Currently, provincially, we are working on this initiative called Street Reach, where a number of our organizations bonded together. There were eight executive directors, and we put together a strategy to deal with that.
Our girls who are on the street or have been put out on the street by their families in some cases are as young as eight. This initiative was born out of a policeman who took this young girl off the street and had nowhere to put her and drove around the city for 17 hours looking for a place.
We don't have a place because we don't have funding. We're expected to be the first responders on the street to help these kids in an emotional way, and we do not have stable funding. We're expected to keep these youth stable, and we do not have stable funding. For us to do any kind of that work, any of that emergency response, we have to be well funded in a stable way. That's been said over and over. It can't be repeated enough.
In terms of prohibition, we've got to come into this century. That's not the answer. We don't even have enough information about FASD to treat it. There's not enough research going on in any capacity with regard to mental health.
We've been at a two-day conference on gangs where we listened to correction officers talking about people: inmates, who have an IQ of 72 or less, brain injury, cognitive deficits, and a range of co-occurring disorders.
We have mental health with one aspect of the government over here, health over here, addictions over here, and nobody is talking to one another. People need to talk to one another. That's a huge beginning.
I've listed recommendations and I have the brief. A number of recommendations came out of the Senate report and they're being repeated over and over again.
We don't want those youth on the street as much as you don't want them there. They shouldn't be criminalized for being on the street or being a victim of their family. Their families are victims—it's generational. There need to be intervention points, and we need support to do our intervention.
I can't be more clear.