Mr. Speaker, it is truly such an honour to be here today to speak to this spectacular bill. I want to sincerely thank my friend, my colleague, the member for Kitchener Centre for being willing to be vulnerable, for being willing to share her story with each and every one of us and to use the pain, the struggle that she went through as she was dealing with addiction early in her life, and how she turned that into a spectacular life. I have had the opportunity of meeting her daughter and seeing the accomplishments she made in her professional life before she came to Parliament. To find out that years prior she had been homeless and sleeping on park benches in the community that she now gets to represent in Parliament, I think, is a huge testament to the fact that recovery is possible.
What stops so many people from going after recovery is not having the tools to get there, the off-ramps. This is one of the pieces that Conservatives have been consistent in sharing. We need to meet people where they are at, but we cannot just leave them there. We need to give them the tools so they can get into detox and then, from that space, from detox into treatment. In my province of Alberta, the fact that people can do that without having to mortgage a house or wait six years on a wait-list has made the difference as to whether people stay sick or get better. I want to see more support for recovery because people truly can and do get better.
Here is the piece: When people are in jail, and the root cause of some of their criminality is addiction, we really owe it to ourselves to make sure we are treating that root cause of the addiction.
For every single person I have met who is now in recovery from addiction, the single hardest thing they have had to do in their life is getting sober and staying sober, confronting the demons of some of the actions and activities they did that were not in line with their values and confronting some of the really tough things they did when they were trying to just survive and get by. We should be offering tools while people are incarcerated so they can get better, and not just offering those tools but allowing that to be in consideration for parole and giving incentives so people can do that.
Right now, if someone is seeking out treatment in incarceration in Canada, the steps they have to go through in most provinces are quite hard. Most people cannot even get into an NA or AA meeting if they are in jail. That is a failure of our system. It costs effectively nothing, yet in so many jurisdictions, it is hard to even get that for people who are struggling with addiction. This bill would take the huge step of not just telling people that addiction is a health condition and needs to be treated as such but clearly stating that we have hope, that we believe they can get better and that we know recovery is possible.
That is the single most inspiring piece we can do. This is the most important piece. If people want to get started on that hard and long path toward recovery, it starts one step at a time, to do the next right thing, and this is the next right thing.
I would encourage every single member in this chamber to put aside partisanship, to realize that this, what we are talking about right now, can make a huge difference in the lives of so many Canadians. I would urge every single member to unreservedly support the member for Kitchener Centre's private member's bill, Bill C-240, and make a very clear statement that recovery is possible.