Mr. Speaker, as chair of the justice committee which made a thorough study of this bill I would like to make a few comments.
The bill was referred to the justice committee on June 23, 1994 and was subject to hearings until December 8, 1994. Over that period of time we heard from 42 witnesses, groups and individuals from all walks of life. We heard from victims' groups, groups of offenders and ex-offenders, experts from the correctional service, witnesses from children's aid societies, witnesses from police forces, judges, bar associations, psychologists, sociologists, school board officials and representatives from the provinces. We had a very wide range of input into the work of the committee. I want to congratulate and thank members of the committee for their co-operation over those months when we had hearings on the bill.
The bill dealt with a very limited number of issues. To begin with, it added to the declaration of principles with respect to the Young Offenders Act. It pointed out in section three that crime prevention was essential to the long term protection of society and affirmed protection of society as a principal goal of the law. It also affirmed that young persons must bear responsibility for their actions and for their contraventions, although not in the same way as adults. That is one of the main reasons we have the Young Offenders Act.
The bill also dealt with transfers to adult court. Under the present law which deals with young persons from 12 to 17 years of age inclusive, a youth aged 14 to 17 can be transferred to adult court on an application from the crown for certain serious offences. The youth court will make the judgment as to whether the young person will stay in youth court or will be transferred to adult court. That is the law as it exists at the present time.
Under Bill C-37 a change is proposed whereby those who are 16 and 17 years old would be transferred automatically to adult court for certain serious crimes of violence against the person unless the young person makes an application to the court not to be transferred to adult court. That is a sort of reverse burden of proof which is being put forward in this particular bill as opposed to the present law.
The bill also deals with the penalty for murder. It would increase the penalty for murder for young offenders tried in the youth court to ten years for first degree murder and to seven years for second degree murder. At the present time the maximum penalty is five years.
The bill also provides for victim impact statements at the time of sentencing of a young offender.
It also provides that for treatment the consent of the young offender must be obtained. Under the present law treatment can be ordered for the young offender without his or her consent.
Another principal change the bill makes is to leave the decision with respect to open or secure custody with the provinces when the provinces have set up offices to deal with that.
Finally, the bill would provide for a greater publication of youth offence records, in particular the publication of the names of young offenders who have committed certain offences. Under the present law this dissemination of information is highly restricted.
Bill C-37 would allow for a greater dissemination of that information to people in positions of trust and administration, in schools and other places where young people study or work, so that there would be greater protection for the public.
More or less those are the changes that Bill C-37 would bring in with respect to the Young Offenders Act.
As I pointed out, during the hearings on the bill we heard from a great number of people, approximately 42 individuals and groups. I must tell the House that the great majority of those who appeared before the committee did not want us to proceed with Bill C-37 until we did a general review of the act such as was proposed as phase two of our studies.
The House will recall that the Minister of Justice, when referring this bill to the House and to the committee, stated that he also wanted the committee to do a complete review of the Young Offenders Act since it had been in force for 10 years. He wanted us not only to study every aspect of the law, but also the resources available to administer the law and the situation with respect to youth crime in this country.
A great majority of witnesses said: "If you are going to do that overall, comprehensive general study, why legislate in these few particular areas right now? Should you not complete your broad, general study and then make a judgment with respect to those matters once that study is completed?"
That made sense to many members on the committee, but to the majority it did not. The committee decided that despite these pleas it should carry on with the consideration of Bill C-37, principally because during the election campaign, the government had made a commitment to bring in those very specific changes. It felt those changes should be legislated right now despite the fact the committee was going to undertake a general study as phase two of its work.
The committee did proceed with Bill C-37 and reported back to the House and the bill is now before us. At the end of our hearings we did make 28 amendments. Most of those were technical amendments. They were corrections in the wording, improvements in the expression of the law, improvements in the
French translation. However, there were a couple of substantive amendments among the 28 that were made by the committee.
One substantive amendment was to change to a certain extent the new transfer provision. I mentioned that Bill C-37 provides for automatic transfer of 16 and 17 year olds, unless the 16 or 17 year old can make a case before the court that they should not be transferred to the adult court.
An amendment was made in committee. It was agreed that it would not be necessary to hold such a hearing and go to the expense and the time consuming process when the crown attorney agreed with the defence attorney that the young person should remain in youth court despite the fact that the individual may be 16 or 17 and had committed one of the serious offences referred to.
Another amendment of substance was to curtail somewhat the dissemination of information that was provided for in Bill C-37. While Bill C-37 will now provide for greater information to the public with respect to young offender records than under the present law, it will not go as far as Bill C-37 would have gone in the first instance.
During this debate over the last few hours and when the bill was before the House at report stage, some members especially some of those from the Reform Party, have charged that the Young Offenders Act is a failure. They have charged that youth crime is out of control and that the Young Offenders Act is to blame for that increase in crime among youth.
As a matter of fact, some have blamed me, as one of the original authors of the Young Offenders Act, for this state in our country. They blame me for what they consider to be an increase in youth crime and for the failures of the Young Offenders Act. I want to respond to that.
