Bill C-25 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act

This enactment amends the Youth Criminal Justice Act by adding deterrence and denunciation to the principles that a court must consider when determining a youth sentence. It also clarifies that the presumption against the pre-trial detention of a young person is rebuttable and specifies the circumstances in which the presumption does not apply.

Youth Criminal Justice Act

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I think my hon. colleague has a very good point. I did mention a couple of the recommendations of Justice Nunn that were ignored by the government, and I would like to talk about some more.

I hope the government will actually reconsider this. I am disappointed, partly because when the Justice Minister went to Halifax and met with Nova Scotia's minister of justice, he seemed to be saying that he had listened and heard the recommendations of Justice Nunn and recognized the concern about this in Nova Scotia and he would bring forward changes to the act.

I must say that my assumption was that those changes would reflect, at least in large measure, the recommendations of Justice Nunn. That is why I am so disappointed because they do not.

Let me speak about some of the other recommendations that Justice Nunn made. For example, recommendation 11, “That the federal government amend section 42--

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

I am sorry, but the hon. member does not have time to do that. Time has expired.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Trinity—Spadina.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the overall crime rate in Canada has been falling since it peaked in 1991. Police reported about 2.6 million offences in 2004, resulting in a crime rate that was 12% lower than a decade earlier. However, youth perception of safety is declining.

Between 1998 and 2002, fewer young people, aged 16 to 24, considered their neighbourhoods to be a very safe place in which to live. In 2002, 72% felt their neighbourhoods were very safe from violent crime, a decrease from 1998, which was at that time 78%. By and large, the majority of young people still feel very safe, but there seems to be a small decrease.

We have seen another statistic from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, which shows an increase of about 13% in the violent crime rate among young people from 1993 to 2003.

Of those young people who feel unsafe, roughly 25% of them are boys and girls who are home alone by grade seven. Eighty per cent of mothers of school-age children are in the workforce, according to the Canadian Council on Social Development, and they worry about their kids. In fact, the average child spends 67 hours of discretionary time each week at home, more hours than they spend in school. That is the time, especially after school, when they are worried about their own safety. Young people are most likely to be bullied during this time and likely to engage in unsupervised Internet use.

In terms of adolescents being victimized or running afoul of the law, research shows this happens between the hours of 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. When we talk about youth crime and youth safety, that is the time when young people sometimes get in trouble. It is between the end of the school day and when parents return home from work.

Research has also shown that this unsupervised time is the risk factor for substance abuse, gang behaviour and other problematic behaviour. Therefore, we know the time that we need to deal with, yet the bill does almost nothing. It does not talk about how we deal with prevention.

There are solutions such as dealing with anger management and bullying. The best programs that can be put in place are after school activities. Again, if young people can attend good after school activities, not only will they be safe, but their self-esteem will be enhanced and their educational success and their positive mental and physical health will be improved. Those are all the things we want for our young people.

Organizations like the Boys and Girls Club transform their after school hours from unsupervised time, where they feel unsafe, to a productive time where they can learn with structured activities.

When we talk about youth crime and safety, in the summer the New Democrats called for the extension of the Canada youth employment program to make it year round permanent program. Right now it only applies to the summer. We know this would have an impact on reducing the youth crime rate.

We have seen it over and over again. For example, the city of Toronto has an after school recreation and care program. This initiative hires young people in their own neighbourhoods. They become role models and mentors. They go to elementary and high schools to teach young people. Sometimes it is an arts program, basketball, physical programs or homework. Some of these young people could have been in trouble with the law, but they decided to turn their lives around.

These kinds of programs have a dramatic effect on safety in a community. Some may remember the summer of youth crime a few years ago. There were a lot of shootings in the city of Toronto. With different strategies, one of which is the youth employment program, the gun crimes for young people dropped 40% within one year. We know this kind of program works.

This kind of program not only provides good jobs, it provides excellent training and new opportunities to benefit the entire neighbourhood. If we look at youth crime, it is not just young people. Sometimes it is the neighbourhood or the families. The program provides young leaders with the tools and resources to reach out and support families and youth to break out of the cycle of violence, alienation and despair, which can often plague the at risk communities.

