Madam Speaker, the sad part about all of this is that the House of Commons studied drugs for the first time in 1972 for 18 months and made 41 recommendations, many of which could have been implemented. The government looked at the recommendations and said that they were more conservative than they should be so it got rid of this issue and threw out the decriminalization of marijuana idea.
Meanwhile, as my colleague has just said, we in Canada suffer from the lack of a drug strategy. We suffer from many young people dying from and getting addicted to other serious drugs. The government is basically doing nothing about it. Canadians should know that the government's philosophy on drugs is probably one of the poorest in the world and that would include Holland.
One of the things that is a real problem with the bill is that the government will tell all Canadians that this marijuana bill will get tough on marijuana grow ops. It has put maximum penalties in place. There has not been a maximum penalty issued in British Columbia, as near as I can find, for about 10 years. That is under the old regime, so what the government is saying is that we will have penalties for $25,000 for grow ops.
People will virtually walk away with a $200 fine or a $500 fine. In my area in particular, we have over 400 grow ops ruining houses for young people who are buying them. Crystal meth labs that the government is not even dealing with are ruining houses, and killing people and addicting kids at a faster rate than heroin.
I would like to ask my colleague, who is a former attorney general of Manitoba, a question. What purpose would a law serve if there is a maximum penalty or a ceiling on a penalty that says if there is a grow op of a certain number of stalks, the offender could be fined up to $50,000 or X number of years in prison, when in the courtrooms many lawyers and judges are saying we should legalize it. The maximum penalty issue is not there because they are getting minimum penalties.
What is the purpose of establishing a law that in effect will not be applied?