Mr. Speaker, I listened with care to the speech by the hon. member and there is something I am interested in pursuing a little further. She mentioned that home ownership is very important in being a role model for new Canadians, as well as youth, in decreasing crime rates in neighbourhoods.
In my riding, home ownership by individuals is at about 85%. One would think that 85% is quite high, and it is, although we would like it to be a little higher. However, even though ours is a thriving community and we might be the sixth wealthiest riding in the country in terms of household income, we still have our problems or challenges when it comes to crime.
Recently in my area, the police found out that the people in one home were dealing in counterfeit papers, including passports and other important papers. There also have been many grow ops in our area even though ours is the sixth wealthiest riding in the country.
I understand that when an area is economically depressed it will have a larger amount of crime and problems with youth, especially where there are ethnic ghettos, as the member mentioned.
I came to Canada when I was 13 years old. My family lived in a kind of ethnic ghetto at the time, but I did not see it as an ethnic ghetto then. I did not know any better. My mother and father went to work every morning and I started work when I was 14 years old, right after we came to Canada, when I could speak very little English. Sometimes I would speak to people in sign language when asking for food or a drink, the same way MPs ask the pages in the House of Commons to get them a drink.
However, the grow ops in our area, if I may expand on that, are coming at us fast and furious. The faster they are closed down or uncovered, the faster there is another one opening up down the street. As a matter of fact, a home just around the corner from my own house was busted twice in a row within a year. Since it was last closed down in October or November, the home has been boarded up and is not being used at all.
I spoke with members of the police associations who were here the other day at the reception for the Canadian Police Association. They are asking for more support in their plight in order to tackle this sort of problem. I certainly do not want grow ops in my area or anywhere in Canada. If only we could do more about that. Maybe the member can elaborate on how we can tackle the problem of the grow ops and chemical labs that are popping up all over the country.
I understand that people get caught, but there are people who know nothing about what is going on. People are living on the first and second floors of a 4,000 square foot home and meanwhile the basement is a grow op. They go down to the basement with water every day, but they are living on the first floor with a big plasma TV and living in luxury that someone has given to them.
I am not sure what we can do about it, but I am sure that building more prisons, as has been suggested across the floor, is not the solution to this problem. What may help is prevention in regard to this issue rather than punishing people and putting them away for longer at the end, with more people put away in more prison spaces. I believe more in the preventative method rather than punishment at the end.
Statistics and information have told us, even at the time when I was going to university, which was many years ago, that a longer sentence is not a deterrent to them repeating the offence later on. There is a break point where it serves no purpose to keep somebody in jail for a longer period.
Could the member comment on that?