Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for coming in on the conversation and reminding me that I was speaking to the amendment to Bill C-68, in fact the amendment in all its glory. I know the hon. member wants to be leader of the Reform Party. He has indicated that. I appreciate that he would get up and get involved in doctoring the speech that is going on.
Anyway, he has some obviously good points that are almost liberal in a sense and that would create some type of a problem for his party. He would be an excellent candidate and I appreciate him intervening.
Let us go back to the main talking points on Bill C-68. I am speaking to the amendment because I already spoke to the bill and I know the hon. member listened intently. I want to correct something that I said when I was heckled by one of my own members when I spoke to Bill C-68. I said that I had spent three years in grade eight and that they were the happiest years of my life. That is not true. My wife asked me to have that corrected. It was actually the member who had heckled me. I indicated those were the happiest years of his life but it came out differently in Hansard .
Going back to lowering the age to 14 and 15 years olds, that part of the youth justice system was not addressed in the original Young Offenders Act. Young offenders come from three sectors. There are the very young first offenders who commit a crime and are caught. Sometimes it is the very first crime they have committed and they are caught. It may be a misdemeanour of some type. They go into the justice system and for the first time in their lives they are taught some values.
When they realize those values and are pressured by different peers and not the peers or the gang they hang out with, many of them are success stories. They actually spend time with people who counsel them. They spend time with very intelligent lawyers. We even have some in the back row who wail away here. They spend some time with people who teach them values.
The part of the Reform Party's platform that always bothers me is that it wants to pretend that this does not happen, that people are not helped by the Young Offenders Act and are not put on the right track.
I can give many instances of people who we deal with once and they never come back into the justice system. They rearrange their lives. They take the talent they have and use it to be productive members of society. The lowering of the age to 14 or 15 years gives me the feeling that the bill is on the right track.
When 14 to 17 year olds commit a very serious crime I do not see anything wrong with publishing their names. Right now they could go back into school without people knowing that they have committed a serious crime. That part of the system has to change so that educators know who they are dealing with when there are violent offenders in their school system. If youths are sentenced for murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, aggravated sexual assault or they repeat serious violent offences, their names are then subject to publication.
We sometimes think publishing their names in the paper is what this deals with. It is more than that. It is the publication of their names so that the people who are dealing with them on a day to day basis know their backgrounds and are able to come to grips with them. They could be sitting in front of them in a classroom. I am not taking about an elementary school system. I am talking about training courses or rehabilitation courses, whether it is Alcoholics Anonymous or courses dealing with people who have come in contact with cocaine, marijuana, heroine or any of those evil drugs that are out there and so easily available. A person dealing with those people should know that a violent reaction could happen at any time. The publication of names when a judge considers them to be dangerous is a very important part of the act.
It is very easy to tell if someone is dangerous. All we have to do is look at their file or rap sheet to see the number of convictions, arrests and times they have appeared before the criminal courts. Bill C-68 is a very positive step toward have a more refined justice system for youth but it will not stop someone from committing a serious crime. That will not happen.
We have already heard the Reform Party saying that the Liberals have this idea that the bill will be the be-all and the end-all. Well, it will not. Once again I go back. We have to look at not the simplistic approach but the systemic problems in society. Until the government and all other parties deal with them our chances of having a perfect society, which will never exist of course, are diminished. This helps the people in the youth justice system to better apply the power of the courts to help youth, to rehabilitate them.
We are trying to make the public institutions a safer place to work. In order to do that we require crime prevention. The only way to have crime prevention is to educate people eliminate poverty, lack of training, lack of education and sometimes the lack of discipline. However, quite often, if we look at the people we are dealing with, giving them another beating is not the answer.
We have to find ways to deal with them that challenge them to do something different with their lives and that challenge them to have more confidence in themselves. A lack of confidence is the largest problem in youth suicide. No matter where it is one is too many. Lack of confidence and a lack of resources or ability to cope comes from the lack of the basic essentials that one needs in life.
People with money, people who are rich, still have suicides in their families. It is not because they have given them too much. It is because they have not given them the confidence. They do not have the ability to cope with the pressures that are existing today in society.
Bill C-68 is a good start in addressing our criminal justice system for youth. When we seriously look at the bill in committee and when we offer any kind of amendment to it, we should take into account the research that was done on the bill and the consultation that was done on it with the various people that came forward and will still come forward to give submissions on a bill which I think is worth the consideration of the House to pass as quickly as possible.
I hope I have added something to the debate that will promote Bill C-68 and a new youth justice system.