Research by Geena Brown shows that if we have these kinds of programs, fewer mothers would use emergency services, child welfare, food bank services and prescription drugs.

I want to point out how much money we could save if we could have a youth crime prevention program attached to the bill.

The latest survey I have seen shows that to keep young people in jail, even without the counselling and support that they may need while in jail, it costs society and taxpayers a bare minimum of $65,000 per year. If we add the counselling and sometimes the substance abuse help they may need, we are looking at $100,000 to $120,000 a year of taxpayer money. If we do the deterrence, the prevention kind of support we have for young people, it is much better use of funding because we know it works.

We recently looked at the figures. The justice department reported that crimes cost our society almost $50 billion a year. If we can enable groups like the Boys and Girls Club of Canada, YouCan, which teaches young people how to deal with violent situations by de-escalating and learning the skills of conflict mediation, they can take a very explosive situation, de-escalate it and young people end up supporting each other rather than resorting to violence.

We know that a lot of the young people resort to violent crimes because they feel is the only method in which they know to express themselves. It is not an excuse. They have to take responsibility, but we also have to give them the tools to learn how to de-escalate things, whether it is a bully situation or very at risk behaviour.

YouCan has had a lot of successful initiatives and many other organizations in the community have had some very good initiatives.

The Youth Criminal Justice Act contains the whole notion that when a young person commits a crime, rather than going to jail, we should find some way to give them alternative sentencing, such as working in the communities so they can reform themselves. Unfortunately, the funding has not followed that principle. A lot of neighbourhoods, organizations and municipalities said that it was a good principle, but when judges told young people, who were facing court time, that they had to take some kind of alternative programming, no programs were available in the communities. The community agencies do not have the funding to provide the alternative programs to train these young people.

Therefore, while we have had good principles in the past, we have not had the kind of funding we need to provide the community support, which is critically important.

The National Crime Prevention Centre, a major body for national crime prevention, funds pilot projects, sometimes for one year, sometimes for three years, but it does not provide permanent funding. Many of the organizations that are doing a lot of work with young people to prevent them from committing crime or after sentencing ensuring they learn the skills so they will not reoffend are saying that they need permanent funding. They know what works. The centre has seen the program work and yet after two or three years the funding dries up and a lot of young people and the communities themselves end up being in trouble.

Other areas that would really help to reduce youth crime are in supporting local initiatives. We have to assist municipalities to build, expand and support drop-in centres, whether it is social infrastructure like basketball courts, community centres or libraries. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has told us there is a social infrastructure deficit.

For example, the city of Toronto is looking at closing swimming pools because there is not enough funding to support them. Again, more and more young people, after school or even during school hours, will be unable to learn skills. Unfortunately, some of these young people will end up getting into the wrong crowd or joining a gang. Then they get into trouble, and that is unfortunate.

We know young people sometimes are get in trouble. Why? Because the rate of depression and anxiety among young people in Canada is growing. The rate of suicide is 15% among 15 to 20 year olds, which is the third worst record among OECD countries. When we look at young people, whether they are in jail or not, or in their community and whether they are young offenders or not, we see a clear link because we do not invest in communities. These young people are feeling more and more depressed. We also see obesity and even suicide.

With Canada being a rich country, how could we possibly have the third worst record of young people committing suicide? They must feel dramatically hopeless to do that.

I know I have talked about deterrence, but the bill does not go into the whole notion of how we deal with youth crime prevention. At the end of the day, that is what will work.

Another aspect the bill does not deal with, which is a key one, is witness protection. Some young people would like to tell authorities what is happening in their circle. They would like to tell them that they may know who is doing what in a community in terms of crime. However, some of them feel tremendously unprotected. If we do not beef up witness protection program, many young people will continue to feel they will be targeted or will be at risk and therefore not speak out. A strong witness protection program is very much needed.

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police recently told the Standing Committee on Public Safety that while witness protection programs are extremely important for law enforcement, they are often too expensive for the local police force. They are unaffordable for the local police departments.

We need a comprehensive youth crime prevention plan that would include youth employment, after school activities, investing in local communities, investing in witness protection programs. Then we could really talk about deterrence and prevention. The bill that is in front of us sets out these sentencing principles. It is fine to have these principles, but there is no community infrastructure or capacity to support these principles such as deterrence.

