Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Minister, for coming here today. Thank you as well to the officials with you.
I've been listening to some of the questions here from some of the questioners. What's the real issue here? Is it addicted people with problems, successful treatment of people with addictions, prescribed drug treatment plans, young people who might be growing fewer than 50 plants? How about the person with only one plant?
Then they'll make a statement that they agree with most of what you're doing, “but”. When I took secondary school education, I learned that when you say “but”, it basically negates everything you said before the “but”, because the real issue is what you said after the “but”, so maybe we just need to leave out the “buts”.
As far as I'm concerned, this is about the people who come to me--and before I am accused of being just a cop who just wants to put bad people in jail, I want to tell you what I did when I was a police officer. I brought in programs like the D.A.R.E. program. I worked with Rebound Child and Youth Services.
This will be a question. Hold on to your hat there, Brian.
This is all part of the legislation you brought in. Part of that legislation deals with people who are addicted, but let me tell you what a lot of folks really think. I don't mean the folks who are hung up here playing the political games and all those other things, which every single person around this table, with the exception, perhaps, of the department people--