Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague from Victoria. He made some very good points. I hate to say it, but he makes good points in the House quite frequently on a range of issues. He is a pretty smart fellow.
On any criminal justice issue, it is really important to look at examples from other countries. For instance, if we want to talk about things like mandatory minimums, we could look at the U.S. and say that if putting more people in jail for longer periods of time created safer communities, then American cities would be the safest in the world.
However, on the decriminalization side of marijuana and some other drugs, if we look at the Portugal example, 12 years ago Portugal decriminalized marijuana and some other drugs. Since then, the rate of drug abuse and addiction has declined because the government redirected money that it was spending in the past on interdiction, jail and the whole police and judicial system on health promotion. It treated drugs as a medical issue and invested in mental health, addiction treatment and health promotion, telling people the dangers of it.
Does the hon. member agree that perhaps things could lead to less drug abuse and addiction if we redirected resources to health promotion, mental health treatment and addiction treatment?