Madam Speaker, I will be supporting private member's Bill C-475 but I do have my doubts about whether or not it would actually do anything. I am left wondering if the bill would be effective or if it is more empty rhetoric with a tough on crime agenda from the Conservative government.
I wonder that because I do not understand quite yet why the existing Controlled Drugs and Substances Act is not adequate to deal with the issue that the member has brought forward since it already is illegal to produce, traffic or import methamphetamines and ecstasy. I am looking forward to hearing from witnesses to see what exactly could be done.
In looking at this bill for the purpose of debate, I would like to first consider other legislative and non-criminal options that are available to us.
Several states in the United States have moved to regulate these kinds of chemicals at the source, and they did not actually use criminal law. They used commercial and consumer regulations. A chain of information is created, tracking the sale of these chemicals and reporting to whom they were sold and in what volume. Anyone along that chain of purchasing has to do the same thing, so the chemical is resold in smaller quantities. The purchaser must list to whom the chemical has been sold and provide an explanation as to what it will be used for. It has been quite effective in restricting labs in the United States, so I wonder why we are not doing the same here in Canada.
Next I would like to talk about Canada's move toward the criminalization of drug use and the movement away from the treatment of drug use.
This bill and all the other drug bills that we have seen come through this House as of late all reek of playing into the fears of a public that the government is happy to keep uninformed about the realities of addiction and drugs in Canada, which continues a pattern of inefficient, ineffective and misguided policies.
Last year, the head of the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy, Eugene Oscapella, said:
We've had 101 years of drug prohibition in Canada. All of the problems we have seen with drugs have occurred under this system. The solution is not to do more of the same.
I do agree with that.
The government has continuously rejected the idea that there are other options to addressing drug policy. For example, despite having the lifesaving success of harm reduction measures, such as needle exchanges and Vancouver's safe injection site Insite in reducing the spread of HIV and hepatitis C among drug users and increasing access to treatment, in 2007 the government introduced a new anti-drug strategy for Canada that removed all references to harm reduction, every one of them.
Instead, the government has put greater emphasis on law enforcement, back to tough on crime, moving Canada closer toward an expensive and failed U.S.-style war on drugs. In fact, just 3% of Canada's current drug policy budget goes to prevention, if members can believe it, with over 73% going toward enforcement and, no surprise, drug use continues to rise. We are taking a page out of George Bush's failed U.S. drug strategy.
The government unilaterally changed Canada's drug policy to get rid of harm reduction measures. We know that “just say no” campaigns do not work. There are realities that we are not facing as a society that are really the root of drug use. I am speaking of realities like poverty, access to education, access to justice, non-judgmental health services, a lack of addiction services, education budgets that have been slashed and extracurricular programs that are quickly and continuously vanishing. We tell our youth to just say no but we give them very few options and very little information to actually make choices for themselves.
There are solutions that the NDP can get behind. I will start off with what we know about drug use in Canada. In 1994, 28% of Canadians reported to have used illicit drugs but by 2004 that number had gone up to 45%. These numbers tell us that a broad, holistic approach to the problem is necessary. We cannot just rely on putting people in jail. That is not a solution. The problem is much more complicated than that, so we need to look at what else is going on. A national treatment strategy is really an idea that we can get behind.
The National Framework for Action to Reduce the Harms Associated with Alcohol and Other Drugs and Substances in Canada is a 2008 working group. Its members include not only federal and provincial health agencies, like Health Canada and Nova Scotia Health Promotion and Protection, but also related agency representatives from the Correctional Service of Canada, College of Family Physicians in Canada and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse.
This working group pointed out that research findings suggest that providing appropriate services and supports across a range of systems, so back to the holistic idea, not only reduces substance use problems but it also improves a wide range of outcomes related to health, social functioning and criminal justice.
Such a spectrum of services and supports is also a good investment for government because it returns economic benefits that far outstrip its cost. That is actually from the report of the working group. This group is calling for a national treatment strategy. It is a strategy that would include building capacity across a continuum of services and supports, supporting the continuum of services and supports, developing a research program and reducing stigma and discrimination.
Young people need to have access to realistic and useful information about resources. We know that children are encountering drug culture from an early age, so prevention and education should be just as aggressive as the sellers.
We want kids to make the right decisions but to do that we need to give them the tools. Similar to safer sex campaigns, education needs to include information about being safe if one is taking drugs, how to seek support if one has an addiction and not just a lot of commercials about the horrors of drugs.
I could certainly support any bill that looked at a four pillar approach to this issue. The four pillar approach has been successful in cities across the U.S., the U.K. and Europe. It is based on the four pillars of prevention that we have talked about many times here: prevention, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement. All pillars are equally important and have to be integrated and jointly implemented to be effective.
In 2002, the House special committee on the non-medical use of drugs, the Office of the Auditor General and the Senate committee all called for: strengthened leadership; coordination and accountability with dedicated resources; enhanced data collection to set measurable objectives, evaluate programs and report on progress; balance of supply and demand activities across government; and increased emphasis on prevention, treatment and rehabilitation. We have seen that the four pillar approach has been approved and recommended by members of this place.
Our drug policies need to be based on research, not on public opinion. We should avoid legislation that increases the already imbalanced and overfunded enforcement approach to drug use in Canada without reducing crimes or drug rate use. Legislation really needs to address the problems of violent or organized crime and not in this patchwork way that we are seeing by the government.
The Conservatives are taking Canada in the wrong direction. This is a direction that is expensive, has no effect on drug use and will only increase the prison population creating a whole new set of issues, like overpopulation, health, safety and crime issues within the prison system.
Would the bill do anything? I am unsure but would it not be great if the bill would take a reality based approach to drug policy that is rooted in this four pillar approach? Would it not be great if this bill considered better and more prevention programs to divert youth at risk? Would it not be great if this bill looked at more resources for prosecution and enforcement of existing laws? Would this bill not be better if more officers were on the street as promised by the Conservatives but not yet delivered? Would this bill not be better if it introduced an overall coordinated strategy focused on gangs and organized crime? Would it not be better if it actually looked at toughened proceeds of crime legislation?