I'll start with the first part of your question, and it's a good opportunity to really talk about FASD on a broad base.
You're right. The cause of FASD is prenatal exposure to alcohol. There are social factors that can contribute to it, such as addictions, mental health, the mother having FASD herself. There are also conditions that exist in which a lady may not even know she's pregnant. We don't know at the present day at what point of pregnancy and how much alcohol consumption can be detrimental.
There's a lot of stigma that comes along with FASD, and it creates different challenges later down the road in terms of identification, diagnosis, treatment, and support. Understandably, there's a lot of stigma around this. This is why it's so important to talk about this openly in Parliament now: to start moving the stigma away from it and understand clearly in Canada that there is not and should not be blame here. There are things we can do to help educate and to make this somewhat avoidable, but there are also circumstances that aren't necessarily avoidable and are nobody's fault. This is part of a great national discussion: making sure that the stigma and the shame start to move away for this. Then we can have an intelligent discussion about it.
Concerning the costs, they range from housing support—people with severe FASD never have true independent living, as it's always supported living—to education challenges, some one-to-one support.... Misdiagnoses cost a lot of money in this country as well, as there are different levels of treatment or people going untreated. Clearly, there is the cost of the criminal justice system, when people get mixed up and involved in it, and a lot of times it starts right at the youth criminal justice level. You can just imagine that these costs start to balloon, from social support, education, and health care needs right up to the costs any time a person ends up in the criminal justice system. I couldn't break them down on every scale for you, but they are alarming.