Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is right. Years ago we did not hear about abuse of older adults, but I believe that it occurred back then, as well.
I remember living near a family where the grandmother was kept. I remember the children, who were my age, going up and slapping the grandmother. I was horrified at the way she was treated in this home. Therefore, I know from personal contact that it did occur, but nobody ever spoke of it.
I want to encourage families to look after themselves. However, it is very important that one of the points of having a project such as this one is to bring out into the open the issue of abuse of seniors. It is family violence. If members remember way back when, we did not hear too much about family violence. It certainly was occurring, but it was hidden, and it was shameful. We need to bring it out in the open.
Nowadays families are more broken up. There are not such large families any more. The children move away. They do not necessarily live in the same community as their parents do. Many people do not have children. These people end up alone, very vulnerable and often are taken advantage of.
This bill came in response to a number of incidents in my own riding and discussions that I had with law enforcement officers and others.
What I really want to stress is, yes, there needs to be more work done and there probably needs to be some more spending. However, it does not necessarily have to be a great big, expensive program. It is a question of better spending what we are spending now and having an ombudsman or a point person to whom the seniors community can turn when it does not know where else to turn.