Mr. Speaker, I want to first respond to what the member said she very much wanted to hear. The government has committed a substantial amount of money for public education, particularly around drug impaired driving. She will begin to see evidence of that made public in November, in the coming weeks.
Back in the 39th Parliament, in 2007, the government of the day introduced legislation that introduced the concept of the drug recognition expert and standardized field sobriety testing. That law was enacted some six months later and came into effect almost immediately, on July 2 of that year. The government of the day allocated $2 million for training of all law enforcement and drug recognition experts. Our government has been working with the law enforcement community for over two years on this. We have given them more than 14 months to prepare, and we have allocated not $2 million, but $161 million, for the training of police officers, for the training of additional drug recognition experts, and for the training of those thousands of officers who require training in standardized field sobriety testing. Not only are we providing training for the new technologies that are being made available, we are making sure that we are going to pay for those technologies. We have made available the resources they asked for.
I would like to ask the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo if she is reassured by the knowledge that this time, we have listened to what law enforcement has asked of us. We listened when they said they needed the resources and they needed the training, and we have responded according to their requests.