Serious drug crimes have negative consequences for local families and all Cambridge and North Dumfries residents.  Drug trafficking is the largest source of revenue for organized crime.  Drugs bring violence and weapons to our streets, endangering innocent residents.  Drug traffickers have even targeted children.  This is unacceptable.

From Hespeler, to Preston, to Galt and throughout all of Cambridge and North Dumfries, our Conservative Government is committed to keeping communities, like our own, safe.  We’ve passed important legislation, including laws targeting gun crimes and measures to protect young people from sexual predators.  We have other important legislation before Parliament as we work to end house arrest for violent criminals, deter property crimes, and stand up for victims of fraud.

We’re also cracking down on drug crime.  Current sentences don’t always reflect the severity of these crimes or their negative impact on society.  That’s why we’re proposing tough, but fair, legislation to require jail time for certain drug trafficking-related offences through the Government’s Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act.

We’re working to give police and courts the tools they need to get and keep drug dealers off our streets.  When drug dealers sell to our children, or sell drugs near schools and playgrounds, mandatory jail time is a necessary deterrent.  When drug dealers operate their dangerous labs in residential neighbourhoods, police need the ability to get them.

Through this legislation, we’re also addressing the inadequate penalties for dealers who sell date-rape drugs.  Currently, the law considers this less serious than selling cocaine or heroin.  This isn’t right.  Our bill would update the law to make this abhorrent trafficking subject to the same penalties, including new mandatory jail time.

By imposing tougher penalties on drug dealers who commit these especially serious drug crimes and on dealers involved with organized crime, we can better protect law-abiding Canadians and their families.

But it’s unfortunate that the Ignatieff-NDP-Bloc Québécois Coalition is stalling progress.  Their soft-on-crime approach has failed.  I encourage MPs from all parties to support Conservative legislation to protect local communities.

Protecting local families from crime been a priority of our Government from the day we took office.  There is still more to be done.  Drug crimes have consequences that shouldn’t be ignored or shrugged away.  Instead, we should do everything we can to prevent them.  That’s why our Government is working to pass the Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act.

Hon. Gary Goodyear, P.C., M.P.
Cambridge and North Dumfries


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