Mr. Speaker, I will use the four minutes I have left, despite the fact that I find deplorable what is happening here. Frankly, when I toured Quebec I always said that my tour was more of a social than political initiative. It was an information tour. I did not want to turn the matter into a political issue.
I understand that the member of the Canadian Alliance may feel some resentment or whatever. However, since we are dealing with an issue as important as youth, and an approach that has proven effective in Quebec, the hon. member could put aside the partisanship and arrogance he has shown all morning and deal more seriously with the bill.
I repeat what I have already said “It is not too late for the government. It is not too late”. Yesterday, I offered to go on another tour of Quebec with the minister, on a non-partisan basis and with all the necessary interpreters and personnel, and meet with the people I met and others also, because I am ready was anywhere. I am sure of what I am saying. Quebecers are unanimously saying that the federal government is on the wrong tack.
The minister refused to meet with these people. She refuses to listen to them, to go to meet them, as if she were living in a glass bubble in Ottawa, briefed only by her officials who have drafted legislation in their ivory tour, the kind of unenforceable and complex legislation that they alone can draft. The minister refuses to acknowledge that kind of reality. Maybe she cannot spare the time to go on a tour of Quebec.
That is why I am saying that it is not too late to send Bill C-7 back to the committee where it could be further reviewed, allowing Quebec and other provinces wishing to continue using an approach based on rehabilitation and reintegration rather than repression to do so.
I moved an amendment that was rejected yesterday. It was a legal and constitutional amendment examined by specialists. However the government is not listening.
It wants, at all costs, to pass legislation based on the seriousness of the offence and that consideration will influence the whole process while the existing Young Offenders Act is based on the needs of young offenders. By correctly enforcing the Young Offenders Act, we could individualize the treatment needed by each youth to become an honest citizen.
The Supreme Court of Canada took at least 15 years to interpret the act concerning the needs of young offenders and to say what it really means. How many years will it take it to interpret what the legislator meant when he said that the seriousness of the offence must take precedence over the sentence, the treatment and the process? How long will it take the Supreme Court of Canada to determine the issue of the day to day application of the act? There is a series of automatic processes.
Today, with the bill the government wants to impose on Quebec, judges will use a grid to assess a case and simply put a checkmark depending on the severity of the offence, without being able to take the kind of action they would like to take. That is the difference between the two.
During my tour I met Quebecers who dealt with victims of crimes, including people from CAVAC. They shared the same opinion as everyone else. They were against the approach chosen by the Minister of Justice in Bill C-7. I would have like the minister to have heard that.
I also met fathers and mothers who told me that I was not making the point clearly enough that the Young Offenders Act gave them the tools they needed to help their children get back on the right track.
Youth crime does not affect only those families where children are neglected by the parents. If there is one thing that is true about youth crime, it is the fact that it affects families indiscriminately, whether the parents' wallets are full or empty. Youth crime can affect rich families as well as poor and needy families.
People asked me to stress the fact that the Young Offenders Act gave them the tools they needed, which they will no longer have once Bill C-7 has been passed. Everything will be based on mechanisms. Certain decisions that parents can make now will be left to the system. This bill will take all responsibility away from the parents. It will destroy the balance reached in Quebec over a period of more than 20 years between the needs of the young offender, his or her accountability, society's intervention and the measure.
Over the years, a balance has been reached, and everyone agrees that this bill will hurt that balance. I urge, and this will conclude my speech, both the Prime Minister, who is from Quebec, and the Minister of Justice, who is responsible for the bill, not to go ahead with this piece of legislation. I urge them to send this bill back to committee to allow us to work on it some more so we can find a compromise for all the provinces, but most of all so Quebec can continue to use its approach, which has been proven effective.