Mr. Speaker, I have listened with great interest to my hon. colleague and to the debate all this morning.
Twenty-five years ago, I was working on the streets of Toronto with the homeless men coming out of prison and dealing with issues of addiction. Twenty-five years later, my daughter is now doing similar work on the streets of Toronto. When we talk about what has changed, it is really dismal to see how conditions have actually become worse for people on the streets, thanks of course to actions such as the Harris government's cutting of social housing and mental health services.
What my daughter tells me in terms of addiction is that the biggest costs they are facing right now are in the emergency wards, with people getting sick and people dying, as well as the heavy cost of police, who actually have become the front-line social workers in many situations. When we talk to the police on the ground on inner-city Toronto, they are saying that it is a complete waste of their resources.
My Conservative colleagues are always talking about being tough on crime, but the real dangers of crime that we see in the inner cities are desperate addicts. It is the same even in smaller communities, where people who are not on methadone and are not able to have safe injection become dangerous criminals. Then the police and the emergency services are the ones who have to deal with these very sad cases.
I would ask my hon. colleague this question: why would the Conservatives once again choose a dumb-down approach when very straightforward systems that work with health care and police have been proven time and again to be effective?
