I'm sorry, but I will speak English.
One of the challenges with fetal alcohol is that it's a raced and gendered way to blame women for issues the state doesn't want to deal with. When I met with pediatricians a few years back, when we first started working on this issue, a number of them asked why we weren't looking at the inadequacy of nutrition, the lack of running water, or the lack of adequate health care as the issues that set up young people and children to be at a deficit. Instead we picked the one we can find and blame the mother for, and therefore divest the state of responsibility. I think that's part of the story of why the programs have been cut.
The other thing is we had some very courageous women--I think of Trish Monture, who sadly passed three months ago, and B.C. children's advocate Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, a judge--who took some very brave decisions. On the issue of fetal alcohol, she had some young people brought before her and was told they had fetal alcohol syndrome, so there were virtually no options aside from sending them to jail. Her response was that if they had fetal alcohol syndrome and therefore couldn't respond to programs, then it was the responsibility of the minister of social services and perhaps health care to find some programs and develop some services to meet the needs of those young people. Sadly, it was overturned on appeal, but I think she had the right impulse in saying not to throw them in jail, where they were going to get no support and likely develop additional issues and additional problems.
One of the aboriginal women I was talking about is in exactly that situation now. She's locked in isolation, just tried to kill herself for the umpteenth time, and has just been transferred across the country again. Her story is much the same as Ashley Smith's, and I only raise that point because people know her story; it's been more public.
The reality is that we should be focused on getting those individuals into the community and into support in the community, where they will end up eventually, hopefully, if they don't end up dead in prison. That's what we should be focusing on, not on trying to apply band-aids and putting more programs into the prisons. I think we need to be developing those services in the community in a preventative way and also in a supportive way.
We should not be continuing to pretend that saying it's the mother's fault because she drinks, or anaesthetizes herself with something else, will solve the problem. As we know from generations past, most of our mothers had no idea of the impact of medication or anything, and yet they weren't vilified for having a drink or that sort of thing. I think it's become a way for the state to divest itself of responsibility.
It doesn't mean that I don't think it's a very real issue; I think these issues are very real, but I think there are other equally important issues that we allow ourselves to ignore because they require state responsibility and state resourcing.