We know that jailing young people is not a deterrent. While in jail they learn to become hardened criminals. Who is in jail with them? Criminals who have been around for a long time. It is a form of university, I guess, post-secondary education. The youth go to jail and while there, learn how to become hardened criminals. Putting them in jail alone does not work. Not only is it expensive, but it sometimes is counterproductive.

Unfortunately, the key element of prevention is missing in this bill. I know of a lot of young people who started out their lives wrong, in that they made a mistake, got to know the wrong people and got in trouble. Because they are young, energetic and enthusiastic many of them are still hopeful. They have not given up hope. If we reach out to them at the right time and actually believe in them, then they can turn their lives around.

This weekend I was at an organization called Sketch. It teaches homeless youth how to express themselves through the arts, visual arts, painting, sculpture, music, theatre. Some of those young people, because they live on the streets, have had quite a bit of contact with police. Some of them have been in trouble before. This is the 10th anniversary of Sketch. Many of those young people come from broken families. They suffered abuse, sometimes physical, other times sexual. They ran away. That is why they are out on the streets. When they live on the streets they get into some crimes that sometimes they regret.

Organizations such as Sketch deal with those young people holistically to get them to express themselves through the arts and in that way, they heal themselves. They come together and form a very strong community. They support each other. They talk to each other about why they should not continue that cycle of violence, how they can get back to school, find housing and turn their lives around.

There is much we can do for young people. Unfortunately, this bill does not necessarily address all we can do to invest in young people.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I like the last example the member gave. Last weekend I visited a very similar project in my riding. People were doing excellent carvings, spectacular art, showing that if their skills are harnessed, it can go toward very productive and positive work. I think it was run by an organization called Sundog.

The bill is very small, as the member probably mentioned. It only has two items. One is to increase the opportunities for the crown to get a bit more detention in pretrial, and the other adds some adult principles of sentencing to apply to children.

I wonder if the member agrees with those two changes. I also wonder if she agrees with all the other recommendations in the Nunn report, probably 30 plus, that were not incorporated in the bill.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when young people can express themselves creatively, they tell me that their souls get touched and they turn their lives around. Often, that is what is missing in a lot of our programs.

The part of the bill I have a great deal of difficulty with is the sentencing principle, the second part. The first part, pretrial custody, I will put aside. The second part of the bill is the sentencing principle.

I used to be a City of Toronto children and youth advocate. I have certainly looked at a lot of research and there is no evidence whatsoever from all the research I have done to suggest that adult principles of deterrence and denunciation would have any positive outcome for the public safety. If we are talking about passing a law, one would think we would look at some scientific evidence. I have not seen any.

Furthermore, with respect to the difference between adults and youth, sometimes the courts and society do not necessarily sanction that. On this concept of protection of society, the best protection is to invest in the programs that my hon. colleagues are talking about, Sundog, Sketch, the Boys and Girls Club of Canada, YOUCAN, Leave Out Violence, or the YMCA. That is the best protection we could possibly have for our young people.

I have seen communities transform themselves when we invest in the communities. The key element is that the best allies to fight youth crime are the young people themselves, if we can get the young people to turn around their lives, go back into their communities and say, “Hey, that is not a good thing to do. Look at me. I have done it. It is terrible. Follow the right path”. They are the best allies, and that is the component that is missing here. That is the best deterrent.

Having the principle of deterrence and denunciation, the second part of the bill, I do not think works.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague with interest and, most of all, a certain sense of satisfaction.

Bill C-25 is clearly based on the Conservative ideology that it is absolutely essential to punish offenders and the belief that this is the way to solve problems, without putting the necessary effort into rehabilitation. I was afraid that this might have become a common view all across Canada, but luckily that does not seem to be the case. In Quebec, we dealt with this issue a long time ago. We passed legislation that gives people a chance and allows for rehabilitation, which helps reduce crime. This is shown quite clearly by the statistics.

