Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak to the Reform supply day motion.
There are two ways we can deal with crime. We can manage it or we can prevent it. Inevitably, it is a combination of both within the context of our justice system. However, I would submit that what we have done over the past several decades is placed our focus on the management of the problem and we have utterly failed in our ability to prevent it.
If we look at what has been taking place not only within Canada but around the world, we see that there have been some innovative programs which have been developed to prevent crime. One of those programs is in Moncton.
Last spring this House passed a private member's motion that I put forth calling for a national head start program. This program would take the best from programs found in Moncton, Hawaii, Michigan, the United States; programs which have been proven to decrease child abuse by 99%, which keep kids in school longer, which have dropped youth crime by 50%, which have decreased teen pregnancies by 40% and which have saved the taxpayer $30,000 per child.
New scientific data shows very clearly that when a child is subjected in the first eight years of life to issues such as drug abuse, sexual abuse, violence, or even to more subtle things such as improper parenting or the absence of parenting, it has a dramatic negative impact upon the development of that child's brain. The neurological development of that child's brain is impeded, which has a dramatic negative effect when the child becomes a teenager and later an adult.
When we look at prison populations we find that large chunks of the prison populations were subjected to violent sexual abuse and such in the course of their childhood. While that does not exonerate them from the crimes they committed, therein lies perhaps some truths and perhaps some answers as to how we can prevent these people from becoming criminals.
Work that was done by the minister of labour and her husband in Moncton shows very clearly that when we enable children and parents to come together, when parents learn how to be good parents and ensure that children in the first eight years of life have the basic building blocks to enable them to have their basic needs met, they have a much greater chance of becoming productive, integrated members of society. Remove those or destroy the ability of that child to develop and we have the problems that I mentioned before such as criminal abuse.
The Moncton head start program was focused on having parents involved in children's behaviour, teaching proper nutrition, proper discipline and what it means to be a loving, caring parent. One would be surprised to know that in some communities parents do not know that because they were never taught it or brought up in that environment. Where that is lacking in a child's development the impact can be dramatic and profoundly tragic at times. Not all children who are subjected to that wind up with deleterious effects, but it happens all too often.
The Perry preschool program in Ypsilanti, Michigan, has been in existence for some 30 years. It shows very carefully that when children's basic needs are met we save $30,000 per child. There was also a 50% reduction in teen pregnancies which we know is a route to poverty for many young women and their children.
The Hawaii head start program uses a very innovative tool which I think we could employ in our country. It uses trained volunteers, primarily women in their fifties who have had children. These women were actually integrated with families at risk. They developed a co-operative integrated relationship with those families.
What was the outcome? There was a 99% drop in child abuse among those children. We see a dramatic benefit at the level of child abuse. At the level of society now, with a large number of babies boomers in the fifties and sixties age groups, maybe there is a way of utilizing their valuable experience in parenting to help those in our community who are less able to do it.
If we are able to integrate that group of people in the way that has been done in Hawaii it would be very cheap and the profound, dramatic and positive effects on children would be amazing. We would have a paradigm shift in our thinking on social programs from one of the management of problems to the prevention of problems.
Through the head start motion I am not asking for the feds to take on the responsibility of having a national program with lots of money being poured into it, but that the ministers merely ask their provincial counterparts beforehand to come together at a meeting to find out what works in their provinces and what does not. By asking them to come to the table it will force the provinces to rationalize their programs, in which case they can remove what is not working and keep what is.
There are many programs in provinces that are done in a hodgepodge fashion that work very well for families at risk. There are also some programs that are not working well. It behoves all of us as legislators to find out what is working well and what is not. It is our responsibility to the taxpayer to do that.
By calling their provincial counterparts together the federal ministers can sit down at a table, work together and have an integrated approach with cost sharing between the feds and the provinces. The amount of money required for this would be minimum.
At point zero we could use the medical community. In the middle we could use trained volunteers. At the age of four through eight we could use the education system. By working with the provinces and the feds we could have an integrated approach which would help not only families at risk but families that are doing financially well with children who are not doing well.
One of the more subtle elements that we are not taking into consideration in our communities is latch-key children. Those children, despite coming from backgrounds that are privileged, have subtle psychological changes taking place within them because they do not have parenting.
Money is not the most important thing in the development of a child. It is good parenting. Children have their basic needs met in a loving, caring and secure environment. Perhaps the proof is in the pudding. Let us look at the number of immigrant families that come to our country with very little from a monetary perspective but have strong parenting skills. Their children are privileged to have such parents.
I grew up in environment in which there was very little money. I was very lucky to have parents with strong parenting skills. All of us who were privileged to have such parents know the value of what they gave us. They may not have given much in terms of monetary goods but they gave us a loving and caring environment and society in which to live. For that we are grateful.
Many colleagues on the other side have a great deal of expertise and experience. Many ministers and members of parliament on the other side have worked very hard on this issue. The Minister of Labour has worked very hard and has been a leader with her husband in this regard. The Secretary of State for Children and Youth has worked very hard in her aboriginal community to make this a reality as many members have done.
I challenge us to work together on the issue and make a national head start program a reality. If we were to do this, it would probably be the greatest thing we could do for children and for Canadian society in the future. By doing so we would radically change the way we think from the management of these problems to their prevention. No longer would we see half the people in jail suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome or fetal alcohol effects, the leading cause of preventable birth defects.
These individuals are suffering from irreversible brain damage. Their average IQ is 68. They cannot integrate and function properly. When they go to school they are at a loss. They are often marginalized, picked on and left in the periphery. As a result their problems are merely compounded as time passes. While not all of them will become criminals by any stretch of the imagination, a disproportionate number of them have an enormous amount of difficulty becoming integrated productive members of society.
I know my time is up. There is much more to say not only on this issue but on the RCMP and truth in sentencing. I will close with a plug for the RCMP. For Heaven's sake, please fund them. They are not getting the resources they need. The CPIC computer is ready to fall apart. My colleagues have mentioned many constructive solutions which the RCMP need to enable them to do their job. If we do not give them the support they require, they will not be able to support our community.