Mr. Chairman, I do indeed know that. What we had asked the Minister was to do more in terms of prevention and early intervention. I am happy to see that the Minister is going to be recommending further expansion on healthy programs in 2012-13. That sounds like good work. These are expensive programs, although I have to
say I would like to debate any budgets provided to us on that, certainly not what we were told when we looked in the healthy families.
I would just like to say, Mr. Chairman, looking at our report, prevention programs are starved for resources and lack capacity to take on more clients. The unfortunate reality is that crisis cases eat up the lion’s share of child welfare resources. This crisis response mode is not sustainable. The Minister is right; this is our budget, we are together on this. We have done a lot of work on it and listened to the people. What we are hearing is much more is needed on the prevention side. We raised this. We are refusing to accept this budget until we get more in that area, which means the Minister, or we will have to make judgment decisions on where the money will come from and we are hoping the Minister will take that on. But we have tried to say this is clearly the responsibility. We need more on prevention and intervention services. Now there are a million ways that the Minister could provide to deliver prevention and early intervention services. We go on to suggest, Members heard how many parents, especially young parents, would benefit from counselling and support groups. We need to vastly improve pre and post-natal care and parenting skills, offer respite services and child care plus in-home supports and home visitation programs. Investing in these prevention programs early will reduce the demand for protection services in the near future. These are investments. That is how we see them.
I am asking the Minister again. I am informing the Minister that we need to see action for us to make progress here. We are waiting. I welcome any comments from the Minister.