Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Ottawa South for his question because it provides me with some time to expound on the issue of investing in our young children.
The phenomenon of street gangs began in the United States in the 1980s and has now moved its way into Canada, and now into Montreal. Originally the gangs were made up of young men. In the 1980s the overwhelming majority of the membership of the Crips and the Bloods which appeared in the Los Angeles region of California were young men. They were of legal age, but as time went on, we began to see younger and younger and younger members recruited.
The phenomenon began to appear in Canada toward the mid and late 1990s and it has become a real issue. Initially in the Montreal area we saw it in Montreal north and Saint-Michel, but the street gangs have now moved into my riding and I am on the west side of the island. Just to situate it geographically, Montreal west and Saint-Michel are on the east side of Montreal Island in the centre and north. My riding is in the southwest and part of it is the west island. I have spoken with police and with the community organizations on the ground. The street gangs are now in NDG and they have now moved further west in my riding into Lachine.
Let us turn to the issue of the young children and young people in their teens and early twenties who have been recruited into the gangs or who have become wannabes. We already know there are higher rates of pregnancies among young people who have dropped out of school, et cetera. The young woman may be the girlfriend of someone who is either in a gang or considers himself to be a wannabe and she dresses her three year old in the gang colours of her boyfriend or her partner.
This is the phenomenon that Harry Delva talked about. We already know that children are very intelligent and have such fertile minds. I remember that my daughter, who is now 14, at five years old was actually teaching me how to use the DVD.
We have to ensure that the parents of these young children are provided with the proper resources. They must be provided with parenting skills. We must ensure they are provided with affordable housing, social housing. They must be provided with the appropriate programs.
I can talk about one program in my riding of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine which is called Elizabeth House. Elizabeth House receives funding from the provincial government, and part of that funding obviously comes from the social transfer from the federal government, in order to provide, for example, parenting skills, cooking skills, budgeting skills to young mothers. There are two homes where these young women can live.
The problem is there are gaps and when the young women have to leave, if they are unable to get into social housing, or even if they get into social housing, their development and skills are not necessarily at the level where they really can raise their children autonomously. Therefore, working with Elizabeth House a number of community activists and I supported a plan for a transitional home. That home saw the light of day in December 2005 in NDG, where? On Benny Farm. Benny Farm, which formerly was veteran housing, has been renovated. In many cases it is green renovation. The architects have won prestigious international prizes for the work that has been done.
There are now a number of units in one building where young women who leave Elizabeth House with their families can go. The children are under five years of age. They are provided with the additional assistance that they require. They are encouraged to go back to school or to seek the skills they need in order to become employable and then they are provided with assistance in job seeking. Once they are able to stand on their feet, they are assisted in finding their own place off the area.
The point, though, is there are virtually no programs that the Maison Transitionnelle 03, which is what it is called, can find to pay for the program and case workers. It is not just young women, I should say. A young man is there who lived, from the time he was two years old, in foster homes and never felt that he had an identity or was worth anything. He has several children. He lives there and for the first time in his life feels like he is someone who can actually contribute. Those are the kinds of needs that the government needs to be addressing and is not addressing.
The national crime prevention strategy that the Liberal government put in place in 1998, I believe it was, needs to continue. It needs to be expanded. It needs to have a component of sustainable, or in French “durable”, core funding.
These organizations need to know that in six months' time or in three years' time they are not suddenly going to have to be scrambling to develop some project to get another year or two years funding. They need to know that they will be able to continue to provide the support in the ethnocultural and visible minority communities, but also in the wider communities.
In Lachine the overwhelming majority of the population is francophone de souche, white francophone Quebeckers. That is where the level of poverty is high and the dropout rate is high. Guess what? When one looks at the criminality rate in Lachine, that is where the criminality rate is high.
The 11th report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights is clear. It is making clear recommendations to the House and I hope that each and every member in the House will vote in favour of concurrence.