Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to take part in the debate on Bill C-68. We have waited a long time for this bill. The minister has delayed 18 months in bringing it in. I do not think there are many in the House who appreciate that delay. It is nothing more than a makeover of the originally flawed act and is more or less tinkering around the edges.
After testing public opinion on this controversial legislation through continued leaks to the media, the justice minister finally introduced Bill C-68. It is ironic that the bill carries with it the namesake of a previous piece of disappointing Liberal legislation which failed to address the needs of Canadians. I am speaking about the infamous false hope Firearms Registration Act.
As with the firearms act, the youth criminal justice act was done without appropriate consultation. Canadians want to know what surveys or consultations were done with parents of young offenders before the tabling of Bill C-68 occurred. What surveys and consultations were done with officers and judges who deal with young offenders? What surveys were done with social workers who deal with young offenders and with guards at the facilities where young offenders are incarcerated? The public would like to know because this bill, which was supposed to take into account the opinions of Canadians, seems to have left the vast majority of Canadians wanting more.
As I mentioned in my opening remarks, Canadians from across the country are concerned that the new youth criminal justice act is not a bill that will move forward societal attempts at dealing with youth justice in Canada. Some would argue that it is a regressive piece of legislation hearkening back to the days of the defunct juvenile delinquent act.
It took the Liberals over a year of analysis, 18 months to be exact, to come up with the very old idea that a repeat youth offender involved in less serious offences would be tried as an adult and then sentenced as a child.
The broader issues of poverty and homelessness are the root of much of the criminal activity at any level. The PC Party is facing this issue head on with the PC poverty task force. The member behind me is involved in co-chairing that process.
The government has drafted a bill which does not go far enough to protect Canadians from increasingly violent youth crime. We are being told that the Liberals have toughened up the bill by placing more violent youth offenders in jail and that youth will be diverted away from the justice system and into community based initiatives such as social services, which are already overloaded and in shambles. This initiative also encourages the police to find alternatives to jail when dealing with youth offenders involved in relatively minor criminal activity.
The legislation encourages formal cautioning by police for young people who have been in less serious trouble. This is all well and good, but how does the government expect the fine members of our Canadian police forces to take on this extra responsibility? The government has already cut Canada's police forces to the point that the police are barely able to function with existing workloads.
Coupled with their already overburdened jobs, they no longer have the time to play the role of parent, psychologist or babysitter. They are expected to come up with a well prepared meaningful statement of warning to the youth offender and his or her parents. Through the implementation of this act the government is stretching police officers beyond their realistic limits and thus the increased workload will not be possible.
The type of crime being perpetrated by youth is increasingly sophisticated as are the problems faced by youth. The challenges on both sides of the divide are immense. Cuts to other sectors like the elimination of ports police and constant budget restraints have a staggering impact.
The sad result for the Canadian public is to see police forces like the the RCMP trying to fight problems such as youth crime with last year's $74.1 million or 13% cut to the RCMP's federal policing services. This gouging of the RCMP leaves the force incapable of dealing with youth crime in a meaningful way. Do more with less, we have heard in the House before. It is a common theme presented by the Liberal government to nurses and public servants in all ranks.
What is missing from the legislation is a long term plan or strategy for funding. It is cynical on the part of the federal government to be downloading its implementation costs on to the provinces, but it is a familiar theme. The Liberals are forcing the provinces to abandon their youth justice proposals and to follow the federal model upon pain of further cuts. They do this by dangling the 30% funding in their faces and threatening to take it back if they choose to opt out, again a familiar plan.
It is a perverse irony that the government appears to be tougher on the far end and more proactive and progressive on the front end. Yet all this costs money; longer sentences and programming cost money.
If the government had allowed for proper consultation in the first place and actually listened, it could have come up with a deal that all provinces could have supported. Instead the bill resembles the sum total of many regionalized concessions that will make national enforcement of the youth act virtually impossible. A recent article in the Ottawa Citizen commented on the regionalized concession theme:
The bill provides considerable discretion on punishment, recognizing that provinces such as Alberta and Ontario want tougher penalties while others including Quebec traditionally rely less heavily on jail sentences.
We are supposed to be one united country with a national criminal justice policy, yet if a youth commits a crime in New Brunswick the youth may not serve the same sentence if he or she had committed the same crime in Alberta. In justice as in health care regional disparity should be of real concern to the government.
I am seeking unanimous consent to finish my speech because I do not think there is a long list of speakers.