the statement, and I agree with it, that we should move away from programs that do not work.

Since about 1979, we have been engaged in a war on drugs that has caused uncounted casualties all over the world. It has led to dramatic problems in developing countries and to the incarceration facilities in our neighbour to the south being absolutely loaded with individuals.

Right now in Canada the illegal drug trade is estimated to be about $10 billion. Of that, $8 billion is cannabis. Canadians obviously partake in this substance on a regular basis. We can increase the degree of intensity that we put toward those who produce it, but we will not change the market. The bill goes in the wrong direction.

How does my hon. colleague anticipate that the bill will deal with this very large industry, which will be present, in one form or another, after the bill is finished?

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question, but I do not take the approach the hon. member seems to take, that we will be stuck with what happens afterwards anyway, so why should we bother to do anything? What are we doing here if we are not going to try to make things better?

Some of us in the House believe there should be serious consequences for those who produce methamphetamine in super labs. I happen to believe that. Some of us believe there should be serious consequences for those who traffic in cocaine and heroine and for those who would sell drugs to young people.

We are either in favour of getting tougher on people who operate methamphetamine super labs or we are not in favour of it. Many of us in the House are in favour of it. It has been shown that the approach we have taken over the past few years has not worked. This is evidenced by some of the statistics I presented.

Sometimes it is not even a case of getting ahead of technology. It is a case of keeping up with technology. As I mentioned, most drugs in the past have required a crop. Methamphetamine is not like that. It is a synthetic drug and we have to keep up with those in organized crime. We have to keep up with those technological advances.

We on this side of the House are in favour of an approach that says, “Let us do it. Let us have an attitude that we can make a difference”. We should all be here to make a difference. If we can impact on the lives of our young people and keep them from getting started on methamphetamines, I am all for it. I and our government is for an approach that says that if people are going to operate methamphetamine super labs, if they are thinking of constructing one of these and producing methamphetamine, they are going to face serious consequences.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, the major impact of the bill is being masked by his discussion about methamphetamines. The question was directed toward the largest part of the illegal drug trade, and he quite rightly pointed to that at the beginning of his discussion. This is the part that I think will cause the greatest degree of difficulty with the bill, so let us not call it anything but a spade.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I do not mind causing difficulty for those who are producing and distributing drugs. The bill will create some difficulty. It will create difficulty for those who have been arrested and convicted for production of drugs.

That is exactly what the bill would do. I do not mind that it creates some difficulty. I hope it creates some difficulty for those who would prey on young people, sell drugs to kids who are on school grounds, traffic in dangerous—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to say a few words about Bill C-26 and on the topic of justice, as this government sees it.

I must say I am very pleased to speak to this bill and this government's justice program, but, frankly, I have several concerns about this. Indeed, this government has introduced and will continue to introduce bills that do not work.

It gives me a great deal of anxiety to look at written laws that do not respond to what they are intended. I have some time to elaborate on that.

I listened to the bright and articulate Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, who shares part of a county with me in terms of representation. Our people are not a world apart. It gives me a great deal of anxiety to hear him suggest, perhaps naively, that the bill would have its intended effect.

The government rolls out bills in front of blue plastic platforms and talks about the new government. Cabinet ministers are paraded around in ridings the Conservatives would like to hold, or hold onto slimly. They roll out justice bills in advance of discussing them with stakeholders, in advance of discussing them as a future agenda at the justice committee and in advance of having any real discussion about law reform with a law reform commission. Canadians would be interested to know that there is no law reform commission. There is no body that can discuss and promulgate laws that affect all of us, and which have the teeth they are intended to have.

The government can try to get a three minute spiel on the evening news, which it uses to tell Canadians that it will stop all drug production and send all producers to jail for longer terms. It feels this will end the problem. That is naive, which is better than saying it is devious. The Conservative government put bills before Parliament then prorogued Parliament so those bills never saw the light of day. It then reintroduces the same bills and new bills knowing they too will likely never see the light of day. It is almost devious. If I sat on the other side, I would probably know the big game plan, but to most reasonable people involved in criminal justice issues, including police forces, prosecutors, social workers, the Conservative justice program is intended to fail.

The Conservatives have been in office for two years now so they cannot claim to be the new government. If we had socks that old, we would not call them new socks. That is an old sock over there. The odour is pronounced. This says to me that the Conservatives have not really come to terms with how to make society safe.

There is one non-partisan point that binds all parliamentarians here. We all want safe communities. Try as it might, the Conservative government, the old sock government, wants to paint those of us in the opposition ranks as people who do not care about safety and society. Perhaps those things first motivated some of us to get into Parliament. I see mayors on this side of the House. I see people who have experience in emergency measures organizations, who have been involved on police commissions and who have headed police commissions. To suggest parliamentarians do not want to save society stinks like the old sock justice program that the Conservative government has introduced.

Those members do not mean what they say. A long time ago they had another one of those blue plastic background announcements with law enforcement officials at bay. They announced that they would create 2,500 new positions for police officers across Canada. They have not done that.

Most of the laws the Conservatives roll out require a certain amount of police presence, and that is an understatement. I can suggest that most of it, when it comes to the detection of drug manufacturing facilities, will require a significant outlay of police resources.

The hon. parliamentary secretary will know that in the Dieppe-Moncton-Riverview area, even before the RCMP took over the municipal force there, the joint forces operation for drug detection was up and running. It continues to run very well. It is like anything else and will be saddled with more duties under a law such as this, which will have well trained police officers wondering if the shoot of a marijuana plant in two places is two plants to get it over the 500 mark, or if it is one to get it under the 500 mark. These are problems of detection which have not been resourced. The government is not serious about its criminal justice agenda.

The other thing Canadians must know is what this law has in one part of it, and it might seem to be well-meaning. Again, I have nothing but the utmost respect for the parliamentary secretary over there. He probably thought, when he parsed the legislation on this law, he was protecting school areas and people who frequent public areas when he agreed to put his minister's pen to subclause (ii) of clause 1, which says that the mandatory minimum punishment of two years will apply if:

(A) the person committed the offence in or near a school, on or near school grounds or in or near any other public place usually frequented by persons under the age of 18 years,

If we all knew where everybody under the age of 18 years was at all times, there would be many happy parents, school superintendents and police forces. This is so vague as to fall on its face. I pray the able committee members at the justice committee, if and when the bill should be referred to the justice committee, can fix this. This goes to the point that in their rush to get in front of that blue plastic sign and give a moment of news release, the Conservatives did not yet again produce a proper law that we could look at and say with some satisfaction that the bill would change our society.

I have been a lawyer for some 20 years. I have been the mayor of a municipality. I know, as all members of the House do, that drug abuse is a problem in any western society. It is a problem in any world society. It is a problem with which many people are grappling. Parents are involved in grappling with these issues. Teachers, doctors, nurses and people from all walks of society, not only members of the justice committee who belong to the Conservative Party of Canada, are all involved in this. Why is there not more attention paid to consulting the stakeholders and coming up with bills that will work when it comes to drug abuse?

The whole other problem of treating the addict as a criminal has to be addressed. Unfortunately, because of the time involved, it cannot be done tonight.

Bill C-26 against controlled substances does not provide the balance needed to reduce crime, substance abuse and drug use, nor does it protect public health. The public health aspect is very important in this debate.

Instead of these commitments, and with no real bills, we are left with a strategy that comes from south of the border, the United States, one that mirrors the Bush administration's policies. Yet these same American policies are doing nothing but overcrowding American prisons.

This bill will lead us down the same path as the one chosen by the United States. There will be many more people in Canadian prisons, if this bill and other Conservative bills are passed and enacted in this country. However, this does nothing to resolve our country's drug problems.

There is no question that sentences are very important and they are an important part of the solution. I look forward at justice committee to hearing this evidence that serious sentences, mandatory minimums for drug use in particular, would have the effect of decreasing drug use and drug abuse, and decreasing crime as a concomitant of that. I am looking forward to those studies because I am afraid they do not exist.

Fighting crime with longer sentences does not work. If it did and there was insurmountable evidence of that, I get back to my premise that we are all interested in a safer community, a safer Canada. So if the evidence were overwhelming that mandatory minimums, longer sentences, longer prison time served actually would keep society safer, why would we not be for it?

In order to bring up good legislation through the process here in Parliament, we have to have evidence-based legislation. We have to show that if we pass this law, this will be the effect. We cannot just say it in front of the blue plastic sign in front of the TV cameras. Tougher penalties for people who produce and are trafficking in drugs will only scare the small time producers and organized crime will fill the gap.

The aspect of gangs and organized crime is something that every community in Canada has to grapple with again. There is no one piece solution to this, but this certainly is not it. As written, it would seem, and we will hear the evidence at committee, that there is a crackdown intended on many small-time, as the parliamentary secretary mentioned, on many small operations that can be put together with household materials and with common accessories for heating and containing liquids and powders.

However, no one is condoning small-time operations, but to crack down solely or to target mostly small-time producers, there is just going to be inevitably a gap. Unless we get to the issue of addictions and what we are going to do to deal with societal issues regarding addictions, the demand side of this equation is not going to be effective.

It seems that all republican, read this now as Conservative in this country, all republican dogma on the war on drugs is supply-based. Take out the supply and the problem is gone. Well, it did not work during prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s. If we take out the supply, that is just a layer of the supply. There will always be a supply if there is a demand.

I am sounding like a raving capitalist and I apologize to my Conservative friends for that, but supply and demand is very much at issue here. What should be tackled is the demand side. How do we make it so that there would be no more demand for crystal meth? How do we make it so that a teenager at a party is not given a date rape drug? Because we do not want anyone to use it, we have to attack the demand for the drugs. There is nothing in the bill that talks about that whatsoever.

Eugene Oscapella, a criminal lawyer who teaches drug policy, would be one of the experts who would come to a committee and give evidence. When we ask the minister questions on the first day of the committee hearings, we will be assured that he is contacted and spoken to because a recognized expert in drug policy living right here in Ottawa would certainly be someone that the minister or the parliamentary secretary or someone from the blue plastic old sock gang should probably get to see. He would say organized crime does not care about the law. With the changes to the law as proposed, the government is doing a service for organized crime.

Would that not be awful, that a government in Canada would actually benefit organized crime? It is certainly not what is intended. I will give my colleagues on the other side the benefit of the doubt. They cannot intend this, but by bringing forth such poor legislation it may very well be the effect of this.

The bill needs to reflect a balanced response to substance abuse and drug addiction which includes of course prevention treatment, enforcement and harm reduction measures.

Did I mention that 2,500 police officers and 1,000 RCMP officers in total were promised by the government and not delivered upon? When one makes a promise to fund something, all one has to do is pass a budget. I believe the government has passed two and things called mini-budgets. So, it has had the opportunity.

Prorogation and blue plastic background in announcements could not have interfered with the ability of the finance minister, if the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Justice really wanted, to put the money behind where the talk was to make sure that there would be 3,500 more police officers on the streets now or in this case, in the bushes of parts of this country where grow-ops are taking place.

Now, there is no one in the bushes of the places where these grow operations are taking place. Has the government walked the walk? No. It just talks the talk.

On mandatory minimum sentences for drug offences, we have had a lot of evidence during the hearings on billsC-9 and C-10 but Bill C-10 in particular with respect to mandatory minimums. Again, if they worked, we would be all for them.

There have been mandatory minimums in certain situations where it has proven that they acted as a deterrent for the institution of criminal acts. However, do we really think that by taking people, for instance at the lower end of the chain, who are making drugs in their kitchen and are using drugs in their home, and that by going to prison alone is going to stop the production of that drug in total or help those people to become meaningful members of society?

What does it do for the addiction issue? Where is the extra funding which would have to come to Correctional Service Canada, to the parole officers across the country, to the correctional services officers across the country, and to the various attorneys general in the provinces across the country who will need funding for all of their officers who supervise probation orders and conditional sentences? Where is all of the money to back up these laws?

Instead, we have a stack of laws, many of which were not intended to pass, many of which were killed by prorogation, and many of which show that the government is not interested in getting tough on crime or tackling crime. It is interested in tackling the airwaves.

What can we do to get us out of this mess? We can actually put politics aside, talk about a safe society, put our money where our mouth is, and send the bill to committee to see what can be done about reducing the number of harmful grow operations, which if not detected would destroy our society.

What about discussing how much resourcing this bill will need? What about getting rid of silly definitions that parse between 500 and 501 plants and at or near a public place where young people are headed? What about working on the bill together and what about actually having an act which will do what it says, which is to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and make consequential amendments which will make our society safer? We are all for a safer community. Let us work toward getting there.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe on his very balanced speech this evening.

Could he perhaps elaborate on how he feels the government could move forward in reducing the demand for drugs, as well as reducing the supply, as he has indicated? Could the member give us some specifics on how we can approach this war on crime by reducing the demand?

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the bulk of the bill and the program of the justice department is on the supply side with respect to drugs and it is on the supply of paper, frankly, that is meaningless. The government has done very little in discussing at any of the committees in the House issues of addiction and issues of public health.

From time immemorial people have had problems with substances. Rather than attack the addict, let us treat the addict. If there is a modality, in some of our larger cities for instances, there are situations where a safe injection site or at least a needle exchange is the best thing for society because it provides a safe, from a public health point of view, place for people to deal with their addiction and seek help if and when they want the help. That is something the government can do.

In my community 9,000 syringes, needles, were exchanged between the period of December and February by a mobile soup kitchen bus that went around and voluntarily exchanged. It is a public health issue, not funded by the federal government.

I have seen nothing from the federal government. It is a bit far away from justice. It probably delves into public safety, but that is how the government could help. We have heard nary a word from it on that.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, maybe the member could get a pen because I have several questions. I hope he will be non-partisan and not attack the government in too much detail but give some good ideas.

First, this week almost everyone has spoken about the failure of the government's crime agenda and what could be done. Many members gave a lot of good ideas. I know the member is a thoughtful member of the justice committee and will have a lot of good ideas. I wonder if he could add some.

Second, the parliamentary secretary did not even answer the first question that I asked on behalf of two organizations. He tried to blame political parties when it was organizations that asked the question.

The first was Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy. It suggested that we should invest in harm reduction and not reduce our investment in harm reduction like the government was proposing. Hopefully the member could provide the Liberal Party's position on that and give the students from McGill who came to see me an answer.

The second question was from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. If the Conservatives will not answer its concern, maybe the member could provide an answer. I will not read the whole quote again but it said, “--jurists and scholars have said there is no evidence that any form of mandatory sentencing is effective for drug offences--”.

Third, I would also like the member to talk about the creation of these bills in the justice committee because they certainly were not done by the Department of Justice and did not follow the input from the experts that came to committee.

Finally, I wonder if the member thought it was humourous today in question period when the Minister of Foreign Affairs stood and said, “It is not our job. We do not create prisons”. As the member just said, many of these bills have been formed to put more Canadians in jail.

The government has provided more money to fund it and studied how many more jails are needed. The justice minister of course was six inches from the Minister of Foreign Affairs kind of squirming. I wonder if the member could also comment on the fact that the experts said that this is not the only answer to solving or reducing crime.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, what the member does not understand and I will put very clearly is that the Conservative government is in the business of building prisons in Afghanistan. It is not in the business of building prisons in Canada, yet it is in the business of putting more people in prison in Canada. Its program is very clear.

What it is not in the business of is recognizing that the institute at McGill that the member referred to has long been a proponent of a harm reduction strategy, which is nothing more than a public health slant on drug abuse issues, which is totally absent from the government.

What these bills on mandatory minimums seem to forget is that we are dealing with people mostly addicted to drugs or at least in the drug trade.

An Irish study, for instance, suggested that 20% of people who use illegal drugs actually began to use illegal drugs while in prison. If there is a problem with drug use, drug abuse or drug production, then sending people to prison is not going to help the problem.

In fact, if some of the more ambitious, intelligent and entrepreneurial drug producers were sent to jail, they might populate a whole new generation of drug users within the prison system. We could call it the Conservative college of cannabis, for instance. This could be the new higher learning agenda.

As my friend, the hon. member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, would suggest, finally we have found the Conservative agenda on higher learning and it is in our prisons, which may or may not be in Canada, which may or may not be in Kandahar.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the sock analogy made by my colleague across the way. There is another sock analogy that I think he should heed. It involves putting a sock in it when it comes to this particular issue.

One of the jobs that we have as leaders, whether we are in Parliament, in the legislature or at the municipal level, is of course that of putting first and foremost the safety and well-being of the citizens we are elected to represent.

I seem to recall that in the last election campaign after we made some announcements on what we were going to do on our crime and justice agenda, CBC or CTV, I do not recall exactly, took a look at it. I remember it vividly. It encapsulated the Liberal position on crime in just a great way. A young fellow in prison had had the actual Liberal logo cut out of his hair in prison. He was clearly advocating where he thought his interests would be best represented, that is, in voting for the Liberal Party.

I also take a bit of umbrage with my colleague saying that we are going after users. That is simply not the case. We are not going after the small-time users. If people read the act, if they read the bill, they will see that we are going after organized crime.

If my colleague really is serious about doing what we are sworn to do here as elected members, which is to protect and preserve the safety of our society, can he stand in this place and say that he is or is not going to support sending this bill on to committee so that we can study it and at least make any minor amendments we might need to make, if we have to? Is he going to support this bill getting to committee so that we can move this agenda forward and actually provide for the safety of children on the school grounds?

I have young children. I would hate to think that somebody could go onto the school grounds and start peddling a cigarette or a marijuana cigarette laced with methamphetamine. That is what get the kids addicted and gets them hooked. This is how these things happen. Those are the people we have to go after. I wonder if my colleague at least will support this bill going to committee and support taking a look at some of the positive things coming out of this bill.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe has one minute in which to respond.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That is more than enough time. I am mindful of the sock comment, but the hon. member must have had a sock over his ears, because I clearly suggested, and I think it is the Liberal position as well, that we would send this to committee, just as we have done with an awful lot of bills, because we have to fix the bill. It is like a mended sock. It is a darned sock. It is a darned bill. We have to fix this bill if it is fixable.

I do take notice of his argument about schoolyards and public places. I did say that the parliamentary secretary, who is a recent father, probably meant well when he signed off on this bill, but I am sure that we will hear evidence about an offence being committed “near a school”. That might work, but is “school” defined in the act? I do not think so. Or it will be “near school grounds” or near any other public place usually frequented by persons under the age of 18 years? I do not have teenagers yet, but if everybody knew where their teenagers were, we could define it.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate.

The member for Châteauguay—Saint-Constant has 20 minutes. However, we have just seven minutes left this evening, so she will be given the remainder of her time at the next sitting of the House.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak today at second reading of Bill C-26. In this bill, the government is targeting those who produce and distribute illicit drugs by imposing more severe penalties on them. This is part of a major anti-drug strategy with a budget of more than $64 million unveiled a few months ago by the Prime Minister.

Even though the purpose of Bill C-26 seems clear, I think that its ultimate goal, to reduce consumption of illegal drugs, would be better achieved with more subtle measures that would produce truly positive results. That is why it is important to understand this bill, to hold onto the parts of it that have merit and to reveal the problems hidden within it.

First, I would like to point out that the current legislation already includes good tools to fight drugs. Since 1997, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act has prohibited the import, export, production, sale, acquisition and possession of drugs and controlled substances, except when regulations permit it for medical purposes. At the time, the legislation created a new offence, production of a controlled substance. It also amended certain penalties in accordance with rulings of the Supreme Court, which had ruled that a minimum seven-year sentence for the import and export of drugs was far too severe.

Under the legislation, trafficking is defined as the selling, giving, administering, transporting, sending or delivering of one of the drugs listed in Schedules I through IV. The legislation also includes precursors of substances listed in Schedules I through V. Precursors are the ingredients used in the production of a controlled substance listed in the schedules.

Now that we know the context of this bill, I would like to focus on a worrisome aspect that I have criticized many times in previous bills and that is minimum sentences. With respect to heavier minimum sentences, it is clear that the Bloc Québécois has never doubted the importance of taking measures to reduce the consumption and production of drugs.

At first glance anyone would say that this bill provides more safety and more means to control drugs. However, before drawing hasty conclusions, the first thing to do before addressing a problem is to understand it in its entirety, grasp its scope and assess its consequences. We have to put things in perspective.

It is important to remind people that Statistics Canada indicated in 2006, before Bill C-26 was put on the table, that Canada's overall national crime rate, based on incidents reported to police, hit its lowest point in over 25 years, driven by a decline in non-violent crime. The crime rate dropped by 3% over the previous year and by 30% since 1991. When we look at the problem as a whole, we see that crime is going down in Canada. This is a major trend that has been observed for many years.

Obviously the Bloc Québécois does not want to minimize the situation. Any tragedy is one tragedy too many and statistics hide the human tragedies that affect families. We have to realize that the current system is producing positive results. We have to avoid giving up these gains by adopting measures whose impact has not been fully examined.

Bill C-26 relies heavily on minimum sentences, and specifically on the supposed deterrent effect of harsher sentences. That has never been clearly proven. Harsher sentences are imposed by our neighbours to the south, who obtain results that are not particularly convincing. I would say that minimum jail sentences are not a greater deterrent than adequate supervision in the community.

However, as a member of a responsible party that does not ignore reality, I have to recognize that drug-related offences have increased slightly.

For example, again according to Statistics Canada, the total number of drug offences rose by 2% in 2006. In fact, the picture of drug use is changing slightly. Cannabis-related offences, such as possession, make up 60% of all drug offences, but were down 4%.

We understand the situation, and we are aware of the issues. Moreover, quite recently, my colleague from Hochelaga and I examined Bill C-428 to consider the best way to combat the emerging problem of methamphetamine use.

We are contributing to the war on drugs, which brings me to a positive aspect of Bill C-26. The bill allows judges, with the consent of the prosecutor, to require offenders to take part in a drug treatment program. If the offender successfully completes the program, he avoids the minimum sentence. I believe that this is a good way to rehabilitate offenders.

I therefore believe that we are going to refer Bill C-26 to committee for a more detailed examination.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

When we return to the study of Bill C-26, the hon. member for Châteauguay—Saint-Constant will have 13 minutes left to complete her remarks.

The House resumed from February 4 consideration of the motion that Bill C-26, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The first speaker is the hon. member for Châteauguay—Saint-Constant. She has 13 minutes to finish her speech.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have 13 minutes. Last time, I was interrupted in the middle of my speech, so I will continue where I left off.

Before the debate on Bill C-26 was interrupted, I was saying how heavily this bill relies on harsher minimum penalties and I was talking about the supposed deterrent effect of these penalties. I will repeat that this has more to do with the Conservatives' repressive ideology than with the rehabilitation approach preferred by the Bloc Québécois.

Now, to resume debate, I will speak about the one positive element in Bill C-26. This bill enables a judge, with the consent of the prosecutor, to order the offender to participate in a drug treatment program. If the offender successfully completes treatment, the court is not required to impose the minimum punishment. This can be found in subclause 5(2) of the bill.

This approach seems promising, and is a change from the Conservative government's approach of wanting to deal with crime using harsher minimum penalties.

If drug offences must be harshly punished, we must also consider alternatives to minimum penalties, since this approach does not allow for rehabilitation. This is why we must carefully examine Bill C-26, so we can be sure that the principle of rehabilitation is still there and that it is effective.

For example, I found out from some Statistics Canada data that adult offenders who have served their time under supervision in the community are far less likely to return to the correctional system within 12 months of the end of their sentence than offenders who have served their time in a correctional institution. That fact must be taken into account.

But my analysis does not end there. We have to consider the fact that illegal drug convictions typically affect young people. About 2.5% of those between the ages of 15 and 24 are addicted to illegal drugs, compared with less than 0.5% of people over 35.

As a result, Bill C-26 could end up punishing relatively more young people. As legislators, we have to ensure that our young people can benefit from effective rehabilitation options. Why? Because prison has always been and will always be crime school. Prison is the kind of place where young people cannot help but become deeply resentful of society. That is why this clause in Bill C-26, which opens the way to rehabilitation, is so important.

That is why we have to study this bill and its new mechanisms thoroughly to ensure that the principle of rehabilitation remains intact and effective without undermining the fight against drugs.

In conclusion, I believe that Bill C-26 is not without merit. However, there are legitimate concerns about what it seeks to achieve. For example, when I read the text of the bill, I was very concerned about some of the aggravating factors, such as when the accused has used a building belonging to a third party to commit the offence. Why would the same offence be that much more serious when committed in a rented house than in a house belonging to the accused? Why would it be more serious in an apartment than in a condo, even if the two are located in the same building?

Despite the fact that we are against this bill in principle for the reasons I mentioned earlier, the Bloc Québécois will support Bill C-26 at second reading so that it can be studied in committee. In my opinion, as I have said several times in this House, if we really want to fight crime, the first thing we have to do is fight poverty, social inequality and exclusion.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member said at the beginning of her comments that maybe there was some hope in this bill because it has a diversion program, or what is called a drug treatment court.

I wonder if she has examined what drug treatment courts do. I am quite familiar with them because we have one in Vancouver. One of the problems with the court is that it allows for late intervention. People need to be provided with intervention, treatment and assistance before they get to the point of being incarcerated.

It also creates a backlog in that it allows people to jump the line. We all know that treatment beds are very limited, maybe not in Quebec but they are elsewhere in Canada, so people can be coerced into treatment by a drug court and that happens at the point of conviction where so-called choice is offered.

Most of the studies and analyses that have been done on drug courts have shown them to have very low success rates. The intervention needs to come much earlier, right on the street, right in the local community, rather than waiting until someone is involved in the justice system and at the point of being convicted.

I wonder if the Bloc is looking at this question because it is part of the bill. The Conservatives have put this in the bill to give the illusion that they are being a bit more progressive, but in actual fact, the evidence about drug treatment courts shows that they are ineffective. I wonder if the member would comment on that.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my distinguished colleague for her question and especially her comments. This bill does reflect a certain openness, because if offenders complete their treatment, this could be considered a mitigating factor and reduce their sentence.

My colleague is concerned that this bill increases penalties, that the war on drugs is punitive and repressive and that, in terms of treatment, these people do not have the physical, financial or other support they need to overcome their addictions.

Clearly, this is a question of approach. The Bloc Québécois and Quebec very much favour rehabilitation over repression. As you know, Quebec has the lowest crime rate of all the provinces.

Our track record shows that we try to attack the source of the problem. When problems arise, we try to put in place mechanisms to help and support our young people and inmates so that they can get the rehabilitation they need. We prefer this approach to repression.

Our track record in Quebec shows that this method works. When a method works and has proven beyond any doubt to be successful, with statistics to back it up, when a model is this effective, I do not understand why others do not use it.

I invite the Conservative Party to look at Quebec's approach. The Conservatives could see where they should be investing money, instead of building prisons, increasing minimum sentences and bringing in all sorts of repressive measures.

This bill does open the door to rehabilitation, and I congratulate the Conservatives on that. However, the Conservative ideology is truly a repressive ideology that is not a recipe for success, in my opinion. In countries such as the United States that have used crime repression methods such as building more prisons and increasing minimum sentences, the crime rate has not gone down.

Logically, we need to invest much more in mechanisms to help young people in particular, because this bill targets them. They are affected most by drugs. That is where we need to invest our energies. That is our responsibility as parliamentarians.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity today to speak at second reading to Bill C-26, which deals with minimum mandatory sentencing for drug crimes.

I have to begin by saying that it is not really a surprise that we are debating this bill, although in my comments I hope to show that the bill itself is seriously flawed and very ineffective. However, it is not a surprise that the Conservative government has brought forward this bill because it is very much a part of its core agenda where it is trying to give people the illusion that it is dealing with a serious problem in our society, in this case drug use, by coming in with a very repressive and heavy enforcement regime.

My riding of Vancouver East has often been in the media and it is a community that has been at the epicentre of a drug crisis not only in Canada but in North America. I have become very involved in this issue over the course of being a member of Parliament for 11 years. I have become very involved in looking at drug policy, what works, what does not, and what kinds of reforms are taking place not only in Canada but around the globe.

In my community of East Vancouver, we are very proud of the fact that we are home to North America's first safer injection facility called Insite. In fact, just yesterday in the House, I questioned the Minister of Health to find out if finally the government would acknowledge the dozens of studies that have been done which show that Insite is a very effective program that has reduced drug use and improved safety, and finally make a decision to allow Insite to remain open.

