There are a number of issues involved here. When I was a manager for the province and worked for Probation and Parole Services, even the employees there spoke of the importance of rehabilitation and the fact that programs needed to be set up to ensure that an offender receives all the help he needs to avoid re-offending. That is one of the things I am hearing here. These days, the government is ready to invest millions of dollars in prisons. We know who is in those prisons. We know the percentage of Aboriginal people who are in prison.
Should we really be investing in prisons or, as was pointed out earlier, I believe, should we be focusing on programs that can help offenders to put their lives back on track?
I had a cousin with an alcohol dependency. He told me he ended up in jail because he made a mistake after drinking. Because there is a long list of people waiting for access to prison programs, he was told that, in his case, he would not be able to take any of them until the end of his term, once he was ready to be released from prison. Does that make any sense? My cousin ended up committing suicide.
Education is very important. You are absolutely right when you say that you are not receiving as much funding as the rest of the population. That is causing a lot of problems. Are you really second-class citizens? I really think that education should begin when our children are small. We saw the difference this can make in terms of sexual abuse of children. We saw what happened in their families when they were educated starting in primary school. Now children are starting to tell us what goes on at home. So, it is important to educate them. At the primary level, we should be teaching them what is right and what is wrong in terms of what goes on at home. We need to give them the proper tools and hope that, later on, we will see a difference.
You have serious social problems. You talked quite a bit about what is going on in your communities, and the fact that people who don't live in a community are still having trouble finding affordable housing in the city. Where will people go when they leave prison? They won't have a choice: they will go back home.
These issues are completely ignored by governments, as is the lack of funding for First Nations. Funding is a must. I would be interested in hearing your comments on prisons. Then I will have another question. I do want to give others a chance to ask some questions.