Mr. Speaker, in terms of prevention, the model that we have to look at is the province of Quebec. It does not just provide extensive services for rehabilitation after crimes have been committed. It has a much broader program to prevent youth from getting into the gangs. That currently is the biggest problem we have. Its social safety net is, arguably, better than any in the country.
If we are to look any place in Canada, we have to look to Quebec and that has been true for at least 30-plus years, almost 40 years, since I have been monitoring this.
The approach of prevention in terms of the government, and this is true both of the Departments of Public Safety and Justice, is in the last three years it has had money budgeted for prevention work, both for youth and adults but mostly geared toward youth, and it has not spent it all. It does not know how to do it. The Conservatives are so locked into this ideology of punishment and after-the-fact response rather than preventing it. They literally do not know how to do it and they are still learning.
In a number of cases, the government has not funded the agencies that deal with youth, those agencies that had been funded under previous governments. It let the contracts run out and gave it to new people, who did not know what they were doing either. It is a real problem in terms of prevention.
The government has a model in the country. If it simply looked at Quebec and followed that model, we may see some real growth in the number of cases that do not get into our courts and the number of victims we will not have because crimes will not be committed.