Mr. Speaker, I will continue speaking.
One of the reasons I will continue speaking is that this is an issue that I brought with me to the House when I was first elected in 1988. I believe that this is the first occasion I as a member have ever had, as a result of the motion being moved today, to address the entire package of the issue of the illegal use of drugs. It has been a long wait.
I think it is fair to say that when I first arrived here the political context was not right in the country to look at new approaches. I found significant political impediments in suggesting new approaches. People were well-meaning, but perhaps 12 or 15 years ago we did not grasp the significance of all of the evil and the costs involved.
Now I think our Canadian society has changed and the country may be ready. We are not sure. Therefore I am not going to suggest that we legalize anything. We do not have to legalize all illegal drug use. I am not even suggesting decriminalization.
The problem is much more serious than could be addressed by simple legalization or simple decriminalization. The reason it is more complex is that we are dealing with the business of organized crime. Whatever move society makes on the chessboard, organized crime will make a countermove. If we legalize, it will work with that. If we decriminalize, it will work with that.
As I look at this, it is my view that we should maintain our strict laws and enforcement of the illegal black marketing of drugs, the importation of them and the conspiracies to do that. I am not advocating any change in that.
What I advocate is what I call medicalization, not legalization, not decriminalization but medicalization. The principal aim is to remove the potential customer from organized crime. Society will get its best bang for the buck by doing this.
The main way we can do that is to recognize when individuals have become addicted and dependant on illegal drugs and as soon as they interface with our justice system or any of our institutions, medical or otherwise, divert them into a medically supervised program. I am not putting parameters on it or being specific about it. What I am saying is when people have become addicted to a drug and are dependent on it, they should be given that drug under medical supervision. At the same time they should also have access to whatever programming is available to get them off the drug and give them back their life. However they must have access to the drug. In some cases if they do get it they die or they do not make it very far. Those are difficult times. I will give a little comparison.
The average Canadian bears the costs of illegal drug use. We have the costs associated with home break-ins, stolen cars, medical costs of needle sharing and the spread of HIV-AIDS and hepatitis. There is also the heartbreak associated with individuals who have to steal and cheat to sustain an illegal drug habit. We could give them the drug for $5, a drug that would cost them $1,000 or $2,000. In other words, medicalize it and bring them into the system.
I recall a friend of mine in the United States took a slightly more liberal view. He said that we should give them a barrel of the drug, then the person would be satisfied. We have to go further than that. We have to realize that an addicted person is essentially a sick person. A drug dependant person needs continuing medical care.
The essential part of this solution, and I hope it is a solution, is to divert the customer of the organized criminal into the medical system and make the drug easily available to the person through a medical doctor's supervision. Maybe the medical doctor could switch the drug from A to B to C, but the doctor's goal would be to service the person's addiction, while at the same time moving that person off the drug dependency.
We are all aware of the methadone treatment programs. Some of these programs work and some do not. However there are many other ways to approach the challenge of moving people away from addiction. We are still experimenting. Federal tax dollars are supporting pilot projects now. Huge dollars are being spent by provincial governments for the same thing. I am not so sure we have added up all the money, as I said earlier, but that is now going on across Canadian society.
We must take away the customer from organized crime. We could ascribe a societal dollar cost to every person who is dependent on illegal drug use, let us say $10,000, $50,000 or $100,000 a year because the costs are huge. We could medicalize the addiction which would stop them from purchasing drugs from organized crime. We would then greatly reduce the direct or indirect costs. I point out that in many cases the medicalization would be there anyway, but it would be done in a much more targeted way for the individual.
I will reiterate the term that I used which is medicalization. It is absolutely essential for Canadians through their government to compete against the ugly, evil organized crime. We have to take away its customers and profits. That will reduce the cost to our society.