I agree.
We talked to witnesses before you on this whole challenge. As I said, I think we're all in agreement. We would like to see youth use decrease in Canada. It's way too high, but there don't appear to be any tools in the toolbox, when we look at this legislation. There have been all kinds of opinions. My colleague brought up that for kids between 12 and 17, this bill allows for up to five grams. It is disturbing for some of my constituents to think that 12-year-olds who are in public school, this is grade 6, will be able to have this in their possession for personal use.
She mentioned that maybe it should be a ticketable offence. Nobody wants to criminalize kids. We don't want to have them carry that over. We had a lawyer from B.C. He said most police officers don't even charge kids. They just confiscate it, but it does give them the opportunity to address it and maybe bring it up to parents and teachers.
There's nothing in this bill. They say that they want it to decrease youth use, but there's really nothing prescriptive in here. There are no ideas.
Do you have some ideas? You deal with these kids every single day. For a gateway drug, at that age, what tools can we give our educators and our public health officials so that if there is a problem, we can get kids into some type of program or some type of educational system that will help them?