Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for the wonderful advocacy he does in his riding. My home town is Kirkland Lake, Ontario, which is in the hon. member's riding. I hear so many great stories from my family about the wonderful advocacy he does there.
The hon. member's story certainly rings true in Halifax, as well. OxyContin is not as big an issue in Halifax, but we certainly have an issue with it in Cape Breton, and there are a lot of other drugs in Halifax.
When the hon. member said in particular that police officers are forced to be social workers, that resonated so much with me as a legal aid worker.
I would have people come to me and say they needed to stay housed. They were having problems with their landlord and they asked me to help them. I would try. I would tell them they were late on rent and I would call their landlord to negotiate a settlement. We would go to residential tenancies and make up a payment plan.
Often, clients would not be able to keep that payment plan. They would come back and say, “I screwed up. I did not pay this. I do not know what to do. I am going to be evicted”. So we would redraft the plan: what are we going to do? There was a constant redrafting of the plan. Obviously, something was up.
When I would talk to the client, it would come out that they had addictions and were on a waiting list for treatment. While I was doing my best to work within the legal system to try to help them stay housed, the biggest enemy was not the landlord, and not even the client, it was the drugs, the addiction.
We are in a situation where a legal aid worker is forced to become a social worker. What do I know about helping people kick their habits? Not much. However, we need to do this. We need to look at prevention and treatment.