Mr. Speaker, my friend opposite and I are family, because as he indicated, he and I both served our communities in uniform and dedicated our lives to protecting kids and keeping communities safe. He will always have my respect for that.
I accept the commiserations that the member offered and the spirit in which they were given, but I want to assure him that they were unnecessary. I cannot say how proud I am to be a member of this government and to have been given the privilege and opportunity to work with and on behalf of the Minister of Justice in finding ways in which we can do a better job of protecting our kids, to restrict their access to a drug that I believe can be very dangerous for them, and to do a better job of keeping our communities safe by taking billions of dollars of criminal enterprise away from organized crime. Like the member opposite, I have spent a great deal of my life fighting organized crime. I know, as he does, what organized crime does in our communities, and the violence and victimization that it is responsible for. I also believe that we have a responsibility to protect the health of our citizens, and I know that the poison sold by criminals is often contaminated with dangerous chemicals and adulterated with even more dangerous drugs.
I have travelled across this country and spoken to families whom I have also worked hard to protect. They have told me they are worried about the health of their kids. They have told me they are worried about the outcomes for those kids in exposing them to those criminals. They are worried that their kids are going to end up with a criminal record.
I would ask the member whether he has given it any thought. Doing nothing is not an option. If not strictly regulating the production, distribution, and consumption of cannabis, restricting the access that kids would have to it, and taking this profit away from crime, what would the member do instead?