This bill sets out to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act by adding deterrence and denunciation to the principles considered in determining a sentence. The hon. member just explained very well how far removed this is from reality. The summary also states that the presumption against the pre-trial detention of a young person is rebuttable. In addition, the bill specifies the circumstances in which this presumption does not apply.

I would like to ask my colleague a question. It has never been shown in Quebec that this Conservative approach will have positive results, especially in view of the fact that the virtually identical model developed in the United States to fight crime has not had the desired effect. In addition, young people are at a time in life when we could be trying to ensure that they do not become repeat offenders. Therefore, an entirely different approach is needed.

I would like my colleague to answer a question. Does this Conservative approach really have a future in the area she represents? Would we not do better simply to study this issue again in depth to determine which real efforts should be approved? For example, we could put more emphasis on prevention, on fighting poverty, or on studying the situations in which young people find themselves, rather than taking a purely punitive approach.

I was reading an article this morning which said that, for the first time in ten years, the number of incarcerated people is on the rise. We would therefore be investing a lot of money in a punitive approach that would not necessarily be very effective. I agree with the hon. member that, in doing this, we risk helping to develop a school for crime. Does my colleague share this view?

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, millions of people in the U.S. have been in jail. There has been a dramatic increase, but the streets are not safer.

If we are looking for a model, it is right in front us, in Quebec. I have seen the way the Quebec court system works. It gives young people a second chance. It does not just talk about principles. It actually invests in young people. It has programs. It believes in young people, that because they are young, they are still learning and there is a chance for them to turn their lives around.

The majority of young people can do that. Yes, there is a very small percentage of hardened criminals, but I am not talking about them. I am talking about the majority of young people.

If we look at the rate in Quebec of those who reoffend, the ones who have gone to jail or who have committed crimes and received alternative sentences, very few of them reoffend. The percentage of young people who reoffend is actually much lower than the percentage outside Quebec. Why? It is because Quebec fundamentally believes that young people have the capacity to reform themselves.

When we talk about principles and sentencing, we have to be very clear. The first principle is that we have to believe young people have the capacity to change. If not, then we throw the key away. They are young people. For how many years are we going to put them in jail? It is not going to work. We have to find the best solutions. In Quebec quite a lot of programs work very well, and of course, there are other models outside Quebec.

On the principle of simply locking them up and putting more and more people in jail, we have seen the example in the U.S. and it has not worked.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have certainly read a lot in the media lately, particularly with respect to gun related crimes and gang related incidents, so I understand why we are seized with this matter today. I also understand why the governing party would like to be perceived as the law and order party.

However, there are people in my community who are concerned about crime and they are also parents who have children of their own. Above all, they are concerned about prevention. They do not want to see crimes happening in the first place. One of the things that concerns me is that while we have debated crime bill after crime bill after crime bill in this House, we have not had any debate about the much more fundamental pieces that need to be in place for today's youth to succeed.

I had the privilege of working for the national office of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada. As part of that organization, I worked with many of the organizations that my colleague talked about, like YOUCAN and the Boys and Girls Club, which are doing some really progressive work with children and youth to ensure that they do not ever end up in a life of crime.

As my colleague is also the children's advocate and because the House has not been seized with these matters, perhaps her committee has been, or maybe she has been involved with other bodies that are part of Parliament but not necessarily in the television limelight. Maybe she could tell us whether there are other opportunities where important work is being done to ensure that children are safe in our communities.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Order, please. I think the House will have to take that as a comment rather than a question, because the time for questions and comments has long expired.

The hon. member for Scarborough—Guildwood, resuming debate.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Richmond.

There is a pattern here. I do not know whether you have noticed it, Mr. Speaker, and I know you have been sitting as Chair for this entire Parliament, but there is a pattern here.

Step one of the pattern is to fan the flames of fear, usually on the basis of some egregious event that happened in public and has caught the public's attention. Step two is to step up to the microphones, to great fanfare, and announce once again that the government is very tough on crime.

Step three, also to great fanfare, is to do immediate interviews and television appearances, et cetera, and announce that the government has the solution. Step four is to table a bill.

Step five is to repeat steps one, two and three for as long as the media pay any attention, for as long as the public pays any attention, or for as long as the government needs to keep the channel on the channel that is currently on.

