Madam Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to speak on the bill. We certainly hope that the bill gets speedy passage through the House because of its importance to Canada and Canadians.
What does the bill do? It enables police officers to do both the physical tests and the tests on bodily fluids to determine a person's ability to function behind a wheel and to ascertain whether the person's ability to drive a vehicle is impaired by drugs.
I use the term “drugs” loosely, because it involves a very large number of substances, not only the traditional drug of alcohol but also a whole panoply of other drugs that have recently come into society and can have quite a dramatic impact on a person's ability to drive a vehicle with competence. It involves not only those that are illegal, but also a group of them that are legal, which I will get to in a while. The group of legally acquired medications we can get over the counter can, with alcohol, have quite a substantial effect on impairment.
I will say this: what is not well known and not well addressed is the level at which these substances are used by kids in high school. They are substances acquired over the counter that can impair a person's ability to function physically and mentally. Examples are those drugs we use to prevent nausea and motion sickness and, indeed, the cough medications that have low levels of narcotics. If people take enough of these and combine them with alcohol, particularly persons who are tiny, small and young, they have a combination in their bodies that might lead them to have quite a significant impairment in their ability to drive a vehicle. I will get to that in a moment.
The bill is important for a number of factors. It enables us to deal with the most important aspect of driving a car, which is the ability to actually function behind the wheel. The tests will enable police not only to convict somebody, but also to exonerate somebody who is innocent. It is a physical test, to be sure, and also it is a test for accessing bodily fluids. If people choose to say no to those tests, they will be charged, convicted and fined for not adhering to that request from the police, just like somebody who refuses a sobriety test for alcohol.
The test is important because it also would give our police forces a number of training opportunities that will enable this particular facility to be across our country with great rapidity. Our government is putting a lot of resources into doing just that.
On a personal note, I would like to say why this is important. I think many of us have actually seen people or know families who have sustained the loss of a loved one in a drunk driving accident. We know that those families pay a price long after that loved one has died. In fact, I would submit to members that they never get over it. The person is yanked out of our lives. At one moment in the morning the person is alive and perhaps by nightfall we get that dreaded call that our loved one has died, died in an instant because someone chose to get behind a wheel, inebriated from many sources, and drove into that person's vehicle, killing them. The people could have been driving a vehicle or maybe they were pedestrians. Even people on bicycles are run over. These are heinous losses that we hope we will never have to confront. Sadly, some of us do.
It also bespeaks the larger problem of substance abuse. The member on the other side, the deputy leader, spoke about the issue of marijuana. I would like to go into that for a moment.
There have been some criticisms from the other side, but let me make it very clear that this government and everyone in this House, all of us, are committed to the reduction of use of marijuana and all illegal substances. There is not a person in the House, I would submit, who is not for the reduction of substance abuse, the reduction of harm and the reduction of the pain and suffering that people endure from the use of illegal drugs, not only the ones that we have known about, not only marijuana, which has a negative effect on people's functioning, but also cocaine and heroine and now some of the designer drugs like ecstasy. There is also crystal meth, which has a heinous effect, particularly on the young. It is hooking a lot of young people into the sex trade. It is highly addictive. There are a lot of ramifications.
I submit that everyone in the House wants to deal with this issue not on the basis of emotion but on the basis of fact. What we are trying to do is implement solutions that will reduce use, reduce harm, reduce incarceration, make our streets safer and improve the health of Canadians. That is what we are trying to do, based on fact, not on emotion, and not on someone's notion of morality but on fact.
We are trying to deal with the facts and solutions from all over the world, with best practices whether they be European, from the United States or from Canada, and we are trying to spread those solutions across the country so we can work with the provinces to decrease use.
The bill is part of an albeit punitive effort to try to reduce harm caused by those who would get behind a wheel while taking substances that affect them, but it is also part of a larger picture that we are trying to accomplish here, and part of that is the issue of prevention.
With the blessing of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Social Development has a fund available that he and our government want to use to deal with early childhood learning. Why is this important? The former minister of labour has done an enormous amount of work on this issue and knows full well that if we are going to prevent substance abuse, we have to deal with the kids early on. The earlier we deal with them the better it is.
Perhaps the best model of this is the Head Start program, which dramatically reduced a whole host of parameters of social problems. That works. It works because we deal with parents and we deal with children before the age of seven. I know that the minister wants to deal with this in early childhood learning. If we do, we will then be dealing with a host of problems that some of our children have. In dealing with this, we will have healthier adults and a healthier society. This is particularly important for members of some aboriginal communities where substance abuse has become a horrendous problem. Members on our side of the House as well as members of all parties are committed to addressing this heinous problem.
This involves not only the Head Start program but also detox, treatment programs that get the addict out of the drug environment, skills training and work. This combination of solutions will effect change and will effect a reduction in substance abuse. It will effect a change in the health of Canadians. That works. That is what we are trying to do in the larger picture.
If we fail in doing this and adopt a more punitive model to deal with substance abuse, then we will have a situation like the one in the U.S. The U.S. uses a more punitive series of measures, basically “throwing the book” at the addict. This results in higher use, higher disease rates of hep A, hep B, hep C and HIV, higher incarceration rates, and more crime and a greater cost to society. It is a lose-lose-lose proposition. We have to look at people with substance abuse problems as a medical problem, not a judicial problem. Let me say it again: in my view, someone with a substance abuse problem has a medical problem, not a judicial problem.
The judicial problem lies with those people who have commercial grow operations and those people who are connected to organized crime. Those individuals are pushing these substances. They are the criminals. The people living off the avails of individuals with this medical problem are the criminals.
We also have to look at this in context and increase awareness. As I said in my earlier remarks, one of the things that is not well known is the degree to which some people in high school are using easily acquired over-the-counter substances. These substances contain narcotics, albeit low dosages. I am speaking about substances such as medications used for nausea and motion sickness. These can affect a person's ability to think as well as the adequacy of motor skills. When combined with alcohol, these substances can have a profound impact.
In closing, let me say that we hope members from across party lines will look at this bill as a sensible bill that will enable the police to do their job in trying to differentiate between those who are under the influence and impaired and those who are not. It would broaden their powers, to be sure, but I submit that those powers are necessary given the fact that there is a broader range of drugs that cannot be easily tested for in traditional ways. I look forward to the commitment of the House to dealing not only with this issue but also with the larger issue of how we can reduce substance abuse in Canada.