Unfortunately, the Minister of Health, as on previous occasions, did not respond to that question and did not make it clear whether or not Insite will continue.

However, I want to say that in Vancouver, there have been many amazing advances in terms of our understanding of the drug issue, how it impacts people and what kinds of public policies need to be developed. In fact, two former mayors of the city of Vancouver, Philip Owen and Larry Campbell, were very involved in setting the stage through their leadership for a changed policy around drugs. Groups like VANDU, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, have been instrumental in transforming the debate.

So often this debate is about dividing people, of saying there are good people and there are bad people. People who are drug users are automatically labelled as traffickers or dealers. We have seen a history in Canada, as we have in the United States, of this issue being used in a way to create fear. I call it the politics of fear and this is something very much that the Conservatives have picked up on, but in East Vancouver, and in Vancouver generally, we have rejected that kind of model.

We believe that the issue of substance use, drug use, has primarily to do with public health. It has to do with ensuring that people make good choices, that people are supported in prevention, treatment and harm reduction when they need it. The more we criminalize drug users, the more we create further harms, as I hope to show in the debate today.

I do want to say that for the NDP, one of our overall concerns is that there is absolutely no proof that mandatory minimum sentences are effective and an appropriate measure to reduce drug use and crimes related to drugs. In fact, most evidence shows the opposite.

This bill does not address the core issue of why people use drugs. In fact, what it does do is increase an already imbalanced and overfunded enforcement approach to drug use in Canada without reducing crime rates or drug use. What this bill further does, in the whole program that we have seen from the Conservative government, is to abandon successful measures, such as harm reduction and grassroots education programs.

What we are most concerned about is that this bill is moving Canada toward an expensive, failed, U.S.-style war on drugs that we know spends tens of billions of dollars a year on enforcement and incarceration while crime rates soar and drug use soars as well.

Greater incarceration rates place a greater burden on the courts, police and prisons, and in fact the bill leaves it open to enforcement. This is one of the real problems of this bill, as it in effect goes after low level dealers, even for marijuana infractions. The fact is that selling one joint or growing one plant can constitute trafficking under this bill.

Just looking at the situation in Canada, we know that Canada spends about 73% of its drug policy budget on enforcement. Only 14% goes to treatment, 7% to research, 2.6% to prevention, and 2.6% to harm reduction. So when we look at that picture and see where the money has gone and where the emphasis has gone, it presents a very troubling situation. Yet, we also know that drug use has continued to rise in Canada.

In 1994, 28% of Canadians reported to have used illicit drugs. By 2004, this number was 45% and we know as well that a Department of Justice report from 2002 concluded that mandatory minimum sentences are the least effective in relation to drug offences. It said:

MMS do not appear to influence drug consumption or drug-related crime in any measurable way. A variety of research methods concludes that treatment-based approaches are more cost effective than lengthy prison terms. MMS are blunt instruments that fail to distinguish between low and high-level, as well as hardcore versus transient drug dealers.

In addition, we have many other people speaking out about this bill and I would like to read into the record some of the key organizations which expressed grave concern about the bill. Certainly, one notable group, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, has done extensive research, analysis and review on drug policy. In some of its background material, it picked up on one very important point and that is that the Conservatives are peddling this bill as a bill that will deal with drug dealers, that is who they are really going after.

Yet, in the HIV/AIDS Legal Network backgrounder, it makes the point that:

This distinction between drug dealers and drug users is artificial, particularly when harsh minimum sentences are mandated for dealing in any quantity of drugs.

The real profiteers in the drug market—those who traffic in large quantities of illegal drugs—distance themselves from more visible drug-trafficking activities and are rarely captured by law enforcement efforts. Instead, it is people who are addicted and involved in small-scale, street-level drug distribution to support their addictions who commonly end up being charged with drug trafficking--

That is exactly what is going to happen with this bill. If we go into the downtown east side in my community, it is the low level folks on the street who are dealers, it is part of the system of how they support their habits. Those are the people who are already most at risk from a health point of view and who are very vulnerable. They are the ones who will be targeted by this bill in terms of the minimum mandatory sentences.

There is further evidence. Judge Jerry Paradis is a member of LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. This is quite an incredible organization of former police chiefs, police officers, drug enforcement officers in the United States and Canada including former judges, who are speaking out against the war on drugs. Former Judge Jerry Paradis said: “The evidence unequivocally showed that minimum mandatory sentences have no effect on crime and they carry with them a grab bag of unintended consequences. The true kingpins are the ones who, as the legal network says, are the ones who are able to distance themselves and not be caught by this kind of legislation”.

Retired Quebec Judge John Gomery, someone who we are very familiar with in this House, has also spoken out against this bill and said that “Judges view this kind of legislation as a slap in the face”. He said that judges find that it is an implied criticism when Parliament imposes these mandatory sentences. This is from someone who is very well respected saying that this bill is the wrong approach.

We have a very important organization called Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy. Its members were on Parliament Hill a couple of months ago doing their first policy and the leaflet that they put out and spoke to us about says “not in our name” because they know again that the propaganda that is being put out by the Conservatives is that this is about helping young people with drug issues. This organization understands that it is really about criminalizing young people.

The organization says in its leaflet:

While criminalizing drugs and drug users continues to be justified as necessary to protect our youth, it is our responsibility to eradicate this harmful approach...

It further states:

The current criminal justice approach to drug use is failing our generation, and our society, and leading to increased harm from drug use.

Young people are speaking out in their own voices with their own experience about what they believe needs to be done.

There is further evidence that this approach put forward by the Conservatives is a failure. The Health Officers' Council of British Columbia, which consists of all the public health officers across B.C., wrote a very important paper in 2005, “A Public Health Approach to Drug Control in Canada”. The council states:

Criminal enforcement strategies do not seem to have achieved long-term reductions in either the supply or demand for illegal drugs.

In this paper the council argues:

The harms attendant upon a criminal-prohibition framework for drugs are significant and the benefits modest, at best. A change in policy to a public health approach, where production and distribution can be wrestled from criminal interests and a range of effective harm reduction strategies can be implemented and evaluated, is overdue.

Further afield, a new report just came out from the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in the United Kingdom. This is a group made up of business people, elected representatives and professionals. It concludes that the current regime, the so-called war on drugs and the emphasis on enforcement are an absolutely failed approach. It has called on the British government to change its policies in regard to drug policy reform.

There are many people speaking out.

What I fear most about this bill is that it is taking us down a very dangerous road. It is a road that has already been experienced in the United States where, for example, 2.1 million people are now in U.S. prisons. Eighty per cent of the increase in the federal prison population in the U.S. from 1985 to 1995 was due to drug convictions. By 2004, drug offenders made up 54% of sentenced federal prisoners, up from 25% in 1980. That is what is happening in the United States. That is the direction in which the Conservative government is taking us.

In the United States, ironically, many jurisdictions are now moving away from minimum mandatory sentencing. They can see what an utter failure it has been economically, politically and in terms of dealing with the crisis of drug use in our communities. For example, the U.S. Sentencing Commission concluded that minimum mandatory sentences have failed to deter crime. It reported that only 11% of federal drug defendants are high level drug dealers. In 2000 California repealed its minimum mandatory sentences for minor drug offences. In 2004 Michigan also repealed its mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug offences. Delaware and Massachusetts are considering doing the same thing.

I find it incredible that the government is about to go down this route when in actual fact what it is modelling it on in the United States has already been shown to be a colossal failure in terms of the rate of incarceration. Drug use is still going up. The crime rate is still going up. Therefore, this model of prohibition and enforcement is clearly a failed model.

What we know about this bill, however, is that it is really designed to appeal to the core conservative base. It is really an oversimplification of drug use in Canada. It uses scare tactics to bully people into thinking that marijuana and other substances are the root of violent and organized crime in Canada and that somehow enforcement is going to address that.

In reality, this bill would do absolutely nothing to address either of those problems. We believe very much that the Conservatives are taking Canada in the wrong direction. It is a direction that is very expensive. It has no effect on drug use. It will only increase the prison population, creating a new set of issues about overpopulation, health, safety and crime within the prison system.

In British Columbia we have had very difficult situations emerge, such as overcrowding and safety problems for corrections officers. We have seen that just very recently.

In fact one of the consequences of this bill, because we are dealing with minimum mandatory sentences, is that we may see an increase in incarceration. The burden of that will be borne at the provincial level.I wonder if the minister has had any discussion with his provincial counterparts that what he is doing with the bill is basically loading the cost on to the provincial systems that are already overcrowded and overburdened. This is a totally failed strategy.

We in the NDP believe that Canada must have a balanced approach to drug use. We have supported the four pillar approach which includes prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and yes, there is a role for enforcement, but not the kind of imbalance that we have seen in past history with previous governments and which is now being exacerbated by the current government.

There are many successful models that have worked in Europe. The big city mayors in Canada have adopted this four pillar approach. It began in Vancouver. It has shown to be successful.

Why would we not be investing in that? Why would we not be investing in grassroots harm reduction strategies like Insite, like needle exchanges? Why would we not be investing in real education for young people which actually gives people real information about their bodies, about making good choices?

I always find it very ironic that we have police officers going into schools doing drug education. Would we send the police into schools to do sex education? I do not think so. They only do drug education because these substances are illegal. What we need to do is focus on a health based approach, because that is the real information that needs to get to young people.

Mandatory minimum sentences, as we see from the evidence and reports both in the United States and Canada, are least likely to work on drug crimes. It begs the question, why is this bill coming forward? If we know it does not work, if we know it is the wrong approach, if we know it is actually going to create a worse situation in the prison system, if we know that it is not going to in any substantive way or even a minimum way deal with drug use and in fact incarceration and crime will probably continue to rise, then why is this bill coming forward?

We have to come to the conclusion that very regrettably, the bill is about a political optic. This is all that the Conservatives have left. It is about creating a climate of fear.

I do not doubt that people are very concerned about drug use in local communities. People are very concerned about the dealing that takes place, the impact on schools and so on, but this bill will not address that.

We have had more success in my community when the police sat down with the drug users, with community representatives and actually worked out a strategy on how to deal with individual situations in our community. That did more good. They were called the Tuesday meetings at the Carnegie Centre at Main and Hastings. The police, the drug users themselves, community representatives, the city of Vancouver would sit down and work out these issues in terms of what was happening on the street and what the impact was in the community. That produced more dialogue and results than anything else.

We think that this is a terrible bill. The bill will not solve the problems with illicit drugs. It will only create further harm.

I really hope that the opposition parties will defeat this bill. We are going to be voting against the bill at second reading. We do not approve of this bill in principle.

If the Conservatives want to fix something, maybe they should look at the medical marijuana program which is in absolute chaos right now. There are huge problems with that program. If they want to actually make some sensible decisions and help people, then they should actually do some good and take a look at what is happening with the medical marijuana program and how people are being severely and negatively impacted by the way the program is run.

I call on the other parties to examine this legislation and defeat it, as it is absolutely the wrong direction for Canada to take.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I am actually very surprised at the hon. member and the approach she has taken. Usually I get this from the Liberal Party, quite frankly. We have had more success in trying to convince the New Democratic Party to support the government's tough on crime agenda.

Among other things, the hon. member asked whether we had talked to provincial politicians about this. I was in Manitoba yesterday, in the last 24 hours, and had a discussion of our crime fighting agenda with the premier of Manitoba, who is a member of the New Democratic Party. Mr. Chomiak, who is the attorney general of Manitoba, has told me on many occasions how supportive he is of our crime fighting agenda. Why? Because they had some major problems in Winnipeg and in the province and they actually want help on these things.

The member said we should be concentrating on the medical marijuana problem or improving the needle exchange program, that somehow these are the things that will fix the drug problem. I can tell her, I have been in Vancouver on a number of occasions and I have had people continuously tell me that we have to send out the right message to the people who are trying to destroy other people's lives. That is who we are talking about when we talk about people who want to sell drugs around schools.

The hon. member may disagree about mandatory minimum penalties for those people, but I do not have a problem with it. The government does not have a problem with it. I am surprised that she has a problem with it.

In addition, we have mandatory jail terms for people who want to import or export narcotics. Who is in favour of these people? Who wants to get on side with them, or send a message saying do not get tough with those poor people importing narcotics into Canada; be nice to them; understand them; they are misunderstood.

We understand these people very well and we are sending out a very clear message to them. If they want to get into that business, if they want to exploit children or they decide to get into a new business cultivating marijuana plants in their living rooms and dining rooms, we are sending out a message to them as well. Do not go into that business, but if they go into that business, they can expect jail. Most Canadians will back us up on this.

I hope when the hon. member talks to some of her provincial counterparts she will join us in that mission.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, if the Minister of Justice thinks that the bill will solve the issues that he has just identified, he is fooling himself, or else he is deliberately putting forward a program that we know will fail. I actually do not think the Conservatives really care what the consequences are. The fact is that this bill, with minimum mandatory sentences, will not solve any of those issues that he just identified. I agree we have to send the right message, but it sure as heck is not this bill.

In terms of Manitoba, obviously there are elements of the Conservatives' legislation that have come forward which the province of Manitoba and likely other provinces have supported too. That is not at issue here.

At issue here today is this particular bill that is advancing the proposition that somehow minimum mandatory sentencing will address the incredibly serious problems that we have in our local communities. I just want to blow the whistle on that, because this bill is absolutely the wrong direction to take.

Look at what is happening in the United States. Have they lowered the rate of drug use? Have they lowered the crime rate? Have they lowered the impact on local communities? Communities are torn apart as a result of incarceration. It has not changed there. It has only gotten worse. That is what the government is now embarking on.

It is an absolutely disastrous course to take. It will not work. That is why this bill should be defeated.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great attention to the hon. member's speech on Bill C-26, which will evoke a lot of discussion. I respect where the member comes from both geographically and philosophically, but I cannot agree with everything she said.

I am open to ongoing debate with respect to issues of harm reduction treatment and prevention, and I agree that not enough has been done by the government in this regard.

I have children in the school system in New Brunswick. RCMP officers are in the schools teaching kids about the D.A.R.E. program, and I endorse that. I endorse the good members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in my community. I realize all politics is local, as Tip O'Neill said, but I believe the RCMP has done a wonderful job in the community of greater Moncton in teaching the D.A.R.E. program. This leads me to my question and my disagreement with her in that regard, but perhaps I can tie it together with a question that leads us to a common front.

The Conservatives talk about a law enforcement agenda. They put out bills that need to be enforced, but they do not back them with the actual trooping of our police forces across this country. They make speeches about hiring 2,500 more police officers across the country. In fact, they have made the same speech for two years in a row. They talk about upping the numbers in the RCMP, which is systemically unable right now to grow its numbers because of age, seniority issues and so on. There is an age issue in the force in Codiac as well as an issue with respect to disability, burnout and overwork, all those sort of things.

Will the member give us her and her party's views on the Minister of Public Safety's complete ignorance in putting aside promises with respect to the deployment of community police officers?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, community policing is a very important aspect of this issue. As the member has pointed out, the Conservatives have broken their promises in bringing in new officers across the country. They should be directed to community based programs. This is another thing they have put out and then have abandoned.

I want to pick up on the member's comments about education.

If the member spoke to the Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, he would learn that police carrying out drug education programs has been shown to be the least effective way of communicating with young people. The idea of scaring people, telling them that if they use marijuana, they are going to become a crack cocaine addict does not work. Young people know that will not necessarily happen.

We have to face the reality that young people experiment with drugs. The most important thing is to get real information to them about what they are doing is harmful, what choices there are and what they can do to protect themselves to remain healthy.

I do not believe that information can be delivered by police officers. It needs to be delivered by people who have a clear understanding of the issue. The idea that we scare people based on enforcement has been shown not to work. In many communities the D.A.R.E. program has been discredited.

I am concerned as well about the direction of the Conservatives' so-called education program, which they unrolled a couple of months ago. It is more propaganda that really does nothing to engage young people about this serious issue. The government would be much better off to work with Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy and devise a real education program that involves young people, a program that deals with these issues in a realistic way.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, people in my community of Hamilton Mountain are also worried about things like grow ops, drug use and the crime that is often associated with them.

I listened to the comments of the Minister of Justice with great care. He is absolutely right. The NDP has supported some of the government's so-called crime bills, but only when they made good public policy sense. All his rhetoric today cannot turn Bill C-26 into legislation that reflects good public policy, especially for a government that constantly talks about wanting evidence based research.

The member for Vancouver East has done an admirable job of laying out precisely why our party will not support Bill C-26 and the minimum sentences that it would impose.

My constituents are much more concerned about effective programs for prevention and for deterrence. An excellent example of one such facility in the riding of Vancouver East is the Insite facility. The member for Vancouver East has been a tireless champion for sustainable funding and for a sustainable future for that facility.

I want her to know that it is not just people in her community who care about this, but health care professionals, people who are committed to treatment and prevention right across the country, also care. Could she give us an update on the future of that site?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there is very strong support in downtown eastside Vancouver, and indeed, across the country, for Insite, the safe injection facility. It comes from the local police, local businesses, the city council and even the B.C. government. We are very concerned the government is refusing to make it clear whether Insite will continue.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we are dealing with legislation that focuses on the drug crime that is plaguing our communities across Canada. Bill C-26 would impose tough new mandatory minimum sentences on the most serious of drug crimes. At the same time, it would provide hope to those who want to escape their drug addictions. This is a balanced approach to addressing drug crime in our country.

I can say with absolute certainty that Canada's drug problem is one of the most important issues to the residents of my community of Abbotsford.

I have called my community of Abbotsford home for some 26 years. My wife Annette and I have raised four daughters in that community. It is a community that fashions itself as a city in the country.

Statistics Canada has declared Abbotsford to be the most generous community in the country when it comes to charitable giving. It is a city of volunteers and it is a community of families with strong traditional values and a strong work ethic. We have a very low unemployment rate. It is somewhere around the 3.7% mark. We are also an incredibly diverse community, one of the most diverse in the country. We have a very strong farm economy. In fact, Abbotsford generates the largest farm gate revenues for the province of B.C and with that, comes prosperity. We also have a significant urban presence and with that, comes some of the problems that face big cities, problems of crime.

Neighbourhoods in Abbotsford are experiencing drive-by shootings on a regular basis. Marijuana grow ops and crystal meth labs proliferate in Abbotsford. In fact, drug related violence and even drug related murders are not uncommon for the average Abbotsford resident. It is happens in their neighbourhoods and it concerns me.

I will point out how critical this problem is. I will read from one of our local newspapers, the Abbotsford News . from a few months ago, and this is typical. It states:

A wheelchair bound man was arrested after the drug squad raided a home in north Abbotsford and discovered a large grow and loaded firearms Tuesday evening.

Abbotsford drug squad officers seized 850 plants...and three firearms after executing a warrant...A loaded rifle was found near the front door of the home and two loaded hand guns were discovered in a bedroom.

“Guns and drugs are a continued threat to officers and the public”, said Const. Casey Vinet....

Another marijuana grow operation was shut down the day previous after a hydro bypass was discovered and led officers to a home...Police found 630 plants growing underneath the living area of the residence housing a family with school aged children...

That is the problem facing communities across our country. Despite the efforts of our dedicated Abbotsford Police Department, citizen complaints to city council about escalating drug activity in their neighbourhoods are increasing.

As I speak, the lives of thousands of Canadians and families are being ruined by illegal drugs. They have become victims of criminal enterprises, the victims of drug dealers who make obscene profits off the misery of others. Time and time again drug traffickers rob young people of their future and sell them a lifetime of heartache. Too often such a future leads to an early death.

The goods news is, after years of inaction by the previous Liberal government, our Conservative government is finally taking action. We are taking concrete steps to rein in organized crime and drug dealers, who have ruined so many lives without facing any real consequences.

It is almost as if previous governments were hoping that the problem of drug crime would simply go away. In the meantime, drug criminals have continued to use our revolving door justice system to evade real and certain justice. That is why we have taken decisive action.

Last October, Prime Minister Harper unveiled—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. I think the hon. member was about to catch his mistake. It would be best to use riding names or titles.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister and his anti-drug strategy provides almost $64 million over two years to prevent illegal drug use, treat people who have drug addictions and fight drug crime. The strategy proposes a two-track approach, one which is tough on drug crime and one which focuses on the victims of drug crime, including the drug addicts themselves.

Our action plan to fight the production and distribution of prohibited drugs focuses on providing strong penalties that will act not only as a deterrent to others, but will put out of commission the really serious drug traffickers in our communities. That is the context within which our Bill C-26 has been introduced. Moreover, the bill follows up on one of the five key priorities that we identified for Canadians during the last election, namely to get serious about tackling crime. As with so many others of our promises, we are getting the job done. We are actually fulfilling our promises.

Let me tell the House what Bill C-26 would achieve.

The bill proposes a series of mandatory minimum prison sentences that ensure that criminals who commit serious drug offences face appropriately long sentences. I want to emphasize that the bill is not about applying mandatory minimum penalties to all drug crime. It is not a wide net that catches all drug users. It is not a bill that goes after the recreational users of drugs. Rather it introduces targeted mandatory minimum penalties for the most serious of drug crimes and ensures that those who carry out those crimes will be harshly penalized. It bill clearly sends a message that Canadians do not accept drug trafficking as a legitimate business or violence associated with drug trafficking and production.

As members know, the production and trafficking of illegal drugs present serious health and public safety hazards. They create environmental hazards, pose significant cleanup problems for city councils and endanger the lives and health of our neighbourhoods. I know that from experience, having served on Abbotsford's city council for some nine years.

Drug trafficking is a lucrative business and attracts the most insidious of organizations, the organized crime groups and drug gangs. Huge profits are available with little risk to drug dealers, and these profits are in turn used to finance other criminal activities.

It has become very clear that the penalties and prison sentences for drug trafficking and drug production are considered by many Canadians to be too lenient and not commensurate with the level of harm that such drug crimes impose on our communities.

Our Bill C-26 is specifically tailored to target the most pernicious of these crimes, primarily the trafficking, production, importation and exportation of larger amounts of prohibited drugs. The prohibited drugs that would be covered under our bill are drugs such as cocaine, heroin, crystal meth and marijuana. I want to make it crystal clear, again, that mandatory minimum penalties will not apply to simple possession offences or to offences involving less serious drugs such as Valium. They also do not apply to the trafficking of small amounts of prohibited drugs for personal use.

As I mentioned earlier, our approach is fine-tuned to target the most serious offenders and would operate as follows. Members will have to bear with me because I want to explain exactly how these penalties would be implemented. It may take a couple of minutes, but it is important for Canadians to understand what the bill really involves.

For the trafficking of the hardest drugs, we propose a one year minimum prison sentence where certain aggravating factors exist. I am talking about drugs such as heroin, cocaine or crystal meth. The aggravating factors that would attract mandatory minimum penalties of one year would be where the offence involves organized crime, or where the crime would involve violence or weapons or perhaps a threat of violence or weapons, or where the crime would be committed by a repeat drug trafficker. These are the really bad guys.

If youth are present or the offence occurs in a prison, the minimum jail sentence would be increased to two years.

If someone imports or exports prohibited drugs, the minimum penalty would be raised to two years if the crime involves more than one kilogram of a drug such as heroin, cocaine or crystal meth.

If someone produces or otherwise manufactures cocaine, crystal meth or heroin, a minimum of two years in prison would apply.

Then there may be additional aggravating factors, which would attract a three year prison term. For example, these factors would include a situation where a drug producer uses somebody else's real estate, such as a house, to produce that drug, or where the drugs are produced in a location where children are present. If someone is growing or producing drugs in a home and there are children living in that home, there would be a minimum penalty of three years in prison.

Three years would also apply where the drug production constituted a potential public safety hazard in a residential area or where the drug dealer sets a trap to injure or kill others if they enter the premises. This is quite common with marijuana grow ops. The drug dealers will actually booby-trap the house to make sure that intruders cannot get in. Those booby traps are intended to maim, injure and kill and often impact our police officers.

For lesser drugs such as marijuana, the proposed mandatory minimum sentence for trafficking, importing or exporting would be one year if certain aggravating factors such as violence, recidivism or organized crime are present. If a drug dealer is trafficking in the presence of children or in an area frequented by children, such as a schoolyard, the minimum prison sentence of one year would be increased to two years.

We are also going after marijuana grow ops. If a grow operator produces up to 200 marijuana plants, he or she would get a minimum of six months in prison. If a grow operator produces up to 500 plants, he or she would get one year in prison. If he or she grows more than 500 plants, he or she would spend at least two years in prison. There would be no more slaps on the wrist. There would be no more revolving door justice system.

Getting tough on marijuana grow operators will be especially welcome in Abbotsford. Marijuana grow ops and crystal meth labs have been a blight on our city, jeopardizing the safety of our neighbourhoods and families.

At this point, I want to give special credit to Abbotsford's city council. Faced with a former federal Liberal government that refused to get tough on grow ops and other drug crime, and faced with a police force reluctant to bust grow ops due to weak federal anti-drug laws, my city council responded by finding creative new ways to use municipal bylaws and regulations to shut down those grow ops.

For example, sophisticated heat sensors are used to determine whether a house is producing more heat than would normally be expected. The city identifies a house that is perhaps a marijuana grow op. Of course there are other telltale signs such as foil on the windows and an odour emanating from the house, and often there is suspicious activity going on. Then the city posts a 48 hour notice of fire and safety inspection. It cuts off the water and the electricity, so of course the plants cannot grow any more. After 48 hours, city staff or the police return and typically find the premises abandoned.

On top of that, the city files a notice against the property advising prospective purchasers that the house has been a marijuana grow op. That of course reduces the value of the property in many cases, as people do not want to purchase a home that has been used for illegal drug activity.

I commend the Abbotsford city council for taking these steps, but I have to ask the members of this House, is it not our job as federal parliamentarians to protect our communities? Why was it left to the Abbotsford city council to deal with this problem? Why, over 13 years, did the former Liberal government not get it done?

Our Conservative government is getting it done and there is much more. Bill C-26 also introduces tougher penalties for trafficking in what are commonly known as date rape drugs. These drugs are used to drug unsuspecting women to allow predators to sexually assault them. Protecting women against violence has been one of our top priorities.

I also fully expect the usual response from the Liberal and NDP members of the House. We have already heard some responses from the NDP this morning. Some will tell us that deterrence and denunciation do not work. Others will tell us that the focus should be on rehabilitation and social reform, not tougher sentences. I am absolutely certain that they are going to tell us that mandatory minimum sentences do not work. They will also try to convince Canadians that our hands are tied and that Bill C-26 might violate the legal rights of the drug pushers.

However, there is one group those members almost never mention. Can we guess what it is? It is the victims of drug crime, the victims across the country who are crying out for redress. They are crying out to be heard. They have not been listened to. I have been in the House for over two years now and I have observed how seldom the opposition members of the House actually take heed of the cries of victims across our country.

Last Sunday I spoke in Burnaby, B.C. at a rally recognizing National Victims of Crime Awareness Week. The rally was sponsored by organizations I really respect: Mothers Against Drunk Driving and F.A.C.T., Families Against Crime & Trauma.

It is quite clear from the sentiments expressed at that rally and at other similar rallies that many Canadians feel outraged. They are outraged that for decades it has been the defence lawyers and the prisoners' rights advocates who have had the ear of government and that victims of crime have been all but abandoned. I am here to say that today victims of crime do have a strong advocate in our Conservative government.

Some members of the opposition will also tell us that Canada does not have a crime problem. They will point to statistics which seem to indicate that crime is down, not up. There is a wealth of material in the House from the opposition members. I went back to the words of the member for Scarborough—Guildwood. When speaking on another bill, he said the following:

In fact, by any and every standard of measurement, crime is declining in every category. That is the truth.

He went on to say:

We have crime rates declining in all categories in virtually all communities.

Those are the words of the Liberals.

What are the facts? I believe it was Mark Twain who referred to “lies, damned lies, and statistics”. I would suggest that some members of the opposition could learn from Mark Twain.

There is always a grain of truth in what the opposition says about crime, but it is just not the whole truth. The real truth is that while the overall crime rate has gone down marginally, due to fewer petty crimes being committed, Statistics Canada reports that rates for almost all categories of violent crime have gone up, not down.

I encourage my Liberal friends across the floor to actually review the latest statistics from Statistics Canada. It is as simple as going to that website. I am going to quote from those statistics.

