Mr. Speaker, it is important to clearly understand what the bill before us, which deals with young offenders, involves. It is important to clearly understand why this bill, if it is passed, would have an effect that is just the opposite of what is intended.
I want to mention a number of things that are obvious to me but which, unfortunately, are not understood by some members of this House, including, it seems, the Minister of Justice.
Teenagers are young people who must receive a proper education to behave properly in society. Threatening them with imprisonment and other repressive measures is not the way to instill in them the values that are necessary for proper behaviour in society.
Some Reform Party members related horror stories about young people committing absolutely horrendous crimes. But, for heaven's sake, when these young people were born, they were normal babies who should have been able to develop and eventually make a contribution to society.
Something went wrong somewhere. These children did not get the education they should have received. They were not made aware of the human, moral and societal values that would have allowed them to be productive members of society.
Looking at this bill before us, one realizes that this is not a bill that will provide young people with a better set of values. It is a not a bill that will help them fit better into society.
It is a bill that will have the opposite effect: putting them into the prison setting. It will put them in contact with hardened criminals and expose them to exactly the opposite of the moral values we would like them to adopt. In fact, it will turn them into hardened criminals.
These children, young people, adolescents we refer to are not aliens from another planet. They are our children, the children we have raised and educated, or the children we have not raised, not educated, not trained in how to live properly in society.
Engineers have to be trained. Doctors have to be trained. A person can take courses to learn carpentry or car repair. Unfortunately, good parenting is not something one learns in school. There are no diplomas for parenting.
Most of us manage to do a pretty good job at it, I would venture to say. Proof of that lies in the vast majority of young people who will take over from us and of whom we have every reason to feel proud. Unfortunately, not all parents are as successful.
Perhaps they themselves have physical or mental health problems. Perhaps they have financial difficulties, ones with which this government's policies might have something to do. Maybe they have a work related problem. But these parents who, at a given point, need support to ensure that their children can be, to use the common phraseology, well brought up, are not getting that support, nor are their children, unfortunately, in many cases. And then we wonder why some of these young people go wrong.
I repeat that a young person's first real crime is not the horrendous offence too often described by Reform members. Often, it is something simple, elementary, a sort of alarm that goes off, meaning “Take care of me, I have a problem”. However, if the parents are unable to deal with that sign, the young person will get involved in more and more serious situations, that could end in a most deplorable offence.
In Quebec, under the existing legislation on young offenders, we have taken a preventive approach. For more than 20 years now, when a child is in difficulty, and the school system or the neighbours or even the parents notice, resources are available for intervention and prevention. This approach works.
Let us look at the statistics. Quebec has the lowest rate of juvenile crime. It is very low, a lot lower than a number of years ago, and the rate of repeats is also very low. In short, we have a formula that works.
Even in the rest of Canada, the level of juvenile crime is on the decline. Canada too has a formula that works, not as well as that of Quebec, because it has not invested the same money as Quebec in prevention, but things are moving in the right direction.
English has the expression “If it ain't broke, don't fix it”. Right now, with the Reform Party, members are doing exactly the opposite. They are taking something that is working and scrapping it, so to speak, for something more repressive.
Obviously, any young person who is disturbed or in distress will not hesitate to commit a heinous crime just because it might carry a tougher sentence or he might be tried in adult court.
In fact, there are two or three possible scenarios. He could care less. He is upset and will commit the crime without checking the Criminal Code or the Young Offenders Act for the severity of the penalties and whether or not he will be tried in adult court. Unfortunately, he has lost his head and it is too late now.
The other possible scenario is that the young person will see the prospect of being treated like an adult as reflecting glory on him. And so, in order to be treated like an adult, he does something that makes no sense at all.
Quebec's approach is to prevent the young person from committing a crime by helping him to be a full member of society when he is experiencing difficulty or psychological distress. The Reform Party's approach is to let him commit the crime, but then punish him with extraordinary brutality, just to show others how spiteful people can be.
Parents are not spiteful; they are kind. We in this House represent the parents of Quebec and of Canada. We must show our children kindness, not spite.
The minister should withdraw this bill. But if she is bent on imposing it on the rest of Canada—heaven help them, their children deserve better—then she should at least respect Quebec's experience, which is conclusive. She should simply spell out in the bill that the legislation does not apply to Quebec.
It is obvious that Quebec cannot let Canada force it to mistreat its children. We will not stand for it.