Mr. Speaker, of course, I support and we support further research into a vaccine. There is great hope in that for many people in our country and around the world. The vaccine is something that is in the future. We are talking about people who are dying right now, today, as we speak because of HIV-AIDS, infection and drug addiction.
We know that there are far too many cracks for them to fall through in the current system that we have. Just a few weeks ago the member for Burnaby—New Westminster and I met with the Burnaby New Westminster task force on sexual exploitation of children and youth. It raised the issues of the cracks that young people, who are seeking treatment for drug addiction, can fall through.
We know that when a young person decides, or any person decides, to seek treatment for drug addiction that the treatment needs to be available immediately. It was pointed out to us that in the Vancouver area it is often possible to get someone into detox right away, which is the first step in that process.
When these people finish detox, they come out and they need to be housed some place because they always have to wait for treatment because the waiting list for treatment is so long and the places are so few and far between. However, when they come out of detox before they go to treatment, there are no transitional housing places for them to go. We cannot send them back to where they were before. They cannot be put back on the street or couch surfing in the environment where they were using drugs before because that will only set back their determination and the possibilities of treatment.
Once they get into treatment and they are finished treatment, they come out and again, they need supportive housing operations so that what they learned and the treatment that they experienced can continue outside of the actual clinical or treatment facility setting. Yet, it is hard to find those kinds of housing options for people. Again, the transitional housing just is not there.
Then again, we need to find independent housing options for those young people, so that they can take up a life and apply what they have learned, the kinds of treatments they have gone through, the kind of ongoing commitment they have to staying clean and sober. If they have to go back on the street, if they go back to couch surfing because there is no home for them, all of that is lost.
Those cracks related to housing between the various points of the treatment process are very serious indeed and are not addressed by the kinds of housing policies that we have at the federal government level. We had the first housing conference this week of provincial housing ministers in two and a half years, and unfortunately the federal minister of housing refused to participate in that meeting. I think that is a shameful act on his part.
The federal minister should have been there to contribute, to show that the federal government was interested in pursuing and participating in the solution to the housing crisis in Canada. Yet, the federal government chose to be absent. That is not acceptable and it needs to be fixed.