For example, crimes such as attempted murder, aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, robbery, kidnapping and forcible confinement are all up. Drug offences involving cocaine are up by a whopping 13%, while other serious drug offences, including those involving crystal meth, were up by 8%. Of even greater concern is the fact that Statistics Canada reports that youth crime has increased by 3%, the first increase since 2003, and in fact the rate of young people accused of murder was the highest since 1961.

Clearly the violent drug crime problem that plagues our nation calls for solutions, not excuses. That is what Bill C-26 does: it takes serious action against the scourge of drug crime in our streets.

We are getting the job done. It is time for the Liberals and NDP to stop dithering on the issue of drug crime and join our Conservative government in passing this bill. Canadians are demanding change. It is time to deliver that change.

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment the hon. member, who did a very good job at describing the technical matters. He got a little out of hand when he started to get partisan, but the technical areas were very well explained.

When we look at what is going on out there with the trafficking, the production, the import and the export of drugs, we find that without argument people want to see all of that end, and they want to see tougher sentencing and tougher actions taken. I do not think we will get any argument on that.

When we see laws like Bill C-26, we see another tool, a tool that will help law enforcement officers do their job and get more encouragement.

I also have to comment on what is happening in Abbotsford. As the member mentioned, the city council is using many different ways of trapping and catching drug producers, whether they have grow ops or manufacturing areas. I commend the council for that.

However, that brings me back to the police associations and their frustration. One of the things the Conservative government said it would do was bring on more police officers. There would be more funding for police officers to hire more people so that they can take these laws and actually do something with them, not just stand there and say that they have these laws but do not have the men and women out in the street who can actually enforce the laws.

Where is the funding that was meant to hire more women and men as police officers?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I sense that my hon. colleague is inclined to support our legislation. I commend him for that. We do support Bill C-26 because it addresses the scourge of drug crime.

With respect to his question about policing, we promised that we were going to provide an additional 2,500 police officers across Canada. Guess what? In budget 2008, which was just passed with the help of the Liberals, we actually have provided the funding for that. Police forces across Canada can expect that there is going to be a significantly enhanced police presence available to implement the drug legislation we are discussing today, to actually enforce the laws we have in Canada to make sure that the real bad guys, the drug kingpins, the drug lords, the high level drug dealers, are taken off the street and incarcerated so they cannot continue to peddle misery.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the comments of the member for Abbotsford. He said that drug offences in certain categories have gone up by 13% and that he believes, and the public believes, that sentencing is too lenient.

I would ask him to actually provide evidence of that and evidence of whether this bill will affect that in any way. We have tried to find research in terms of what are the average penalties across the country. It is very difficult to find out. The member is making these assertions, so I would like him to bring forward the evidence to show where penalties have been too lenient.

I certainly will agree that there are particular cases where there have been big disputes in the public and articles in the newspapers which may show that people believe that for a particular offence the sentence of incarceration was not adequate. That certainly happens, but overall he is making the assertion that penalties have been too lenient and that somehow this bill will fix that.

One of the problems with minimum mandatory sentences is that it is more likely that people who are charged would fight those charges because they know that a minimum mandatory will apply, so it will actually tie up more court time and more lawyers, whom he does not seem to like.

I wonder if he can actually show this House and Canadian people the evidence behind what he is saying, not just his opinion, not an anecdote, but hard evidence on the penalty side, and also if he can actually show that this bill will impact the fact that drug offences have gone up by 13%. Where is the evidence that the bill will change this?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to encourage the member to get out on the streets and talk to the people and the victims of crime. They will say that the sentences are way too lenient. In fact, some of the key drug criminals in our communities are getting a slap on the wrist if they are even penalized in the courts.

The member should talk to people like Sandra Martins-Toner and Nina Rivet of FACT. The member will know these people because they work in her community. They will tell her that the penalties are way too lenient and that it is time for the federal government to step forward, do the courageous thing and start imposing a regime of escalating mandatory minimum penalties, which are targeted, by the way. We are not talking about all of the drug users in Canada being subjected to mandatory minimum penalties. We are focusing on the worst of the worst, getting the bad guys off the street.

Quite frankly, when we talk about mandatory minimum penalties, they are tailored because of their prophylactic effect. We are trying to take these guys off the street for longer periods of time and we want to disturb their criminal enterprises. We want to interfere with them to ensure they cannot function properly.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want the member for Abbotsford to know that this an issue not just in Abbotsford but also in my riding of Burlington.

I sent out a questionnaire to my constituents asking them for their response to our getting tough on crime and drug dealers. It was the biggest response I have received from any mailing to my constituents. By far, the response was that we need to be doing something, that we are on the right track and that we are making things happen.

As a member of Parliament, I visited the local police chief for the region of Halton and he clearly indicated to me that getting tough on crime, particularly drug crimes, is the way to go.

This is National Victims of Crime Awareness Week and he did a great job in terms of highlighting how important that is. Could he tell the House who he considers to be the victims in the drug crime business and how this would affect them?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is easy for me to answer. There are two groups of victims in my mind. We have those who are the innocent victims of drug violence, the ones who are hurt, injured, maimed or even killed, such as Ed Schellenberg from my community.

Members may recall that in October of last year, six men were gunned down in an execution-style gangland slaying. Four of them were known to police as being involved in the drug industry and two were not. They were innocent victims. One was from my riding of Abbotsford, Ed Schellenberg. Those are the victims of the violence of drug crime.

The other group of victims are Canadians who, for one reason or another, through difficult circumstances, have found themselves in a life of drug addiction and, to feed their habit, they sell drugs. I believe it is the will of the House that we would focus on them and provide them with a way of getting off their addictions and freed from that slavery. Our bill would do that because it is a balanced approach.

We are not only imposing mandatory minimum penalties. We are also providing an option for judges to sentence offenders in a way that would allow them to undergo a court approved drug treatment program and, if that program is completed satisfactorily, the mandatory sentence would not apply. If they do not complete it satisfactorily, a mandatory minimum sentence would be applied. Those are the victims we are addressing in our crime bill.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, at the risk of disagreeing with a colleague, the member for Scarborough—Guildwood said that crime was decreasing. We know from breaking news that there is a bit of a surge in crime today in that the RCMP is executing a warrant at Conservative Party headquarters. I would like my friend's comment on that aspect of crime increasing.

As a former city councillor, he knows or should know that it is universal for city councils that there is a lot of pressure on police budgets. The Conservatives have been in the job for two years and four months. If getting the job done is waiting two years and four months for more police officers, which has been called for throughout the cities of this country, then what is not getting the job done?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, when I was a member of the Abbotsford city council, we did our very best to provide our police with the resources they needed to address drug crime. In fact, Abbotsford has its own police force. It is not part of the RCMP system.

The residents of my community were more than willing for us to provide the resources through taxation to our police to ensure our neighbourhoods were safe. In fact, we had numerous community organization that would appear before our council regularly to ensure we had the police presence in the neighbourhood that was required.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to discuss a very important issue to my constituents of Newton—North Delta: our society's approach to illegal drugs. It affects my family, neighbours, businesses and constituents across Newton—North Delta. I say my family because, along with my wife, Roni, we are raising three children from school age to university. I run my own business in my own riding.

When I talk to parents and to the businesses, marijuana grow-ops are a problem that is affecting people across society.

Last year, when I was talking to Chief Superintendent McRae, he told me that last year the RCMP handled 7,000 drug related incidents in Surrey, an increase of 11% from the year before. Chief Cessford from Delta tells the same story.

Addictive, destructive drugs can ruin lives and often the lives of our children. Crystal meth, for instance, is extremely hazardous to the brain. Particularly when smoked, meth rapidly damages the brain, killing portions of it. It makes the brain of users in their early twenties look like the brains of sixty or seventy year olds who have suffered from minor strokes.

Not all drugs are as dangerous as crystal meth. As responsible legislators, we must keep things in perspective.

Bill C-26 is welcome in many ways, although it has limitations. Before considering the bill, we should be clear on what principles should govern our approach to illegal drugs and other criminal activities.

Canadians are a fair and generous people. We have never been as harsh as our American neighbours. We recognize that many social forces push people toward crime: poverty, poor education, unstable childhoods, social isolation and many more.

We believe that people are fundamentally good but we recognize that good behaviour is not automatic. People need to be encouraged.

Canadians also know that it is not enough to try to prevent people from becoming criminals. We must also deal with those who commit crime. People who break the law must be punished.

A government that serves the needs of Canadians must be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. Everyone should have an equal opportunity to make the most of life but people should not get away with committing crimes.

Canada's crime policy should not be just reactive. It should proactive. Our goal should also be to prevent crime. How do we prevent crime? Do we hire more police, prosecutors and judges? Do we set longer sentences or minimum sentences? I believe the best way to prevent crime is by ensuring criminals get caught and convicted.

Earlier, I was listening to my hon. colleague from Abbotsford talking about 2,500 new police officers that the government promised in its platform. However, when it comes to those figures, that corresponds to $32,000 a year for a police officer for only four years.

This is a long term, serious problem that we need to deal with. Funding needs to be stable for those 2,500 new police officers and it needs to be a reasonable amount so we can hire and get more police officers on the streets.

Beyond that, we need to provide positive activities for our youth so that they do not fall into drugs.

Yesterday, I was talking with people at the Muslim Youth Centre in my riding. Organizer and volunteer, Zeynel Azimullah, and his associates are providing tremendous volunteer efforts to play a constructive role in the lives of city youth. The aims and objectives of this organization are to protect our youth from doing things that are unlawful and illegal, to provide learning opportunities for character building, to mould our youth to be committed and dedicated citizens, to offer physical, spiritual, moral and social educational programs, and to promote peace and harmony.

When it comes to government, it can be a force of good in people's lives. For the last four years, the Muslim Youth Centre has been running based on donations. This is the type of work that is really appreciated in my riding. However, when the organization went to the Revenue Canada Agency to get a charity number it did not qualify as a charity organization. This is the type of organization that needs to be encouraged and needs the resources to be put in place.

Similarly, two years ago I was introduced to another gentleman in my riding by one of my constituents who is a multicultural coordinator with the city RCMP detachment. She introduced me to a young man named Rob Rai. He works with youth at risk and teaches them skills through sports and keeps them off the streets. Similar to the Muslim Youth Centre, Rob Rai's organization is also run by donations from businesses.

It is the people who are playing a role in the lives of our youth but I am sure the government can do much more on this. Every social worker or child care provider with whom we talk say that the first six years in a child's development is very important. However, when the government cancelled those child care agreements, it showed how serious the government was in providing the prevention needs.

When the government cancelled the Kelowna accord, it showed that it was not committed to improving the lives of our youth.

I appreciate the government bringing in this bill and I, along with my colleagues, will be supporting this bill in principle.

In Canada, the use and abuse of illicit drugs is a serious problem that is increasing. The number of Canadians who have used an injection drug during their lives increased from 1.7 million in 1994 to 4.1 million in 2004. According to the RCMP, the number of secret labs seized increased from 24 in 2000 to 53 in 2005. Because growers use volatile materials and frequently obtain their electricity illegally, marijuana grow operations pose a threat to public health and safety, especially to their neighbours and children.

Production of ecstasy is also on the rise in Canada. The United States has expressed concerns about ecstasy being smuggled into the U.S. from Canada.

The increase in drug use, trafficking and production threatens our safety. These activities have serious impacts on our communities, such as increasing rates of petty crime, prostitution, increased violence, and increased risk to law enforcement officers. Proceeds from the sale of drugs are used to finance other criminal activities.

What we want to stop above all is violence. We need to recognize the problems that are caused by small producers and the biggest dangers from the big operations. We need to define where the problem is and where we need to get tough.

We also need to be smarter on crime. The city of Surrey's innovative electrical fire safety initiative has been so successful at shutting down grow ops that the city is doubling the program. It investigates houses with unusual power consumption and cuts off power if there is dangerous wiring, typical of grow ops. The program has sent a strong message that grow ops will not be tolerated in Surrey, and it is working.

Tougher penalties are an important part of our strategy to fight crime. Bill C-26 proposes several measures on drug crime. It would create a one year mandatory jail term for dealing drugs while using a weapon, or for dealing drugs in support of organized crime. It would create a two year mandatory term for dealing cocaine, heroin or meth to young people, or for dealing near places young people frequent.

Bill C-26 proposes to increase the maximum sentence for date rape drugs. It would create a mandatory six month sentence for growing as little as one marijuana plant for the purposes of trafficking.

I welcome the measures in Bill C-26 to target large scale growers and traffickers, organized crime groups, and people who push drugs on our children and teenagers. These people are ruining the lives of our future generations. We hope that this bill will help. Our hopes should be focused more on our youth, and I personally feel that this bill is a step in the right direction.

The Conservatives' approach, however, has problems. They see that drug abuse is a criminal matter, but they do not see that it is also a health issue. They are not focusing on the more serious criminal problems, especially gangs and guns.

We could talk to the police chief or any police officer in my riding and they would tell us that we need to focus our resources on organized crime. For instance, right now we only have a 16% conviction rate for homicides. This is appallingly low. It used to be much higher, but it is harder for the police to get convictions now because more homicides are being committed by organized crime.

Those are serious problems, but they are not getting the attention from the Conservative government that they should be getting.

We do not even know where all the new prisoners will be jailed. The British Columbia provincial corrections department says that if Bill C-26 were to pass, it would probably have to find room for about 700 more marijuana growers per year. Nobody is sure where they can go because 80% of the provincial prisoners in B.C. are already double-bunked and the rest are either in protective custody or are too violent for a cellmate.

Even the National Post is critical of these issues, and when the National Post agrees with The Globe and Mail, we know something must be seriously wrong.

Just like with the economy, the Conservatives had a fantastic opportunity to change Canada's drug policies for the better over the past two years, but they have once again wasted the opportunity.

Now, I request that this government, if it were to implement Bill C-26, should also be focusing on preventive measures and education, particularly among our youth and aboriginal communities. That is very important.

I will be supporting this bill as I have on every crime bill that has come before this House. I have always stood up to be tough on crime, but at the same time, I have always been an advocate of preventive measures, education and social benefits, so that we can keep the social justice, so we can keep the balance when it comes to making laws and providing resources in our communities.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the U.S.-style war on drugs has failed in the U.S. and it is failing in Canada. I notice that in Canada we spent 73% of our drug policy budget on enforcement, whereas we spent only 14% on treatment, 7% on research, even less, 2.6% on prevention, and 2.6% on harm reduction.

We have seen many Canadian families whose teenagers are trapped in a cycle of addiction. It really should be seen as a health issue not one of morality. We know there are many parents who are desperately trying to seek drug treatment programs for their teenagers and their children, but they have not been able to find them in Canada.

There are hardly any long term drug treatment programs. There are very few community-based treatment programs. Those that are available are private and very expensive. There are some treatment programs in the U.S. where parents end up having to send their kids but of course the travel costs, et cetera, are not covered.

We know that drug treatment programs work very well as they deal with young persons in a holistic manner. We know that many of them who are taking drugs use them to mask the pain that they have experienced when they were young, whether it was physical or mental abuse.

I do not understand how this bill would actually work because it would end up throwing more people in jail and as a result we would end up with more hardened criminals and certainly we would end up spending more money dealing with them on the enforcement side. We know that to put a young person in jail, for example, would cost at least $100,000 a year, whereas a drug treatment program would be a lot cheaper.

My question for the hon. member is, how could one even begin to support this kind of very wrong-headed, ineffective, non-science-based approach war on drugs that has proven to be a complete failure in the past?

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Trinity—Spadina for the statistics she gave with which I could not agree more. If the hon. member was listening to my speech, in fact the numbers she gave, the 73% on enforcement, and 7% on prevention, I also mentioned that there are certain aspects of the bill that have to be tough on crime because if we are not tough on crime we cannot deal with the problems we have in our society.

At the same time, I mentioned that the Conservative government is not looking at this as a health risk. I do agree with the member that we need to put more resources into preventive and treatment measures.

The member asked, how can I support it? It makes total sense to support this bill and send it to committee so that members of the committee can discuss the pros and cons of the bill and come up with a constructive, healthy bill that will put resources into prevention but at the same time be tough on crime.

The committee will have this responsibility and then we can bring in experts at committee to deal with this situation and put their input into the bill so when the bill comes back to the House it will be a more effective bill.

On the other hand, we all know how committees are functioning under this Conservative leadership. Basically the government does not even want to hear the input from members of the opposition. It is forgetting that 66% of the people elected the opposition. That is why it makes sense to send the bill to committee and allow the committee to work on this, so the bill will be more effective in every way.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member mentioned that the Conservatives had a great opportunity to make good changes to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. We think we are making good changes.

Liberal Party members had the authority and opportunity for 13 years in this House to make changes, but they did not make any critical changes in this area. As a member of the Liberal Party, how does the member feel about the performance of the Liberal Party for the 13 years that it did nothing on this file?

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to serve on the access to information, privacy and ethics committee with the member for Burlington.

He asked about the 13 years. Maybe the hon. member was not aware of those 13 years. Maybe he is not aware that Brian Mulroney left this country with a $41 billion deficit. When the previous Liberal government came to power, it balanced eight consecutive budgets. It brought in the Kelowna accord to improve the lives of aboriginals.

We brought in landmark child care agreements that the Conservatives cancelled. The member can talk to child care providers who will tell him what the Liberal government had done and what the current government has messed up.

Regarding the economy, The Economist said that the Liberal government of this country was one of the best, and that in fact Canada was the second best country to invest in. We were the top country to live in, but under the current government we are heading into deficit right now. These are the achievements that we made and these are the mess-ups of the current government right now.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member to table some of those things, but I will not. We will try to get back on the topic of how justice in this country has gone downhill.

I am not sure if the hon. member has heard some of his colleagues talk about the banning of hand guns, but I want to make a comment and then ask the hon. member a question. I am getting sick and tired, as constituents in my riding are, of politicians who have no solutions to the problem, but come out and say that we should ban hand guns, which for all intents and purposes are banned anyway.

I wonder if the member knows that crack cocaine, crystal meth, and all of those things are also banned. How does that work?

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to crime with guns, I would refer to the headline, “More youths in gangs. National trend. Drug trade behind gunplay, author says”.

In fact, less than 48 hours after Toronto Mayor David Miller launched a national push to have hand guns banned by the federal government, his city recorded three more shootings. It is self-explanatory.

The other issue the member raised was for me to table those things I was talking about. It is on the public record.

I hope the member can put his team forward to do the research. It shows in the economy in one budget after the other. The Canada pension plan was ruined by the Mulroney Conservatives. It was a Liberal government that put the Canada pension plan on a strong footing. I forgot to mention that.

When it comes to banning these drugs, as I have already said in my speech, I want to make sure our youth are protected from these drugs. We have to have tough laws, but at the same time we have to have preventive measures and the resources to support those youth.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Peace River.

It is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-26, which is an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The Minister of Justice recently tabled Bill C-26 which proposes a number of mandatory minimum penalties to ensure that appropriately high sentences are imposed on those who commit serious drug offences.

The bill is not about applying mandatory minimum penalties for all drug crimes. The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act contains a complex offence and penalty structure. Penalties depend on the nature of the prohibited activity and on the type of substance involved.

The most problematic and dangerous substances such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and morphine are listed in schedule I. Offences involving these substances attract the severest penalties, up to life in prison.

Cannabis is a schedule II drug and attracts lesser penalties. It is only if at least three kilograms are involved that trafficking and possession for the purpose of trafficking are punishable by up to life imprisonment. Production of cannabis is punishable by up to seven years' imprisonment.

The least severe penalties, up to 12 months' imprisonment on summary conviction, are reserved for offences involving substances listed in schedules IV and V.

It should be noted, however, that most of the prohibited activities in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act are legal if committed by someone possessing the proper licence, permit or exemption.

For example, the marijuana medical access regulations that came into force on July 30, 2001 provide a comprehensive scheme for sick individuals to apply for licences to possess or grow marijuana for medical use with the support of their doctor, or in some cases with the support of a specialist. There is also a process to apply for a designated person production licence if the individual is unable to grow the marijuana himself or herself.

As such, there are individuals in Canada who are exempted from the production offence contained in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act who are growing marijuana within their residences or in their yards.

The amount of plants that the individual is permitted to produce is derived from a formula tied to the amount of dried marijuana product which the individual holder of the permit requires on a daily basis. The amount of plants that the permit holder is authorized to produce can be quite significant. For example, it can be in excess of 50 plants.

Some members of the House may be of the view that serious drug offences do not require a response such as the one contained in the bill. However, serious drug crime is a growing problem in Canadian cities and towns and a serious legislative approach is required.

According to Statistics Canada's Juristat “Crime Statistics in Canada, 2004”, the rate of marijuana cultivation offences has more than doubled over the past decade from approximately 3,400 offences in 1994 to 8,000 in 2004.

According to a study on marijuana grow operations in British Columbia in 2003, 39% of all reported marijuana cultivation cases, or 4,514 cases, were located in British Columbia. Between 1997 and 2000, the total number of these cases increased by over 220%. Although the number of individual operations in British Columbia levelled off between 2000 and 2003, the estimated quantity of marijuana produced increased from 19,729 kilograms in 1997 to a seven year high of 79,817 kilograms in 2003, which was due to the size and sophistication of individual operations.

Recent investigations by B.C. Hydro indicate the existence of up to 17,000 possible marijuana grow operations. The increase in the illicit production of marijuana has occurred not just in British Columbia but all across this country. There is no available national data on synthetic drug production.

Other RCMP data indicates a steady rise in these production operations. The RCMP seized 25 synthetic drug production operations in 2002, 51 in 2003, 60 in 2004, and 50 in 2005. Of the 60 operations seized in 2004, 17 were producing ecstasy and 40 were set up to produce methamphetamine. Of the 50 labs seized in 2005, 60% were producing meth and 30% were producing ecstasy. Ecstasy seizures and precursors increased between 2001 and 2006 from 1.5 million tablets to in excess of 70 million.

Unlike other better known drugs of abuse such as heroin, cocaine or marijuana, methamphetamine presents some unique challenges. Methamphetamine is a synthetic drug. It is not dependent on the cultivation of a crop. Its production requires no specialized skill or training. Its precursor chemicals are relatively easy to obtain and inexpensive to purchase. These factors make production attractive to both the criminal trafficker and to the addicted user.

Methamphetamine also presents a threat to law enforcement authorities. They must simultaneously combat small toxic labs and super labs, which are primarily controlled by drug trafficking organizations. The small labs produce relatively small amounts of methamphetamine and are generally not affiliated with major drug trafficking organizations.

A number of factors have served as catalysts for the spread of small labs, including the presence of recipes easily accessible over the Internet. Indeed, widespread use of the Internet has facilitated the dissemination of technology used to manufacture methamphetamine in small labs. This form of information sharing allows wide dissemination of these techniques to anyone with computer access.

Aside from marijuana, methamphetamine is the only widely abused illegal drug that is capable of being easily produced by the abuser. Given the relative ease with which the manufacturers or cooks are able to acquire recipes and ingredients, and the unsophisticated nature of the production process, it is easy to see why this highly addictive drug is spreading.

Methamphetamine use has a number of impacts on users, on our communities and on society generally. The quality of life among users of methamphetamine is generally greatly diminished. Addicts may experience dissolution of relationships, social isolation, altered personality, difficulty with academics, loss of employment, involvement in crime, exacerbation of pre-existing mental illness, drug related psychosis, brain damage, health risk behaviours, including risky sexual encounters and declining physical fitness.

Furthermore, individuals may be unmotivated to seek help as methamphetamine can create seemingly high levels of energy and productivity. Communities can become vulnerable to petty crime, social disorder, associated risks to health, increases in violence and increases in large scale labs and drug trafficking.

Methamphetamine production operations also pose serious public safety and health hazards to those in and around production operations. These operations can result in serious physical injury from explosions, fires, chemical burns and toxic fumes. They produce environmental hazards, pose cleanup problems and endanger the lives and health of community residents.

The collateral damage of methamphetamine includes impacts on families, school staff, students, law enforcers and fire department paramedics, health care practitioners, businesses and property owners. These individuals experience second-hand symptoms of methamphetamine use. First responders may experience exposures to production byproducts, fire explosion or hazards and may be subject to violence from addicts or frustrations and stress from inadequate resources or judicial restraints from preventing them from taking action.

Parents may also experience emotional and financial stress, strain from missing work, fear and embarrassment, guilt and shame, as a child goes through treatment. A family may also encounter gang related crime, contamination, violence—

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Order, please. The member did not seem to winding up or he did not bother to pretend he was, so the 10 minutes has expired.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Burlington.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Dufferin—Caledon's review was enlightening to me and I am sure others who heard him speak on the production of drugs, how that happens and how easily it can be done. He indicated that access to a computer could give one the knowhow and that the ingredients were easily found.

This week is National Victims of Crime Awareness Week, during which we celebrate everything we try to do to help victims of crime. In getting tough on drug dealers, could he give us his opinion on what the bill would do to help victims of crime?

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an issue that has affected our society in an incredible number of ways. There are the issues of gangs, problems in schools, businesses, the breakups of families and it goes on and on.

The member for Newton—North Delta and the member for Trinity—Spadina, along with other speakers, raised others issues such as health, education and all these issues are most relevant.

Something has to be done about the way these drugs affect our society. We will put people in jail. The public needs to be protected. The victims of crime, the families that have been affected by the crime committed as a result of these drugs need to be assisted. This legislation will help them.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is with considerable pleasure that I rise today to speak to Bill C-26. From my constituency, I hear great concern with regard to the impact of the drug trade and the drug fueled crime that results from that trade.

With crystal meth, the date rape drug, the marijuana grow ops and clandestine labs proliferating in our communities from coast to coast, Canadians are demanding that the Government of Canada take some action.

In the last election we promised to crack down on drug crime. We promised that we would “introduce mandatory minimum sentences for designated drug trafficking offences to ensure that serious crime results in serious punishment”, and that we would, “end conditional sentences or house arrest for serious crimes, including major drug offences”. We also promised that we would support results oriented community based initiatives for addiction treatments, training and rehabilitation of those who were in trouble with the law.

With Bill C-26 and our national anti-drug strategy, the government is fulfilling these promises.

With the proposed legislation, I am particularly pleased that we will take strong action to combat marijuana grow ops. Why do we need these mandatory minimum penalties for grow ops? We need them because sentences for these offenders amount to little more than a simple slap on the wrist.

Professor Darryl Plecas did a study of all the drug files opened by the police of British Columbia from 1998 to 2003. His findings underscore the need and the urgency for these criminal law reforms.

Professor Plecas found that between 1997 and 2003 indoor grow operations increased in average size from 149 plants to 236 plants. It should be noted that hydro bypasses, which allow for theft of hydro, were seen in approximately one in five grow operations. Also the number of fires associated with grow operations increased from 32 in 1997 to 80 in 2003.

These numbers are important because it draws a picture. Among the suspects, 57% had at least one other drug conviction, 41% had a prior conviction of some form of violence, 22% had a previous conviction for production and 27% had a previous conviction for possession for the purpose of trafficking. On average, suspects had seven convictions occurring over a thirteen year period.

What kind of sentences are the courts imposing? Members may find it hard to believe that Professor Plecas found that only 27% of offenders with nine or more non-drug convictions were imprisoned. For offenders with nine or more drug convictions, only 54% were sentenced to jail time. Moreover, cases in which prison sentencing was the most serious disposition dropped from 19% in 1997 to 10% in 2003, while conditional sentences, as the most serious penalty, increased from 13% to 46%. When a prison sentence was imposed, the average length was only 4.9 months.

Clearly, existing sentences are not deterring individuals with multiple convictions from participating in grow ops over and over again.

I believe all members will agree that these sentences are insufficient to deter persons from being involved in marijuana grow ops. Certainly, I do not think they are appropriate. These sentences do not adequately reflect the serious nature of these crimes.

The issue of grow ops, and specifically crystal meth superlabs, is something in which I have taken a personal interest. My private member's bill, Bill C-428, which is currently being dealt with in the other place, deals with raising the penalties for those who produce and traffic in this dangerous drug.

