Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my hon. colleague allowing me to share his time.
Again I would like to compliment the hon. member for Surrey North on all the hard work that he and my colleagues have done in trying to change the justice system to make it a more realistic, pragmatic and effective justice system to ensure that there will be a balance: those people who are a danger to society will be dealt with strongly and forcefully so they will not be able to victimize innocent civilians again and new initiatives can be utilized to prevent crime from occurring. That is something in which my colleagues and members of other political parties have been taking a leadership role. I hope that one day the government will listen.
Bill C-79 has some very important points in it in terms of ensuring that victims have rights. It ensures that we will be able to make a change to reverse what a Liberal government did some years ago. I want to bring to the attention of members that in the early 1980s the justice minister of the then Liberal government said “From now on we are going to change our justice system from one of protecting society to one of rehabilitating the criminal”. As a result, we have seen the faith of the public and the police forces in the system substantially eroded. It is our job to change that; not to do it in a grossly punitive and blind fashion, but to do it in a manner which strikes the balance that I spoke of earlier.
We have to ensure that victims have a greater role within the justice system than the convicted. In many cases we have seen convicted criminals who have greater access to social programs, rehabilitation and care than the people they victimized. I can tell members of some tragic cases of families, adults and children who have been victimized and left out in the cold alone with little or no help, while the person who victimized them receives the lion's share of the help.
We believe that should change. The first priority of the justice system should be the protection of innocent civilians. The second priority should be to ensure that those who have been victimized are taken care of and get the help which they require. The third priority should be to ensure that rehabilitation takes place so that we can break the cycle of crime, punishment and incarceration that we have been unsuccessful in accomplishing in so many unfortunate cases.
The other side of the coin is how we deal with people who are in the justice system now and what we can do to prevent these situations from occurring. I draw the attention of the House to the National Crime Prevention Council. This council was enacted by edict from the justice department. It has done excellent work in looking at ways in which we can prevent crime. I want to outline a pragmatic way of doing it, which is to implement a national headstart program.
This program was in a motion that was passed in the House last year. The motion was based upon existing programs that work, such as the Hawaii healthy start program, the Ypsilanti Perry preschool program and the Moncton headstart program which the Minister of Labour and her husband took a leadership role in constructing in 1974.
These programs are modelled under the premise that if we can ensure that children have in the first eight years of life their basic needs met, then those children have a greater chance of developing a normal psyche than those who are subjected to child abuse, violence or more subtle negative factors such as improper parenting.
If we ensure that children have their basic needs met, if we also ensure that parents have the parenting skills to be able to do the job, to raise their children in a well defined system with boundaries and good discipline, where their children are in a caring, loving and secure environment and where they have proper nutrition, then those children have the greatest opportunity of being well adjusted, productive, integrated members of society.
That is the model and the basis of the three programs that I mentioned. Do they work? Let us take a look.
In the Hawaii healthy start program the child abuse rate dropped 99%. What they did was very innovative, which I think we can do in our country. They brought mentors, women who had children and good parenting skills, and they linked them up with parents who had children at risk. By engaging in this mentoring program, by developing a trusting and secure relationship with these families, we saw a 99% reduction in child abuse, massive drops in drug abuse rates and an improvement in the socioeconomic welfare of these families. It was a huge saving for the taxpayer.
In the Perry preschool program, which has been in existence for some 30 years, there has been a $6 saving for every $1 invested. There has been a 50% reduction in youth crime. There has been a 40% reduction in teen pregnancy, which, as we know, unfortunately is usually a one-way route to poverty for both the mom and the baby. We have seen children stay in school longer, with less dependence on welfare, which again results in savings to the taxpayer of $6 for every $1 invested.
The Moncton headstart program, which the Minister of Labour championed with her husband, has shown similar effects. All three of these programs are based on the premise that if we work with parents and families, if we ensure that their basic needs are met and if we encourage them and teach them how to do this for their children, we have a better, more integrated, safer and productive society because individuals are able to develop their psyches in a normal fashion.
It is not a guarantee that this is going to happen by any stretch of the imagination, but the cold, hard facts prove that headstart works. If this government is serious about preventing crime, it can do this.
I am calling for over 70 groups in the country to put pressure on the federal government to enact a national headstart program using existing resources. We can use the medical community at time zero, because every pregnant woman goes to the doctor to have prenatal exams, and then we can address issues such as drug abuse. Hopefully by doing that we can prevent the devastating effects that fetal alcohol syndrome have on our society.
Secondly, we could use the mentoring programs in the middle years, from the time the child is born until about age four, and then use the school system between the ages of four and eight.
The Moncton program was ideal in that it brought parents into the school system. Parents came to the classroom once a week to learn basic essentials, such as proper discipline, setting boundaries and proper nutrition. They would learn that a bag of chips and Coca Cola is not dinner and is bad for the child.
That is what we are asking the federal government to do. That is what we are pushing for. We started a massive campaign last week to push the government to pursue this. It is a win-win situation for everybody.
I will digress a little on the issue of victims. As we said before, victims need rights. Victims need to be appropriately represented within the justice system. They do not at the present time have official status. My colleague from British Columbia, our House leader, has put forth a victims bill of rights that would entrench the rights of the victim. I hope the government pursues this because it is an act of fairness.
I also want to ensure that the government listens very clearly to us to ensure that victims get the care which they require because they are not getting it now. They are being excluded from the social services that they need to patch up the sometimes extraordinary damage that has been inflicted upon them through assault, rape, battery, abuse and so on.
We have an opportunity to truly put balance into the justice system. I hope the government takes it. I also hope that it listens to our judiciary. I hope it listens to the police departments who are saying very clearly, as the police chief from Vancouver said as a parting shot before he left, that we have a revolving door justice system. Criminals come into the justice system who have made some serious errors. Some of the hardest criminals go into the system and are tossed out the other end as quickly as they came in. Justice is not being served.
If we separate those high risk criminals who are dangerous to society and put the full force of the law against them, we will be saving people's lives. If we take the rest who are low risk people and try diversionary tactics, diversionary methods through the justice system, if we try alternative methods to ensure that they pay back and engage in restitution with their victims and society, we will have a chance of building a safer, fairer society for all.