I apologize, Mr. Speaker. I do not know how I could have left you out of this equation, it was most improper. Please accept my apologizes.
Mr. Speaker, I did touch in my intervention on the whole matter of prevention. I agree with my colleague that it is most important. I had a discussion with some police officers in Calgary a few months ago and they told me they can tell as early as five years of age if an individual may be predisposed to a life of crime and law breaking. I found that very interesting. When my colleague suggests there can be early detection and prevention of a tendency toward criminal activity, that is borne out by some of the things I have heard and read.
Reform members believe there should be support for the introduction of programs for the early detection and prevention of youth crime. There needs to be more effective rehabilitation programs, not just to put people away or put them in a closed facility for a period of time, but to have that time spent in activities that emphasize education, literacy and skills training. These people would then have a better opportunity to become productive members of society rather than otherwise. There should be an emphasis on discipline and community service.
Reform believes that the key to crime prevention is to strengthen families and communities rather just relying exclusively on the judicial parole and prison systems.
I would say two things in reply to my colleague's concern with regard to the decreased funding for the support of these kinds of activities. The Reform Party opposes such measures as a universal registry of every law-abiding citizen's firearms. This is a very ineffective deployment of scarce resources when every dollar is
needed for the kinds of programs that will help to give us safety. However, those dollars are going to activities that simply cause problems for law-abiding citizens and take away law prevention and enforcement time. Reform opposes that.
Second, this is why the Reform Party has kept saying that governments cannot continue to borrow. The government's interest bill when it took office three years ago was only $38 billion-I should not say only, that is a lot of money-and today it is $48 billion. In three short years we have lost $10 billion to interest to lenders. That could have gone toward the kinds of programs that my colleague and I have been speaking about: to prevent crime, to detect crime early and to seriously assist people to become law-abiding citizens rather than lawbreakers. We have to get government spending under control so we do not continually have the resources that we need for these important programs eroded.