I have heard from people from coast to coast who are concerned about the illegal drug use. They are concerned especially about the deterrents that are in place for those who produce and distribute these dangerous drugs, which have such a horrific impact in each one of our communities. It is time that Parliament send the needed message as to what we think is the appropriate range of penalties within which a judge can craft a sentence, taking into account the particular circumstances of the offender.

Bill C-26 would set that new range. At present, there is no floor and the ceiling is only seven years. Under Bill C-26 there would be a new maximum of 14 years, indicating clearly to the courts how seriously parliamentarians take this type of crime. More important, there would be mandatory periods of imprisonment that would reflect the number of plants. Those mandatory minimums would be increased where: the production constituted a potential security, health or safety hazard to children who were in the location where the offence was committed or in the immediate area; the production constituted a potential public safety hazard in a residential area; a trap was placed or set; or the offender used real property that belonged to a third party to commit the offence.

Under Bill C-26, the penalties would be: six months for the production of up to 200 marijuana plants where the production was for the purpose of trafficking and nine months where the offence involved safety and health aggravating factors; one year for the production of 201 to 500 plants and 18 months where the offence involved health and safety aggravating factors; and two years for more than 500 plants and three years where the offence involved health and safety aggravating factors.

Clearly these proposed mandatory minimum terms of imprisonment are a measured response and fulfill the promise “ensure that serious crime results in serious punishment”. Moreover, the proposals fulfill the promise to support addiction treatment, training and rehabilitation of those in trouble with the law.

I remind members that where the accused has a previous conviction for a serious drug offence but there are no other aggravating circumstances with respect to the offence before the court, the legislation will allow the court to suspend the imposition of sentence if the offender participates in a drug treatment court program. If the person successfully completes the drug treatment program, the court can impose a lesser sentence.

Drug treatment courts are fairly new to Canada, but they are very promising. I understand that at a press conference on Bill C-26, Joe, the first graduate of Ottawa's drug treatment court, spoke eloquently and emotionally about how the court had helped him to be clean for 16 months. Joe has turned his life around and now he can contribute to society, whereas before he used to commit crimes to get money to feed his drug addiction.

I urge all members of the House to support Bill C-26.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Peace River for highlighting the penalty side of Bill C-26. I also congratulate him for his personal work on justice issues that deal with drugs and for his private member's bill, which is now in the other place for review.

The member did an excellent job of highlighting the changes the bill would make to increase penalties for those involved in serious drug crime and in the production and sale of drugs to others.

Could he tell the House what the bill will mean to his community of Peace River and his young family with respect to making it a safer place to live?

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, as I have had the opportunity to work with my colleagues on both sides of this House, including the member for Burlington, I appreciate the support each one has given me.

In terms of this bill and the bills that we have brought forward, there is no question that in my riding of Peace River and the ridings from coast to coast people are asking that parliamentarians step in and do the work of protecting our young families and the people in our communities who are the most vulnerable.

Because of my work on the crystal meth front, I get calls on a regular basis from people in Vancouver and in the Maritimes who are concerned about the way we deal with it. We need to ensure that we go after, first and foremost, the people who are producing and distributing these drugs, specifically to the most vulnerable.

In the past, attempts have sometimes been made to go after the most vulnerable and criminalize their behaviour. We do want to continue to ensure that people are not being encouraged to possess drugs, but we also need to get to the root cause, which is the networking, manufacturing and distribution of these drugs.

Canadians have asked us to go that route and, clearly, that is where this government is responding and getting tough on the real serious crime of producing and distributing the most serious drugs. This bill would take us that much further.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to offer the member my congratulations on supporting such a great bill for Canadians. I can tell members that people in my riding of Cambridge and North Dumfries cannot wait any longer for the tightening of these types of crimes.

I do have a simple question requiring a very simple answer.

On my own street in my riding we had a grow-op pretty much across the street from my home that was operating without anybody knowing it was there, obviously. The operation was turned in by a real estate agent. When the people were arrested and the whole thing went to court, it turned out that one individual owned about five of these homes but had somehow figured out how to rent them to the bad guys. As a result, none of the properties were seized and only one person ever ended up in court and, to my understanding, was fined $20,000.

If people can produce marijuana in a home for a year where $1 million in crop is produced, I think a $20,000 fine is the wrong message for Canadians. I am just wondering if the member agrees with that. Would this bill help solve that problem and send a better message to Canadians about the safety of their communities?

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the efforts of the member for Cambridge to reform the criminal justice system and to have stronger penalties for those people who would go after the most vulnerable in our society.

One of the things I have been concerned about, which he mentioned, is the ownership of the properties in which these criminal acts often are committed.

He is talking about a $20,000 fine as a result of having been involved in a grow-op. As a contractor, I have seen the damage caused from some of these grow-ops and $20,000 is a drop in the bucket when we consider the landlords who hope to rent out their homes and get a decent return. However, at the end of the day they are left with hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to their property because it was used as a grow-op.

The government and this Parliament need to send a signal that we are getting serious about protecting not only those people who are being sold drugs, but also the people who are victimized through grow-ops as well, the people who, in good faith, rent out their homes.

We want to encourage a good rental market but, by not getting tough on the people who rent and destroy these homes and then go on to another home, we do not encourage a rental market, which contributes to the issue of low income housing.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be taking part in this debate on Bill C-26. The Bloc Québécois wants to see the bill sent back to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights but the committee chair must be able to fulfill his responsibilities properly. The Bloc Québécois wants to see the bill sent back to the committee once it returns to normal. Even then, that does not mean that we will automatically support this bill after studying it more closely. We want to hear witnesses and do a comprehensive and thorough job because we obviously have questions.

Let us put all this in context for our fellow citizens. Bill C-26 introduces a minimum one-year prison sentence for trafficking of drugs, particularly marijuana, when undertaken as part of organized crime and involving the use of a weapon or violence. Certainly we agree that drug-related activities, especially those that profit organized crime, deserve a penalty. The Bloc Québécois has not changed its mind about minimum mandatory sentences.

I have said it many times, just as a number of my colleagues have: there are no conclusive studies showing that a minimum mandatory sentence in a bill necessarily works as a deterrent. Quite the opposite, a minimum mandatory sentence can lead to plea bargaining, a game of negotiation between the defence counsel and the Crown where they agree to other charges that are not subject to minimum mandatory sentences.

A second offence is contained in this bill. A minimum sentence of two years will be imposed for trafficking drugs such as cocaine, heroin and amphetamines to young people and, of course, for trafficking drugs near a school or near any other public place usually frequented by young people, like a youth centre.

We are in favour in principle of the legislator taking a closer look at people wanting to traffic drugs in places frequented by young people. In fact, that was a recommendation of the special committee created in 2002 in which I took part. I will come back to that later. Nonetheless, we are not convinced that this offence requires a mandatory minimum sentence.

Third, this bill contains a minimum sentence of two years for the cultivation of more than 500 marijuana plants.

Fourth, the maximum sentence for the production of cannabis will go from 7 to 14 years imprisonment. The Bloc Québécois does not have a problem with the maximum sentences, as this respects the judicial discretion that judges hearing witnesses should be afforded. They are aware of the circumstances and are well placed to determine the best sentence for each individual case. The Bloc Québécois has always defended the idea that sentences should be handed down on a case-by-case basis. A judge must receive and look at each case by bearing every factor in mind.

Finally, punishment will be more severe for trafficking in GHB, which is commonly known as the date rape drug. We do not have any particular problem with that provision.

There is another aspect of the bill that is a little more on the positive side. Clause 5 states that if the offender successfully completes a drug treatment program—and every one of our provinces and communities offers one—the court is not required to impose the minimum sentence, as the treatment will be seen as a mitigating factor in sentencing.

I understand that a government member has already introduced a similar bill.

We are in favour of clause 5 of the bill, but we have a number of concerns about the rest of the bill.

I would also like to mention that the bill establishes a list of aggravating circumstances that would rule out the possibility of a minimum sentence. These factors are considered serious enough to encourage judges to lean towards harsher sentences, rather than more lenient ones.

This bill addresses offences committed for the benefit or at the direction of a criminal organization. These provisions already exist, since they were passed when we dealt with the whole issue of organized crime. The House will recall that there are three offences under sections 467, 468 and 469, I believe. Committing an offence for the benefit of a criminal organization, whether drug related or under other circumstances, is still considered an aggravating circumstance.

Also, when violence is used in the commission of an offence, naturally, that is considered an aggravating circumstance. The same is true for offences committed in a school or on school grounds, offences committed in a prison and offences committed using the services of a person under the age of 18 years. Those are all examples of aggravating circumstances that would rule out the possibility of a minimum sentence.

The drug issue is very worrisome, of course. We in the Bloc Québécois are aware that drugs can destroy families, have a profoundly negative impact on communities, contribute to the formation of criminal networks and lead to violence. Thus, we are not complacent about the issue of drugs.

We can be somewhat critical of the bill. In 2002, I participated in a study on drug use. At the time, there was a member by the name of Randy White. I can mention his name because he is no longer a member in this House. I am sure you will remember him because he held office for three terms. He was a staunch Conservative. We could use more colourful language to describe him but I will refrain. He was a fairly opinionated Conservative. He had introduced a motion that the House establish a committee to study the non-medical use of drugs.

We worked for about two years on this committee, together with the former member for Burlington, Ms. Torsney, who was the chair. Other members who are still in this House were also on the committee and we invested about two years travelling around Canada and Quebec to hear testimony.

I was very surprised at the time—it was the early 2000s—when we were informed that the Canadian government was allocating $500 million to the drug issue. Of this $500 million, $380 million—which is not small change—went to the RCMP and Correctional Services Canada, organizations responsible for enforcing the law.

These organizations are not very likely to engage in prevention or early intervention. They do not work with the youth in our communities and inform them of the terrible consequences of drug use in order to deter them.

It is very worrisome that, as recently as the early 2000s, we picked a prohibitionist approach and one that was very clearly and predominantly associated with elements of repression.

It is even more troubling—and we need to think about this—that for at least 80 years, Canada has had provisions in the Criminal Code that prohibit the use, import, export, possession and trafficking of drugs. Anything to do with these five things has been prohibited in the Criminal Code for decades. Obviously, this was moved into the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act a few years ago, but the Criminal Code has been used for a very long time to deter people from taking drugs.

I say this with complete detachment: I have never taken drugs in my life. Anyone who knows me will know this, and even those people who find me hopelessly relaxed. Nevertheless, I have to wonder something. For 80 years, we have had a prohibitionist strategy, and in survey after survey, after examining the realities and the current situation, we find that one quarter of Canadians take drugs. I should clarify that, of course: 80% of those people use marijuana.

Should we invest as much in social resources to deter young people as we invest in the Criminal Code? We should allocate $500 million to explain to young people that marijuana, although it is perhaps less harmful than other drugs, is not part of Canada's food guide. A person does not need to use marijuana to be happy in life or to be successful. This is not to pass judgment on those who do use marijuana, but it is certainly not something that should be encouraged.

Conversely, does society really want this system, in which a young person gets a criminal record for using marijuana? When we examined this in committee, we realized that there were very serious consequences to having a criminal record, affecting many things, from bail hearings to job searches. In fact, when a person declares to a potential employer that he has a criminal record, it is still quite a stigma.

Is this the right strategy when we know that, despite the prohibitionist approach that has been in place since the creation of the Criminal Code in Canada, one quarter of Canadians report using marijuana or other drugs more or less regularly? We need a more nuanced approach. Is the Criminal Code the best way to achieve these goals?

Let me go over the list of stigmas associated with having a criminal record. First, it can influence a police officer's behaviour during an arrest because it creates a negative prejudice. Of course, it justifies denying bail and can influence the crown prosecutor's decision to proceed with an indictable offence—which means fingerprinting and so on—or by summary conviction. It also undermines the credibility of testimony given in court. Having a criminal record makes it difficult, if not impossible, to cross borders—certainly the American border. It compromises access to citizenship and, as I said, can have a detrimental effect when job-seekers get to the interview stage.

This does not mean that we should not pass the bill. I am not suggesting that the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act should not include provisions for drug traffickers, particularly for those who get young people involved, who profit from it and, by the same token, make money for organized crime. However, does cannabis really deserve such a hard-line approach?

When the committee studied this issue, I was surprised to learn that Canada produces about 800 tonnes of marijuana per year. That is a lot; Canada is known as a marijuana producer. This phenomenon has been on the rise in British Columbia, where growers use hydroponic greenhouses.

Do you know approximately how much the RCMP and law enforcement agencies seize each year? According to the latest statistics presented to the committee in 2002—more recent statistics would be better—of the 800 tonnes produced in Canada, 1.2 tonnes were seized. Some $500 million was spent. One thousand RCMP officers in Canada are policing the borders and taking part in drug investigations. Despite all of these resources, this law enforcement infrastructure and all of the money that we invest in that infrastructure, 1.2 tonnes out of 800 tonnes was the total seized.

It is therefore not obvious that repression is the way to go. It is not obvious that it is good to insist on giving law enforcement organizations more resources. As a society, would it not make more sense for us to turn to the school system, youth centres, adults who play a significant role in the lives of children or youth? We need to explain the negative effects of marijuana and try to understand why people use these substances.

By the way, when we studied marijuana and the non-medical use of drugs in committee—Senator Pierre Claude Nolin also headed a task force that spent several years looking at this—no one concluded that marijuana was a gateway drug. People are not going to get hooked on heroin or other drugs because they use marijuana regularly. I am not promoting marijuana use. What I am saying is that when we heard the witnesses and did our work, no one was able to provide scientific evidence to back the claim we sometimes hear that marijuana is a gateway drug that inevitably leads to hard drug use. That is what we need to say about marijuana.

The Bloc Québécois will work seriously. Once again, I want to remind this House that my committee chair has unfortunately dug in his heels and is refusing to do his duty and hold a vote on a motion by our colleague from Beauséjour that would allow us to hold a hearing concerning the Cadman affair. Regretfully, I must say that my chair is refusing to comply with the rules.

Mr. Speaker, you and the table officers could attest that when a motion is introduced in a committee and we do not accept the chair's ruling, all the members of that committee have the prerogative to challenge that ruling. Ordinarily, a vote without debate should automatically follow. But my chair is refusing to comply with the rules, and that is creating an unusually tense situation in the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. Everyone has worked collegially. We have done quite a lot of work. Hon. members can imagine the uncomfortable situation we are in. I urge my chair to come to his senses and regain his sense of fairness.

I believe I have a minute left, so I will conclude by saying that the Bloc Québécois will examine this bill seriously in committee. We have some concerns about the scope of the bill, but we will be happy to hear witnesses and to invite the committee chair to report to the House on Bill C-26 in due course.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak this afternoon in the debate on the government's Bill C-26, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

This is an important piece of legislation, because the issue of drug use in our society is one that affects many Canadians and is important to many of our communities.

I know it is important in my community, where people are affected personally both by the issues related to drug addiction and by issues of crime related to drugs in our community, not only the trafficking and production but also the property crime that results from this. Police have told us that in the Vancouver area probably 80% of the petty property crime is related to the needs of drug users who resort to crime to deal with their addiction. It is a very serious problem that affects many people in our community.

Unfortunately, I have to say that I believe this legislation from the government is absolutely the wrong direction to take. It is the wrong approach to take when it comes to dealing with the serious question of drugs in our society. In fact, it borrows so heavily from the American style war on drugs that it has to be seriously questioned.

This approach has been shown to be a failure, a dramatic failure in the United States and a dramatic failure all around the world. The war on drugs has not resulted in greater success. More people are in jail because of drug infractions. Drug use has gone up. Drugs are more potent. Big crime associated with drugs has increased around the world. The problems of drug-producing countries have also increased.

The war on drugs has yet to prove successful after years of taking up huge resources. The huge expenditures by government on the war on drugs in the United States have not gone unnoticed. As for the failure of this money to produce any tangible result that has actually led to a lowering of drug crime, a lowering of addiction and those sorts of determinants that might be an indicator of some success, this money seems to have been wasted on a plan that has not proven successful.

After so much analysis of those kinds of programs, I am not sure that at this stage Canada should be going further down the road on the war on drugs in this American style, Bush style campaign that has proven to be so unsuccessful around the world.

A cornerstone of this legislation is the provision of mandatory minimums and increased minimums for drug related crimes. That is a particularly flawed piece of the war on drugs. We know, particularly when it comes to drug crimes, in fact, that mandatory minimum sentences are very ineffectual. They have never lived up to the hype that surrounds them.

In fact, many jurisdictions in the United States that went down the road of implementing mandatory minimum sentences have backtracked significantly from them and have undone that kind of legislation. They found that it only ended up putting more people in jail, with increased prison populations and increased dislocation in families and communities. It targeted racial minorities. It targeted the low end of the drug chain, whereby the neighbourhood traffickers got the sentences but the big guys were missed completely.

Mandatory minimum sentences have proven to be highly ineffectual. In fact, the United States Sentencing Commission concluded that mandatory minimum sentences failed to deter crime. It reported that only 11% of federal drug defendants in the United States are high level drug dealers and that 59% of crack defendants are street level dealers compared to the 5% who are high level crack dealers. This seems to be targeting absolutely the wrong people when they are going after the root of trafficking problems in the United States.

In 2000 California repealed mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug offences. In 2004 Michigan also repealed mandatory minimum sentences for most drug offences, including what it had been proud to call the “harshest drug law in the nation”: life without parole for dealing more than 650 grams of cocaine.

Even elected leaders in a state in the United States who had proclaimed to have gone farther down that road than anyone else, had proclaimed their commitment to a harsh mandatory minimum sentence, had to backtrack significantly from that and undo that law because it had proven to be so ineffective and actually the reverse, so harmful to the overall campaign to deal with drug issues in that state.

Other states, like Delaware and Massachusetts, have similar legislative reviews already in process to reduce mandatory minimum sentences.

The American Bar Association's Kennedy commission called for the repeal of mandatory minimum sentences. It stated, “mandatory minimum sentences tend to be tough on the wrong people”.

We cannot any longer pretend that this approach to dealing with drug use, drug crime, drug addiction is an effective approach to dealing with that problem. It is so clearly proven that all it does is increase the population of prisons and increase dislocation. It does not solve the problem of drug related issues at all.

In Canada we have depended heavily upon enforcement measures to deal with the problems related to drugs. Seventy-three per cent of the money that is spent on drug issues in Canada is spent on enforcement. That is a significant percentage of all the money that we spend on drug policy in Canada. We spend 14% on treatment, 7% on research, 2.6% on prevention and 2.6% on harm reduction. Those other key elements that most people concede are absolutely crucial to a sensible drug policy, a sensible attack on dealing with the issues in a positive way, are dramatically underfunded in Canada, when 73% goes to law enforcement proceedings related to drug policy.

The legislation that we have before us would do nothing to significantly overturn that imbalance. In fact it would continue the undue emphasis on enforcement by taking us farther down the road of mandatory minimum sentences in Canada. This has been effectively proven to be the wrong way to go. It clearly has been shown to be an ineffective way of dealing with the core issues of why people use drugs and how we can change those patterns that have such detrimental effects on society, families and communities.

This bill also puts a greater emphasis on drug treatment courts. There is significant concern about drug treatment courts in many quarters, because many people believe that it is impossible to coerce somebody into drug treatment. The coercive effect of a drug treatment court is fairly plain when we look at what they are really about. What they try to do is defer somebody into a treatment program monitored by the courts, by medical professionals, by social workers, to keep the person out of the criminal justice system, to keep him or her out of jail. The person has had to plead guilty to a drug crime but has opted for this treatment program and the person is monitored throughout that process of referral into a treatment program.

The reality is that the most successful drug treatment programs are ones initiated by the person who has the addiction issue when the person is ready to take that drug treatment, when the person wants to go into that program, not for other reasons such as to avoid going to jail.

The reality, too, is that there is a real lack of evaluation of the effectiveness of drug treatment courts. They have not been effectively evaluated. The reality is that we do not know that they produce a significant difference in, for instance, someone who goes to jail for the same kind of drug crime. There does not seem to be a significant correlation between a lowering of the kinds of criminal activity that people who go through a drug treatment court would be involved in and the kind of activity that people who go through the justice system and who might end up in jail participate in either during the time they are waiting to go on trial, or the time they are in treatment, or subsequently, when they have completed their treatment program and/or are released from jail. There just does not seem to be a significant improvement in the results for people who go through a drug treatment court.

The book is still yet to be written on the effectiveness of drug treatment courts. It sounds like a good idea. It sounds like a great idea to keep people out of jail and get them into treatment, but there are significant problems with first coercing people into a treatment program as a way of escaping that. We have seen in the United States that people often are offered a drug treatment court as a way of avoiding jail even if they really do not need to be in that kind of treatment program.

Here in Canada spaces in treatment programs are still very limited. The need for those still far outweighs the number of positions that are available. Without a significantly increased commitment to treatment programs, it makes it difficult for this kind of program to succeed. There are still very serious problems about that.

It is far beyond time. We need to look at significant research into the effectiveness of drug treatment courts. I am going to talk later about Insite, the safe injection site in Vancouver. It is ironic in that it has been the subject of 24 studies about its effectiveness, almost all of which have been positive and yet the government will still not commit to its continuation beyond June of this year.

Here the Conservatives are introducing a bill to further support drug treatment courts when the available research on them is very inconclusive and very scanty to put it mildly. I do not understand how the government can choose to support this option and dismiss another one that has been studied and studied and shown to be effective. There is a very significant issue around this other aspect of the bill before us in its support for drug treatment courts.

There is something to be said for a four pillar approach to dealing with drug policy in Canada. Harm reduction, prevention, treatment and enforcement all need to be pieces of how we approach dealing with drug issues in our society.

Harm reduction measures such as safe injection sites and needle exchanges have been shown to be very effective both as public health measures and as places for ensuring that people who are ready to deal with issues of addiction get the kind of assistance they need when they are ready to do that.

Places like Insite, the safe injection site in Vancouver have broad public support. Certainly people in Burnaby—Douglas are broadly supportive of Insite and the approach it takes to reducing harm in our community. We know that lives have been saved. We know that diseases have been prevented from spreading further because of Insite and the people who make that facility work so very well. It has been a significant new institution both as a public health institution and as a component of a positive drug policy in our community.

Prevention programs are crucial. I do not think anyone is going to dispute the need for continuing education programs that ensure people, and young people in particular, are aware of the problems associated with the use of drugs. None of us wants to see that kind of program stopped, but we also want to make sure that there is increased funding so that the job can be done more effectively.

We know how crucial treatment programs are, but we also know how few places there are in reality. When someone makes the decision to go into treatment for drug addictions, we know how crucial it is that the space be available when that decision is made, because putting off that kind of decision lowers the effectiveness, lowers the success rate very dramatically. We need to make sure that there is an increased commitment to treatment.

Enforcement is a piece of all of this. Unfortunately, I believe that the over-emphasis on enforcement has not served us well. The resources that go into enforcement policy, into law enforcement have not served our society well. Canadian society has shown different attitudes around recreational drug use that often throw these kinds of measures into some disrepute. For the police who are required to enforce them, it has affected how people view police forces in many of our communities as well. There are serious issues around the emphasis on enforcement. All of those are key to how we proceed on drug policy in this country.

I noted a few minutes ago that Insite, the safe injection site in Vancouver, has been studied. I think there are now 24 studies, including most recently, just last week, the government's hand-picked panel that looked at Insite and came to the same conclusion as so many others, that it has had a very positive effect in terms of saving lives. It has reduced the spread of disease. It ensures that people deal with their addictions in a context where they can get help and where the risk to their lives is significantly reduced.

Moving drug injection out of the back alley and into a safe clean facility has a number of positive effects for the community. All of us who have witnessed people injecting drugs on the street have felt very uncomfortable and unsure of what to do in that kind of circumstance. Knowing there is a place where people can go and deal with their addiction in a safe controlled environment is a very significant improvement.

What I really want to talk about in many ways today is the failure of how we approach the use of drugs in our society. There is a lot to be learned from the past and the United States' experience with alcohol prohibition in the 1920s and early 1930s. Alcohol was prohibited in very similar ways to the way drugs are prohibited in our society today.

Alcohol prohibition was a massive failure in the United States. It led to the same kinds of problems we are experiencing in our society today with drug prohibition. We saw in the 1920s and 1930s an increase in family dislocation because of rampant alcoholism. We saw an increase in the inability of people to get assistance for the kinds of alcohol dependency issues they had because alcohol was a prohibited substance and therefore was illegal. Therefore, barriers were put up to people getting the kind of help that would improve their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

We saw the problems associated with backyard and basement stills. They caused problems in neighbourhoods, fires, explosions and all those kinds of things. We see that in parallel today with grow ops that exist in homes across Canada and the kinds of problems they cause for tenants in buildings and for neighbourhoods where those grow ops are located.

In the case of alcohol prohibition we saw a very significant period of growth of organized crime in the United States. Some people see the roots of organized crime in North America in the period of alcohol prohibition. Gangs became very powerful and organized. They had significant resources to use because of their involvement with rum running and the illegal sale and distribution of alcohol. This is a very similar situation to what we are seeing today with the involvement of organized crime in drug production and distribution here in Canada.

There were very significant problems with alcohol prohibition. Society in the United States decided in its wisdom that this was a failed program. It made more sense to regulate the use of alcohol, ensure there was access to it, and put resources into all of those other programs that were so significant. Serious problems did arise from the use of alcohol in society, but the outright ban of alcohol was a complete and utter failure.

Canada never went down that road. We decided with regard to alcohol that regulation and legal use of that product was the way to go.

We should have learned something from the experience of alcohol prohibition. We are seeing exactly the same problems in our society related to drug prohibition. Many people who have studied this issue have noted that very clearly.

One organization in particular that is doing excellent work on this is LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. I would invite anyone who is watching to look at LEAP's website. People will find many resources from law enforcement officers who themselves have decided they can no longer support prohibition of drugs in our society. They can no longer support what it does to society, what it does to law enforcement officers, what it does to public policy. They see it clearly as bad public policy that needs to be overturned.

I believe the bill takes us down the wrong road. It furthers the failed war on drugs. It puts forward mandatory minimum sentences as a solution when all over the United States similar legislation has been shown to be a complete failure and most jurisdictions have moved to undo such legislation where enforced or coerced treatment, such as drug treatment courts, is still unproven as a policy.

There are significant problems with this legislation and I hope we can have a serious debate about it in this place.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, at the end of his speech, the member talked about the prohibition of alcohol saying that it did not work and that he prefers regulation. He talked about a leap. I think it would be a big leap off a short pier for us to be doing this.

I want to be clear. Is it his opinion or is it the NDP policy that all drugs should be legalized and regulated and that there should be no laws making the use of illicit drugs illegal? I was not clear whether it was just his opinion or a policy of the NDP.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was speaking personally when I said that we should be learning from the experience of alcohol prohibition, and I feel that very strongly. When I hold community meetings, I often have discussions around drug policy and the rate of crime in the community related to the use of drugs and drug addiction.

I believe there is strong support in my community for reviewing, in a very determined and complete way, the kind of drug policy, drug enforcement and drug law regime that we have before us. People in my community appreciate that there are very serious problems with the kind of approach that is in place. I think they believe there are lessons to be learned from alcohol prohibition, which is something we in this place and in our communities need to take very seriously.

The NDP has said on several occasions that we believe in the decriminalization of marijuana, for instance, because we recognize the injustice that is done in relation to the use of marijuana, especially the possession of small quantities. Far too many people are ending up with criminal records for the use and possession of this substance, the effects of which are considered by many in our society not to be significantly harmful. This would be a good example of a place where a significant change could be made to our laws.

The NDP has been very clear that mandatory minimum sentences are not the way to go in dealing with drug crime. As well, we have been clear in our support for a comprehensive, four pillar type approach to dealing with drug policy in Canada that includes harm reduction, prevention, treatment and enforcement. All of those issues are part of NDP policy.

The part of my speech dealing with the whole issue of drug prohibition and the need to look at it very seriously were my contributions to this debate and ones that I will continue to make because I believe there is much that is instructive in both the history of alcohol prohibition and in the need for a comprehensive review of drug policy.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Burnaby—Douglas for outlining some clear problems with this deeply flawed legislation.

Last November, the Ottawa Citizen had a lengthy editorial dealing with this bill stating that this was a bad law in pursuit of bad politics based on non-existent science, and Parliament should not go along.

