Mr. Speaker, in 1992 a subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Health produced a report called, “Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: The Preventable Tragedy”. It concluded that maternal consumption of alcohol during pregnancy is the leading known cause of mental retardation and other alcohol-related birth defects.
As the member said in his speech, there is clear evidence that 40% to 50% of the inmates in our jails across the country, both federal and provincial, in fact suffer from what is now called FASD, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, because it is much broader than we thought. It is incurable, but it is 100% preventable.
The bill purports that we need to deal with youth crime. Yet with the causes of this being related to the environment and the early conditions related to a child, why is it that the courts are sending people who suffer from FASD to jail where rehabilitation is not applicable in their case? How can there be rehabilitation when that is not possible?
The real question is, why do we not have the funding for programs to prevent the incidence of FASD? More important, should that occur and crimes occur, where are the programs for dealing with the lifelong tragedy of FASD?