Mr. Speaker, Bill C-68 was introduced at first reading by the Minister of Justice in March 1999. It is a product of the strategy to renew the justice system for young people, which was introduced in May 1998.
The Bloc Quebecois and all the stakeholders in Quebec are opposed to that reform, because it is useless and dangerous in terms of its anticipated impact on crime reduction in the long run.
The current legislation has allowed Quebec to enjoy the lowest youth crime rate in Canada. In the rest of the country, it has decreased youth crime by 23% between 1991 and 1997.
Given these results, one wonders why the act should be changed. Did the minister make this reform strictly for political reasons, or did she yield to the pressure of the right in Canada?
Why did the minister not see fit to refer to the Quebec model for youth justice in the principles and the preamble of the bill? Since she alludes to Quebec in her comments, she should have made explicit reference to our province, as was pointed out by the Quebec coalition opposing this bill, which feels that:
The alleged flexibility given to the provinces to implement the act is in fact just a series of limited powers that rest on the shoulders of crown prosecutors. Nowhere in the bill do we find confirmation of the right of the provinces to apply their own model.
Some extremely repressive measures are found in Bill C-68, which includes 14 and 15-year old children among those offenders who could be sentenced as adults. I emphasize the fact that these are 14 and 15 year olds. Anyone who has been active in education with teenagers or, better still, who has raised a good family that included teenagers, knows that at age 14 and 15 they are not yet adults. They are still children in some respects.
Bill C-68 establishes a sentence of custody for young people at higher risk and repeat offenders in cases of violent offences.
In addition, it is worth noting that the publication of the names of adolescents would be authorized if the adolescent receives an adult sentence or a youth sentence for violent crimes, if the adolescent is at liberty in the community but has committed a crime or been charged with a criminal act or if the adolescent authorizes release on reaching adulthood and is not under custodial sentence.
Here again, you have to know something about adolescents. The Bloc Quebecois contends that this publicity will give importance to certain young offenders, especially in the case of young people who are members of street gangs or groups. It might be an idea to look at what is going on in the schools across the country. The phenomenon of gangs is everywhere.
We therefore support the current restrictions intended to protect the reputation of innocent families. Publicizing the identity of adolescents could also have the unfortunate effect of creating a false sense of security among the members of the public. We might think that, once we know the identity of the offender, we are safe and there is no more problem.
We must also look at the cost of applying the law. In Quebec alone, the new Young Offenders Act should cost an additional $69 million in implementation costs over a three year period. How much of the money set aside in the finance minister's last budget will be left for crime prevention? Because it is through prevention that crime is reduced, not through punishment. There are costs associated with prevention, but the long term results are much more promising.
We therefore call on the federal government to transfer full jurisdiction for youth justice, along with the associated funding, to Quebec. Unfortunately the Minister of Justice has failed to convince the rest of Canada of the effectiveness of Quebec's approach. In fact, the proof is in the crime rates.
The Bloc Quebecois is concerned about the future impact on Quebec's crime rate of the tougher approach other provinces will be allowed to take. We also wonder about the latitude judges will have in handing down sentences intended to be proportionate to the seriousness of the offence and standardized throughout Canada.
Judges cannot ignore sentences given elsewhere. Case law, by its very nature, requires that judgments handed down elsewhere be considered and similar sentences given for similar offences.
Finally, various experts from Quebec spoke out against this bill. I am thinking of the association of organizations interested in the new young offenders legislation, criminologists André Normandeau and Cécile Toutant, lawyer Jean Trépanier, and André Payette, the spokesperson for the Association des centres jeunesse du Québec, who has seen many things in his work at the Supreme Court of Canada and as Quebec's president of the bar.
By placing the young person's responsibility foremost in a new statement of principle, the minister is running the risk of destabilizing a system which has, up until now, been able to substantially reduce the juvenile crime rate.
Finally, the government has not explicitly recognized in its bill the possibility for Quebec to maintain, and particularly to expand, its youth justice model. The presumed flexibility in the bill is an illusion, since it is not included in the preamble or the guiding principles of the bill.
In Quebec, as in some other provinces, alternatives to detention have been put in place. Considering that incarceration is not the appropriate solution for most cases that come under the Young Offenders Act, it is the opinion of the Bloc Quebecois that it is essential for such alternative measures to be given more attention.
In her letter of May 3, the Quebec Minister of Justice reminded her federal counterpart:
—that the planned reform is based on false premises. Youth crime has been on a steady decline for a number of years already, everywhere in Canada. This is particularly true in Quebec, which has the lowest crime rate in Canada.
According to the Minister:
The bill—is neither necessary nor justified, and is liable to imperil the rehabilitation model that has been implemented in Quebec. Concretely, if our model is to be maintained, this means that Quebec will have to be excluded from the bill, which is based on a repressive philosophy and which Quebec will have no choice but to apply, like all the rest of Canada.
For all these reasons, we are asking that this bill be withdrawn or, if the minister does not comply with that request, that Bill C-68 be amended by adding after clause 3 a clause 3.1, which would read as follows:
3.1. This act is not applicable to Quebec.
We also wish clause 196 to be replaced by the following:
- This act replaces the Young Offenders Act, except in Quebec, where it remains in force.