The member for Vancouver East has put together some numbers. She said that Canada spends 73% of its drug policy budget on drug enforcement and only 14% on treatment, 7% on research, 2.6% on prevention and 2.6% on harm reduction. We have examples like Insite, for which the government is failing to announce any extension beyond the current time limit of June.

I wonder if the member could comment on some of the important elements around treatment and harm reduction that are simply missing in the drug policy we currently have in Canada.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely shocking that the government has not gone forward to extend the life of Insite, the safe injection site in Vancouver.

It is a facility that has broad, strong public support across the community in Vancouver. Vancouverites are proud that people came together from all levels of government, the community and the drug user community, to come up with a new approach to public policy that would actually save lives, prevent the spread of disease and get drug use off the streets and out of the back allies into a safe location where professional health care workers could offer advice and get people into treatment programs when they are ready to take that important step.

I think there is widespread recognition across the community that Insite has been an important step forward in how our society deals with drug abuse.

In report after report, the Conservatives continue to say the same thing. However, these effects are known, they are provable and it is happening at Insite. Even the government's own hand-picked panel, which, apparently, has just reported, said exactly the same thing, that this was worthy of the government's support and that the goals it set out to achieve were being achieved.

We need to move forward with that. This kind of facility needs to be introduced into other communities where there is interest to do it. There are other communities across the country that want to follow that example and go down that same road because they know it is a positive way of affecting the lives of people who are drug addicted. It is a positive way of affecting the community to ensure something is being done to help people get the assistance they need and to save lives.

We need to see an expansion of this kind of project, not constantly having to worry about the short leash on which the government seems to have that project. The sooner we can extend this project and ensure it has a permanent place as one of the strategies toward dealing with drug addiction and drug use in Canada the better.

It is not the only policy but it is certainly one piece of the puzzle that is absolutely crucial. A measly 2.6% of drug policy money going toward harm reduction is absolutely inappropriate. We need to restrike the balance of how we spend money on drug issues. We need to ensure that treatment, harm reduction and prevention receive a significantly larger piece of the pie. We know those are the areas that have proven to make real change in the country, in the lives of Canadians, in the lives of people who are addicted to drugs, in the lives of drug users, in the lives of families who care about them and in the life of the community around them. Those are the things that have done it effectively.

The research and the experience is all there. The negative experience of our neighbours to the south is there. All that information is before us and we should be finally putting that into a public policy framework in Canada. We need good public policy. The Ottawa Citizen has said that the kind of route that the government is on is just bad public policy. I think that has been proven time and again. We need to turn that around. We need to get down the right path and show support for things that actually do work in this regard.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member about the importance of the four pillars approach: treatment, prevention, harm reduction and enforcement.

In many of the big city caucus meetings, attended by mayors from across the country, they have talked about how the four pillars approach would be comprehensive and how it would be effective. In Toronto, for example, there have been many studies and consultations. Whether it is between the families, the chiefs of police, the people who are working with young people who have drug addiction problems or the many doctors and scientists, their four pillars approach has proven to be effective.

The bill in front of us only deals, by and large, with enforcement but we know that enforcement alone would not assist in the situation at all. In fact, it would just put more people in jail and they would come out as hardened criminals.

Perhaps the hon. member has some opinions on how treatment, prevention and harm reduction would work coast to coast to coast.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we have talked a lot in the debate about the four pillars approach and how, not only in metro Vancouver and the city of Vancouver proper but in those communities, like Burnaby, that surround it, it is a broadly accepted approach to dealing with it. It is a new approach and one that merits consideration by many other communities. Some are already going down that road.

We have seen the effectiveness of many of those policies. I remember, probably 20 years ago, when the first needle exchange started in Vancouver. Ingrid Robinson, the sister of my former boss, Svend Robinson, was one of the first workers in the needle exchange program and became very well acquainted with drug users on the downtown east side of Vancouver, on Hastings Street and Main Street. She saw directly the effectiveness of that kind of program, how it saved so many lives, how it prevented the spread of disease and how important it was. The program was very controversial at the beginning but it is now broadly accepted in many communities across Canada and around the world.

The harm reduction approach has had a significant and positive effect on the lives of many people. It has saved many lives and the communities. It is something that we need to ensure has a permanent place in our repertoire of measures to deal with the effects of drug use in our society.

If we continue to have an overemphasis on the criminalization of drug use, then we will keep beating against the wall where we are trying to meld two very different approaches. When people are engaged in something that is contrary to the Criminal Code, there is very little reticence to deal with the effects of that and to seek the help they need because their fear is that they will be sanctioned criminally for that.

We know that drug use and drug addiction is a health issue and that it should be treated that way. It is very important that we put less emphasis on the criminal approach to this and get back to dealing with the issue of drugs and drug addiction as the health issue that it truly is.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to speak about this issue of drugs.

Just yesterday we heard a mother pleading for her two teenaged daughters who have been having a really hard time trying to find drug treatment programs. The mother ended up spending tens of thousands of dollars to send her daughters to a drug treatment program in the U.S. that is comprehensive and long term.

She is speaking out about and lobbying for a drug prevention program and also a treatment program within Canada. Everywhere she goes she hears about thousands of middle class Canadian families who have been told that there is just not enough funding to support drug treatment programs, yet somehow the Conservative government seems to have a lot of money to put people in jail.

I want to talk about what Bill C-26 is all about. This bill ignores the root causes of drug use and the problems relating to drug use in Canada. It would give mandatory minimum sentences, but science and studies have shown many times that these kinds of mandatory minimums just do not work on drug crimes.

Many statistics in the U.S. have shown that it has failed in the many years of its war on drugs. More people are in jail and many are trapped in a cycle of violence in their neighbourhoods. The majority of this violence is caused by drug use and drug dealing.

In 2004 the American Bar Association's Justice Kennedy commission called on the U.S. Congress to repeal mandatory minimum sentences, particularly with respect to drug crimes. Interestingly, the report said, “Mandatory minimum sentences tend to be tough on the wrong people”.

We want to jail the kingpins, but the kingpins and the drug lords are most likely to get off. The people who are going to be jailed and who are most likely to get harmed by mandatory minimum sentences are the folks who are the small fry, which is what they are called on the street.

We also notice that the U.S. Sentencing Commission concluded that mandatory minimums fail to deter crime and reported that only 11% of federal drug defendants are high level drug dealers, the kingpins I was talking about. It also reported that 59% of crack defendants are street level dealers compared to 5% of defendants who are high level crack dealers. Yes, we need to crack down on all crack dealers, but why are we not going after the high level ones? These are the people we really need to go after.

Just nabbing the small folks on the street will be a recipe for exploding prisons, courtroom backlogs, and millions of dollars of taxpayers' money. Research has shown that it costs at least $100,000-plus per person for a year in jail, whereas if we used that money for a prevention program, an effective counselling program and effective drug treatment programs, we would actually see results.

That is not where the Conservative government is going. The Conservative government is ignoring what works and is of course going forward with the failed, George Bush, Republican style war on drugs that has been waged for many years. We have not seen many results.

In fact, we have seen a lot of handguns illegally imported into Canada from the United States. These illegal handguns are making the drug situation in big cities such as Toronto even more dangerous, as these folks who are on the streets protecting their turf are buying these illegal guns and causing havoc in our communities. We believe this legislation will actually make it a win for organized crime, because we are going to take the small players off the street, push up the price of drugs and leave the door open for organized crime, making the situation worse.

However, I want to spend more time talking about the four pillars approach, about what actually will work. I have noticed that even this House of Commons in 2002 had the Special Committee on the Non-Medical Use of Drugs.

The House special committee, the Office of the Auditor General and the Senate committee have brought forward four areas, including, first, strengthened leadership, coordination and accountability, with dedicated resources.

Second is enhanced data collection to set measurable objectives, evaluate programs, and report on progress. We do want to know what we are doing and how we are spending taxpayers' money in trying to be effective. Without evaluation programs, we do not know whether these programs are effective or not.

Third, we need a balance of supply and demand activities across government.

The fourth one, which is the most important, is that we absolutely need to increase our emphasis on prevention, treatment and rehabilitation.

We know this balanced approach is not happening right now. How do we know? We can just follow the money trail. I have noticed that for every $100 Canada spends on the war on drugs, $73 goes to enforcement, i.e. catching the people doing the drugs. Only 14%, which is $14 out of every $100, is spent on treatment programs. Research gets a tiny amount. Researching whether any of these approaches will be effective gets only $7 out of $100. That is hardly anything.

To see what is even more outrageous in terms of our approach, let us look at the figures for prevention, which is the most important. We know it is the most important because it deals with the root problems of drug addiction. For prevention, we spend $2.60 out of every $100. Of the money that we spend on the war on drugs, 2.6% is spent on prevention. That is really quite shameful. For harm reduction is the same thing, at 2.6%, so for every $100 we spend, only $2.60 goes to harm reduction.

It is no wonder that this war on drugs is not working.

Let me point out, however, that in other parts of our country people are taking leadership. In Toronto alone, there are the drug strategy recommendations. Many of the recommendations actually deal with the federal government. It calls on the federal government to establish a national framework for action and take leadership. Of course it is not doing that. The Conservative government is actually going the other way right now.

The Toronto drug strategy report calls for a holistic family approach. It says that we absolutely have to support funding for “family-based support services” to help families that are dealing with substance use, because often it is not just one person doing it.

That one person doing the drugs and who is addicted actually has an impact on all the family members. The report says that we need to provide a support and counselling strategy for family members as to how they will deal with that one family member who is addicted. By and large, the approach is one of health. When one is addicted, one needs to have the tools to be able to get out of the addiction.

The report also calls for support for parents who want treatment programs and the provision of “on site childcare at treatment facilities”. That is a very common sense approach, because one cannot take one's young child to many of the treatment facilities. As a result, because they do not have child care support, some of the folks who are addicted end up not going to these treatment programs.

For young people, says the report, we absolutely must have “comprehensive prevention programming” for young people on how they can avoid getting addicted to drugs. It states, in fact, that this should be a comprehensive mandatory drug prevention program for young people. Often they are missed. We are beginning to do this with regard to tobacco. I have seen it. It has been effective. By the way, tobacco is also a drug. We have seen that the prevention program is effective. We are noticing, for example, that fewer young teenagers are smoking. We know that if we put our minds to it, we can do it. We have seen programs that work.

The recommendations also say that it is important to train people on the front lines, whether they are teachers or front line workers, so that they can detect a person who is addicted to drugs and so there would be “early intervention, counselling and other supports in place” to assist these young people.

Of course, we need to deal with the root problems. Many young people in particular do drugs because they need to have drugs to mask the pain they are experiencing. Some of the pain could be physical abuse, sexual abuse or mental abuse that they experienced as children. Unless we provide the kind of counselling support they need, it is very difficult for them to get out of the cycle of addiction: being addicted, going to treatment, and then getting trapped again.

There are also other recommendations, which state that we have to work with the people who are abusing substances in order to come up with some kind of comprehensive approach. This is not what is happening in many places.

There are also service barriers. We have seen drug addicts who want to get out of street life and a life of violence. They want to escape that cycle, but because they cannot find affordable housing they cannot get their lives back in order. That is the result. They are trapped with people around them who are doing drugs.

We have seen programs where there is supportive housing. We might ask what supportive housing has to do with drug use and the war on drugs. Actually, having decent, stabilized, affordable housing, with some kind of supportive network around the person, is very effective. We have seen it work in downtown Toronto. Former drug addicts will say that they have turned their lives around, not because they went to jail, which may in fact make the situation worse, but because they found stable housing. They were able to feel that they could begin to contribute and participate in society in a meaningful manner.

That is a way to deal with our young people or with people who are addicted and have been on the street for many years. That is the way to crack through this, because drug users occasionally have mental health problems, and until there are programs to deal with that, they will continue to use drugs.

We have also noticed that many of the drug users are more involved in the cycle of violence and we need to enhance neighbourhoods, whether it is working with the community to provide alternatives or with the police to target high level drug traffickers, importers and producers of illegal substances. We need to work with the police in a holistic way. Having minimum sentencing is not going to do it.

The city of Toronto has said that there are parents, unfortunately, who occasionally use their children as runners for drugs, which is quite unfortunate. One way to deal with it is to work with the police and find ways to protect these children, possibly to pull them out and have their parents punished properly.

All in all, the NDP is proud to say that it does not want a very simplistic approach to control drugs and substances and that we have to have the four pillar approach. Sending people to jail for extensive periods of time for marijuana use, for example, will just not be effective. The U.S. has failed in its war on drugs. It has, for example, spent tens of billions of dollars a year on enforcement and jailing folks while crime rates and drug use have soared.

I hope the other parties will not send this bill for second reading. If that happens, there will be a tremendous amount of amendments at committee, so that the bill does not return to the House of Commons in its present form because we certainly cannot see any reason to support it.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I was happy the member mentioned the four pillars. I would like her to comment further on the pillar about other activities that would reduce the use of drugs, especially among youth.

While she thinks about that, I will talk about a project in my riding. Young aboriginal carvers who have exceptional talent but have problems with employment or substance abuse have been funded for this program. Some of them are now master carvers. It is an excellent use of their talent and gets them into a positive activity. It has been a great project, but I think the funding is running out. I hope the member would support more funding for it. She might have ideas of other projects similar to that so that the total answer is not simply incarceration.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, yes, I too have seen from small towns to big cities the fact that we need to believe in our young people because they are our best allies against illegal drug use in order to keep our streets safe. I have seen very effective holistic approaches that deal with drug addictions.

I have seen young people living on the streets who are trapped in a cycle of addictions and violence, yet their lives completely turn around when they discover self-confidence, when they discover, in the case of the hon. member's riding, being able to carve.

In downtown Toronto there are programs to teach young people art, whether it is mural painting, making music, or sketching or even small things like making jewellery so they can sell it. It gives them a sense of self-confidence.

Once they have that sense of self-confidence and a feeling of pride of who they are and that they are no longer living in a cycle of poverty, that they have some means of employment or some hope so that they can go back to school or return to their families, then we see their lives turning around.

They feel they no longer need drugs in order to feel that they are important. I have seen young people who abused themselves and abused drugs because they did not feel important. They did not feel loved but once they found the power within themselves it liberated them to have the confidence to say no to drugs, to say no to that cycle of living on the streets and living in violence.

However, these kinds of programs are very holistic. They are not cheap because they deal with the people as individuals, as human beings rather than as criminals to be removed from society, thrown away in jail or locked up so we will never have to look at them again. This approach of locking them up and throwing away the key, and these young people do come back out on the street and they become hardened criminals, makes the entire matter far worse.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have heard the police in my riding say that without a solid harm reduction strategy, they are really helpless in dealing with drugs. What they are dealing with is essentially, and I quote a public statement that some police made, “a social and health issue”.

My colleague has explained very well the inadequate response of the Conservative government, providing very minuscule amounts to prevention, detox and treatment. I see the leadership is really coming from local community groups. I see groups in Victoria like the Cool Aid Society and Our Place Society, and there is another group wanting to start a therapeutic community to help young people. They are all struggling to make ends meet to deal adequately with this issue.

I am wondering if my colleague would like to comment on the kinds of difficulties that such groups have in their communities because they are underfunded by the federal government.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there really is a complete lack of funding, whether it is a drug prevention program or a drug treatment program or an enhancement for the community so that it has the capacity to come up with innovative solutions.

We know the answer lies in strengthening a family, strengthening a community, strengthening a neighbourhood, but they often find the funding is short term.

It goes from project to project; it is project-based. Once the project is finished, even though it is tremendously effective, creates a lot of goodwill in the community, brings lots of hope and excitement and is in the community, maybe after a year, perhaps after two years, all of that goodwill, all of those effective strategies completely go to waste. Five years later maybe the community is offered yet another pilot project funding.

There is absolutely no opportunity for administrative support, to learn from successes, and to take the best practices of all these wonderful neighbourhood and community-based successful programs. They are not used collectively to create a permanent long term strategy. That is not done because of a complete lack of leadership in drug prevention programs and strategies here in Ottawa.

There are also many other things, even something as simple as a 24-hour crisis hotline for people who are abusing drugs. If I notice that my teenage daughter or my teenage son may be abusing something and getting into dangerous territory, what do I do as a parent? Am I able to call a 24-hour hotline? Is there a crisis intervention strategy across the country? No. So parents are often left alone, struggling to figure out what to do.

If there were mandatory minimum sentences, we would see some teenagers, because they just got caught up with the wrong groups of people, gangs or whatever, facing huge criminal charges, and these could be first-time young offenders. They need an opportunity for a second chance. Once they go to jail, they learn to become hardcore criminals. They have a criminal record. They graduate from jail and become completely trapped in that cycle of poverty, drug use and violence. That is a completely wrong approach.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in this important debate today.

The bill is being introduced to further the Conservative tough on crime agenda. It is clear, with the number of justice bills the Conservatives have introduced over both sessions of the 39th Parliament, that this will be one of the major focal points of their re-election campaign.

The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act regulates certain types of drugs and associated substances. The new legislation would amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, focus on drugs in schedule 1, which includes opiates such as opium, heroin, morphine, cocaine and methamphetamine, and schedule 2, cannabis related, including marijuana.

Currently there are no mandatory prison terms under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, but the most important serious drug offences have a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Under the proposed legislation, anyone found guilty of a serious drug offence would automatically receive a mandatory term of imprisonment. For the purposes of this initiative, serious drug offences mean production, trafficking, possession for the purpose of trafficking, importing and exporting and possession for the purpose of exporting.

The bill would amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to include mandatory prison terms for drugs listed in schedule 1, such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, and in schedule 2, such as cannabis, marijuana. Generally the mandatory sentence would apply where there would be an aggravating factor and would also be increased where the production of the drugs would constitute a potential security, health or safety hazard. Also, the maximum penalty for the production of schedule 2 drugs, for example, marijuana, would be increased from 7 to 14 years.

Commonly known date rape drugs include GHB and Flunitrazepam and will be moved from schedule 3 to schedule 1 and it will provide access to higher maximum penalties for illegal activities involving these drugs.

The legislation would allow the drug treatment court to impose a penalty other than a mandatory sentence on an offender who has a previous conviction for a serious drug offence where: (a) the offence involves no other aggravating factors; and (b) the offender successfully completes the drug treatment court treatment program.

As we can see, this is a very important debate. It is certainly a conversation or dialogue that Canadians are having from coast to coast to coast. We heard members speak to the bill today. Liberal members have said that they are supporting the bill going to committee because of the importance of the dialogue Canadians are having.

We agree there must be a balanced approach. The hon. member for Trinity—Spadina spoke extensively about the four pillars approach, which includes prevention, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement, on the war drugs.

The Conservatives are taking a hard-nosed approach, which does not seem to be designed to encourage the four pillars approach. It is very reminiscent of the Republican approach with its war on drugs. The Conservatives are tagging this as a war on crime. The problem with this is it is not a balanced approach. As Canadians are engaged in a dialogue about the increase in crime and the types of crime, the increase in gang violence and the increase in serious offences related to drugs, there absolutely has to be a dialogue.

When we look at the drug policy budget in Canada, 73% of it is spent on enforcement, and rightfully so, but when there is not enough money budgeted to begin with, only 14% goes to treatment, 7% to research, 2.6% to prevention and 2.6% to harm reduction. The budget is not adequate. We need to be resourcing all sectors of these strategies.

When we talk about the Conservative approach, it is a war on crime and a war on drugs. I will quote Dan Lett, a writer for the Winnipeg Free Press in response to the Prime Minister's announcement yesterday in Winnipeg to battle auto theft. He said, “Harper's pledge Monday was to introduce tougher laws to crack down on the trafficking—

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Order, please. The hon. member knows she should be using the quote in such a way as to not mention the Prime Minister by name. Perhaps we will end it there. The member has 14 minutes left.

We will move to statements by members.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-26, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, before the break for oral questions, I was discussing the whole matter of balance and how we have to address these issues. As I was saying, this is a deep concern for all Canadians. There is an ongoing dialogue among Canadians about what a balanced approach is and how we get there.

As I mentioned, the Conservative members have a strong slogan. They are involved in a war on crime, a war on drugs, and their fearmongering is reminiscent of the Republicans.

In response to the Conservatives' announcement to battle auto theft, Dan Lett, a reporter with the Winnipeg Free Press, said in an article:

[The Prime Minister's] pledge Monday was to introduce tougher laws to crack down on the trafficking of stolen vehicles and parts.

The problem is that the changes he outlined will do precious little to help the situation here, where auto theft is less about organized syndicates and more about a bunch of teenagers out for a dangerous joyride...

He continued:

This approach to fighting crime is probably the best example of not actually doing anything while creating the impression something is being done.

The so-called "war" on crime is often about being seen to be addressing the problem, while ignoring the root causes that lurk below the public's radar, and seemingly outside of the grasp of politicians.

He continued:

Longer sentences mean more people in remand, on trial and in jail, which means significant increases in the costs of administering the courts and of incarceration. That leaves less money for social programs that divert potential auto thieves to more wholesome activities.

As more young people experience prison—we already incarcerate youth at 10 times the rate of European countries—society can boast more graduates of what is essentially a post-secondary education in crime.

That was Dan Lett from the Winnipeg Free Press in response to the most recent announcement that the Conservatives made on their war on crime.

Those are important points to consider. They are certainly points that have been raised in the House in this debate on Bill C-26. In fact, Bill C-26 is part of a larger effort by the Conservative government in its war on crime. What is important in terms of how we move forward is that we need to look at how we address issues.

We also saw in the Winnipeg Free Press yesterday an article about a recent gang related shooting. It is a serious issue.

As I said earlier, this affects people from coast to coast to coast. We have an issue in this country that is related to drugs and gangs. We need to have a debate on finding an approach that will make a difference and make communities safer.

I would like to focus on a number of pieces that are directly related to my riding. The issues of drugs and crimes are very closely related. We look at the drug policy budget and the amount of money that is being spent on enforcement. In my riding there are dozens of first nations. They have separate jurisdiction which comes under federal jurisdiction. Their funding for their band constable program is an intrinsic part of dealing with this issue as it relates to policing.

There are four communities that are very closely situated. About a month ago, children and youth from the Island Lake communities, which include Wasagamack, Garden Hill, St. Theresa Point and Red Sucker Lake, decided to walk from the Island Lake area to Winnipeg. They were protesting the lack of attention by the government to the serious health and social issues, including drug issues and gang related issues.

In the fiscal year 2006-07 when the Conservative government took power, it cut all of those communities' band constable funding. Those four communities had band constable programs, which all first nations expect and require, as all Canadians do, to participate in policing efforts. That band constable funding went from an average of $70,000, which each of those communities was receiving, to zero in 2006-07. Those funds were reinstated in the last fiscal budget.

There is an impact when the government cuts literacy and housing programs. The member for Trinity—Spadina talked about the relation between housing and gangs and drugs. It is a critical issue. As Dan Lett so aptly said, it is the root cause and we cannot ignore the root cause in this dialogue.

When we talk specifically about drug policy, we are talking about issues related to prevention, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement but we are also talking about the other issues. The government, which claims to be tough on crime, has not made any effort to ensure that as a society we address all the issues in order to ensure safer communities. We cannot address this issue piecemeal.

Building more jails in order to be tough on crime is part of a Republican strategy that creates more criminals. In fact, many of the amendments that we are talking about are going to have an impact not on the big drug suppliers or the people who are involved in organized crime but the people at the lower end of the chain. Research has found that mandatory minimum sentences are blunt instruments that fail to distinguish between hard core and transient drug users.

We want to participate in an effort to build safer societies and communities. That is the approach that the Liberals are condoning. That is the approach we have to move forward on. Without a doubt, the relationship between drugs and gangs is something that does not escape anybody.

In fact, one of the primary pieces of work with respect to the Mental Health Commission has been around the issue of addiction. The Mental Health Commission has seen that as a priority. It is moving forward to create pilot projects. I am sad to say that this is another piece in which northern Canada has not been identified as a part of the country that will be participating in this pilot project. I have a very large riding. It encompasses about two-thirds of the province of Manitoba. There are dozens and dozens of communities and they require these services as well.

Where we have all these group causes and support systems within communities and within a society that are intrinsic in building a healthy community, we have seen the government make very little effort. In fact, it eliminated the national child care strategies, which affected not only all of the provinces, but also first nations. Through the Assembly of First Nations, first nations signed the national child care strategy with the government.

We also have the issue of housing. The government often says that it has identified more money than any government for first nations housing, but not one penny of that money was identified for on reserve housing. A primary concern the youth who participated in a walk from the Island Lake Tribal Council area is around social issues, overcrowded housing which would be completely unacceptable in any other part of our country, being one of the issues.

As I said, we could not find a group of youth who are more committed to trying to raise the issue of the crisis in which they live. There is the issue of health services. The government talks about its commitment to human rights, yet it brought forward a bill on human rights, which sought to repeal section 67 of the Canadian Human Rights Act for first nations, exempting the Indian Act. The aboriginal affairs committee worked very hard and long on this issue. Approximately 95% of the witnesses who presented at committee made recommendations to ensure the collective rights of indigenous peoples to participate in Canadian society and human rights for first nations.

I raise this matter again because it is dumbfounding to me that children residing on reserve do not get health services for complex medical needs. Health care should be a universal right in Canada. The youth from the Island Lake Tribal Council walked because they were concerned about drugs and gangs in their own communities. They are seeking assurance from the government that they can move forward.

We on this side of the House are recommending a holistic way of moving forward, addressing these issues, their root causes and identifying how we can hear from Canadians and amend the bill so it ensures we are moving toward a safe society.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her insights on this matter, particularly with respect to the announcement yesterday, a typical Conservative announcement which appears to do something about something when in fact it does nothing about what the subject matter might be.

First, does the member have in her possession or is she knowledgeable about any study anywhere, any place, any time that shows imposing harsher sentences on people who steal cars and things of that nature have any impact whatsoever on the actual incidents of auto theft? It would seem to me that if we are to start a Criminal Code initiative, we should at least start with some basic fundamental evidence on that point.

My second question is with respect to the misallocation of funding. I agree with the member entirely. When we do this kind of funding, essentially we are putting more people in jail, or hope to anyway. In this case funds are taken out of the community and put it into jails. Under our previous government, my community had initiatives, particularly in Scarborough Village area, where it put money into the community and crime rates went down.

Could the member comment upon this misallocation of funding? What we put into the penalty system is effectively taken out of the community. Is this consistent with her own experience?

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member raises an excellent point. There is no evidence that demonstrates longer incarceration sentences would have a positive impact on an individual. In fact, it has been proven in many studies that a multi-pronged approach needs to be in place and that rehabilitation is an intrinsic part of dealing with offenders.

I will also add that the bill, as it stands, would take away a judge's discretionary powers with respect to the offenders, the offences and mitigating circumstances. The member raises a very important point and I thank him for that.

I also thank him for raising the issue on investment in crime prevention. It was a very serious part of how the Liberals would approach the issues of crime. Under the current government, crime prevention dollars have been rolled back in my communities. In fact, the Island Lake Tribal Council, which I talked about, is an area which did receive crime prevention dollars and it had a very positive impact. For people who do not know, those first nations do not receive funding for recreational services.

Again, first nations do not receive infrastructure funding through the dollars transferred to the provinces. They do not receive funding for recreational facilities or programs, like other Canadians. They are lacking not only that funding source, but now they have lost their crime prevention dollars. As I said, the testament of youth walking 800 kilometres in the cold spring weather through winter roads is an absolute shame. Here is a community in which young people are saying to the government that they need all of these pieces to move forward.

We on this side of the House are not saying that we should not be looking at this. We need to look at it. We do have serious gang and drug related activities in our country. It is causing serious pain and damage to many communities. This is not only happening in the urban centres, it is happening in rural Canada, including towns and first nations. I believe Canadians want to participate in this dialogue, and it is really important that we send it to committee.

[Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

Mr. Speaker, listening to the debate, I cannot fail to mention the fact that so many of our aboriginal people are in penitentiaries across our country, in numbers that are greater than they should be as far as percentages when we look at the small population of the aboriginal community in Canada.

At the aboriginal affairs committee, which I have been on since I became a member, one of the witnesses who came before us was an ombudsman for people who were in prison. He presented numbers that showed a very alarming rate of offenders in the prison system came from aboriginal communities. Not only that, many times they do not qualify for rehabilitative programs because of the way they are labelled in the prison system.

