Mr. Speaker, I say that because I read the budgets. I said that the government has put in less money, devoted less money over the next five years for addictions treatment than the previous government had budgeted for the same time period. That is just a fact. I would be happy to sit down with my colleague and go through the last budget tabled by the Conservative government and compare it to the budget that was just tabled a few months ago, that show the expenditures over the next four years and I will show him in black and white where it says that.
I do congratulate the government on changing this legislation, as it is long overdue, but I will give it a bit of criticism for taking so long. This is a public health emergency. We must remember that the New Democrats started raising this issue in February 2016. We are approaching a year and a half later where we have legislation before the House and in that 18 months there has not even been a declaration federally of a public health emergency, which would have the positive impact of actually sanctioning the current overdose prevention sites that are operating in Vancouver against the law currently. The government will not do that.
I have asked repeatedly. First, the Liberals said that there is no need to declare it a public health emergency because it does not do anything. When I pointed out that actually it would do two things, that it would allow emergency funding to flow and it would allow them to sanction the currently illegal overdose prevention sites, I heard silence from them. While I will congratulate the current government on taking some positive steps, again, I will give it no credit for progress until the death rates in this country start going down. Liberals cannot get credit when more people are dying every month from opioid overdoses than the previous month. I will measure progress on this side of the House when death rates go down, not up, unlike my colleagues in the Liberal Party.