Addiction should never be a life sentence.

So you recently sponsored a private members bill in the House of Commons that is geared towards helping addiction. And why don't you tell us a little bit about that? Sure. So it's Bill C240 and it's introducing rehabilitation into incarceration. And while I would love to see rehabilitation before incarceration, this is what I can do on a federal level right now to start changing paths and breaking cycles and doing things a little differently. So right now, programs do exist in institutions, there's mental health, there's some supports, but there's no real accountability to make sure that those those supports are given specifically as a part of a plan for inmates, as well as an inmate to partake in those services that exist today. So what this bill does is it makes it judge prescribed. And when you make it judge prescribed, it puts accountability both on the institution and the inmate to take part in the rehabilitation plan. And so in that there's mental health services, skills, education training, just rehabilitation in general, for people. So it's at least starting a path to break cycles. We're the only country in the G7 right now that incarcerates for just time, regardless of behavior, regardless just time. So we don't concentrate at all on breaking a cycle on providing someone an opportunity to do different in their life when they come out, not just fall into the same cycles and, and repeat the same patterns. And so that's what I want to do is, is create in Canada a path where people can do different with their lives. So when you were preparing this bill, I imagine you talked to many folks, both in the corrections institution, as well as perhaps inmates. Is there evidence that going through a program like this will help reduce the odds that somebody will wind it back in prison? So there, there is data that suggests that, you know, people won't repeat the same cycles when they get the supports that they need. But again, we don't really have a fulsome program in our institutions. You know, we have needle exchanges, we have safe supply rooms where people can shoot up in our institutions. And to me that that isn't, how is that helping people break a cycle that put that got them there in the first place? And so and also how can you have drug use next to people who are wanting to change their lives in healing cannot, there cannot be the same thing in one place, there cannot be. And I know that personally, from my own story, I relapsed 13 years after becoming sober, because it was literally in front of me. So I couldn't imagine if it was there in front of me every single day, when I'm trying to heal, I just wouldn't have been able to do it. I know I wouldn't have had the strength, I wouldn't have had the healing. I wouldn't have had the time, you know, when I relapse, so searching years later, luckily, I had healed and I had the time and I had, you know, had processed everything. And the next morning, there was more of, oh my god, what did I do then falling back into that life, right? But if it was right there in front of me in that moment, when I was first taking those few steps, I probably wouldn't have healed today, I wouldn't be the person that I am today. Because people don't understand the amount that drugs takes over. People just don't understand how you can love and hate something so much at the same time, because it takes you away, but it's destroying your life and you know it. But you're powerless until you decide that you want to make change. And so in institutions, it's a perfect opportunity for people to be like, wait a minute, kind of like I was in that job house, is this the life I want? Looking around, is this the life that I truly want? And if it isn't, then there's these resources for you to change it, not next to the thing that brought you there. And so this is what we need to change. Well, and that comes back to actual rehabilitation. And, you know, there's years ago, there was, you know, a stigma about mental health, there was a stigma about addiction. I think because of the, I would say the far left liberal policies, it has swung the pendulum way too far in the other direction, where, you know, we have safe consumption sites where it's okay for adults to watch kids, you know, shoot up and not intervene. And we have taxpayer funded narcotics that are just being distributed. We have pharmaceutical companies that are benefiting. It's actually now on their bottom line. And it's based on their profit margin to actually have people that are addicted out there. Do you think that if this was the approach that was taken back when you were trying to recover, do you think you would have ever made it out? No. No. And that's part of my messaging is that addiction isn't a business. It isn't at the end of the day. And it actually destroys me on the inside to know that it has become on some level a business and keeping people in the clutches of addiction is actually profiting some people. And that to me is unbelievable. These people are the one that need to go to jail is that, you know, they're, they're trying to, you know, make money off of vulnerability and that is not okay. It is not okay. And, you know, I remember even this is how things have changed so much is that you actually, I think, just put out, um, a podcast on there's a way to safely snort now. I just saw it very quickly and I'm like, whoa, what? So let's educate people on how to do drugs instead of educate people on why they shouldn't do drugs. Like, do you guys remember when we were younger, this is your brain on drugs. I was thinking about that this morning. What happened to that? Like, why are we not educating our children and educating people of the harm of drugs instead of how to safely do them? This isn't okay. We are, we are creating a society of addicts in our messaging that just, well, you're going to do it. So here's how to safely do it. No, like this is what's going to happen to you. This is your brain damage, especially the drugs today are very different than even when I was an addict. Like, you know, they, they destroy brain quicker. They, they're so much more harmful to your physical self. They cause psychotic breaks, you know, breaks more than the drug. So, so why are we saying as a society, oh, it's okay, just do it here. Here's how to do it. Instead of this is the harms of it, you know, this is what life is like on the streets. For example, people don't talk about what's actually happening in these 10 cities in its human trafficking of young girls who are kept in a addiction. It's happening in these 10 cities every single day, but it's okay. But it's, it's, it's okay because we're not seeing it as a part of the problem. And so, but this is, we need, do you want to be trafficked? Do, do you want your brain destroyed in time? You know, this is the education that we have to give our children, not a pamphlet that says, here, here's how to snark cocaine.