Madam Speaker, although I am allocated three minutes, I believe I have a further 17 when we again resume debate.
In the next three minutes I will again try to summarize what the problem is. My colleague from Crowfoot and I spent about 18 months on a committee that we initiated in the House of Commons. The government had no impetus whatsoever to initiate a drug strategy or an investigation into the drug situation in Canada. We had to do that from opposition.
At the end of the committee, we had 41 recommendations, many of which I and my colleague subscribed to and some of which we did not. By the way, the overriding recommendation was that abstinence would be the overriding policy throughout the drug strategy. We found out subsequent to that, that the government was into safe injection houses and that it was supporting all kinds of harm reduction techniques. What the government did was take these recommendations, set them aside and brought in this little bill on the decriminalization of marijuana. For goodness sake, I do not know what motivates those people on the other side.
We are talking of hundreds, if not close to one or two thousand people dying every year from the overdose of drugs. If it were from being shot, there would have been a bill effectively dealing with that. If it were for other reasons and if that many people were dying every year, there would have bills all over the place. Instead the government lets this stuff die on the side.
I do not understand for a minute why the government will not deal with crystal meth addiction, with cocaine addiction and with heroin addiction by advertising to our young people, and not through bureaucrats but through the Canadian Medical Association, the people to whom young people will listen. I do not understand why those issues are not dealt with by the government.
During our discussions in the drug committee, time and time again my colleague and I tried to point the committee in the right direction. We found two departments getting the bulk of the money. We also found that, without exception, everybody on the committee freely admitted that those two departments were the worst offending departments. They had no idea where they were going. They had no objectives. They did not know what they were accomplishing or where they were spending the money. What happened? The government came out later on and said that it would give $248 million to these two departments.
The failure is in government. Again it is the government's spending habits about which my colleague just spoke.
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.