Mr. Speaker, I know that you are an experienced parliamentarian, but you may be surprised, or you may not be, to learn that this pattern was used 16 times in the first session of this Parliament. Sixteen out of the 64 bills presented to Parliament were crime related legislation, which means that about 25% of the legislation on the floor of the House is crime related legislation.

That is a lot of criminal legislation, but it is a great pattern. It appears to generate, how shall we say it, publicity more than it actually deals with the issues. However, because it is dealt with in such a piecemeal, hodge-podge fashion with the repetition of this pattern, it gives Canadians watching the debate a very small glimpse of a very large picture, whether it is a large picture of criminality or a large picture with respect to amendments to the Criminal Code or the youth justice legislation.

By dealing with it in this way, the government in effect gets 16 photo ops, 16 press conferences and 16 TV appearances, all to great effect for the propaganda machine of the Conservative Party, but not much actually gets accomplished. When the government went to prorogation, which killed all of the activity we had in the first session, it got to do it all over again.

In this session, six out of the 29 bills that are on the floor of the House are crime and crime-related bills, so again the pattern is repeated to great effect. The Conservative Party has six more photo ops, six more press conferences and, it hopes, at least six TV appearances. It gives the appearance of actually doing something about crime when in fact nothing is getting done about crime.

Instead of a comprehensive approach, which is what Mr. Justice Nunn suggested with respect to youth in this country, we have all these little series of one-offs.

I thought it would be particularly informative for those who are listening to know that Mr. Justice Nunn had 34 recommendations. Of those 34 recommendations, about 19 were of an administrative nature and are not the prerogative of this chamber. They are largely on how the youth justice system is administered. It is administered by the province.

However, six were specific suggestions on amendments to the legislation, none of which are incorporated in Bill C-25, or if they are, it is in a very tangential way. Here we have an individual who is well respected in the field issuing a report that has 34 recommendations, six of which are of a legislative nature and none of which appear in Bill C-25. That seems to be an awfully strange way to go about being, apparently, tough on crime.

Mr. Justice Nunn has suggested that:

The Province should advocate that the federal government amend the “Declaration of Principle” in section 3 of the Youth Criminal Justice Act to add a clause indicating that protection of the public is one of the primary goals of the act.

I do not know whether that is a good recommendation or not, but it does on the face of it make a lot of sense to me. Why would Bill C-25 not contain a declaration of principle that “protection of the public is one of the primary goals of the act”?

That does seem a bit sensible to me. It also seems to be something that would be easily incorporated into a piece of legislation such as this. It would not, however, be useful to the pattern that has been established, and which I suggested at the beginning of my speech, in that it does not give any publicity hit if this kind of thing is put into the bill.

Recommendation 21 states:

--that the federal government amend the definition of “violent offence” in section 39(1)(a) of the Youth Criminal Justice Act to include conduct that endangers or is likely to endanger the life or safety of another person.

Again, why not amend the definition of a violent offence while we are at it? Why can Bill C-25 not incorporate that suggestion? It seems perfectly sensible to me.

Recommendation 22 states:

--that the federal government amend section 39(1)(c) of the Youth Criminal Justice Act so that the requirement for a demonstrated “pattern of findings of guilt” is changed to “a pattern of offences”, or similar wording....

That is an interesting one, because there is some parallel in proposed subclause 29(2) in clause 1 of this amendment. The government seems to have chosen to stick with the concept of a “pattern of findings of guilt” rather than a “pattern of offences”.

I do not sit on the justice committee, but this would seem to me to be a particularly important question to ask. It would speak to those kinds of situations when a youth who has done a series of particularly egregious offences that may not have actually generated convictions still looks like a pretty bad apple. So if in fact incarceration or detention is being considered as a way to keep this particular individual off the streets, apparently in the government's bill there must be actual findings of guilt even though this particular individual may have had a whole string of offences for which guilt has not necessarily yet been found.

I am curious as to why the government, which apparently wants to be tough on crime, is not incorporating that. There may be good reasons. I do not know. Again, this looks like a missed opportunity.

Another recommendation deals with the concept of the “responsible person” and how that responsible person should continue his or her responsibility if the person is outside of detention. There are other recommendations with respect to bail.

