Mr. Speaker, that is exactly the kind of program we need. I am glad the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca has highlighted that work in British Columbia.
We need to work on the prevention side of the equation. We are falling down on that. We do not give the attention that young people need to divert them away from a potential life of crime. We do not deal with the question of drug addiction in our communities. We do not deal with the dislocation of families in our communities.
In my community of Burnaby the greatest crime problems are car thefts and break and enter. We know of the high correlation between those crimes and issues of drug addiction. Yet trying to get someone into a drug treatment program remains an incredibly difficult proposition in British Columbia.
If we could take that $250 million, which we estimate will cost the provincial correctional systems, and put that into drug addiction treatment programs, we would make a far more significant dent in crime in our communities than this proposed legislation ever has a hope of doing. We need to put our emphasis on that.
We need to look at our whole criminal approach to drugs as well. I am someone who believes that prohibition did not work with alcohol and it has not worked with drugs either. It has led to the same kind of criminal activity that we saw during the period of alcohol prohibition in the United States.
There are lessons to be learned, and there are better places to spend the money than what this kind of proposal would cost.