Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just for the record, I have already said that the federal government is wrong to have walked away from funding these programs and there is no excuse for them having done that. I have also said there is no excuse for us to walk away from them either. I do recognize how difficult it would be to expand the programs. Most of these programs already try to cover areas outside of their principal community so I think it's important to make sure that what we have, which is working right now, is given enough to ensure they can continue to do their work and succeed.
I hear from people in my constituency all the time that they feel that, too often, the victims are forgotten. We always seem to come up with money to live up to our statutory requirements when it comes to dealing with offenders. I guess I would just have to say, like our adoption of zero tolerance for violence policy, we have to live up to this government's commitment to victims, which it signed in 1988. If we're not going to live up to that, then I think the government should make a statement saying that it's not going to live up to it because it can't afford to.
The Minister of Justice told me last week that all of our principles are now subject to review because of fiscal pressure. Well, if the principle of the support for victims is one that has had to be reviewed, then let's be up front about it. Let's hear out in the open that it is up for review and that perhaps we've been found wanting for money to ensure the principle can be upheld.
Mr. Chairman, I think that the amount of money that the Standing Committee on Finance is recommending be put into these programs is not a tremendous amount, given the size of the territorial budget and given the size of the budgets of even the social envelope departments. I still maintain that there should be some way for us to get a stronger commitment than what we have so far today from the government to work with victims' assistance programs, to ensure they get adequate funding and support to continue to do their valuable work through the next year. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.