Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for being here today and sharing your testimony with us.
Mr. Wiebe, first, I would like to offer you my sincere condolences on the loss of your son. I admire your courage and also your great humanity. Losing a member of our family can sometimes leave us feeling extremely angry and blind. I welcome your testimony, because of the strong emphasis on compassion, prevention, and trying to save children before they become criminals.
I am also a member of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. A few days ago, we heard the Minister of Public Safety and all the other officials. My question was specifically about prevention. In the current budget, and subsequent budgets, there is really no increase in terms of prevention, and this was confirmed to me. The budget varies between $30 million and $60 million for the whole of Canada.
I am looking at you, and you seem to be exceptional people, in your need to rescue young people, even though you have only crumbs, little bits of money, to do it with. Looking at the budget, we see that there is still no increase. This was the first point I wanted to confirm, that there will be no increase for prevention. That has been the case for several years, going back before the present government.
I would also like to talk to you about the Young Offenders Act before getting to my question. That act is intended to criminalize young people 14, 15 or 16 years old, according to the provinces.
I have been listening to my colleagues asking what we can do. In fact, you have been telling us from the outset: prevention, prevention, prevention.
There is no more money being invested in prevention. The NCPC has told us that it can't even apply for any more projects because there is no more money in the budget, until 2001-2012. What do we do if there is no more money being invested in prevention? They don't want to invest in prevention, but they want to hand out harsher sentences to young people who may have committed murders or serious crimes at the age of 14 or 15 or 16. So the real question to ask is this: what do we do after talking about prevention and not criminalizing young people? In fact, we find ourselves with a system that will do that, that will criminalize young people and won't invest a penny more in prevention.