With the bills that are being introduced by the Conservative government, will we be seeing more of our people in the system instead of them getting out of the system and becoming contributors to society?

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Nunavut's question is about a critical issue. I represent a riding that has 36 first nations and numerous Métis people as well. This pattern runs across all aboriginal peoples in Canada. We do have a disproportionate number of aboriginal people within the prison system.

Whenever issues around this type of legislation come up, it becomes a primary concern within our communities. The whole effort must be on crime prevention and supporting people. It needs to be about addressing route causes. I am not saying that criminals should not be incarcerated, that people should escape incarceration for certain crimes. However, there needs to be a balanced approach. We need to address and be very clear and honest about the fact that there are disproportionate rates of aboriginal people in prison. We need to support communities and not pull their crime prevention or band constable funding.

We should invest in addressing the root causes. The cost, as Mr. Lett said in his article, of a post-secondary education in crime is far more expensive than a post-secondary education that would benefit to the country. It is about investing in the country. I do not understand this sort of fearmongering, the mentality of war on crime, pulling funding that addresses root causes. It has never been proven by data or research to have any benefit and it is an enormous cost to the country. Those are the pieces we need to look at as we move forward on the bill.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not usually quote from newspaper editorials but at the end of last year I came across an editorial in the Ottawa Citizen, which accurately reflects, although it was the best editorial, the number of editorials on this issue in major newspapers across the country. The heading reads, “Drug-induced stupidity”, and it is in reference to Bill C-26. The editorial states:

More than half the people incarcerated in American federal prisons are there on drug charges, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, and about one-fifth of those in state prisons. This doesn't count people whose crimes were indirectly related to drugs, but it includes people jailed for life for possessing one marijuana joint. Nevertheless, the war on drugs rages on.

Canada's Conservative government is choosing to copy this strategy, which has been failing non-stop since Prohibition. The reason Canada has drug addicts on its streets is supposedly that dealers aren't going to prison for long enough, so Tory Justice Minister...has a bill to make the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act harsher. Judges have had the discretion to sentence drug criminals according to the evidence presented in their cases, but now [the Justice Minister] wants to change that by imposing mandatory minimum sentences.

For instance, anyone dealing in marijuana would go to jail for at least a year if he or she did so in support of “organized crime” (that is, in a moneymaking enterprise involving three or more people). That covers just about all marijuana dealers, who are by definition organized if they have one supplier and one customer. Most of the changes are like this.

Some drug users might be exempted from the minimums if they're diverted into special drug courts that focus on treating addicts. But an addict who deals to support his habit, who can't break the addiction despite treatment? Why, what he needs is more prison time, right?

Actually, wrong. This is bad law in pursuit of bad politics based on non-existent science. Parliament shouldn't go along.

We in the NDP will not go along with this. We made that quite clear, as opposed to the other opposition parties that have stood in the House and made speeches opposing mandatory minimums in this area but then will vote in principle in support of sending the bill to committee. That is, in particular, the Liberal Party and its eternal shame.

This bill would do absolutely nothing to reduce drug consumption in our society. All we need to do is look to our neighbours to the south, or to the north if one is from Windsor, and their experience of the last 35 years. It is uninterrupted. Over that period of time, the United States has actively engaged in its so-called war on drugs but what do we have today? The production of drugs in the United States and around the globe is up. The consumption of illegal drugs in the United States is up. Prison populations have more than doubled and, in some cases, tripled, in terms of the number of people incarcerated on drug charges. The cost of that war on drugs is up in the range of 10 to 20 times higher depending on the state in the United States.

In the last few years, the United States has finally recognized that its war on drugs was not working. Last year, in Detroit, Michigan, the neighbouring state across the river to my riding in Ontario, the state legislature, which controls the criminal law in the area of illegal drugs, began reducing the charges where if people are convicted on drug charges they would have a mandatory minimum.

The state legislature did it for two reasons. I could be somewhat cynical and say that it was only because of how much it was costing and the rate of incarceration that was occurring in that state, but it also did it because it finally recognized that it was not working. We can go through at least half a dozen to a dozen states just in the last few years that have begun to drop mandatory minimums with regard to drug offences.

In spite of those experiences in the United States and in spite of the Conservative government knowing about those experiences, it intends to copy that failed experiment.

Since the Conservative government has been in power, both of the justice ministers and the public safety ministers have appeared before the justice committee and the public safety committee. I and other members of the committees have repeatedly asked them about the basis on which they were making these decisions. Their answers have always been ideological. I want to say, and maybe its to their credit, that I have no hesitation in saying that they believe in that ideology. They believe that by mimicking the U.S. experience in fighting drug crime that they will change society and that it will work.

Unfortunately, when we hear them say those things, their tendency is to pursue it. However, there is absolutely no scientific basis or any study they can point to showing that mandatory minimums in the drug area work in reducing the consumption of drugs or reducing crime as a result of that consumption.

I and my party do not for a minute downplay the consequences of the crime rates that are going on around drug consumption. We know the level of crime rate in those specific areas and the consequential crimes that are committed in our society as a result of people breaking and entering, doing armed robberies or doing other violent acts because they no longer are in control or because they need financial resources to buy drugs.

We are very conscious in our communities. I live next door to the city of Detroit, a city that has one of the highest crime rates in a country that has one of the highest crime rates in the world. We hear on a daily basis about the crime that goes on there. My community is somewhat lucky that more of it has not spilled over but it does spill over to some degree.

Victims live in my community. It is to the eternal shame of the Conservative Party that it continues to mislead the Canadian public by saying that introducing these kind of amendments to the Criminal Code and to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act will somehow reduce the level of victimization in this country. It will not happen. The government cannot point to one jurisdiction in the world where this has worked.

When the Conservatives stand in the House and repeatedly mislead Canadians, which I am not suggesting they do intentionally, they really believe this will work. When they refuse to face the facts, to look at the reports and to look at all of the research that has been done in this area, they are misleading the Canadian public because it will not work.

When my colleague from B.C. gave a speech a while ago, he gave the classic definition of insanity as being someone who repeats over and over again the same course of conduct and expects a different result. The United States has followed that policy with regard to its approach on its war on drugs and now the Conservative government is attempting to do the same thing. It will repeat the same errors over and over again and it will not get any different results. The consumption rate of drugs and the production of drugs will continue to climb and we will continue to be a market for them.

Every study that we have done shows that we need to get at the whole issue of treatment and getting people off drugs. Putting them into prisons is not the solution. It just simply does not work.

I want to spend a few more minutes on what always bothers me about the government when it passes these kinds of laws.

An analysis was done on the impact this bill would have on the incarceration rate. It would have the effect of increasing the population in our provincial jails, for which the government pays nothing, by significant percentages. We know that at least 700 to 900 additional people will go into our jails, which, quite frankly, is optimistic to think it will be that low, if this bill goes through as it is presently written.

I will put that into context. At the present time, roughly 10,000 to 11,000 people are incarcerated in our federal prisons. Depending on the level of security in which they are held, to the tune of about $110,000 at the top end to roughly $90,000 at the minimum security level, that number in federal prisons will probably increase by 1,000 in the first couple of years if this bill passes.

If this bill passes, we will have at least as many more at the provincial level because, in spite of the rhetoric that we hear from the justice minister, the bill will not go after organized crime. It will be used to go after the small pushers and the sentences as a result will be in the six month to two year range. At least half of the people incarcerated, if the bill goes through, will be incarcerated at the provincial level.

The average cost of incarceration across the country, which does vary fairly significantly from province to province, runs at about $75,000 to $78,000 a year, money that the provincial governments need to find. We know that especially the smaller provinces will not have the ability to cover those costs unless they take it from other parts of their budgets, which means that other programs will suffer and, in particular, some of the programs in the corrections area that are more effective at reducing illegal drug consumption.

We have heard nothing from the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Public Safety or the Minister of Finance to indicate that there will be additional funding for the correctional services at the provincial level to cover these costs, which will not be inconsequential. We are talking in the range of $75 million to $100 million-plus that will need to be found to cover these costs if the incarceration rate is as high as we expect it to be. The federal government has given no indication that it will help in that regard. It will simply dump that cost onto the provinces.

We can go on with the other costs that will be related to that increased incarceration. The length of trials will go up, as has been indicated by judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers. If one is faced with a mandatory minimum sentence, chances are there will be no plea bargain but there will be a longer trial, which is the usual consequence. We only need to go across the border to the United States to see repeatedly where the length and number of trials and the reduced number of guilty pleas for these charges were altered because of the mandatory minimums.

That puts an additional financial burden on the court system. It means that our police are spending more time testifying in trials. It means that our prosecutors are spending time in court on these charges for longer periods of time because the trials go on longer. It is the same for our judiciary.

As for all of these costs, the vast majority of these cases, I should point out, are not tried by our federal judges. They are tried by our provincial judges. All of these costs are being serviced and dumped, literally, on the provincial governments, with no indication of any compensation from the federal government to assist them with this. I have seen no assessment of how much it is going to be, but again, it is going to be at least in the tens of millions of additional dollars in those areas.

We will see provincial governments having to draw from other programs in any number of areas in order to cover these costs. They do not have a choice. That is one of the interesting things. They have no voice in this. Police officers have to lay those charges. Crown attorneys have to ask for mandatory minimums because they are mandatory. Judges have to send people to jail for those mandatory minimums because they are mandatory. There is no discretion at all in the system. Those costs just go on.

Let me move for a minute from the effect of this to alternatives. There are in fact alternatives. We see the government actively engaged currently in trying to shut down the safe needle program in the city of Vancouver downtown in spite of a report that came out as recently as yesterday. One has to appreciate that this report came from a body that was appointed by the current government. It did a complete analysis of the 24 reports that have been done on that centre. It concluded, as every single one of those reports did, that the site should remain open, that it should receive federal funding on an ongoing basis, and that the site reduces crime rates and literally saves the lives of drug users.

We can go through all the other positives of this program. Obviously it keeps drug users out of the court system to a much greater degree, allowing the police to do other work. In spite of this, I am sure that we are going to continue to hear the government attack that centre and look for some other way to pull the plug on it. It almost did so last September, but as a result of a huge outcry from the community it backed off and extended the funding until this June.

The fear in the community in Vancouver is very palpable that the government is going to figure out some way politically to justify doing this. Again, it will not be based on any facts, any science or any of the studies that have been done. That attitude, that ideological passion, and some may say fanaticism, that we get from the government in this area is reflected in this bill. There are no facts on which to base it. In fact, there were studies from the justice department in 2003-04 on the use of mandatory minimums specifically in the drug area.

Maybe I should diverge for a second here. My party in fact has supported the use of mandatory minimums in Parliament in areas where we think they can work. I do not know how many times I have given this speech in the House. It is a limited area. It has to be focused. We in the NDP have done so quite extensively where firearms are involved. We believe that can be justified by studies and scientific fact, but there is not one study that does not say that the use of mandatory minimums with regard to drugs is useless. There is not one.

In fact, a major study was done, I believe in 2003, by the Department of Justice. It canvassed all of the studies and prior reports that had been done and it showed this. We have to appreciate that most small drug pushers are users as well. That is who this bill is really going to end up targeting. The government says that is not the case, and that is not who it means, but that will be the result.

My time is up, but I would plead with the government and with the opposition party. This is the time, at second reading, to vote the bill down. In principle, the opposition party should not be supporting it.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I have two questions for the member, who I know is well versed in these areas, so they will be in-depth questions.

First, the hon. member made the obvious point that some of these measures are the same ones that the United States followed and there was no appreciable reduction in drug use. Pretty well everyone involved in the justice system knows that. Therefore, my question is this: where was the breakdown in communication? Obviously the Department of Justice researches these items and would have had this information to give to the government to show that this is not what works.

Everyone wants to reduce drug use. Does the member believe that the Department of Justice would have informed the minister of this and that the government could have come up with a more effective strategy? Where does he think the breakdown was there? That is the first question.

Second, as for the philosophy of this, if a person was in the jail system long enough to get appropriate treatment to deal with the root causes of the problem, the person would not just be kept there, have the sentence extended and come back exactly the same. We would assume that by staying in jail longer a person would get more treatment and that there would be effective and sufficient treatment in the criminal justice system.

The member probably knows better than I: does he feel that the treatments available while a person is incarcerated in today's federal justice system are sufficient?

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the questions of my colleague from Yukon.

I did find that in my notes. I found the study. Maybe somehow the government missed it. It is called “Mandatory Minimum Penalties: Their Effects on Crime, Sentencing Disparities, and Justice System Expenditures”. It was done in 2002 by the justice department. It said, “MMS”, mandatory minimum sentences, “do not appear to influence drug consumption or drug-related crime in any measurable way”. That was the basic conclusion the study reached.

To answer the question more specifically about the miscommunication, I do not think there was any miscommunication. I know a number of people in the justice department. I am sure they showed this to the justice ministers. However, again, there are blinkers being worn by the government. The Conservatives are so driven by their ideology on this issue. They sincerely believe that if we punish people more, and more severely, we can change their habits.

They are absolutely refusing--I was going to say “reluctant” but that is too soft--to open their eyes to look at anything else. If the justice officials said to them that they had done all this research, here is the result, it shows no measurable difference, and there is no use at all in us doing this, they would just ignore that. I am quite sure that this is what happened.

With regard to the other issue about the availability of treatment when a person is incarcerated, if a person is incarcerated at the provincial level, there is hardly any available treatment. What is available is so backlogged that the vast majority of people who serve two years less a day will never get through the backlog. Those people will be out of custody before treatment is available.

The situation at the federal level is not much different. The vast majority of treatment programs, especially around drugs, are fairly scarce at the federal level. They are severely backlogged in terms of availability. Again, in the vast majority of cases, people may access those treatment programs, but if they actually serve four years, they may get into it by their third year, and then they are there for such a short period of time that it really does not work.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that was an excellent speech by my colleague from Windsor--Tecumseh. I want to ask him a question pertaining to a situation in my constituency of Winnipeg North, in particular the neighbourhood of Point Douglas, which is one of the hardest hit neighbourhoods in Canada in economic and social terms.

In response to the police and in response to our mayor who, like the Conservatives, quickly jumped to get tough solutions, which we do not dismiss but want to see applied judiciously, Sel and Christine Burrows said the following:

You want to get tough with these kids...Well, I hate to tell you, but the majority of these kids have seen a bloody sight more tough than you or most of your kids will ever see. Many of our Lost Boys were unwanted boys...they were delivered into a life of misery and poverty...mental illness and addiction issues, learning disabilities, hyperactivity, racism, FASD. These are all parts of growing up a Lost Boy.

Sel and Christine Burrows suggest that putting these kids in jail is not going to be any kind of solution. They are just going to be repeating a life of crime and drug abuse. They ask us to “think outside the box” and that means thinking outside the jail cell. I am wondering if my colleague could give us some comments on this issue.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we need to put this in the context of what has happened. I heard one of the Conservatives talking. It was like was one of those speeches that we heard being given in our legislatures, and in the United States in particular, in the run-up to prohibition. The words being used were exactly the same: prohibit the use of alcohol and all of society's evils will be cured. There is the same attitude with regard to drugs.

As for incarcerating our youth, we are seeing in the Conservatives' attempt in the youth justice bill, which is waiting before the justice committee right now to be reviewed, this attitude that more penalties and harsher penalties will cure all of society's evils, contrary to all the evidence.

We know with regard to drug consumption in particular that the vast majority of users of illicit drugs have other emotional, psychiatric and psychological problems. We can look to all sorts of experiences in Europe, where the treatment model is to get the youth at an earlier stage, and which in fact does work to a significant degree.

I am not going to suggest for a second that it is perfect. It is not. We are human beings and the people who provide that treatment are human beings and it does not work in every case, but it is clear especially for youth that if a treatment modality is used, versus an incarceration modality, the treatment modality has a success rate that is four and five times that of the incarceration modality rate.

We have the knowledge. We have the ability, from a social science standpoint, to treat. We just do not have the resources. We are much more prepared to spend millions of dollars on the war on drugs, tens of millions and hundreds of millions, as opposed to spending similar or perhaps greater amounts on a meaningful modality that would work.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have great respect for the member's handle on some of these justice issues. With respect, I tend to disagree that we cannot do something because the member thinks it does not work and therefore we should not really do anything.

The fact is that this government has put forward millions of dollars to attempt to find the indicators of crime early on in the schools and so on to try to assist in the prevention of crime. However, people repetitively choose to make the same mistakes.

I am holding statistics from my area of the country, where violent crime is up by 28%, with defensive weapons up by 20%. The list goes on, with a 100% increase in some of the drug crimes. If the crimes are added up, including all the different traffic violations, the crime rate is actually down by 3%, but the fact is that on some of these violent crimes with respect to drugs and weapons, the crime rate in my area has gone through the roof.

I think we need to get tough on these criminals once and for all, not the ones who need help, and I understand that, but there are a lot of folks out there who are making a lifestyle choice.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know where the member gets his figures from. I am glad he raised it because I heard other members make the point.

There is only one figure that we really look at to be absolutely certain of what is happening with the violent crime rate in the country and that is the murder rate. For the last 20 years the murder rate in this country has gone down.

These are the figures of how we spend money on drug policy: 73% on enforcement, 14% on treatment, 7% on research, 2.6% on prevention, and 2.6% on harm reduction.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to share my time with the member for Surrey North.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this bill. The increase in drug use and drug trafficking has become a very worrisome problem in many of our communities.

We have seen the increase in petty crime. We have seen the ravages among many young people created by the use of drugs. It concerns members of all parties. Where we may disagree is on the best approach in responding to that very real problem.

There is a confusion, it seems to me, between the notion of mandatory minimum sentences, and some people have equated it to minimum effectiveness. If someone is against mandatory minimum sentences, the Conservatives say the person is being soft on crime.

I would like to talk about mandatory minimum and quote some of the experts who believe that it is the least effective tool that we could use to deal with this particular problem. Not only experts believe it is the wrong way to go, but most Canadians also believe that drug addiction is an illness and it should be treated in that way.

In the time that I have, I would also like to speak to the kind of response the Conservative government is giving to the harm reduction approach.

The mandatory minimum is a bad idea in principle. In 2001 a justice department report concluded that mandatory minimum sentences are least effective in relation to drug offences. It said:

MMS [mandatory minimum sentences] do not appear to influence drug consumption or drug-related crime in any measurable way. A variety of research methods concludes that treatment-based approaches are more cost effective than lengthy prison terms. MMS [mandatory minimum sentences] are blunt instruments that fail to distinguish between low and high level as well as hardcore versus transient drug dealers.

That was a report by the justice department, not by the New Democratic Party.

These would be some of the consequences of adopting this kind of ill thought out, ideologically driven policy.

The Prime Minister would like us to believe that this approach is just being tough on organized crime and big time traffickers. The reality is that it will not deter organized crime. In fact, we presently have legislation with respect to organized crime with mandatory minimum sentences. We can see the great effect that has had in reducing the number of Hells Angels for example.

Frank Addario, president of the Criminal Lawyers Association of Ontario, noted that justice department research shows that mandatory minimum sentences do not deter offenders more than tailored proportionate sentences, and often result in lower conviction rates because judges are reluctant to convict someone for a minor transgression if they know the penalty is harsh.

Politicians have no business making preordained decisions on the future of people being brought before the courts. This belongs to the judges. A judge who has heard the case from start to finish should be the only person to decide what penalties are appropriate.

This reminds me somewhat of the Conservatives' attempts to meddle in nuclear safety. I do not know how much safer Canadians feel today after the Conservative government meddled with our nuclear energy regulator in Canada but I certainly do not feel safer. The issue of drug crimes should be in the purview of judges in Canada.

It is just too draconian to pass a law that ignores mitigating circumstances. For example, someone dealing in marijuana would go to jail for at least a year if he or she did so in support of organized crime. Organized crime, I am told, is defined as a money-making enterprise involving three or more people. That covers almost all marijuana dealers who are by definition organized if they have one supplier and one customer. Most of the changes in this law are like that.

We would all be concerned as parents to see children taking serious drugs, whether it be cocaine or crystal meth. My colleagues and I feel that the government's resources should go toward prevention. Rather than going toward making these kinds of draconian laws, the resources should go toward supporting the harm reduction approach, the four pillar approach that involves real enforcement. That is certainly needed. At the moment, without the other pieces of the four pillar approach, prevention, treatment, and housing, and I will come to that, the enforcement becomes a revolving door. The police are telling us that they are attempting to respond to a social problem.

I have some statistics on the amount of money that the government is spending on its drug policy. Of its drug policy, 73% is spent on enforcement, 14% on treatment. In Victoria, people who are trying to help drug addicts who want treatment just cannot provide it. It is just not available. There is no money for treatment. There are no treatment beds. There are no detox beds. This appears in report after report on the issue in Victoria. Across Canada 14% of the money goes toward treatment and 2.6% toward prevention. That is simply inadequate to address the very serious issues on our streets. While the federal government attempts to bring in these ideologically driven solutions, cities and municipalities are left to pick up the pieces and to deal with the lack of leadership by senior levels of government.

We see the ravages on our streets. We see the impacts among our young people. We very strongly need enforcement. More than anything I see all the social providers in my city scrambling for funding, whether it be to set up programs around mentorship to help young people avoid crime, or programs to support those people who want to find a way out, or to provide detox or treatment services. The money is not there to provide those services.

That is where the negligence is by senior levels of government.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to make a clarification for the House and the member. I do not want to imply that the member was not here during the debate on the Chalk River nuclear problem, but all members in this House who participated in that debate came to the conclusion and voted unanimously on the actions the government had to take in that regard. I do not think it is fair that the member stands up in public and makes assertions that are contrary to that truth.

I want the member to know that we certainly do look at statistics even if they do not say what we want them to say. I am looking specifically at murder rates, which the NDP is inclined to do because, of course, they tell the story that the NDP members want to hear.

The fact is that drug crime in my riding in some cases, heroin, for example, is up over 100%. The folks in the downtown Galt area of Cambridge have called me into their homes to talk about the number of crack addicts that are roaming the street. It is absolutely epidemic.

I have former patients who are police officers who tell me they spend most of their nights dealing with drug issues, and the next night they are dealing with the same ones because it is a revolving door in the justice system which was so carefully built and supported by the previous Liberal government.

I would like to ask the member what she expects us to do with the current rate of drug related crimes that impact insurance costs, as some of these folks break into local businesses to finance, in some cases, their chosen lifestyle. I understand there certainly are folks that by no choice of their own have this problem, but I am not talking about those people. I am talking about the folks who make a choice, break into a business, and the business insurance rates go up, or worse, as is the case in my riding, some businesses cannot even get insurance. The downtown cores of these communities start to rot as buildings become empty.

I do not believe for one second the NDP has even a semblance of a grasp on this problem. I suppose that is okay because I do not think they will ever come to power and that in itself is a good thing.

Perhaps the member wants to comment on that reality.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think it was the Prime Minister who assured all Canadians that there would not be a nuclear problem because there could not be an earthquake. I do not think members of other parties have a crystal ball to make those kinds of comments.

On the question that he asked, I understand very clearly the frustration in seeing the drug use in many cities across Canada. I also think that kind of frustration should not drive us to poorly thought out policies that by all reports, and not just ours, but even reports from the justice department, are shown to be ineffective.

Instead of a knee-jerk reaction of wanting to incarcerate more people, which incidentally, brings about its own costs that are quite incredible, one of the answers may be to reconsider some of the policies that are at the source of these problems of the kind of hopelessness that we see and the increasing poverty that is prevalent in our communities. In my riding 25% of the population is living at or below the poverty line. These are the kinds of issues we might consider in terms of good social policy that might help.

Again, I want to stress that enforcement has to be a part of the solution to address those hardcore cases that the member just referred to, but to go beyond that and talk about using mandatory minimum sentences for the kind of situation that he has raised of robbery is just plain--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Surrey North.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to share some comments about the bill before us today. It seems this is yet another example of what I consider to be a lack of balance in the actions of the Conservative government.

I come from the city of Surrey, which has some significant drug problems. Every day we see individual drug use and drugs trafficked by very sophisticated organized crime. Just a few months ago we had a tragic incident when two innocent bystanders were killed as a result of simply being in the vicinity of an apartment building where a gang was producing crystal meth. I do not think we would find anybody in any part of the city in which I live who would oppose actions that would impose very significant penalties on those who would produce, traffic drugs and lure children into the drug trade. Nobody would suggest that the penalty should not reflect the crime. It should, but it often it does not, and I do not believe anybody would oppose that.

The city of Surrey has been able to create some successes around grow ops. Some grow ops are quite small, although they would probably still fit the three or more definition. Some are much larger because they are part of chains. Surrey has won an award for the way in which we have taken down grow ops. We have worked not only with the RCMP, but with the fire department and the hydro company. We have made significant inroads into the numbers of grow ops that are shut down. Should those people who run a series of grow ops be in jail for what are very deterrent and I would hope long periods of time? Of course they should be.

We always have to ask the questions: What does this bill say it is? What is it? Who does it help? Who does it hurt?

The bill says that it is about minimum mandatory sentences, which it is. As one of my colleagues said earlier, we have supported minimum mandatory sentences in the House before, under different circumstances, so we are not opposed to a minimum mandatory sentence. However, I do not think it is true to suggest that the bill will make some huge difference in major drug activities, drive-by shootings and crystal meth labs. The bill would make a difference for individual, small time, non-violent offenders who may traffic on their own, not that this makes it okay.

When I look at the recommended sentences, I see one to two year mandatory prison sentences, prison sentences of perhaps a minimum of six months, one to three years, et cetera. These people are not creating the roots of drug crime in our communities. These people are not killing other people. Drugs are killing people and destroying lives. People are being shot as a result of drugs.

Who will this benefit? Neil Boyd from Simon Fraser University said that the people who would benefit from this would be the drug traffickers. The cost of drugs will go up and they will make a bigger profit. That is not the intention of the bill. However, I think it will hurt people who could benefit from a different kind of help, and I will speak in a moment about what we might be able to do about that.

I am worried quite a bit about drug courts, which are a fine thing. A lot of research has shown that as an intellectual concept they work in certain places. However, drug courts only work if people really want help and are able to access treatment after they have gone through the drug court. This is where the entire system fails.

We do not have enough treatment programs for people who are referred by drug courts. Perhaps it is only in British Columbia, which would seem unusual, but we are very short of drug facilities for youth, for adults who have been duly diagnosed, for single women or for women with children who want to take their children with them or want to know they are in a safe place while they receive treatment. The drug court concept is fine, but there are not nearly enough treatment facilities so the system will eventually block up as soon as there is no place to refer people.

These drug courts are going to be funded by provincial governments. The people going to prison, as a result of the sentences I read to the House a moment ago, are going to be sent to provincial facilities using provincial dollars. These dollars could go toward treatment.

We will be in significant difficulty until we find a way to provide resources to the provinces and not simply download on them. Bill C-26 will not make that any better. In point of fact, the bill would probably make it worse.

Others have said that we need a balance, that we need a multifaceted approach to this issue. This is about appropriate sentencing, but it is also about coordinated, well researched, well documented, well shared information about early intervention.

One member said earlier that all kinds of money had already gone into drug prevention programs and so on. However, the evaluation has been poor. We do not know what has worked. We have not evaluated them properly at all. The money is put into programs that may be are good or may not be good. However, there is no way of gathering that information, which I think is a critical federal role. It is one of the most important roles the federal government can play, which is to gather information from across the country, to ensure information is both qualitative and quantitative and then ensure the money put into drug prevention is done in a way that will be effective and efficacious, whether it is for 4 year olds, 14 year olds, 40 year olds or 80 year olds.

I will make a couple of closing comments. We talk about being able to help with organized drug gangs in the community. We cannot even prevent organized drug gangs in prison. There was a riot in Mountain Prison in British Columbia in which two people were killed. We are talking about putting more people in prison when we have a growing drug gang problem there. I am not quite sure how—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I will have to stop the hon. member there.

Before I go to questions and comments, it is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the question to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment is as follows: the hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan, First Nations Technical Institute.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Cambridge.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want comment on the member's speech, which I appreciate very much. The member has somewhat more of a balanced approach to this idea.

