Madam Speaker, I would like to take the last part first.
I indicated, in the short period of time I had during question period, that the Prime Minister announced in Winnipeg the national anti-drug strategy. Two-thirds of the new money in that program went directly to programs to help educate and work with individuals who, unfortunately, have become addicted or might consider experimenting with drugs.
I was very pleased to see that. There are a whole group of initiatives that have been undertaken by this government under the guns, gangs and drugs initiatives, the national crime prevention programs, whereby individuals, groups and governments can make application to get assistance to help work with people because we want to get people out of this business. We want to discourage them from getting into it and we want to help those who have found themselves addicted.
Part of what needs to be done is sending out the correct message to these individuals that these kinds of actions will not be tolerated.
When we were discussing the Tackling Violent Crime Act, I alluded to the fact that we had mandatory jail times in there for people who commit serious firearms offences. One of the opposition members said to me that my problem was that I did not understand that sometimes these people do not understand the consequences of their actions. I said that that was where I and my government wanted to help. We want those people to get the message and five years in a federal penitentiary is a great start. We are even going further. If they do not get the message the first time, they will get seven years in a penitentiary because that will give them the opportunity to understand just how serious these offences are.
This is what we are doing in this bill as well. We are giving those individuals time to figure out what they are doing. However, here is the other part of it. We are helping to break up gang activity. Police officers in British Columbia told me that getting these people off the street will disrupt the gang activity.
It is a comprehensive approach, with respect to the hon. member's question. With respect to the other items, I do not want to get into the situation that we were in in the last Parliament. We had five good bills for about a year and a half none of them passed. They were all bills that we needed and that were important for Canada but because it was a minority Parliament none of them went through.
I do not want to get into that situation again so we are taking these one step at a time. We have two bills. I introduced another bill, the third one, the anti-terrorism act provisions, and we know how hard that was to get that through the last Parliament. I am optimistic that with the increased focus, this 11th hour conversion that we are seeing from so many members of the House of Commons, that they will be on side with us--