Mr. Speaker, I had not intended to speak to this specific issue until I had heard some of the presentations in the House here today, in particular around the issues of treatment, housing, and dealing with addictions and the intersectionalities around mental health.
I just want to be clear that as we move forward on this important legislation, we are not leaving those elements out simply because they have not been spoken to specifically in the bill. There is an all-of-government approach to ensuring that the evidence-based process is dealing with the dynamics and tragedies, as well as with the challenges that the intersections among addiction and mental health pose, right across the board.
I want to highlight some of the ways we are doing that, just to make sure that Canadians listening tonight, as well as members of Parliament, understand that this is more than just simply a question of cannabis. This is a question of how we deal with some very significant challenges in society in general.
Let me start with housing. We know that there is a significant spend in the budget this year. It is more than just the $11.2 billion promised for a new national housing strategy. There is also a repurposing of the national housing program as it relates to homeless persons.
In addition to that, though, I think the most important accomplishment that has gone unnoticed in the House is in the health accords we have signed with the provinces, and in particular the province I represent, Ontario. There is a specific component for housing supports for dealing with addiction and mental health issues, and how they intersect. That is the support required to turn housing into supportive housing. It is the best way to deal with addiction and mental health issues, especially as they materialize in the lives of people who are chronically homeless.
While it is not specific to cannabis alone, because cannabis, quite frankly, is not the major pressure in that area, the reality is that there is a new era of treatment coming forward as a direct result of budget 2017, and tying together all these different pieces of legislation. I hope the NDP members can find it in their hearts to support the budget, because it delivers one of the best housing programs this country has ever seen.
Additional steps are also being taken on this front. The previous government had a very silent approach to the housing sector. It did not allow for the taking of a health care fund from a province or a municipality, or even a third party, as a subsidy to pay a mortgage for supportive housing. In other words, if there was a grant from CMHC to deliver supportive housing, the whole program was supposed to be run off that grant and not tie in other government programs to create the dynamic partnerships that are required to deal with the intersectionalities of health, mental health, and addiction issues.
We are removing those stipulations put in by the previous government to allow for dynamic partnerships on the ground to materialize in communities right across this country to deal with this issue, and in particular, in major cities where we know that addiction is having a huge impact on people who are homeless.
On the issue, again, of dealing with the impaired driving, dealing with the public education, and the support of the police departments in this area, we also know that our program, which is supporting municipalities with infrastructure dollars to unseen levels in this country, takes the pressure off municipal budgets and allows for municipal governments to have more flexibility to deal with the challenges as they materialize in their communities. This frees up resources, in particular, where local municipalities pay for policing to deliver that policing support.
We also know that downstream, as we start to move this program through the legislative process, as we start to move towards legislation, there needs to be an in-depth conversation with municipalities, local police forces, contracted police forces, aboriginal police forces, as well as municipalities and provinces, in terms of the public health side of this, as well as the public safety part of this.
The training of police officers and the support for police departments is very much front-of-mind as we start to move forward, but the first thing we have to get in place is the legislative regime. We have to get the public safety components in place. Then we have to sit down and talk to police forces as to the best way to deliver some of these resources.
I was on the police service board when the previous government made some changes to the Criminal Code and required specialized training for police forces. It mandated that training, which was only available in the United States, and did not provide any support for police officers to be trained. We, as local municipalities, had to pick up the costs for that.
That was really sort of typical of the previous government's complete lack of understanding of how their decisions impacted local municipalities. The program we were mandated to have our police officers take was not even offered in French, let alone in Canada. We were sending police officers south of the border to be trained to meet federal requirements, with no financial support but also no linguistic support for the francophone police forces right across the country.
I can assure the House that in this particular piece of legislation, we are cognizant of the whole-of-government approach that is required, and the specifics that are required to support municipalities as they deal with a lot of the enforcement and regulatory requirements to make sure the process is safe.
In particular around impaired driving, one of the most important things we have to keep in mind is that many of the arguments we are hearing from the other side, particularly in the last presentation around impaired driving, were the same arguments used to try to thwart breathalyzers coming in.
They were the same things that tried to slow down tougher drunk driving laws in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Once again there was a Progressive Conservative opposition and the Liberal government moved on these issues to protect public safety.
The other side pretends to be tough on crime, but as a good colleague of mine on this side of the House says, sometimes it is better to be smart on crime than tough on crime. If we are going to reduce the risk to public safety, we need to have these comprehensive conversations.
I want to assure the House on the positions raised by the New Democrats around the support for housing, treatment for drugs, and public education, those programs are under way. We can see it in the language of our health minister. We can see it in the language of our infrastructure minister. We can see it in the language of the minister I work with in families, children and social development. We can also see it in our new relationship with the municipalities.
We do not consider municipalities creatures of the provinces. They are a legitimate order of government in the country. We deal with them directly. If members come to the FCM conference over the next weekend, they will see what happens when there is actually a positive relationship, when we show up at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities with a full ministerial approach, what exactly a new relationship with municipalities looks like.
On this side, we are proud of that record. It is one of the reasons so many of us from municipal councils ran to come to Ottawa to change the way the federal government spoke with municipalities, large or small, northern or southern, remote, rural, or coastal. It is a proud achievement of our government that not only are we funding municipalities, but we are also working with them to develop policies to make their laws and bylaws more effective, and our laws, rules, and regulations more effective.
We do the same thing with the aboriginal governments and provincial governments. That is why a whole of government approach and an all of Canada approach is going to pay off with such dividends, especially as we move toward a much better Criminal Code, a much better approach to impaired driving, and a much better partnership in terms of making sure when we deliver those services, they are there.
To recap very quickly, housing money is there; treatment dollars are there; supportive housing capacity is being built in our country; additional resources are being delivered to cities to pick up the tab on some of these challenges. The dialogue continues, and it is a good dialogue. I hope the rest of Parliament can support us as we move forward on this, because it is a new era in federal-municipal relations. It is entirely focused on giving cities the capacity they need to deliver programs that we are working with in concert to deliver.