Mr. Speaker, we are willing to stand and tell the truth. We heard the minister say that the Conservatives were sending a clear message and getting tough on traffickers. The fact is the bill applies to one plant all the way up to over 500. I have given examples where people could be convicted of trafficking for simply giving one plant to a neighbour or for being in a car and transporting a plant.
I will tell the minister what people in B.C. are saying. Ann Livingston, the executive director of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, says:
There's a term that's used for arresting people who use drugs in our neighbourhood and it's the low-hanging fruit. There's a sense of shooting fish in a barrel.
That is what the minister is doing. Those are the easy targets. The bill will not go after the kingpins, otherwise it would not make references to the drug treatment courts.
Philippe Lucas, who is from The Vancouver Island Compassion Society, says that Canadians deserve policies that will actually achieve this goal of dealing with problematic substance use and not ill-considered responses that have been proven to actually increase judicial and incarceration costs, as well as the transmission of HIV-AIDS and hepatitis C.