Mr. Speaker, I have two questions for the member, who I know is well versed in these areas, so they will be in-depth questions.
First, the hon. member made the obvious point that some of these measures are the same ones that the United States followed and there was no appreciable reduction in drug use. Pretty well everyone involved in the justice system knows that. Therefore, my question is this: where was the breakdown in communication? Obviously the Department of Justice researches these items and would have had this information to give to the government to show that this is not what works.
Everyone wants to reduce drug use. Does the member believe that the Department of Justice would have informed the minister of this and that the government could have come up with a more effective strategy? Where does he think the breakdown was there? That is the first question.
Second, as for the philosophy of this, if a person was in the jail system long enough to get appropriate treatment to deal with the root causes of the problem, the person would not just be kept there, have the sentence extended and come back exactly the same. We would assume that by staying in jail longer a person would get more treatment and that there would be effective and sufficient treatment in the criminal justice system.
The member probably knows better than I: does he feel that the treatments available while a person is incarcerated in today's federal justice system are sufficient?