First of all, thank you to the witnesses for coming and thank you to the witnesses on the videoconference.
Most people understand and know instinctively that compulsory or forced treatment for addiction or substance use, whether it's legal or not, is not something that can be legislated. Anyone who has tried to quit smoking or deal with an alcohol problem knows it's not something that is easy to deal with in a legislative manner, so I see the drug treatment courts in this bill as really being a concession to lead people to believe that somehow we're being more humane. There's lots of evidence to show that the drug treatment courts don't work, but I'm not going to dwell on that, because I think that's a topic for another debate.
I want to come back to what Mr. Sterling put forward. I think you said that we need to answer two questions: what they are going to cost, and whether they are effective. I've actually tried to get answers to that. At least we should have some idea of what we might expect here in Canada.
Do you have in the top of your head, or can you draw our attention to, information as to whether there is a way of estimating what the mandatory minimums have cost in the United States in terms of the cost to the judicial system and the cost to local communities? I don't know if there is any way you can speak about that.
Considering the effectiveness of mandatory minimums does raise the question of what criteria we apply in defining the effectiveness of a drug policy. Is it more people in jail? Some people may actually argue that having more people in jail is success, but if drug use is still going up in society, as statistics show is happening in Canada, it could be an argument that criminalization has not been an effective policy.
In terms of effectiveness, the second part is that I'd appreciate the comments of both Mr. Sterling and Mr. Alexander on what they see as an effective measure. What criteria should we be applying as we look at this issue of mandatory minimums?