Madam Speaker, I completely agree with the member. This is about racialization and poverty. This is about criminalization of race.
I had the opportunity at home to visit a youth program for young people who were in conflict with the law. A number of youth that were in the room came from racialized communities.
There was a young man who said to me, “You know, growing up my uncle sold rock on the corner and my friends did and my dad did, and that is all I have ever known, so what will I do when I become an adult? That's what I did. I sold rock on the corner”. He said, “I didn't know that I could get a job, that I could build a resume, that I could apply. I didn't have the skills”.
He was in this program and he looked me in the eye and said, “If there were more programs like this for people like me when I needed them, I wouldn't have gone to jail because I would have gotten a legit job so that I could support my girlfriend and my daughter”. He said that. This is a young man who was in one of these programs who said, “I didn't know what to do other than sell drugs”.
It is not rocket science to figure out how to solve a problem like that.