Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Rosedale. As I said there is no quick fix for increasing criminality. If we delude our citizens into believing there is a quick fix we deserve condemnation.
If we suggest to them that we can solve the problems of crime in the streets in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver simply by amending provisions of the Criminal Code or by making the sentence 20 years instead of 10 years which they have done in certain American states, if we suggest that is a solution and five months later there is even more crime, we are not serving our public very well.
We must show leadership in the House on these issues. We must deal with the causes of crime. We must make sure that we have child protection acts that intervene at an early age when children are being abused or when they start going wrong, whether it is eight or nine. They have such an act in Quebec called the Child Protection Act. I am sure they have one in Ontario which deals with children under 12 who are lower than the age for the Young Offenders Act.
Whether these are children going from foster home to foster home, whether they are abandoned by their families, or whether they are caught up in drugs or whatever, we have to intervene quickly to try to prevent these things. We also have to make sure that we have proper educational systems, employment policies and so on that help turn people to productive ways of life and not criminal ways of life. That is the model I suggest but it is not a quick fix. It means we have to spend some money but it is money that will show dividends. If we have safer communities in the long run it is money that pays off.
There may have been some terrible crimes in Toronto in recent years but I have looked at the statistics. Toronto had somewhere between 50 and 60 murders last year. It is a city of over three million people. If we compare it with Detroit, Cleveland or New Orleans, those communities have over 500 or 600 murders per year. Toronto is a safe city compared to those others.
I do not show any sort of toleration for the terrible murders that took place in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver or wherever, but the rate of crime is much lower than it is in the United States, maybe because we have traditionally taken an approach that was not simply a criminal justice approach.
We have had broader social programs and better educational programs. When we talk about the United States, criminal law is a state matter unlike here where it is a national matter. Some states in the United States have much better programs and systems than others. I referred to the ones that were very punitive and did not take a preventive or rehabilitative approach. There are some states that do and do much better, by the way.
If we look at states like Minnesota, some New England states and some other states there are much lower rates of crime per 100,000 than some southern states with very tough, long sentencing policies.