Mr. Speaker, I will focus my question on the member's priority throughout her speech, which is education.
I agree in many ways how important education is. The leader of the Liberal Party, a teacher by profession, has talked a great deal about the importance of education. For example, he talked about the importance of looking at how we fund first nations education, and that we need to provide a lot more resources.
Earlier today I met with representatives, including Paul Olson, the president of the Manitoba Teachers' Society. We talked about the importance of education. If we do not recognize how important education is to the children of our country, then we will sell short their potential. Many will end up on the wrong side of the law if we are not more proactive in encouraging our provinces, which have the administrative responsibility for education. We also need to recognize the important role that the national government can play. We need to ensure there is a sense of equity across the country in dealing with education as well as issues such as mental health. We need to ensure there is programming that allows for the nutritional well-being of young children even before they enter the education system.
If we had a proactive national government dealing with those types of issues, we could actually prevent more people from going into prisons.
Perhaps the member could comment on those points.