Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Trinity—Spadina for the statistics she gave with which I could not agree more. If the hon. member was listening to my speech, in fact the numbers she gave, the 73% on enforcement, and 7% on prevention, I also mentioned that there are certain aspects of the bill that have to be tough on crime because if we are not tough on crime we cannot deal with the problems we have in our society.
At the same time, I mentioned that the Conservative government is not looking at this as a health risk. I do agree with the member that we need to put more resources into preventive and treatment measures.
The member asked, how can I support it? It makes total sense to support this bill and send it to committee so that members of the committee can discuss the pros and cons of the bill and come up with a constructive, healthy bill that will put resources into prevention but at the same time be tough on crime.
The committee will have this responsibility and then we can bring in experts at committee to deal with this situation and put their input into the bill so when the bill comes back to the House it will be a more effective bill.
On the other hand, we all know how committees are functioning under this Conservative leadership. Basically the government does not even want to hear the input from members of the opposition. It is forgetting that 66% of the people elected the opposition. That is why it makes sense to send the bill to committee and allow the committee to work on this, so the bill will be more effective in every way.