To begin with, youth crime is not out of control and has not increased in Canada. The incidents of youth crime have not increased. As I pointed out the other day at report stage on the bill, the greatest number of homicides committed by youths 12 to 17 years of age was 68 in 1975. That was before the Young Offenders Act. The lowest number was in 1987 when there were only 35. With respect to homicides, there was a much higher number committed by those 12 to 17 years of age before the act and the lowest number was committed after the act came into force.
One could give even more precise statistics. For example, in the period from 1974 to 1978, a four-year period prior to the Young Offenders Act, there were 60 charges for murder laid against youths in Canada. From 1984 to 1989 which is a five-year period after the act, there were 40 charges. One could go on and on.
Of course, a certain phenomenon has been taking place which has led to an appearance of increase in statistics. That is what might be called the zero tolerance approach in many school board districts. School authorities now call in the police whenever there is a fight or a disruption in the school yard. In the past, when those sorts of incidents took place, the principal might call in the young people involved and discipline them, call in their parents and do something about the incident, but criminal charges would not be laid.
Now in those ordinary types of assaults in the school yard, charges are being laid in many jurisdictions. Therefore of course the statistics for charges laid has increased but the number of incidents has not. As a matter of fact, the trend has been more or less the same with respect to those kinds of assaults over the years, both before and after the act.
Let us be absolutely clear. I can refer to many documents. There is a fact sheet put out by the John Howard Society on youth crime. The title of the bulletin is "Youth Crime: Sorting Fact from Fiction". It goes into much detail and deals with violent crime rates with respect to youth over the years. There has not been a substantial or significant increase in crime with respect to young persons. As a matter of fact, as I pointed out, there were much higher rates of youth homicide before the act than there were after the act.
The act has not failed. The act is the same one from Newfoundland to British Columbia. It is the same act in Windsor, Ontario, as it is in Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories, but it is administered very differently in the different provinces and in the different territories. In some provinces and territories there is no trouble with the act; in other provinces and territories there are problems with the act.
I must ask, are the problems attributable to the provisions of the act or the way in which the act is administered? It so happens in some provinces such as my province of Quebec a great deal of resources, much more than other provinces, are dedicated to the administration of this act and to dealing with the causes of youth crime. There is much greater satisfaction with the act in the province of Quebec than there is in certain other provinces, but it is the same act in Quebec as it is in Alberta, as it is in Manitoba, as it is in New Brunswick.
The act is not the cause of youth crime where it does take place. I do admit there are still some horrible youth crimes taking place in this country. The perception of those youth crimes is way out of proportion to the number of crimes which are actually taking place.
In any case, the act is not responsible for the crimes. There are causes for those crimes and it is there that we must direct our attention. We must also accept the fact that there has been very uneven administration of this act across Canada and very uneven dedication of resources, both human and financial, to the whole area of youth offenders and youth delinquency.
If that is the case, if the act is not responsible for those crimes which do take place, then simple changes really will not reduce the level of crime. To suggest to the Canadian population that we are going to change section 5, or section 8, or section 25 and all of a sudden there will be a panacea and we will reduce crime is to mislead the public.
If we are serious about reducing youth crime where it does exist in Canada then we must dedicate resources to the causes of that crime, whether it is broken families, whether it is alcoholism, whether it is battered children and battered mothers, whether it is drug addiction and the trafficking in drugs, whether it is the lack of employment, the lack of recreation opportunities, latchkey kids who have nobody to come home to, a whole range of things. If we are serious about reducing the rate of youth crime, a simple amendment to the law will not do it.
However putting our minds to it and putting some resources and care into it at the level of the causes at the community level might do it because where that has been done there has been more success and less youth crime. We only delude ourselves and the public by suggesting that a few changes here and there to the act will substantially change the situation.
I want to absolutely rebut those suggestions. I am sure we will hear them again, especially from the Reform Party. We will hear that youth crime is out of control, that it has substantially increased, that the cause of that youth crime is the Young Offenders Act which is a failure. Well it is not a failure and it is not out of control. However, there are still some serious cases of youth crime in this country and if we are serious about this issue we should direct our attention to those causes.
In conclusion, I want to say that this bill has some worthwhile changes in it and they should be supported. There are other changes which I find doubtful. I will nevertheless support the bill with the understanding that when we do our phase two review we will re-examine everything that we have done under Bill C-37 as well as the entire Young Offenders Act.
As chair of the justice committee, I give lukewarm support for this bill because I feel it is a mixed bag. It has some good sections that are worthwhile. It has others which are doubtful. However we are going to have a chance to do a complete review of the act within a few months.
It will not be just a complete review of the act but a complete review of the administration across the country of the facilities for correcting young offenders, the probation systems, the secure custody systems and so on, and also the nature, level and status of youth crime in Canada. We are going to do all those things in the committee later this year. Therefore, I will reserve judgment on those matters until that time.
