Mr. Speaker, for many members of Parliament and certainly for many of the people I represent in the northwest of British Columbia, this issue strikes at the heart of some of the most grievous offences we can imagine, sexually harming young children.
It is important for a government to take on this issue. It is of public importance. One would think that this importance would carry right through, beyond the announcements, photo ops, and crafting of the title of a new bill into the actual delivery of the program.
On the preventative side, as my friend has pointed out, $10 million would have gone a long way to protecting our kids and going after some of these offenders. Then on the rehabilitation front, unless the government's plan is, and so far it is not, to lock everybody up forever, we need to do the rehabilitation so offenders do not commit the crimes again.
If the government does not spend the money on the prevention and does not spend the money on actual treatment, so that people do not cause harm again, what can it possibly say to the victims, the future victims who are ensnared in one of the traps set by these predators?
If the government simply says that it has decided to put the money into deficit cuts instead and that it does not have any money for treatment as it is for other more important things, what could it say to those families and those kids?