Kelly DeRidder

Mr. Speaker, if the government is serious about strengthening protections, maybe it should actually do it. Waterloo region had 70 overdoses in four days. This is not just a public health issue. This is a humanitarian crisis. Our Conservative plan will keep communities safe. How many more lives need to be lost? How many more families torn apart before this government finally reacts? When will this government reverse course, admit that its policies are failures and start focusing on recovery, rehabilitation and treatment?

Mr. Speaker, I want to start today by asking everyone in this room to think of a teenager in their life. It could be their son, daughter, grandchild, niece, nephew or even a neighbour. Imagine that teenager is going through a rough patch. They got caught up in substance abuse or addiction, which is something that happens in all our communities day in and day out. Now imagine that the rough patch leads them to make a mistake. They commit a petty crime or make a poor decision that brings them into contact with our justice system. What do members want to happen to the teenager in that moment? Do they want them to be locked away in a cell, surrounded by influence, where their addiction could continue, or do they want them to recover, to get into counselling and get the help they need to turn their life around? I think most of us would choose care. We would choose to give that young person a second chance at a different life, which is a choice that brings us here today to Bill C-231. Bill C-231 is about updating the laws we have around youth justice to focus on health, recovery and healing. The first big change it would bring is to create a path to recovery for a young person who broke the law, instead of sending them straight to jail. It would give them that second chance to get clean, get healthy and rebuild their life before a continued life of addiction truly takes hold. I think that second chance is something we can all understand. None of us would ever want our worst decision at 17 years old to dictate the rest of our life. We understand that a young person can change, because we have seen it. We have seen young people graduate, get jobs, rebuild relationships with their families and become leaders in their community. The question is whether our justice system is going to help them make that possible or whether it will make that journey even harder. We all know that recovery is not a straight line. It is a climb. Sometimes we stumble, and that is okay, as long as we get ourselves back up again. This bill would make sure that if a young person stumbles on their first try, the judge cannot throw them back into prison for failing treatment. Why is this important? It is because fear cannot shut down recovery. If a teenager thinks that admitting they have slipped up will land them in jail, they will likely hide their struggles, lie to those around them or even run away. By removing that threat of time in prison, we would give them a safe environment to keep trying until recovery sticks. To understand why this change is necessary, we have to take a look at how our system works today. For a long time, our system has operated like a hammer: If a person breaks a rule, the hammer comes down. However, addiction is not something we can hammer away. We cannot punish trauma, or dependence on a substance, out of a human being. When we lock up a young person who is addicted to drugs or alcohol, two things usually happen. First, they will not get access to recovery and the care they need to beat the addiction. Second, they are isolated from their family. We remove them from their school or learning program and connect them with deeper criminal behaviours. When they eventually get released, often as young adults, their addiction is still there, but now they have lost their support system, or it is broken, and their future opportunities are limited. Creating a cycle where people reoffend time after time does not make our community safer. This is where I believe we need to think beyond punishment with respect to addiction. We need to start thinking about outcomes, and at the end of the day, the goal in our justice system should not be simply to punish someone but to create a path to breaking cycles and building a different life. We have to ask ourselves what a true, safe community looks like. Is the neighbourhood safer when a young person is locked away for six months, only to come back angrier, more disconnected and still addicted, or is the neighbourhood safer when that same teenager is guided through healing and education, and can build a stable life and become a happy, healed, productive neighbour? Bill C-231 would step into that cycle and break it at the beginning. It recognizes that teenagers' brains are still developing. Their decision-making skills are still being formed. Teenagers are wired to make mistakes, test boundaries and sometimes fall into bad situations, but their brains are remarkably adaptable. At that age, with the right structure, the right rehabilitation plan and proper guidance, a young person can turn their entire life around before adulthood. This is why early intervention is so incredibly important. The earlier we can interrupt addiction, the earlier we can reconnect young people with their family, with education and with their community. This is not about letting people off the hook or ignoring accountability. Recovery is hard work. One has to show up every day, take accountability for one's past and do the heavy emotional lifting it takes to heal and become truly addiction-free. This is real accountability. It requires far more effort and leads to far better results than just sitting in a jail cell. Think about what this means for families. When a young person falls into addiction, it is not their personal crisis. It pulls in their entire family. Parents spend sleepless nights worrying about their child, whether they will come home and whether they are still alive. They look for treatment beds, navigate confusing and expensive health care systems and try desperately to keep their children safe. When legal trouble hits, many parents feel isolated, as if they have hit a dead end. They fear that the court will take their child away and lock them up, leaving the underlying issue untreated. Bill C-231 offers families hope. It would turn the feeling of being stuck into a doorway for help. It would allow everyone to work together to guide our young people back on the right track. It says to parents that their child has made a mistake but that we are going to focus on getting them well so they can rebuild their future. That future matters. If we help even one young person recover, we are helping not only that individual but also their parents, their siblings, their classmates, their future co-workers and even the communities that they will eventually be a part of. Every young person we help get back on their feet is one more person who has the opportunity to contribute instead of being trapped in a cycle of addiction and the justice system. To wrap things up, I want to leave us with one simple thought. A society should not be judged by how strictly it punishes its young people when they fail. It should be judged by how effectively we help them stand back up. Bill C-231 is practical, compassionate and a necessary update to our youth justice system. It would choose rehabilitation, and, most importantly, it would give young people who have lost their way a realistic path toward recovery. We all want safer communities. We all want our young people to grow up healthy and educated and to have a wonderful life that they build on their own. Bill C-231 would give us the ability to make that a reality. In the name, memory and honour of David, I look forward to the bill's passing the final stage.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his incredible speech today on the importance of getting projects delivered in Canada. There is $1 billion here, $1 billion there, $1 billion for this person and $1 billion for that person. I would like the member's thoughts, please. If we could stop announcing $500 billion across Canada and just approve 500 projects sitting on the Prime Minister's desk, where would Canada be as we move forward?

Madam Speaker, 11 years ago, we had the richest middle class in all of the G7 under the Harper government. After 11 years of failed policy and blocking our economy, we now seem to be turning course. After many announcements and billions of dollars spent, why does nothing seem to get approved so that we can get back to the amazing Canada we had before the Liberal government took office?