I'd like to say that the success I've had with my two fantastic sons, one 38 and one 35, who are wonderful men, and the successes Mary has had with her children, are really basic. It's taking your child and loving your child and showing them that there are things they can do. Colleen loves dancing, so she's gone that way.
But I think the important thing is that we need the infrastructure for kids to do things. I live downtown in the core here and they've just put in this new skating rink. I made some proposals to the planning board. I said to them that whenever I walked by there at night I saw kids doing hip-hop dance and things like that, and practising and things like that. I'm saying that we need more of those things in the community. We need more basketball hoops so kids can go and hang out and have a good time.
We need more support for the Boys and Girls Clubs of our communities. We don't need more social agencies to deal out money to support things that aren't helping kids. Let's make it more of a support from organizations like the Scouts, the Guides, and the YMCA, those organizations that have been doing it for years, and give them the support they need to keep the thing going.
And let's encourage community. Community is the only way we're going to survive in Canada with our children and our children's children and in being able to express to them and let them know how much we love them and how much we care for them.
Like what was said here on the issue concerning knowing where your child is, Mary knows where her child is. Also, don't be afraid to ask the questions. Find out where she's going, who is going to be there, and whether the parents are going to be home. Ask the serious questions. We need life-skills questions taught to parents on how to teach their kids to survive. We need to provide some courses on how to grow up and how to handle a kid.
We live on a different planet today. We have TV that is so advanced. Ten years ago, hookers looked like hookers, and now everybody on TV looks like a hooker. The difference, and what's going on, is what the kids see through the media and what the kids get on MSN. As parents, we need to be able to provide the facilities for them to go to something that's diverse, other than having them just watching TV or doing the Internet. It's community, community, community: that's what we need to work on.
Thank you.