Madam Speaker, I have to say, it is great that members of the community, organizations in the community, and the member of Parliament for Nepean—Carleton are prepared to be involved in these kinds of programs. We need to do that.
However, it strikes me like the old argument: Would it not be great if someday we did not have to hold bake sales for education but that the armed forces would have to hold a bake sale to have funds for carrying out war?
It would be really nice if governments could fund treatment appropriately so that these individual organizations did not have to do this kind of fundraising to support their programs, that we had programs on such a scale that people could get into them when they needed to, rather than having to wait.
When Chief White from Ottawa appeared before the committee, he talked about how programs were failing, how we were failing people with addictions because we did not have treatment places for them to go to as soon as they needed them.
We know that is true in Vancouver as well, where we are failing people who have made a determination that they need to deal with their addiction issues but they cannot get into a treatment program. When they wait, they backslide and the determination sometimes fails. We have to get those people into those programs immediately.
We also have to make sure that, when they come out of programs, they have transitional housing. Housing is a crucial issue around the issues of addiction. We need to make sure that people have decent housing to go to, housing that is probably not associated with their former routines and former neighbourhood and perhaps their former friends, so that they can make a clear break and establish themselves in a new pattern of life.
There are a number of issues related to all of this.