I'm waiting for the light there, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the answer to the Minister, but the fact is I'm still confident that we've got our eye on the wrong sort of game here. It almost sounds as if it's a legal loophole that we're worried about taking a stance. I mean, this is my opinion, obviously, and I share a completely different opinion than the Minister does on this issue. That's why I keep pressing it. I see it as an incisive issue. There is urgency and clarity on this and that's why I encourage him to take it to the justice folks to see if we can do something like this. It is my understanding that the B.C. administrator in this area has the authority to require something like this. I think we should be asking ourselves, is it too much to ask?
Another principle we should be considering is anytime someone goes to court and we're there to represent the child's best interest, we should be asking for this to be put into writing if at this time we cannot do this. It certainly should be the very minimum that we should be asking.
As I've seen it and have come to see it, that is, if someone has been on meth, I mean, they can't just walk in one day and say I'm clean. I mean these are life-changing problems and they're also life-changing struggles that I think people walk away from many years and can they wipe themselves from being an addict? I don't know. Some folks will say once they've been an addict, they will always be one and they deal with it day to day. I compliment the success of people getting away from these things, but the challenges and sometimes the temptations are out there that they're difficult to resist.
But the fact is, I would like the department to explore this area to ensure that, be it a zero tolerance of anyone found using this and that's why their children were taken away, that we should explore this again. Being wrong in the context of protecting the child first and having a mistake by overburdening someone to pee in a cup to prove that they're not using drugs anymore, the fact that, you know, I could handle that type of criticism. The fact that we had said to ourselves that this child's safety is on the forefront of every decision we make and the willingness of the parent I think should be there and probably in most cases would be there to ensure that, yes, they are going to provide them with the best opportunity before them. I guess that's why I keep coming around to the fact that I'd like to encourage the Minister to see if we can explore options like this, create contracts with people, even on the short term where they're at least, at the very least that is, a moral contract where people are allowing themselves to prove that they are clean when they get their children back and we can feel comfort at night when we go home and we wave goodbye to those kids as they're returned to their rightful family that we know that they've been given the best shot that they can. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.