Mr. Speaker, when I heard of today's debate, I naturally thought about the victims at l'École polytechnique, but I also thought about all the other victims of violence, about the 300 and some women who have died in violent incidents since 1989, and about the thousands of women who face various acts of violence every day. It is important to see this situation, not necessarily as a particularly atrocious fact, but as a situation prevailing throughout our society, which has led to unacceptable behaviours and to which we must give priority so that Quebec society, Canadian society can be held up as an example of a violence free society.
Part of the problem we are facing can be found in this House today: all members are denouncing violence and saying that we must take the right measures to prevent such incidents from happening again in the future, but we encounter the same problem in society.
Violence is often a problem, partly because we do not talk about the reality, the fact that people are affected. Victims of violence are not allowed to speak out, so they can overcome their fears and get on with their lives after going through a period of violence. For example, violent men have few opportunities to express who they are and release this negative energy, so that they can clean up their act and allow the situation to evolve.
That is why, in considering what I expected from this debate, I thought a great deal about my children, my two daughters, Audrey and Maude, and my son, Renaud, because it is for them that we are trying to build a different society.
When we read stories about how violence is perpetuated, we see that some behaviours are often passed on from father to son or from mother to daughter and that even abusers are not necessarily aware of their violent tendencies. As I said earlier, we must hold a public debate on the subject and initiate a dialogue that will enable us to correct these situations.
Some specific ways to promote this dialogue are by supporting women's centres or groups that look after violent men, because you may have the best intentions in the world, but if you do not have the energy and resources needed for these discussions to go on, they will not take place and we will inherit the negative results, as we have for a long time, with tragic events like what happened at l'École polytechnique and all the tragic events that we learn about and which we hear reported as anecdotes; repression is suggested as the way to deal with them, but I think that repression is a last resort to prevent physical violence.
Of course, we must eliminate violence by properly controlling firearms and all other instruments of violence; we must control them to prevent a recurrence of events like those at l'École polytechnique. But at the same time, we must look further and see what is behind this event and find out what caused it.
We realize that conjugal violence and violence in general is a complex phenomenon because it involves not only poor families, middle class families or rich families. Domestic violence occurs in all classes of society and we must find ways to correct this problem.
Earlier, I talked about creating proper conditions. However, many people in our society have basic needs that are not met, for education, family income, child care, equity in social programs; also, the new types of families in our society do not have the support services they need. Single-parent families and blended families experience completely new situations to which our social programs are not necessarily suited.
I would also say that violence has a subversive aspect, a rather perverse aspect due to the inequality between men and women in terms of employment and career opportunities.
This perpetuates the feeling of inequality, and often allows some men to establish relations in which women are dependent, thus creating a situation which can potentially lead to violence. But there is not only physical violence; there are many other forms of violence.
Consequently, it is important to do prevention from the time a child is born, since the way that child will develop will influence, to a degree, his perception of things. We must ensure that families can give birth to children in acceptable conditions, feed them properly and provide them with all the necessary elements to grow and build their self-esteem, so as to help them develop respect for their fellow citizens, members of the opposite sex and friends, as well as relations based on mutual respect instead of dependency.
Clearly, we must launch an attack on several fronts. We are faced with a situation similar to that of child poverty, in the sense that a preventive and comprehensive strategy is required to end violence, but we also need ad hoc measures to deal with emergencies.
It is also important to look at what can be done during the various stages of a child's development to curb the tendency to resort to violence. Do we grant adequate maternity leave to all Canadian women, so that they can give birth in proper conditions? If these women are single parents situation, do they have adequate financial resources to live in acceptable conditions?
Later on, when a child is growing, does he benefit from adequate daycare services? Are there not people right now who would like to have access to such services to help their children develop in a proper environment? Do we not stereotype people increasingly?
Children born in relatively well off families that can afford privately funded quality daycare will receive a more stable education. These children will develop more self-confidence. On the other hand, there are those who are trapped in the vicious circle of financial dependency and can see no way out. So we have to work to ensure that equal opportunities become more prevalent, so that 20 or 25 years from now, changes will be noticeable, with less violence and fewer groups living in conditions conducive to violence.
Then there is school and career. If women go back to experiencing difficulty in finding employment and to being in a position of inferiority in the jobs that they do get, if they cannot have access to university careers, if we fail to eliminate stereotypes in that regard, we help perpetuate the existing climate.
On that subject, choices must be made-they are still under consideration-concerning the social security reform for example. Students could have to take full responsibility for their loans. This means that they will have much higher debts to pay off when they graduate. And it would be unfair to women who would choose to start a family.
Specific measures such as these do not have a direct bearing on dramatic acts of violence, but nevertheless add to the set of conditions which eventually lead to violence.
I would also like to see that, later in life, women who have grown up and become adults are able to start a family and have children in acceptable conditions, so that they do not find themselves in a situation where they themselves could become violent toward their children because we have failed to put in place an adequate social system to enable them to raise them in decent conditions.
This whole debate on violence is a societal issue and, perhaps it should also be pointed out, an individual issue. Because somewhere we have to take a good look at ourselves and at our own behaviour. I think that if this debate made all Quebecers or all Canadians take a moment of their evening to think about and discuss potential sources of violence in their environments, as well as individual behaviours which could be corrected, and the need to adapt, we could say that we helped reduce the opportunities for violence in our society. I think that this would be a good response to today's debate. It is up to each one of us.
This is also a government responsibility. A review is under way. The Minister of Justice spoke earlier about a series of measures that have been or will be taken, but important choices must be made regarding the resources to be allocated to the various programs, the approach to this problem, and I think that the results will show how successful our efforts were. This government must take concrete actions that will bring about some improvement in the situation and make our society better before the new millennium rolls around.
When we commemorate again in five or ten years the terrible event that occurred at l'École polytechnique, instead of talking about the negative side of the current situation, we will at least be able to tell all those who were made aware of the issue of violence by this event, all those who made a contribution, all the women who circulated petitions until a gun control law was passed, that the mission has been accomplished. We will have
succeeded in reducing violence in our society, and this may be the best test.