I want to suggest to the member that no one in Canada denies that drinking and driving has gone down considerably. The R.I.D.E. program goes up one year and then down a bit. No one would deny education has helped to educate folks that drinking and driving is a bad thing. However, I do not think anyone can deny either that tougher penalties have caused a great reduction in the episodes of people killed by drunk drivers. It is sort of a retrospective study that we do what makes sense, knowing full well it will happen, and the proof is there. That takes courage and leadership, which this government is showing.

The member mentioned some of the causes of crime and no one would disagree that poverty is one of the big ones. The government put forward a drop in the GST by 2%, which helps, not help completely, but it helps. The child care benefit helps, not completely, but it helps. There was a decrease in income tax to the tune in some cases of $600 to thousands of dollars a year.

There is help in the budget for the disabled and seniors. Seniors can now make a lot more money if they choose to work. If they do not, they have greater benefits. We have paid down the debt to help poverty in the future. As the member mentioned, this is the multifaceted approach of the government for which the member is looking.

Why did the member vote against that?

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that would be a longer answer than you would allow me.

We all look at our balanced approach and the kinds of programs that are offered in a very different way. I see the ones in the budget, particularly around $100 a month for families to “provide child care”, as being not very effective.

I want to go back to a comment the member made earlier. I live in Whalley, which was probably once known as the worst part of my riding. All of us are very proud of living in Whalley, our city centre, but many businesses are in the position that the member described earlier, and I am glad he raised it.

Some businesses are having trouble staying viable and some may be shutting down. People go to their businesses in the morning and find people sleeping on their doorsteps. They have to step over them to get into their premises. There is garbage, sleeping bags and body waste, et cetera. This bill will not affect those people. That was my point earlier. Who does it hurt and who does it help?

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, excuse me, but I simply wish to inform you that there is currently no French interpretation.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Is there a problem with the interpretation in general or only with the headset at your seat? We will look into it.

It is now working. The hon. member for Windsor West.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for solving that problem so ably and so quickly.

What I would like to ask my hon. colleague about is prevention. One of the issues that we have seen is a lack of attention to prevention from those individuals who have been brought into the drug culture or have been introduced to it, and then have been used by other people as well to promote other people's needs.

I used to work on behalf of Youth at Risk, and we found intervention programs to support youth to either get them back to school or help them find employment. There were many success stories where we actually got people untangled from those environments.

What we found most often was the fact that individuals were looking for hope and opportunity, and what they were not seeing was that developing in their lives because either they had not reached the goals that were necessary or they made bad decisions that needed to be fixed. Hence, bringing in programs that assisted in the facilitation of changing that direction really worked. We had individuals who clearly were able to repatriate their lives in ways that were much more progressive and law abiding, and contributing to society.

The hon. member did mention prevention, but I would like her to highlight a little more in that regard because it is an important issue that has not been discussed enough.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

There are only about 30 seconds left for the hon. member for Surrey North.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Prevention in 30 seconds. Okay, Mr. Speaker.

We can identify, during pregnancy and early infancy, those families or infants that may be at risk of running into difficulty later. If we ask kindergarten teachers, they can identify children who are going to need some extra support.

As the member said, when youth move into that 10 to 15 year old range, which perhaps he was talking about, if we hold out a hand and get them hopefully before their first contact with drugs or with the law, but immediately after, we know that there is a very high incidence of being able to prevent that second contact with the law.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today at second reading stage of Bill C-26, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

This bill seeks “to provide for minimum penalties for serious drug offences” and “to increase the maximum penalty for marihuana production”.

Even though the purpose of Bill C-26 seems clear, we believe that its ultimate goal, to reduce consumption of illegal drugs, would be better achieved with more subtle measures that would produce truly positive results.

The consumption, production, sale and trafficking of drugs are, in my opinion, a scourge throughout the world. That is the case in Quebec, Canada and in all other countries. We are trying in every way possible to reduce drug use among youth and also to prevent adults belonging to organized crime from producing drugs, from growing the plants used to make the drugs, and from seeking out youth where they congregate to sell drugs to them. Young people are being targeted.

At first blush, this is the basis on which the Bloc Québécois intends to assess certain provisions of Bill C-26. We want to look at this bill. At first blush, we can see once again, of course, that the Conservative government is remaining true to its principles and its ideology and using minimum sentences to deal with crime. I believe that there should be harsh minimum sentences for organized crime, which, as I said previously, leads to drug use.

Like many Conservative bills, this bill relies heavily on minimum sentences and on the supposed deterrent effect of harsher sentences. We believe that this is not the only solution. The Conservative ministers and members are forever telling us that minimum sentences are a more effective way to fight crime.

We have said and our justice critics have said repeatedly that this is not the only solution. The United States imposes harsher sentences, for example. Our neighbours to the south send more people to prison, but the American homicide rate is three times ours.

Nonetheless, the Bloc Québécois is a responsible party and, as such, intends to study this bill in depth, because we are concerned about drug use among youth. I say youth because young people aged 16 to 24 are the main users of these mind-altering substances. Although it is true that drug offences are up slightly, we want to make sure the legislation we adopt meets the ultimate goal of reducing drug use. There is no point in getting tough by introducing bills if those bills do not really have any positive impact on the use, production, sale and trafficking of drugs.

In my opinion, we must listen to the various stakeholders, health agencies and detox facilities across Canada and Quebec, but also to the testimony heard by the various committees to see whether we can improve the situation even more and reduce this problem in our society. That is why we are prepared to study this bill in committee.

We believe that prevention and rehabilitation remain effective ways to meet this goal without undermining the war on drugs. When it comes to justice, we firmly believe that prevention is and will always be the most effective approach.

We must attack the causes of crime, poverty and social exclusion, addiction, suicide and violence. All of these things are often linked to addiction, and we need to be aware of that. Attacking the causes of delinquency and violence, rather than trying to repair the damage once it is done is the most appropriate and, above all, most profitable approach from both a social and financial point of view. We cannot ignore that.

We will not improve the drug situation by cutting prevention and health promotion programs, as the Conservative Party seems to have been inclined to do since it came to power. We have to study new measures and propose alternatives to drug use. That is what many stakeholders are often doing throughout Quebec and Canada.

I worked for a number of years as a social worker, mostly with youth. On many occasions I saw how beneficial the prevention and awareness programs about the negative effects of drugs could be in fighting the problems of addiction.

I am convinced that an approach that takes into consideration individual, family and social realities is much more effective, even though that is not the only solution.

We have to realize that drug-related sentences affect young people. According to Statistics Canada, roughly 2.5% of young people between 15 and 24 have become addicted to drugs, compared to 0.5% of those 35 and over. The drug phenomenon greatly affects young people.

It is important to have addiction programs, prevention programs and awareness programs in schools, in addition to various projects run by community organizations in youth centres and alternative programs. Detox centres and addiction centres, as well as street work, are other forms of intervention currently available in our communities. These agencies need support. These are forms of intervention and we have to encourage young people to turn to these alternative measures and resources.

Young people do not wake up one day and decide to use drugs for the sheer delight of it. Of course, some adults encourage young people to use drugs, but young people who use drugs often are going through some sort of pain and suffering. We have to address that aspect as well.

We are fully aware that drug trafficking offences must be severely punished. The government has a duty to intervene and use the tools at its disposal to allow Quebeckers and Canadians to live in safety.

We are also aware that drug use in young people is on the rise and that sentences related to drugs primarily affect young people. This is a tragedy, an alarming situation that we must tackle with the right tools.

I fear that Bill C-26 will only penalize a greater number of young people. We have to be careful: it is the criminals we should be going after. As legislators, we must ensure that our young people can benefit from measures that will facilitate rehabilitation.

With Bill C-26, we risk sending more young people to prison. It is a risk because prison is and will always be a crime school. Let us not forget that. It is a place where young people can become resentful toward society.

That is why we have to study this bill and the new measures it contains carefully, in order to ensure that the principle of rehabilitating young people remains, but that we also wage an effective war against drugs.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member talked about rehabilitation. Could he elaborate on that in some more detail by referencing some success stories, especially in his riding?

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of success stories, throughout Quebec and in many regions of Canada as well. The drug phenomenon is nothing new, and there are many people who specialize in this area. There are social workers, psychologists and criminologists who have studied this phenomenon. They have developed approaches and have intervened to try to help young people struggling with this problem. We are talking about young people but also adults.

There is an interesting provision in the bill. It states that a person struggling with a drug problem could be sentenced to participate in a drug treatment program. If a person is caught selling drugs because they have a drug problem, that person is sent to prison or to a detention centre. But that will not always solve the problems, as our NDP colleague mentioned. People take drugs in prisons.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, from the statistics I have read and the information that I have at hand, I know that harsher penalties and putting people in jail longer actually increase recidivism, repeat offenders.

By putting money and resources into treatment and prevention, the chance for success is much enhanced. What we find in Canada today is that we are spending 73% of our drug policy budget on enforcement but only 2.6% on prevention, 14% on treatment and 2.6% on harm reduction.

Looking at those statistics and that information, how could we actually be entertaining a bill such as the one that is before us here today?

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I agree entirely with our NDP colleague that of course we must develop and invest more in prevention. My speech touched on that.

As for the bill before us, we know there has been an increase in the number of offences related to cocaine trafficking in our society, for example. Is this bill the solution?

We are saying that perhaps this is a document that can be studied in committee, for we cannot ignore the issue. We must look at ways to improve the situation, as well as to get tough on crime in certain cases. Indeed, we talk about prevention for our youth, but as I said in my speech, it is often adults involved in organized crime who produce and traffic in these drugs.

As I indicated earlier in my speech, the Bloc Québécois wants to examine this bill in a responsible manner in committee and make any changes that could improve it. If these suggestions and amendments improve the bill and serve to improve the situation for young people in Quebec and Canada, then we will move forward. If, however, this bill does not meet our expectations and contribute to the development of better methods to effectively address the use, sale and trafficking of drugs, we will not support it.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, there are several reasons I would like to get this bill to committee. I will talk about some of the positive items first because that will be a very short part of my speech, but I am pleased with the objectives of the bill to further inhibit organized crime, to prevent harm to youth, to increase security and to enhance health and safety.

I am also in favour of moving GHB and flunitrazepan from schedule III to schedule 1 so there can be more serious penalties for those date rape drugs. However, I have a lot of problems with this bill and I will go through a number of them now.

One of the reasons I would like to get the bill to committee is because the government does not seem to listen to the facts presented by the various opposition parties. At committee, it can once again hear evidence from the experts, as witness after witness comes forward with what are becoming pretty commonly known facts, and maybe get the government to change its direction so that its crime package will not be such a disaster and fall apart the way it has. Members will notice that it has fallen right off the radar screen because it has really been much of a disaster in a lot of ways, based on what these experts in the field have come forward with.

One of the reasons the government has had this great problem with its crime agenda is the process. Normally in the bureaucracy, in bringing forward government bills, the process is that experts, in whatever federal department, in this case the Department of Justice, who have had a lifetime of expertise to study what happens in other countries and to do studies on the effects, propose to the government effective potential changes.

When the justice committee was in Toronto, I asked one of the witnesses why we were getting so many bad bills that did not make any sense. He said that the process, from the bottom up, was not the process that was being followed by the government. It was not the normal legislative development. Of course, that would obviously lead to a number of problems that even would be beyond the control of the Conservative backbenchers, so I cannot blame them.

It is kind of ironic that the Conservatives called this justice week and an hour and a half ago, for the fourth time, their chair of the justice committee walked out again, halting all progress on justice bills like this and a whole line-up that we have at the justice committee, and actually not following the standing rules of order in doing that. It is ironic that it is justice week when no progress is being made in a number of committees that are looking at other types of justice issues.

In the United States, it has tried the mandatory minimums. I think a number of members have pointed that out. I will not get personal, as some have, but I will say that the results of sweeping mandatory minimums in the 1980s in the U.S.A. have been overcrowded prisons with no appreciable reduction in drug crime.

That is our closest example of something that does not work. Why, in heaven's name, would we in Canada want to implement something that has proven to be an abject failure? The problem is that not only would it be a failure for the objective that every member of Parliament here wants, which is to reduce drug crime, and I honestly believe everyone here wants that, but we would actually be moving backward.

What happens when we increase the numbers in prisons that are already overcrowded? We do not have enough treatment facilities. We do not have the capacity to deal with existing prisoners so they are corrected and healed and do not get out and hurt us or revictimize the victims who we are trying to protect. The whole problem is exacerbating and we are taking a step backward.

If we do not want to take the evidence from the United States, there are all sorts of studies showing that mandatory minimums, to a large degree, do not work except in some very select cases. However, in the area where it works the least is where the bill is focusing, and that is drug crimes. If members do not want to believe all the expert studies by professors from other places, experts who any normal academic or rational person would believe, they can go to the study done by the Department of Justice in 2002 which stated that mandatory minimums do not influence drug crime in any way.

Therefore, mandatory minimums in many ways are not helping the situation. As was mentioned on Monday, it is one of the negative aspects of the massive attack on judicial discretion that we have had under the government. Obviously, the more choices and options a judge has the more likely the judge will make the right decision on the alternative treatments and sentences that would help a person stop from reoffending and, once again, save victims and make society safer. Any time we put caps on that, we are reducing the potential to have a better outcome and a safer Canada.

An item in the bill suggests that the Conservatives may be understanding that a bit and going in the right direction. They have actually increased one of the maximum penalties from 7 to 14 years. Unlike most of their previous bills, which limited judicial discretion, a total mistake, as the academics have said, in this case they are expanding judicial discretion. They are actually making a maximum penalty longer, which may or may not be warranted but in some cases it would, and the judge would have that option to make Canada safer in that way.

A member of the government made an interesting comment when he commented on a statement made by a member of one of the opposition parties. He said that just because it does not work does not mean we should not do it. Of course it does not mean we should not do it. If we have a fire, everyone wants the fire out but throwing gasoline on it will not help. We do not do something that makes the matter worse. We look for another solution. A number of people have spoken about those options and I will speak to them later today.

The member for Cambridge talked about the crime rate in his riding expanding dramatically. Considering that crime in Canada has reduced over the years in general, that definitely is a big problem in his riding. If I were that member I would be looking at all the various solutions, such as more police officers, which the Conservatives had promised in their first term and which I think they are acting on now. It was a problem for the north. I am glad to see my colleague from Western Arctic here because the distribution of those police are on a per capita basis, which means that he and I get approximately one police person and assorted support to cover an area larger than any country in Europe. That will not make a lot of difference.

The member for Cambridge also mentioned that one of the biggest problems the police have night after night is dealing with drug problems because, once again, the prisons are not working and that system is not working. As we know, virtually everyone gets out of prison so obviously it is not working. The member should be looking at other solutions so that the police in his riding do not need to deal with a problem that has not been fixed. We have just delayed it for a few days or a few years, to whatever time offenders will get out.

When a member suggested a drop in the GST would solve the problem, one member went laughing from the House. Most of the people who are in such desperate straits do not have a huge amount of disposable income that would give them a substantial savings on the GST to head in the right way of life. Had the income tax rate not been increased by .25% in the Conservatives' first budget and another .25% in the following year, they at least would have had that off their basic income if they had any income at all.

The murder rate across Canada has gone down in the last 20 years. That point was made earlier.

There is an item I am pleased with in the bill. It would allow the drug treatment court to impose a penalty other than a mandatory sentence when an offender who has a previous conviction for a serious drug offence where the offence involves no aggravating factors and the offender successfully completes the DTC treatment program.

I commend the government for this move. This is a recognition that we have to deal with the problem, not just put it on hold for a year or two, so when the person is released it continues to be a problem. We can actually take a serious look at the problem. In fact, the government is making provision for the drug courts, which have proven to be successful in a number of cases, to seriously consider the problem. I commend that particular part of the bill.

I also commend the attack on organized crime. I support any items that would reduce organized crime, but once again, most of the speakers today have suggested that the bill would not have that effect. I want to read a quote from a criminal lawyer who teaches drug policy. He is one of the most experienced experts in Canada. He said:

Organized crime doesn't care about the law. With these changes, the government is doing a service for organized crime.

That was from Eugene Oscapella, a criminal lawyer who teaches drug policy at the University of Ottawa and once advised the Law Reform Commission of Canada.

The Law Reform Commission and the court challenges program, which the Conservative government unfortunately ditched, can no longer help improve lives. They probably could have given very wise advice in this particular area.

I am not saying it is my opinion because I do not know, but it has been suggested by others that this particular bill would scare off the lower criminals, the mom and pop operations, so that there would be even more of a market for organized crime. However, I am certainly in favour of anything that the government can prove to me would reduce organized crime.

Everyone in the House wants to reduce drug crimes. We should be looking for solutions that actually work rather than solutions that research has shown do not work, and which every single MP through speeches in the House and expert witnesses at committee have shown do not work very effectively. What would work in a lot of cases to reduce this problem?

As I have said before in the House, to a large degree we have had a criminal justice system, a penal system that for 1,000 years has not really worked. People who have been to jail reoffend when they are released. Extending their sentence another day or another year will not make any difference. They will still reoffend when they are released. That is a total failure and it happens far too often. What can we do to stop that?

There were some good examples from experts in the city of Ottawa at restorative justice week a few months ago. Hundreds of enthusiastic people in the city of Ottawa have worked on some of these new restorative justice programs, such as, alternative sentencing, diversion, treatment, group conferencing, family group conferencing, which has been very successful in my riding, and family circles. There are all sorts of different ways when simple incarceration will not work.

The Ottawa police chief is very enthusiastic about finally having an alternative that has a greater degree of success. He suggested at the conference that even these methods I have spoken about fail 30% or 40% of the time. That means 30% or 40% of the time the youth that often go through alternative sentencing, restorative justice, still reoffend. However, had they gone through the regular justice system, had they been incarcerated or their incarceration has been increased, as this bill suggests, they would have reoffended 70% of the time. It is an amazing success story.

What have the Conservatives done with this amazing success story, what was their strategy? In Bill C-23 they tried to reduce the increase in crime. The use of this in a large number of cases would have been an absolute disaster for the country and particularly in my riding. More victims we are trying to protect would have been victimized. When we finally came upon a solution that in a number of cases worked, it was not allowed to continue.

I mentioned earlier today another program in my riding, a positive preventive measure, which is a carving course for aboriginal and other youth. These are very artistic people who either were having trouble getting employment or have substance abuse problems. They have produced some incredible work, some beautiful art.

At one time the operators of the program needed more funding. I hope the government has continued the funding because it has been a success so far. If the government has funded them to continue the program, I give it credit for that. It is the Sundog Carving Centre, a wonderful model that we could try in other places.

Another example I cannot imagine people would not be very supportive of is improving the treatment of prisoners. As I said, what good does it do to put people in jail when they come out and reoffend? Most people who have visited prisons would suggest that there be a wiser investment of money in prisons and in after care for such things as drug treatment, literacy, anger management. The programs are too minimal and are not nearly enough. More could be done to solve the problem than simply building more jails.

I also decry the lack in all the justice strategies of any significant mention of assistance to aboriginal people. There is a much higher rate of incarceration. The aboriginal justice strategy was a success story, way higher than the traditional system of putting people in jail when they just get out and reoffend. The aboriginal justice strategy was having a great success. I have to commend the minister that at the last minute he extended that program. He is a fan of it, so I commend the minister for that but I want him to make that strategy permanent and to do it soon because it is such a successful program.

I have two other items. One is related to harm reduction. I know the government is opposed to this in spite of the evidence of its positive effects. One of the corollary benefits to people coming in and keeping them alive and not passing their disease on to other people, which would add huge costs to the health care system, is they also get directed in the process to other resources that can help them with therapy, direct them to treatment centres when they have decided themselves that they want this help. Those corollary effects show that those are also good investments in the system.

In my last minute I would like to mention the Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce which in the last month unveiled a strategy in conjunction with the crime prevention office. It is looking at some innovative ideas to reduce crime in the small business sector. It is looking at education, prevention and other items so that crime does not happen in the first place. Maybe the causes of the crime can be dealt with so that we do not have the unfortunate situation of a person going to jail, not getting any help, maybe learning lessons from other prisoners that should not be learned, and coming out not rehabilitated, not able to face society any better than when the person first went in.

[Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member for Yukon if he feels that the way the Conservative government is dealing with criminals can be tracked in dollars, that this is the amount of money and this is what we are doing to prevent crime in our country, instead of investing in the programs that were mentioned, crime prevention and other initiatives that prevent crime before it ever happens. When someone is a good contributor to society I do not think we can put a dollar figure to that. I do not think we can say that for a good healthy person we spent so much money and this is the person's output for the country.

I honestly say the more we invest in the good health of people, the better the outcome for the country. However, because we cannot put a dollar figure to that, I keep thinking that the government is trying to go for initiatives where it can actually apply dollar figures to what it is doing on preventing crime.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Nunavut is always very thoughtful. She has a special constituency.

First, whether the Conservatives could put a dollar figure to what they are doing, I think she is actually giving them too much credit in that respect. Although we disagree with their philosophy, if they were going to be efficient in implementing their philosophy, they would have done an actual dollar analysis. One of the major problems is that with respect to their program to increase incarceration, we asked officials at various committee meetings what analysis had been done on the results of this, and there was not sufficient analysis done. There was not a careful extrapolation of the expenses for the prisons, for therapists, for treatment, for longer aftercare. There was no money set aside for those types of things. They are not even putting in the dollars needed for their own solution, which of course we proved is wrong.

The member also made a very good point that with Canada being the best country in the world in which to live, we do not see the results because the crime does not occur. The facts are that everyone in this country, low income earners, seniors, and other people, has access to food. We have training for people with disabilities. We have pensions for seniors. We have retraining and literacy programs. It is very hard to reflect the effect of all these types of things because in many cases crimes are not occurring. It has been proven that poverty and a lack of literacy increase the crime rate. That much has been proven.

Finally, in relation to the member's riding, the problems that I mentioned with this particular philosophy of the Conservative government have hurt her constituents more than any others in the country. They are so far removed from penal institutions. If we move a person from such a unique culture and take the person away from his or her family, culture, supports, and the person has a problem to start with, how is the person ever going to heal and reintegrate into that society?

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's comments and I agree with him for the most part regarding the significant investment to be made in prevention and health promotion as well as the various programs to be established to provide greater support for young people dealing with addiction.

I would like my colleague to speak about current sentences and the treatment of criminals, namely those who really target youth, those who produce and import drugs and who have very organized networks for feeding the drug habits of youth. Sometimes, these vulnerable young people are even forced into prostitution to obtain drugs.

Does my colleague believe that the measures and legislation put in place by the government provide an opportunity for restorative justice?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, the member's question relating to sentencing and in particular to youth is a thoughtful one.

With regard to the philosophy of the Conservative government, the problems I suggested are even exacerbated for youth. What happens when young offenders are put in prison for the first time? It is called the university of prison. What access are they going to have to all sorts of other criminal activities and ways of doing things so they can be learn to be more successful criminals from the people they meet in prison? What types of role models are they going to have? What type of acceptable behaviour in society are they going to learn if their role models are other prisoners and hardened criminals?

That is why I believe that restorative justice, alternative justice and family group conferencing have had twice the success rate, statistically, of the prison system. In our aboriginal justice strategy, it was remarkable. From what I remember, in a lot of cases there was no recidivism at all. It had a remarkable success rate in dealing with youth.

Some people think that family group conferencing is an easy way out, that people just sit down and chew the fat and do not have to do hard time in prison. Let me tell members that they can talk to anyone who has been through this, the victims who went through it, and they will hear that those people would much rather have gone to prison. It was a lot harder to face up to their peers and families, to make the apologies, to make retribution and pay back--

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Western Arctic.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, today it is my turn to speak on Bill C-26, a bill introduced quite a while ago by the Conservative Party that has now come forward for more debate.

If we look at the history of the concern over the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act in this country, we will see that the pattern has been in a fashion that is different from what we are dealing with here today. Many people of my generation and the generation that grew up in the 1960s looked to the leadership of the government. In the early 1970s, the government came out with the Le Dain commission report, which made certain recommendations about the use of controlled substances at that time.

It went on from there. In the late 1970s in Parliament, many of the politicians of the day were more open-minded about questions of drug use in Canada, especially those who dealt with what was probably the largest single illegal drug used in Canada, cannabis. At that time, they were moving toward a different point of view on that particular controlled substance.

Then, of course, we had the introduction of the Reagan era in the 1980s. Through many of the international law enforcement agencies, the United Nations and many of the protocols at that time, we saw much hardening of attitudes toward the illegal use of drugs from the United States, which filtered through to the rest of the world. In this Parliament, that led, I am sure, to in some ways kowtowing to the United States and to going away from any semblance that we would go in the direction of the probably 20% to 25% of Canadians who use certain drugs at certain times. We made that conscious decision.

Once again, in the intervening years, the war on drugs went on and on. We saw the results in many third world countries. We saw the results in the United States.

Certainly we do not want Canada to follow the U.S. on its drug policy. Many people in the U.S. do not want us to follow them on the path the U.S. took through the 1980s and 1990s with highly restrictive legislation that led to incredible hardship and incredible increases in incarceration in the United States. The situation grew to where the United States as a population ranks first in the world in per capita incarceration, with roughly 5% of the earth's population but 25% of the total incarcerated population in the world.

Of the 2.2 million people in the United States behind bars today, roughly half a million are locked up for drug law violations and hundreds of thousands more for related drug offences. The war on drugs in the United States costs the U.S. government $40 billion a year in direct costs and tens of billions of dollars more in indirect costs. That is useful information for all Canadians to think about when we approach the question of controlled substances.

We have a bill here that we in the NDP are opposed to and I am glad we are, because it is a hodgepodge of various types of efforts to bring to Canada what is in many respects a very harsh regime in regard to many of the controlled substances that are present in our society. They are used by people in our society and are there as a result of that use. When we speak to the direction that we should take on drugs now, in 2008, we find this bill to be absolutely the wrong direction.

As well, it flies in the face of previous Parliaments in the new millennium, where we had much more direction, such that we actually would move in some ways to lessen the sentences for possession of drugs. We had a greater understanding of the need for harm reduction in dealing with many of the other drugs.

We can see that today with some of the facilities across Canada that deal with drugs such as heroin, such as Insite, the injection site in Vancouver. I went to a presentation the other morning that was given by a woman who had worked at Insite for many years, including getting it established and working through the politics involved for many years. I wish every member of Parliament could have heard her heartfelt talk.

I wish they could have heard about the good that has come out of that kind of work in turning to harm reduction in a sensible and practical fashion for the many people in our society who, for one reason or another, do not make it. They fall off the path of righteousness and good grace and end up living on the streets.

These people are chronic drug users. They are the most victimized people in our society. This safe injection site in Vancouver has saved many lives, each one of them important. The life of every single Canadian should be important to us, should be meaningful to us and should get our attention.

I felt so strongly about it when I heard that speech. I would recommend that all members consider the good that comes from having tolerance and from understanding other people's situations and making our way toward that.

Instead, we are dealing with a bill today that is going the other way. Recent statistics have pointed out that over 24% of Canadians have used cannabis in the last year. Some 1% or 2% have used cocaine. Another 1% or 2% have used other substances. The crime industry in this country makes about $10 billion a year from illegal drugs, of which the vast majority is cannabis.

We have a situation in Canada in which we have a lot of users. A lot of people do this and we are not going to change that with Bill C-26. However, what we will do with this bill is create a situation whereby more and more people will be targeted by this legislation for what they are doing. They will be directly targeted for any infractions of the Criminal Code, any of the things that go on in their daily lives.

That is what this bill does, and this bill is not what Canadians want. The majority of Canadians favour decriminalizing cannabis. They favour the medical use of cannabis. Our society is tolerant. We are not like this bill. This bill is different from what the vast majority of Canadians want.

The Conservative government has lumped many things into this legislation. It has included some things that it thinks might be attractive to its political base. The Conservatives have taken a stand that should guarantee the support of many of the people who support them already.

However, Bill C-26 is draconian in its approach to the problem. It is approaching the problem in a way that is the exact opposite of what we were doing a few years ago in this very House. That really is unfortunate. It is unfortunate that we have moved in this direction. It is unfortunate that the minority Conservative government feels it has the right and direction to do the things it is doing with respect to this legislation.

I am glad our party is standing up against it. I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to it.

