Mr. Speaker, it goes without saying that we must remember. I was at home when I heard about the tragedy at the École polytechnique. Even five years later, the memory is almost just as painful.
I spent my whole adult life as a high school teacher in a rural area.
Even in a comprehensive secondary school with 1,200 students, there was quite a bit of violence, so much so in fact that some children were persecuting each other in almost a tragic way.
When I first started teaching there was some violence, but it was more sporadic. However, toward the end of my career, it had become almost a daily occurrence.
Earlier, we referred to verbal abuse, which is very prevalent among young people. It is fine to describe that violence, and when we discuss violence, we forget about partisan considerations and think only about the victims, but we forget about meanness.
I have a question for this House: Why is there so much violence? It goes without saying that if a young boy is not loved, he will not like himself. And a young boy who does not like himself will develop a mean streak which he will express in various ways.
How does he behave? He hits, makes harsh comments, or hurls insults. It is said that violence generates violence. Gangs are organized: three against three, four against four, and so on. These gangs carry on their activities; they often use drugs and then they find weapons. There is practically no limit to what they will do.
How de we stop that? I believe there are several ways. By looking for the causes of violence, we will find the means to stop it. We feel that prevention is an excellent means to that end. In some schools, there is a lot more prevention than in others and violence has diminished considerably.
It is also true that where poverty and unemployment are a fact of life, crime tends to be more widespread.
The massacre of these young students was a tragedy, I agree. But two young people who make a suicide pact is also a tragedy. This happened in my riding two years ago, when two young people committed suicide. When you consider that these were intelligent, healthy youngsters, you wonder why they no longer
wanted to go on living. Why did they want to take their own lives? There must be a reason. And I wondered how at sixteen, seventeen or twenty, you could consider suicide. Many of my students committed suicide, and every time I said to myself: There is a reason. There is a reason, because we instinctively hold on to life, as anyone who has been near death will agree.
If you are in good health and you decide to take your own life, there may be several reasons but we have to find the right one.
Other students are in prison, some of my own students whom I see from time to time. Apparently, at 15 or 16 they were like everybody else, just as open-hearted. So what happened? Why did it happen to him and not someone else? Maybe it was some experience they had in their lives or somehow they had reached the point of no return, with very unfortunate results.
I agree we need legislation on firearms but we need more than that. I think that starting with primary school, we must find ways to wipe out this petty violence that occurs year after year. How can a three or four year old child become so aggressive that he is almost ready to strangle his next door neighbour? If we take them at 25 and send them to jail, the cost to society is enormous. Sometimes they get out with new tricks, and some, although not all, become repeaters.
My main concern is not firearms. I agree that we should control guns. I could not agree more. It does not make sense to send people to prison for 20, 25 or 30 years, and turn them into hardened criminals. I am not saying we should not do that, that is not what I mean. My point is that we have to go to the root of the matter and find out the initial causes as soon as possible.
Some children go to primary school without breakfast or lunch and only have a snack for supper.
Some of my oldest students were saying that poverty did not exist or hardly. Once, during the holiday season at the school where I taught we made Christmas baskets. I told these older students who were big and tough and sure of themselves to come with me. They came, and the first house we went to we saw two cases of empty beer bottles, each with 24 bottles, and a man lying on a kind of chesterfield. The cupboards were bare and children were crying.
When we got back, these guys who were 16, 17 or 18 and pretty tough, said: Poverty does exist, and we should go and visit poor families more often. These kids had been in trouble before, some had been convicted of theft. They felt they were luckier than others, but it takes time to make them understand. They should have these experiences, otherwise they harden their hearts and lose their self-esteem, and then they will do anything to survive. They try to be tough and become marginalized.
So to come back to what I was saying, I am glad the Minister of Justice is here.
I want to ask the minister whether all the legislation we are going to adopt should not emphasize prevention. Prevention should take place at the earliest possible age, because once a person is 40 and has been in prison repeatedly, I am not saying nothing can be done, but it is certainly far more difficult.