Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the Bloc for his question. He is right.
Quebec is a good province to look at from this perspective. Under the Parti Québécois and the Liberals, that province made conscious decisions with regard to preventing juvenile crime and when it did occur, to rehabilitate the juvenile as effectively as possible. Quebec did that more consciously than any other province. We were still using the young offenders law at that time, so I am going to say it was close to 30 years ago that that province started doing this.
We can see the pattern if we compare Ontario and Quebec, or one of the western provinces, and I will use Alberta because it is probably the most restrictive. The rates of juvenile offences in Quebec stayed at a significantly lower level than some of the other provinces, for example, Alberta.
The member is right. Quebec's approach was to look at the root causes of crime. Some first nations feel completely alienated from our mainstream society. Some visible minorities feel disenfranchised and disconnected. Some individuals are from poor, dysfunctional families. We need to address those problems.
Instead of telling the provinces that they are going to spend $200 million to $250 million a year more on incarcerating people, if we tell them that they are going to spend it on prevention programs for youth, we would get a much better bang for our buck.