When we talk about mandatory minimum sentences and increased minimums for drug related crimes, this is a particularly flawed piece of legislation. In all cases, these types of crimes need the discretion of the judge. They need the judge, in these particular types of crimes, to have the ability to say whether granny with her pot plant in the corner is going to be put in jail for six months because it is the mandatory minimum that the bill proposes. The judge should really have a say and should have a way to deal with this in a correct fashion.

I know this is only the bottom of the heap in terms of where we are going with the bill. As it moves through other phases, we are seeing even greater sentences that would be given to people who--

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but he will have nine minutes left in his speech.

It being 5:30 p.m. the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

The House resumed from April 15 consideration of the motion that Bill C-26, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-26, which deals with minimum mandatory sentences for drug crimes.

I would like to acknowledge the work of the member for Vancouver East who has been tireless on this issue on behalf of her constituents.

Bill C-26 is flawed and ineffective. Mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes do not work. The approach outlined in Bill C-26 is unbalanced. The bill oversimplifies the issue and irresponsibly seeks only to placate Conservative voters.

There are better solutions to tackling the drug problem than mandatory minimum sentences, solutions that actually work.

Bill C-26 would move Canada toward a more expensive, failed U.S.-style war on drugs that spends tens of billions of dollars a year on enforcement and incarceration while drug use soars.

At the end of last year, an editorial on Bill C-26 in the Ottawa Citizen read:

More than half the people incarcerated in American federal prisons are there on drug charges, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, and about one-fifth of those in state prisons. This doesn't count people whose crimes were indirectly related to drugs, but it includes people jailed for life for possessing one marijuana joint. Nevertheless, the war on drugs rages on.

Canada's Conservative government is choosing to copy this strategy, which has been failing non-stop since prohibition. The reason Canada has drug addicts on its streets is supposedly because dealers are not going to prison for long enough, which is why the justice minister has a bill to make the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act harsher.

Judges have had the discretion to sentence drug criminals according to the evidence presented in their cases but now the justice minister wants to change that by imposing mandatory minimum sentences.

For instance, anyone dealing in marijuana would go to jail for at least a year if he or she did so in support of organized crime, that is, in a money-making enterprise involving three or more people. That covers just about all marijuana dealers who are, by definition, organized if they have one supplier and one customer. Most of the charges are like this.

Some drug users might be exempted from the minimums if they are diverted into special drug courts that focus on treating addicts. What about addicts who deal to support their habit and who cannot break the addiction despite treatment. Why? What they needs is more prison time, right? Actually, that is wrong. This is bad law in pursuit of bad politics based on non-existent science. Parliament should not go along with it.

As the editorial points out, the bill would do absolutely nothing to reduce drug consumption in our society. All we need to do is look to our neighbours to the south and its experience over the last 35 years. It is uninterrupted. Over that period of time, the United States has actively engaged in its so-called war on drugs but what do we have today? The production of drugs in the United States and around the globe has increased. The consumption of illegal drugs in the United States has also increased. Prison populations have more than doubled and, in some cases, tripled, in terms of the number of people incarcerated on drug charges. The cost of that war on drugs is up in the range of 10 to 20 times higher than previously, depending on which state in the United States we examine.

In the last few years, the United States finally recognized that its war on drugs was not working. Last year in Detroit, Michigan, the state legislature, which controls criminal law in the area of illegal drugs, began reducing the charges in cases where if people are convicted on drug charges they would have a mandatory minimum.

The state legislature did it for two reasons. I could be somewhat cynical and say that it was only because of how much it was costing and the rate of incarceration that was occurring in that state, but it also did it because it finally recognized that it was not working. We can go through at least half a dozen to a dozen states just in the last few years that have begun to drop mandatory minimums with regard to drug offences. There is no evidence that any form of a mandatory sentencing policy for drug offences works.

Former U.S. supreme court justice, William Rehnquist, noted:

These mandatory minimum sentences are perhaps a good example of the law of unintended consequences. There is a respectable body of opinion which believes that these mandatory minimums impose unduly harsh punishment for first-time offenders-- particularly for “mules” who played only a minor role in a drug distribution scheme...

Mandatory minimums ...are frequently the result of [legislative] amendments to demonstrate emphatically that legislators want to “get tough on crime.” Just as frequently they do not involve any careful consideration of the effect they might have...they frustrate the careful calibration of sentences, from one end of the spectrum to the other....

In spite of those experiences in the United States and in spite of the Conservative government knowing about those experiences, it intends to copy that failed experiment.

Bill C-26 proposes an unbalanced approach to preventing drug offences.

In my riding, there is a different approach. London's community addictions response strategy cites that the cities around the world, which are making progress on this issue, are doing so by planning within the context of the four pillars model: prevention, harm reduction, treatment and enforcement.

Currently, the federal government spends 73% of its drug policy budget on enforcement and only 14% on treatment, 7% on research, 2.6% on prevention and 2.6% on harm reduction.

London's community addictions response strategy states:

Substance abuse is affecting London’s health and well-being

How serious is the problem? Most people in Canada use substances, such as alcohol or drugs. For example, in the past year, about 1 out of every 7 Londoners exceeded low-risk drinking guidelines, 1 in 8 used cannabis, and 1 in 33 used an illicit drug, such as cocaine, ecstasy or methamphetamine. And these figures probably underestimate actual substance use. Not everyone who drinks alcohol or tries an illegal drug develops a substance abuse problem, but some do, including individuals from all groups within society.

Substance abuse is not a “downtown” problem, nor is it limited to the poor and homeless. It is, however, becoming an increasingly critical issue among London’s poor and homeless populations. Health and social service agencies in London report relatively high rates of substance abuse among their clients. For example:

Ontario Works estimates that substance abuse is a barrier to employment for between 820 and 984 of its clients (10 to 12% of the caseload).

The city‘s shelter operators estimate that 40 to 60% of residents - or 350 to 525 people - have substance use or abuse issues.

About 40% of visits to the London Intercommunity Health Centre are substance related.

My Sister's Place provides services to 50 to 70 women, many of whom deal with addictions and/or mental health problems.

Between January and June 2000, London Counter Point Needle Exchange Program served 730 clients and distributed over 230,000 needles.

Addiction Services of Thames Valley serves between 1500 and 1700 clients each year.

Clinic 528 which operates a methadone maintenance program sees 900 clients per month.

London's homeless population is growing. In addition to local residents who [struggle with] life on the streets, we are a regional centre for mental health, justice and social services. Issues associated with release from provincial mental health facilities to "no fixed address"; criminal discharges to local emergency shelters; and the lack of appropriate social service and emergency shelter services in many southwestern Ontario communities result in an inward migration of the homeless to London.

Complicating this situation is the deteriorating health of the homeless. A growing number are presenting with multiple health challenges as a result of poverty, mental health and addiction, particularly [addiction] to alcohol and prescription painkillers. Local social service agencies are struggling to cope with this changing population. Faith based agencies are being forced to reconsider...core values about abstinence, in order to meet their mission of serving the most vulnerable in society.

Not surprisingly, drug trafficking to these vulnerable populations is a key contributor to the declining health of these individuals. In turn, those with addictions are forced to enter into illegal activities to support their habits.

Treatment programs are desperately inadequate. The waiting time in Ontario for a treatment bed is four months. My constituents deserve better.

The NDP thinks the bill sidesteps the real problems and ignores the real solutions. Bill C-26 would not solve the problems associated with illicit drugs. It is more about creating the illusion of action rather than a genuine effort to take positive steps.

If the government really cared about the vulnerable in our society, children in schools and those who are susceptible to the temptations of drugs and alcohol, it would bring back an affordable national housing program so the homeless and low income families would no longer face a lack of decent housing. A home goes a long way to providing the stability that makes drugs less attractive.

If the government cared about children, there would be a real, safe, affordable, regulated child care program, instead of the sham perpetrated against young families.

If the government cared about the welfare of our communities, it would ensure that those who lost a job or needed training were able to benefit from the employment insurance to which they have contributed, instead of stealing $55 billion from that fund.

The Conservatives can cry crocodile tears for those in need but then give $14.5 billion to profitable corporations and big polluters.

If the government truly cared, it would fund programs like the London community addictions response strategy. That is genuine action and it is time this country had something genuine from its government.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member for London—Fanshawe has outlined so well the situation in her own community of London. She has demonstrated something very important, which is that the response to drug issues and substance use in our communities comes most effectively from the local communities.

It is the organizations on the ground that are dealing with harm reduction, treatment, education and prevention. Those are the organizations that are actually doing the most valuable work in dealing with this crisis we are facing in many communities.

She has demonstrated very well that this kind of top heavy approach from the government of imposing minimum mandatory sentences has nothing to do with effecting a legitimate, rational, intelligent response to what we are facing.

I think that in her community, as in my community, these organizations that are doing such a valiant job are facing difficult times because they have inadequate resources.

We know the Conservative government completely eliminated harm reduction from its so-called anti-drug strategy. The harm reduction movement in Canada is actually very strong. It has done amazing work across the country but, unfortunately, the federal government is no longer part of that program.

Is that an issue in the member's local community in London? I know some of the organizations she has referred to, whether it is the needle exchange or the addiction response service, are organizations that would like to see greater resources come from the federal government, as well as from the provincial governments, no doubt, which would allow them to do their work.

It would be interesting to hear how this is playing out in her community for those organizations.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question is quite timely. About two weeks ago, the council for the city of London had its quarterly meeting with London area MPs. The program, London CaReS, the proposal with the four pillars approach, was presented to the MPs. One of the government MPs present was asked if he would ensure this important program was funded because, despite the fact that London has done a great deal of work, there has been no response.

In addition to that lack of response, is the reality of what happened to Londoners in budget 2006, 2007 and 2008 in regard to housing money.

Members have no doubt heard me speak about places in London, like My Sister's Place, At^lohsa, Youth Unlimited, Street Connections and the needle exchange, that do the good work to try to help people in our community. Some of them have closed down because the government reduced the funding available to those organizations that provided support, housing and interventions. They are gone. As a result, there are more vulnerable people without help.

My Sister's Place is in a situation where it needs to fundraise privately in order to manage because the government cut the funding that it needed. It deals with the most vulnerable of people: women who have mental illness and abuse issues.

There is a lot that can be done but not much of it is done.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this debate is very troubling. It appears to me that on the face of it what we have coming from the government today is more of a blame the victim mentality. People who are addicted to drugs are victims. They are not people who are out there socially playing games.

Also, the government seems to be ignoring evidence that can be found with a modest amount of research. For example, the head of the Ontario Criminal Lawyers' Association noted that justice department research shows that mandatory minimums do not deter offenders more than tailored proportional sentences and often result in a lower conviction rate because judges are reluctant to convict somebody for a minor transgression if they know the penalty is overly harsh.

Another part of just a minimal amount of research is that in 2000 California repealed mandatory minimums for minor drug offences. In 2004 Michigan repealed mandatory minimums for most drug offences, including repealing the harshest drug law in the U.S., life without parole, for dealing more than 650 grams of cocaine.

Does the member for London—Fanshawe have any explanation of why this government is headed in the wrong direction?

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me the answer is that this is a government hell bent on punishment. It has a punitive mentality that has nothing to do with the reality within communities. It is a punitive mentality with some kind of strange need, that seeks some strange revenge, to further brutalize those who have been victims.

I want to point to something that I think the members here might be interested in. Last June, a first nations worker in London, who heads up At^lohsa, organized a march to the women's monument in Victoria Park and talked about the problems that first nations women, children and men face in regard to drug addictions. This has also been corroborated by Beverley Jacobs of the Native Women's Association of Canada.

They both ask the question: what would happen to your community? Would there be drug abuse and would there be people living in despair if they had to cope with the kinds of things that first nations have had to cope with over the past few years?

Beverley Jacobs was very pointed. She has asked this government about this. If we were beaten for speaking our own language, if we were sent away from our families so that we would lose our culture, if we were raped in those schools, would we not seek the solace of drugs? Could we not see ourselves declining into a situation where we needed help and support instead of this kind of punitive attitude? I think that is a very good question to ask everyone in this chamber.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I am between a point of order and a question on this bill. During question period, the Minister of Justice, in answering a question about drugs from the Bloc, suggested that he had not heard anything from the Bloc on this, yet yesterday the Bloc talked about this bill at least three times. The member for Châteauguay—Saint-Constant stood up twice, the member for Hochelaga once, and the member for Berthier—Maskinongé at least four times. I think it was totally out of order and the Minister of Justice should apologize for making those false accusations about the Bloc--

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Order. Is the member making a point of order or is he smuggling in a quasi-point of order on a question and comment?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I could make it as a point of order. If I had made it as a point of order, I would have thought that the Speaker might rule me out of order for going too long.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Maybe you should make it at the time. Otherwise, do try to stick to the topic.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To finish the point, the Minister of Justice went on to ask why the opposition parties were holding up his legislation, which was laughable, I am sure, for the media, who know about it, but maybe not so much for the public, who do not know that the Conservative chair of the justice committee ran out four times. Also, there are at least four or five meetings,on all these justice bills, which the Conservatives are holding up.

Does the member think it is the opposition parties, including the NDP, that are holding up the government's justice agenda?

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, certainly all of us here in the House, members of the media, and I hope the people of Canada are catching on to the shenanigans of the government members in terms of obstructing committees and doing precisely as the member has indicated. They are running out on committees such as justice and the environment in an effort to sidetrack and delay important legislation in terms of their own legislation and the environment bill currently before the environment committee.

Maybe they understand what so many understand, including the Bloc members, which is that this is flawed, unbalanced, unworkable legislation that will not solve any problems in our communities and will simply brutalize those who are currently victims of drug abuse.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to provide some input into Bill C-26, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

Some years ago, I was the chair of a health subcommittee looking at the time at what I think was Bill C-7, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. That particular act dealt with very similar things, such as the scheduling of various drug categories, sentencing, and the concerns that had been expressed by the Americans and other countries about the transborder point that Canada provided for other countries to get drugs into the United States and Mexico.

It took about two years before there could be some resolution of this subcommittee within the health committee to come to some understanding about what we could do to curtail the flow of drugs and get Canada out of the situation where it was clearly shown to be a transshipment point for drugs into other countries.

During that time, I recall hearing from a large number of witnesses, including the policing authorities, medical and health experts and some of the advocacy groups dealing with NGOs. These arguments were made then, back in 1995.

As a matter of fact, at the time I gave my speech in the House at third reading, the lead speaker could still give a 40 minute speech. I gave a 40 minute speech on this issue and still was not able to fully cover all of the thoughts that I thought should be put on the table for the benefit of members so they could simply understand the forces involved with the whole issue of drugs. It is, as I found, extremely easy to make argument one way or the other depending on the examples one uses.

When I looked at this bill I thought it had to be looked at in terms of the specificities. There are recommendations for a basic toughening up of the penalty regime with regard to certain offences. If we talk about that in generalities, we could make a very good, long speech about the pros and cons.

However, let us look at the specific provisions. I would like to just mention them. The first one is a one year mandatory prison sentence to be imposed for dealing drugs, such as marijuana, when carried out for organized crime purposes or when a weapon or violence is involved.

If we discuss that scenario alone, I have a feeling that people are going to have some difficulty arguing that there should not be some sort of penalty regime in place because of the seriousness, the nature and the description of the offence, and the potential for that being involved in other things. Therefore, a one year mandatory prison sentence with regard to dealing drugs carried out for organized crime purposes, or when a weapon or violence is involved, is not draconian in my view. It is a responsible approach to a serious situation.

In fact, back in 1995 when we dealt with this, it was a big stretch, a big hurdle, because people were asking why we would want to get involved in this. We talked about all kinds of issues and there were all kinds of debates, because nobody was really being hurt, it was only small drugs, only marijuana or something like that.

However, in the years since we have been dealing with criminal justice issues, particularly as they relate to drugs and organized crime, we have become more and more sensitive to the fact that there are consequential implications to drug activity and organized crime: innocent people do in fact get hurt; communities become less safe; the economy suffers; and moneys from these illicit activities get involved in other illicit activities. This is a cycle that is continuing to undermine the value system within our society and the principles within our justice system, which continue to be eroded and nibbled away at simply by ignoring the realities within our communities.

I do not think anybody here should be worried about being painted as someone who is trying to throw in jail all people who commit crimes, but rather, are there the tools?

I am a big believer in judicial independence. We want to give the latitude to judges because every case has to be looked at on a case by case basis. I am sure if we talk to most Canadians about the issue of selling drugs and the relation to organized crime activities in the context of using weapons and violence with that activity, I think it makes some reasonable sense in the context of the values of Canadians.

Another item of change in the penalty regime is a two year mandatory prison sentence to be imposed for dealing drugs such as cocaine, heroin or methamphetamines to youth, or dealing those drugs near a school or an area frequented by youth. There are a couple more drugs, but ostensibly we are dealing with the most serious of drugs. This involves some fairly bad people, those who are selling these drugs and targeting our youth, the vulnerable in our society who often, for whatever reason, are under a fair bit of pressure, maybe a little rebellious but they think it is cool. There are people who take advantage of the weak in our society. That is the approach to take in looking at these things, that for those who prey on the weak in our society, whether they be young people, whether they be seniors, whether they be the disabled, whether they be the mentally challenged, when people in our society take advantage of those who are unable to protect their own interests, we need to deal with it.

We are talking about drug dealers dealing in hard drugs, bad drugs, for criminal purposes. Again it is a two year mandatory minimum prison sentence. Going to jail is a serious issue and two years is not an insignificant amount of time. I think of Brenda Martin right now who for over two years has been in a Mexican jail simply waiting for a disposition of her case.

Sometimes in the criminal justice system things take a long time. I would think that Canadians would certainly want to look very carefully at and be very supportive of mandatory prison sentences when hard drugs are being peddled to those who are unable to make wise decisions.

There is also a two year mandatory prison sentence being proposed for the offence of running a large marijuana grow operation of at least 500 plants. Most members have familiarized themselves with the problems of grow ops. In my own community of Mississauga, a number of these places have been found. They are not just bad people who are growing marijuana and making lots of money. What they are doing is fronting their operations with people who are desperate for some money. They are fronting it with people who have no idea about the laws, but they are there because they are being taken advantage of. They are put at risk. The real tragedy is that the people who are really behind these operations are getting the money out of these operations and are using that money to finance other illicit operations.

Grow ops are a significant problem in Canadian society. I doubt that there is going to be any disagreement, no matter which party it is in this place, that a two year mandatory prison sentence for those responsible for these large grow houses is appropriate.

There is a further penalty proposed, a maximum penalty for cannabis production. It would increase from seven to fourteen years' imprisonment. I have no doubt that there will be a lot of discussion about marijuana. I remember at the hearings that we had, people were giving us evidence that today's marijuana, compared to when I was in university around 1970, is 10 times stronger, simply because of the growing techniques and the ability to adjust the THC content, the tetrahydrocannabinol content. They can play around with those things.

I doubt this debate will ever cease. There will always be people who simply associate marijuana with a recreational drug: harm reduction, who cares, nobody really gets hurt. Well, I am pretty sure that those people who sell marijuana are also peddling other very dangerous and serious drugs. This takes a lot of looking at and I certainly would like to hear more from members about their views.

Finally, tougher penalties are proposed to be introduced for trafficking GHB and flunitrazepam, commonly known as date rape drugs. Day after day we hear about incidents. Again, we are talking about people who are taking advantage of other human beings for their own selfish purposes and they are breaking the law.

It is not just a cliché to say that we want to be tough on them. We want the justice system to be fair and strong. We want to make absolutely sure Canadians understand that the protection of their rights and freedoms is something that this Parliament will continue to work for. Bill C-26 makes a significant contribution in giving Canadians those assurances.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to put on the record a few thoughts that might differ somewhat from those of the previous speaker. I do not necessarily think that simply getting tougher when it comes to these kinds of behaviour and simply providing for minimum mandatory sentences is actually going to do the trick. I do not think that is actually going to respond to what everyone knows is a serious, complicated and difficult challenge confronting us, our communities, our families and people who are trying to live ordinary lives by going to work and looking after themselves.

On this side of the House we are not saying that there is not a problem, but it is a question of how we define that problem and how it is we go about trying to fix it.

We look across the border and into the backyard of our neighbour, the United States, and we see the results of the war on drugs that has been playing out there. There are very mixed results, most of which from what I have read are not as positive and as substantial as one would expect, given the focus that has been on that tact.

Will the approach in Bill C-26 fix this problem? On the one hand, yes, Canada has an underworld, a crime scene that benefits the availability and the trafficking in illicit drugs. On the other hand, we have communities of people who are affected by this and get themselves mixed up in it for a myriad of reasons, not simply because they want to do drugs. There are other approaches that would better respond to some of the very difficult challenges that oftentimes are the forces behind people who find themselves engaged in a behaviour that is not in their best interest or supportive of their health and well-being.

Recently I went to Calgary on a poverty tour. That city is the epitome of the new economy that is growing in this country, an economy that is driven by big oil and big gas. I remember discovering at the bottom of the huge buildings this terrible culture of poor people who cannot find housing.

I spent some hours one evening in one of the big shelters that has been put in place to try in some small part to deal with this problem. In Calgary on any given night, there are some 3,500 to 4,000 people sleeping on the streets, while the city of Calgary, recognizing that it has a problem, is passing laws to make it illegal for them to sleep in places that might be available to them.

In Calgary, there are people who have risen to the challenge and are providing some beds and shelter for folks. They are providing enough shelter for some 1,500, and on a really cold night when parked and idling buses are used, perhaps there is enough shelter for 1,600 or 1,700, but this leaves over 2,000 people still looking for a place to protect themselves from the cold, looking for a place to get a meal so that they have the sustenance to survive the next day.

When I was there I watched one shelter bed down some 1,200 people on gym mats. Many of those people are struggling with addictions. Many of them are struggling with mental health issues.

A significant number of young people went out there because they were attracted by the new economy and jobs about which everybody had talked. Some found work, but did not find a place to live and sleep. There was no housing.

What I discovered later on in the evening was some of those folks, in their attempt to deal with the very difficult and often frightening situation in which they found themselves, to deal with hunger after a day of snacking on food that was neither sustaining nor nutritious and to deal with some very severe weather, had turned to drugs. I am told that with crack and crystal meth, which is the drug of choice, they would not feel the cold or hunger and they would not be afraid.

Is the answer to this situation to bring in harsher penalties in the criminal court system, or is it to deal with these folks and invest in programs of harm and risk reduction, treatment and counselling? Maybe it is like missing the nose on one's face, but would it not make sense for the government to take some of the energy and effort that it puts into this place and begin to invest in housing, ensuring that people have decent, affordable and safe housing, as suggested by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities? It seems every other week the government brings in yet another tough crime bill to deal with social, societal and community issues and the failures of communities. If people have this housing, they can then cook for themselves. Maybe they can get some training and get into a job. Would that not make more sense? It certainly does to me.

If we are going to try to deal with particularly the real victims of an industry that is out of control at the moment, this it is the kind of thing one might want to do. In my community, as the member from London just suggested, we have a number of agencies trying desperately to respond to difficulties, to the needs of citizens, of brothers and sisters and of family members who need some help with all kinds of issues. Those issues ultimately may lead to them to abusing or misusing drugs to survive from one day to the next. It would make more sense to spend money on those issues rather than the way it is spent now.

My staff has told me that Canada is spending 73% of its drug policy budget on enforcement rather than putting money into treatment, where we spend 14%. We spend 7% on research on some of these issues. We spend the least amount on prevention and harm reduction.

From talking to people in my community of Sault Ste. Marie, for example, we have a program run out of the Indian Friendship Centre. Willard Pine, an elder, spends hours and puts in all kinds of effort into working with people who find themselves and their families caught up in addictions of one sort or another. He told me that if he had the resources to bring in more people and to build a better program, he could save more people. He said that he could get more people back on the straight and narrow and into housing and training programs. After that, he could get them into the workplace. They could then look after themselves and contribute in the way that we know they want to. When we sit down and talk with them heart-to-heart, we know they want to do that.

I am not suggesting for a second that we do not have a big problem and that we do not have challenges in our communities. However, we have ways we could be responding that would be more effective than simply cranking up the criminal justice system, putting in harsher penalties and ensuring that anyone who would come before the courts would find themselves in jail longer, which is what this will do.

There is really no proof that mandatory minimums are effective and appropriate measures to reduce drug use and crimes related to drugs. Most evidence shows the opposite. Bill C-26 does not address the core issue of why people use drugs which is what I was just saying.

Bill C-26 would increase the imbalanced and over-funded enforcement approaches to drug use in Canada without reducing crime rates or drug use. It would abandon successful measures such as harm reduction and grassroots education programs. It would move toward the expense of a failed U.S. style war on drugs, which spends tens of billions a year on enforcement and incarceration while crime rates and drug use soar. It would lead to greater incarceration rates and greater burden on the courts.

I suggest there are other approaches. They may take more creativity and effort on behalf of all of us, but if we put our efforts and our resources behind those kinds of treatment, harm reduction and prevention, I believe we would be further ahead than the result of Bill C-26 will provide to us.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member has spent virtually all his time talking about users and those in possession of drugs. The vast majority of the bill, however, has to do with people who are involved in the production, trafficking, possession for the purpose of trafficking, importing and exporting and possession for the purpose of exporting.

Two debates can go on, and that is the harm reduction and the personal; we have to get drug users the assistance they need. The bill is not about that.

What is the position of the member's party on those who are guilty of serious drug offences, which for the purposes of the bill mean production, trafficking, possession for the purpose of trafficking, importing and exporting and possession for the purpose of exporting? What is the position of the NDP with regard to the penalties on the people who are really the problem with regard to the drug problem in Canada?

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we already have the laws in place to deal with that. What we need in some instances is more police on the street, which the government does not seem to be interested in providing, and we need to ensure that the courts work.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Sault Ste. Marie made a very important point in this debate. He described the situation in Calgary and what he experienced with homeless people, people who often resort to drugs as a way of dealing with their pain, their destitution and the situation in which they are living. He also described the situation in his community. I have dealt with that in Vancouver East.

It shows a very important point, which is this issue of drug enforcement and how it is used is very much a class issue. Most enforcement is used against people who are on the street. Those are the people who are the easy pickings. Those are the people who it is easy for the police to go after because they are visible, they are on the street.

In fact, drug use in our drug society permeates all levels. Professional people deal with addictions and drug issues, but they rarely get caught because they have the resources to deal with this behind closed doors. Therefore, it does speak to the problem with this bill.

The bill is about introducing minimum mandatory sentences. NDP members are not saying that there should not be enforcement. We support what is called the four pillar approach, which includes enforcement. However, the bill would bring in minimum mandatories, which we are told will go after the so-called kingpins and the big dealers. In reality that does not happen. Those people have the ability to distance themselves from where law enforcement is. The street people are the ones who get hit. That is only one of the problems with the bill.

I will ask the same question I asked member for London—Fanshawe. In our local communities we know of organizations that are coping with this issue. They have very limited resources, whether they are needle exchanges, or addition services, or shelters. That is where the resources should be going, into the local communities, and I am sure that is true for the member's riding.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

That is right, Mr. Speaker. As I said, we have a number of under-resourced programs with well-meaning professionals who are trying to provide the support, advice, treatment and counselling that is necessary, but they are unable to access resources anywhere.

I spoke of Mr. Willard Pine, the aboriginal elder in my community, who s trying to provide support. He said that he could provide all kinds of support if he only had the resources to give the people who came to him what they needed, for example, the kind of housing they so they could get their lives back on track and begin to participate.

To crank up the criminal justice system and to think that minimum mandatories will make any kind of dent in the huge challenge of trying to ensure everybody who calls themselves a Canadian citizen has the wherewithal to make a decent life for themselves will not be done with Bill C-26.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Call in the members.

And the bells having rung:

It has been requested that this vote be deferred until 5:30 p.m. this day.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-26, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading of Bill C-26.

The Secretary of State and Chief Government Whip now has the floor.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, once again, if you were to seek it I think you would find unanimous consent to apply the result of the vote just taken to the motion presently before the House, with Conservative members present this evening voting yes.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Is there unanimous consent to proceed in this way?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Liberals will be voting in favour of the motion.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the members of the Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of this motion.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the members of the NDP will vote against this motion.

[Blair Wilson, Independent, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I vote in favour of the motion.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #92

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

I declare the motion carried. The bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

(Bill read the second time and referred to a committee)

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

It being 6:04 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.