Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to the member's speech. I appreciated his starting off with a story about some of the good things young people are doing. I know in my own community of Nanaimo—Cowichan, a couple of weeks ago, some young people did some brilliant work on cyberbullying, where they presented some things that young people are faced with in cyberspace around bullying and they invited the audience to participate. These young people had a hand in writing the program and certainly in interacting with the audience. So, I think we need to really recognize that young people from coast to coast to coast are doing some good work.
I noted with interest that recently Statistics Canada has done a report in which it did some geocoding in a number of cities. One finding in common among the cities was that higher levels of crime occur in neighbourhoods with lower levels of income.
Of course we know that Justice Nunn's report talked about prevention. He covered a number of items in his recommendations around prevention, including increasing supports that promote the integrity of families, looking at a gap analysis of existing programs to ensure a targeted and strategic approach and looking at the education system. Although some of these do clearly fall within provincial jurisdiction, there is a role for the federal government to play in terms of targeting funding, perhaps investing in pilot projects that look at programs around youth prevention, so that we actually stop youth from getting involved in the criminal justice system down the road.
I wonder if the member could comment on the fact that over a number of crime bills introduced by the Conservative government, we simply see inadequate attention paid to prevention of crime, particularly with young people.