Mr. Speaker, in response to the hon. member for Yukon, another Liberal member from the provincial government in Ontario, a former justice minister, famously said about a year ago that the Liberal approach to crime was stuck in the summer of love. What we have seen, even from the type of questions that we get, is that there is such a hesitancy on the part of members opposite to get tough in any way on crime.
Our bill strikes what I think is an extremely reasonable balance between all of our goals, which is to help people who are addicted to drugs, but to get tough on those who are producing drugs, who are distributing drugs, who are putting drugs into our communities.
We all represent, as the member for Yukon said, from coast to coast to coast, communities in Canada, both rural and urban, that are struggling with drug problems and young people who are addicted to drugs. We want to cut this off.
I would have to ask, is what we are doing now working? The approach that is soft on people who produce drugs, soft on people who distribute drugs, a system that says there is no or very little consequence to a person's actions, that the person can commit a serious crime involving drugs and perhaps not go away to jail, is that working? That is not the message we want to be sending to society or to our young people. We have to show that we will be tough on those who produce methamphetamines in labs in our country.
I commend to the member the stats that I gave that show an alarming rise in methamphetamine labs, both small labs and superlabs. Individuals are taking legal substances, cooking them up and creating a very harmful and in some cases deadly concoction that has a devastating impact for those who are addicted to methamphetamine, preying on the most vulnerable. I say there should be no tolerance in our society for those who would operate a meth lab and have this product eventually wind up in the hands of our young people.
We have to be caring. We have to show compassion for those who are addicted to drugs. This bill does that. We also have to get tough on those who would produce drugs and put this scourge on to our communities, both rural and urban.