Mr. Speaker, I would like to share a thought on violence against children, a painful reality I have often been confronted with in my profession.
Even if our instinctive reaction of outrage tends to overshadow everything else when we are confronted with such unacceptable tragedies, I have learned from experience to read in this violence the signs of a society which is out of balance, a society in which social expectations of performance at any cost, family isolation, financial difficulties and psychological deficiencies play a major role. These are sick families.
As Fairholm wrote in a book published in 1990 and entitled "Child Abuse Prevention Program for Adolescents", children of all ages are abused. In every social, economic, racial and ethnic environment, there are adults abusing children under their care. All families and all children are vulnerable to this problem. Psychological violence is at the root of all forms of abuse or negligence, but we do not know how common physical neglect actually is. Is such ignorance tolerable? I do not think so.
In conclusion, I would like to go back to the events of December 6, 1989, exactly five years ago today. A light late afternoon snow is falling on the city, when horror suddenly strikes: 14 young women are gone forever, robbed of a promising future.
This tragedy affected me personally because I knew one of the victims; her name was Anne-Marie. In memory of all her sisters, I laid 14 white lilies near her grave. I thought for a moment of adding a red rose dedicated to Marc Lépine's mother, but I decided against it because the violence done to this woman in the evening of December 6 was beyond imagination. This woman died deep in her soul.