Madam Speaker, I think we have all had to deal with issues of addiction. I suspect that not many people in Canada have not had a family member, a friend or a colleague who has dealt with addiction. Most people struggling with addiction are not the people we see living on the streets in our cities' urban cores or getting into trouble with the police. Most addicts are people who look exactly like those of us who sit here in the House of Commons. Most of us know there are drug addicts who go to work every day, support their families and live with those addictions and those circumstances. When we talk about addiction as if it is a problem of a particular neighbourhood in our cities, we are missing the point about dealing with addictions.
I want to come back to a point the member for Halifax raised and it is one that has been drawn to my attention by a number of the people I know who struggle with addiction and who struggle with treatment for addiction. It is the whole issue of people trying to get treatment immediately when they are ready to go to it. The moment people who are struggling with addiction want to deal it by getting treatment, there should be a place for them. The moment we put that off for someone, we know we have lost. When people are put on a waiting list and then called in a couple of weeks, the moment has usually passed and getting them into a successful treatment program has gone. They will wait months, perhaps years or maybe never for that moment to return. Treatment is a very crucial issue and we need more of treatment places.
The member for Halifax alluded to the need for supportive housing for people who go through an addiction treatment process. When someone emerges from treatment, they need to be removed from where they were before, which was often with friends where addiction was the focal point of their life. These people need a home where they can find support to remain clean and sober and one that does not get them back into the circle of friends and acquaintances who were part of the problem they were experiencing before. We do not have that kind of supportive housing available in most of our communities. We need a much more extensive and broader national housing program that not only deals with the need for affordable housing, but with the need for supportive housing for people coming out of treatment programs for alcohol and drug addiction. That is a huge problem that is not being addressed in Canada now.
This is not a program that will be addressed by a one-time only injection of money into housing programs. We need a consistent, ongoing, regular national housing program with significant ongoing and multi-year participation by the federal government.