This is Tim Shriver in response to Mr. Lake.
Thank you for a beautiful analogy. I suppose that's the right way to put it.
This is not easy. If it had been easy, it would have been done already. We wouldn't be here having this hearing. We wouldn't be talking about neglected children, abused children, lonely children, institutionalized children and forgotten children, but the reality is that we are, and it will take 20, 30, 40.... I don't know how many scientists, engineers and scholars were required to put a human being on the moon in the 1960s, but my suspicion is that just in NASA it was 50,000 or 60,000 people—don't quote me on that—and it's going to take the same thing here.
We have to wake up. I know you know this. We have to wake up to the enormity of the challenge and the responsibility that comes with proclaiming that we're going to try to meet it. I mean, it's an embarrassment. I frankly find myself embarrassed in meetings like this as a professional in this field. As I said before, I'm embarrassed by my own organization.
Yes, we're going to have to do it, and it's going to be hard. This is going to take a significant shift. I hope Canada leads it. I've knocked on doors. Maybe you can hear in my voice a certain frustration that has been built up over the years. I am frustrated. I'm tired of hearing parents tell me there's nowhere for their kids to go. I'm tired of hearing parents tell me they have no friends for their child. I'm tired of it. I thought when I was in my twenties and thirties that we would solve these problems. We haven't even come close to putting the necessary effort behind it.
Couldn't Canada, on the heels of this important hearing, make a commitment to investing some significant resources out of its global development and foreign assistance budgets for these children?
You help every child in the world when you help our children. We help every school system in the world when we implement universal design. We help every teacher in the world when we educate them to be able to be an “includer” in the classroom. Pedagogy is improved. Access to building is improved. Instructional outcomes improve. Climate improves. Behaviour problems go down. Mental health problems are reduced.
It's not just our kids that we're fighting for here. It's all children. We know this as educators. My background is in education. We know that when we include every child, every child wins. It's not just the child who is locked out, the child in a segregated classroom, in a segregated school or, for that matter, in a segregated institution. It's not just those children who benefit. Every child benefits. We're robbing not just children with intellectual developmental disabilities. We're robbing all children of the chance to actually have trust, faith and belief in themselves that they're going to grow up in a world where everybody has a chance, which is what they want.
It's going to be hard, Mr. Lake, but I would very much trust in your judgment, your zeal and your leadership to marshal the kind of coalition and the kind of resource commitment that we need now, not to continue to talk but to implement a much more aggressive plan of action.
Thank you.