None of these appear in Bill C-25. It is difficult to know why these kinds of sensible recommendations do not get incorporated. They are recommendations by a respected justice on an area of law that we all agree always needs some continuous amendment and review.

Then we have some of the things that the government does put in. I want to pick up on the comment of my colleague from Scarborough—Rouge River, who said that sentencing does not reduce criminality.

In another life, I used to be a lawyer. Actually I still am a lawyer, but I do not practise. I did a very little bit of criminal law. Occasionally one would go into the prisons to interview one's client. I did make a couple of observations on the very few clients that I did actually represent.

One was that they were not the sharpest knives in the drawer. Generally speaking, people who are in the criminal business are not that sharp. Second, they frequently had some pretty horrific backgrounds, possibly due to drugs, either drugs they were taking or drugs that had resulted in fetal alcohol syndrome or fetal alcohol effect or things of that nature, which diminished their capacity to interact in society.

Frequently their educational achievements were not very high. Frequently they had dependencies of some kind, whether it was drugs or alcohol or something of that nature.

Therefore, it is a population that is not, so to speak, the most outstanding. A consistent pattern was that in each and every case they never thought they were going to get caught in the first place. Therefore, amending legislation so that you can denounce them and deter them, whether it is the Criminal Code or this particular legislation, is utterly meaningless to the population we are trying to affect.

First, none of them had any idea they were going to get caught. They all thought they were going to get away with what they were doing. Second, if they were caught, they had absolutely no idea what the sentence might be for conviction on the particular offence with which they were charged. This was consistent both with adults and with juveniles.

I just want to point out that sentencing, whether it is minimum mandatories and all the rest of the stuff that seems to go on here to great effect, does not seem to make a great deal of difference with respect to the actual criminal population that it is supposed to affect, but for some of us, it really makes us feel a lot better.

Let me pick up on a comment by Martha Mackinnon of Justice for Children and Youth. A news report states that she says:

--the Conservatives are addressing a perception that has been exacerbated by politicians and the media. She also criticized the government's move to bring back “general deterrence” for youths, saying “there's no evidence that deterrence works for young people.”

I agree with Ms. Mackinnon. I do not know who she is, but she--

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member. I have been trying to get his attention to let him know that his time has expired, but he has been absorbed. Perhaps he could take a sentence or two to wind up.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I apologize for not recognizing your signals.

In summary, this is a bill that could have done a lot, appears to have done very little, and frankly misses the mark, but does feed the Conservative propaganda machine.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague's remarks. I must point out one thing. He talks about penalties not being a deterrent, but when there are no penalties, clearly there is no deterrent. That is what youth are approaching the justice system with right now. They do not care because they know they are not going to be punished.

The member talks about the Nunn report and says we are not including the principle of “protection of the public”. The whole thing is about protection of the public. He said that a person has to be found guilty, not just charged. I do not think he has read the bill. It states:

--unless

(a) the young person is charged with a violent offence or an offence that otherwise endangered the public....

So clearly it is about public safety. Further on, the bill states:

(c) the young person is charged with an indictable offence....

That means not necessarily convicted. Further, the bill states:

--including any pending charges against the young person, that the young person will, if released from custody, commit a violent offence or an offence that otherwise endangers the public by creating a substantial likelihood of serious bodily harm to another person.

It is all about protection of the public. It is not about only when a young person is found guilty. It is about when he is charged and when he has a record and so on. It is clear. I am not sure why the member says it is not.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, with respect to the statement that there are no penalties, there are penalties. Of course there are penalties. The member may not be happy with the application of the penalties, but there are penalties. The member may not be happy with the timeliness of the application of penalties, but there are penalties.

With respect to the member's concerns about protection of the public, why not simply adopt Justice Nunn's recommendation? It states:

--the federal government amend the “Declaration of Principle” in section 3 to add a clause indicating that protection of the public is one of the primary goals of the act.

These are the kinds of things that judges refer to continuously when considering sentences.The member may think that these are simply superfluous words, but these are significant words that Justice Nunn, on studying patterns of criminality and studying how judges deal with these things, says are important to incorporate.

Why is it not there?

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

It is there.