Mr. Speaker, there are two aspects to the hon. member's very good question.
As I indicated in my comments, the part of the bill that deals with serious drugs is part of a national anti-drug strategy that has three distinct prongs: preventing illicit drug use, treating those with illicit drug dependencies, and combatting the production and distribution of illicit drugs.
I concur with the hon. member that individuals who are incarcerated because of their addictions need access to rehabilitative programs. The public safety committee in the last Parliament, as she might know, wrote a comprehensive report on drug dependency and rehabilitation programs that are available in the federal penitentiary system.
The second part of her question is actually more challenging, and that is the whole notion that crime is somehow on the decline. I have to concede that officially reported crime statistics as reported by Statistics Canada based on how it measures crime in fact show decreases. However, Statistics Canada also surveys Canadians on whether or not they have been victims, and victimization is way up. In any given year, over 25% of Canadians state that they have been a victim of crime. Happily, most of that is property crime, and is not as serious, but nonetheless, victimization surveys show that crime is up.
With respect to the notion that crime is somehow diminishing, that is only officially reported crime statistics. The reason is that the police have changed how they measure crime. For example, if an individual breaks into three houses on one night, that used to be counted as three crimes, but now it is counted as one. The bigger problem is that Canadians are so fed up with the justice system they are not reporting crime. Officially reported crime might be down, but crime is not down.