Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Mississauga West for what I thought was a very good speech. It is a pleasure to watch a real pro get a good head of steam up now and then, especially when they are comments that I can associate with.
I have quite a bit of personal knowledge about young offenders, street gangs and so on, coming from Winnipeg. In the inner-city of Winnipeg we have quite a serious problem. We have been forced to deal with it and forced to find lasting solutions.
I want to thank the member for pointing out some of the exciting and innovative things that are being done in the province of Manitoba to try to deal with kids as kids. The member clearly pointed out the folly in treating kids like adults in terms of the criminal justice system.
Former Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba, Yvon Dumont, was the first Metis lieutenant governor of Manitoba. He started something that was called the Lieutenant Governor's Foundation for Youth. I was a member of its board prior to being elected to this place. One of the things he pointed out in dealing with the young people who were causing a lot of the property crimes in the inner-city, like car theft, was that these kids do not steal these cars for the lousy $50 that they get from some fence, although that certainly is part of it.
What really motivates these kids to steal half a dozen cars in an evening is that they crawl underneath the steering column in the car, they break it open, find the three wires, push them together and the thing starts. It is exciting and it is interesting. It is auto electronics. It is like the thrill a mechanic gets when he tunes up a car.
These kids have some redeemable virtues in the fact that they are interested. They would make good apprentices.