Thank you.
Did you know that it costs $785,000 for the next 20 years for any sitting government to take care of a victim once they are being victimized? If we have approximately 50,000 victims in Canada, please do the math. How much money does it cost the government or us, not to mention the emotional toll that the victim has to go through in rebuilding their life?
It is pretty simple: We either make serious efforts to put serious investment behind the cause to effect real change, or we are going to continue to treat the symptoms and not the root causes.
If we can put $300 million into quit smoking campaigns, I'm pretty sure that we can find the funding to fund effective changes.
In closing, we have enough expertise. We have done the research. We have held enough hearings like this. We know what the problem is and we also know how to fix it.
My question today is to the government and the committee before me: Are we going to make some real changes this time, or are we going to spend the next 10 or 15 years again talking about the same thing, continuing to act out of crisis and making empty promises?