Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca used the term “moral obligation”; does the government have a moral obligation. I think he would agree with me that it had a moral obligation to intervene in the case of a Canadian on death row in Montana. It took a federal court to force it to do that. The Conservatives had a moral obligation to deal with the case of Omar Khadr, who is still at Guantanamo Bay, a Canadian citizen who was a child soldier. It took the federal court yesterday to force them to do that.
I do not have a lot of confidence that the Conservative government accepts it has a moral obligation, as my colleague from British Columbia so correctly identified, to treat the addiction problem as one of health. My colleague, being a physician, knows more than I would about some of the medical aspects of addiction, but what I do know is that in British Columbia there have been a number of very progressive initiatives, whether it is Insite in Vancouver or whether it is the project he spoke about a minute ago. These initiatives have been supported by public health officials, by provincial law enforcement officials, by the Government of British Columbia. In our view, they are a very important part of dealing with crime prevention, treating the root cause of crime, which in many cases can be addiction, or as my colleague noted, in some cases can also involve a complex or difficult mental illness.
The Conservative government focuses on punishing those who commit crimes, instead of trying to help prevent crimes and deal with some of the root causes of crimes, such as addiction. Conservatives talk about an announcement they made some years ago about a drug strategy. That will do very little compared to supporting public health authorities and the provincial government of British Columbia in the example my colleague used.
My colleague also spoke about the issue of modernizing investigative techniques, lawful access, as it is known. He is absolutely right. The government has hesitated and has taken a great deal of time to introduce a bill that would modernize the ability of the police to deal with electronic surveillance of organized crime groups in a way that recognizes 21st century technology and not technology or instruments of communication that may have been around 50 years ago.
My colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine has a private member's bill that deals with exactly that issue. I think it was in 2005 that the then minister of public safety in a previous Liberal government introduced a bill, which was not passed by the time the 2005-06 election was called, to modernize investigative techniques and to give the police the tools they desperately need to go after these organized crime groups.
I agree with my colleague. There is very much a hesitation on the part of the government to complete the puzzle. Conservatives focus on one narrow band of the problem and we supported them with respect to increasing penalties, but we also believe they need a more comprehensive approach and they need to accept that harm reduction on addictions and some of the health-based research and projects that have begun in some parts of the country also form a very important part of reducing crime and helping people live healthy and productive lives.