Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member opposite for his address on this particular bill.
While I agree with a lot of what he had to say and a lot of his sentiments, I have to take exception to one or two of his points, the first one being that the bill has been slowed down in the House and can be obstructed by members of the opposition.
I want to point out to the hon. member that he admitted where the logjam was, which was when the Prime Minister called an election one year ahead of his own fixed election date. His problems with the bill really started with the procedural process. As long as the member recognizes that, we will do on our side what we can to move the bill along.
I think the Liberal Party member who spoke earlier made a very good point when he suggested that the bill should have been introduced by the government. This is not the only bill in that category. Another one is by the member for Kildonan—St. Paul dealing with trafficking of children. That too is an example of a bill that the government itself should have introduced.
I admire the members who are doing this because, having been around this business for a long time, I know how hard it is at times to take on one's own government. I admire them for making the effort to bring ideas into the House as private members' bills, which the government will not necessarily accept. It is a longer and more tortuous process but I do not think they should give up on those ideas. If there any other ideas that members have that they cannot get through their caucuses or through their government, they should do what the member did. Bring them in as private members' bills and let us debate them here. The members might be surprised to find that those bills might actually become law at the end of the day.
I want to deal with several issues. One of them is the whole business of the pill compression machine issue. Even though the member tells me it will more or less be covered by the bill, I really do not see where that is automatic.
I see there is a provision for a schedule and the schedule will deal with substances. I note that proposed section 7.1 states that, “No person shall possess, produce, sell or import anything knowing that it will be used to produce or traffic in a substance referred to in” these schedules.
Whether the member thinks that pill-making compression machines are going to be covered by that, I am just not sure. It seems to me that perhaps it might be dealt with by a special measure, perhaps through Health Canada regulations. I am just not sure how the member would proceed, but I think it maybe should be dealt with in addition to what the member is referring to.
When we track this through, the whole issue becomes one of money. There is a saying, follow the money. I think that is the way the government should be looking at this. When we follow the money we find out this is a problem that involves big business, that this is really a big organized business.
The member in his speech has pointed out there are big organized gangs operating this business. As a matter of fact, the Americans who spoke to me about the pill compression machines pointed out to me, as was also indicated by one of the members tonight, that this has now turned into a problem where Canada is a big exporter of these pills. The Americans say there are labs in Toronto that are producing huge quantities for the American market.
The Americans have identified the pill compression machines as the reason for this and say that in the United States they are controlling the inputs, the pill making machines, so the bad guys have simply moved their operation up to Toronto and into Canada to get around the rules that they have there on the pill compression machines. I am not sure that is entirely the full part of the problem but certainly some of them think that it is.
I want to get back to the whole area of the money and big business. Our party and our critic has pointed out this issue that the Conservative government tends to focus a lot on enforcement. We have been through this story before with the United States, with Ronald Reagan and his mandatory minimums and the “three strikes you're out”. What have we seen after 25 years? We have seen prisons filled to capacity. Many more prisons are being built by private persons. At the end of the day, however, the crime rate is even higher than it was before. So once again, let us do things that work.
Clearly, we need to chase small time drug dealers and put them in jail, but we should not be measuring our success by how many of those people we pick up, prosecute and put in jail when the problem just keeps expanding. We need to look at what else is going on.
When we look behind the veils we see that there is organized crime. It is not motorcycle guys driving around behind this. The men in suits who live in fancy houses are funding this business. It costs money to buy these ingredients, to set up these houses, to buy pill compression machines and hire the expertise to make these drugs. Based on what I have read, the average person cannot cook up this stuff on a stove. The person needs to have some sort of a background in chemistry in order to do that. Otherwise they would be blowing themselves up and taking the neighbourhood with it.
I have to admit that I never heard of these drugs until mid-age. When we grew up we never knew about drugs until we hit the end of high school into university and then they were simply the common drugs that we know, such as marijuana and so on. However, we never contemplated what we see going on here. The member in his speech talked about these pills being made with smiley faces mixed in with terrible and dangerous chemicals that are basically being pushed by essentially big business corporations onto the street to little street dealers to go out and entice kids in school to take them.
At the end of the day, the big businesses have money so they hire lawyers. The lawyers tell them how to protect themselves. The reason law enforcement is catching just the little fish is that the big guys are never at the scene of the crime. However, they are funding and controlling the operation, which is what we need to address here.
I have been highly supportive of the white collar criminal legislation. The member is suggesting that the bill should have a million dollar limit but I am saying that is way too high. It should maybe be $100,000 or only $50,000. When white collar criminals steal from people they should know they will be going to jail for a minimum sentence of a couple of years and maybe that will stop them.