Bill C-3 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and Divestiture Act and the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act

Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization And Divestiture Act

[Odina Desrochers, Bloc, Lotbinière—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today on Bill C-3, which was originally introduced before parliament was dissolved.

First, I would like to make a comment. The Bloc Quebecois is not against this bill. However, the fact that we have to debate an issue that could already have been discussed, if an unnecessary election had not been called, leads us increasingly to realize with all these bills that this government has no legislative agenda.

The only items we have been called on to debate are bills which had been introduced before the House was dissolved. Those bills are brought back with minor technical changes and are presented to us as an important legislative agenda.

This shows once again that this government has no vision nor any clear policy. It does not know where it is heading. It is the first time in my short political career, and also in a previous life as a reporter, that I see a government with so poor a legislative agenda.

When I looked at Bill C-3, I hoped the government might have taken advantage of this opportunity to really deal with the problem of the oil companies. All we are asked to do is to amend rules and regulations in order to permit a deal involving the owners of Petro-Canada, those who might buy its shares. However, this does not get to the heart of the issue.

This bill does absolutely nothing to alleviate the crisis faced by Quebecers, especially in areas where gas prices are very high. There has been no change in spite of the oil companies' record profits. What we see is that there has been no change in the concentration and centralization of decision making. When we talk about capitalist countries, we are talking about the United States, of course.

In the U.S., there are laws protecting companies, distributors and retailers, thus improving the economy within this system. Here, over the last 25 years, we have seen retailers and distributors disappear, and big companies take over the market.

This is of great concern to me as my riding of Lotbinière-L'Érable is very rural. Over the past 25 years, we have seen the local garage disappear. We were better off when we had a gas station, at least then there were attendants to serve us. Now we are left with self-serve gas bars. They are run by the oil companies. The managers of these outlets have nothing to do with pricing and the profit margin.

Let me give the House a very specific example. The managers of two related companies, Petro-Canada and Esso, met with me to give me a press release issued by each of their companies. Both press releases were issued at 7.04 a.m. and were similar in that they informed their managers that both companies, Petro-Canada and Esso, were setting the price at a certain amount and indicating what their profit margin would be that day.

The problem with gas is not only at the pump. It is also a management problem. These people told me “Do not mention the municipalities. Do not try to identify us, because we will suffer reprisals at the hands of our companies. If they find out that we tried to get a little more, that we tried to be a bit fairer, they will reduce our profit margin”. These people are terrorized.

According to a report not yet published, but which we had an opportunity to get a glimpse of, “All is well in the wonderful world of the oil companies”.

My riding is rather small, let us say that it is 120 kilometres from one end to the other along highway 20. My riding is on the south shore near Quebec City. The price differences can be 6, 8, or 10 cents. Could someone explain that to me?

Is it due to transportation? I doubt very much that it could increase the price of oil by 8 or 10 cents. Is it due to taxes? As far as I know, politicians, in Quebec as well as in Canada, explain in their budget how they manage it.

This is not due to transportation or to taxes and, as I said, management has nothing to do with it neither. This means that oil companies are increasingly taking control of retailers.

A television channel called LCN is now presenting the hit-parade of gas prices. Here is the hit-parade: in the Eastern Townships, 82 cents; in Lac-Saint-Jean, 81 cents; in central Quebec, 79 cents; in the Quebec City area, 77 cents, and so on. But this is ridiculous.

When this government tells us that everything is fine in the oil industry and when the Conference Board of Canada tells us officially, as it will soon tell us, that there is no problem, they are laughing at people.

They are laughing at people because, as I explained with many examples, the retailer has no control on his profit margin nor on prices. In addition to that, the situation is so ridiculous, prices changes so much, going up and down like a yo-yo—so to speak—everywhere in Quebec that we now see the hit-parade of gas prices on LCN. This is ridiculous. Who foots the bill? It is the workers, both wen and women, and the small and medium size businesses who foot the bill.

I will now move on to the heating oil issue and the $125 or $250 that were paid. Could someone please explain to me why a person living alone gets $125 and two persons living together get $250. As far as I know, the price of fuel oil is the same. This government is always determined to put forward diversionary measures.

It would have been far simpler, instead of having this propaganda operation, this flag-waving exercise by the great Liberal Party of Canada, to really attack the problem at its source and find a means to ensure that the people paying for fuel oil are the ones to receive the $125 and $250, and to make the amounts uniform. Prisoners got cheques. People who have been bedridden for the past ten years in chronic care hospitals got cheques. Young people got cheques.

This week, a minister announced in the House that they were going to get parents to have their children return the $125. I am not here to promote the clothing stores, but I can tell hon. members that that $125 has already gone on jeans, coats and cool shirts. A person would have to be out of touch with reality to not realize that a kid with a cheque for $125 is going to cash it. He is not going to mention it to his parents. I have had parents calling me to ask “What is this business of $125?” They had not heard anything about it. This is unacceptable.

Now we have the government turning up here with a bill aimed at transactions and trying to get out of a field from which it ought to have pulled out a long time ago. Much editorial ink has been flowed about this bill since the start of the session. The latest clipping I have in hand is this one of an editorial by Jean-Paul Gagné in Les Affaires . I would advise hon. members to listen carefully.

Petro-Canada has just made the highest net profit in its history: $893 million or $3.28 a share in the year 2000, compared to its 1999 figure of $233 million or 86 cents a share.

He goes on to tell us what Petro-Canada is about.

This company was created in 1975 by the government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau to enable Ottawa, so they said, to acquire an indicator sector in the petroleum industry, which was and remains dominated by foreign multinationals, and to better understand the industry.

The Liberals of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s or 2000s do not change. They say any old thing. We have the proof once again with Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who tried to get us to believe that, with the creation of Petro-Canada, we would be protected from the multinationals. What a monumental joke. The editorialist continued, saying:

At the same time, this was an opportunity to plaster maple leaf designs throughout a vast network of gasoline sales points from one end of Canada to the other.

The fine symbol of the maple leaf was at the heart of the creation of Petro-Canada. When will this government get down to dealing with the real problems? I have talked about the problem that stands out with the price of gasoline. I have talked about the problem that stands out with heating oil and the problem of the fluctuations in the price of gasoline not only within regions but even within my riding.

I also mentioned that, in the last 25 years, self-service stations have cropped up while service stations and small local garages disappeared, and all the government has to offer is Bill C-3.

The Minister of Industry and the Minister for International Trade keep saying “We are going to table the report of the Conference Board of Canada. You will see, they will come up with some solutions”. Nothing will be changed and once again the poor will foot the bill.

What I find unfortunate is that we, in the Bloc Quebecois, when we rise in this House, we seem to be the only ones in touch with what is going on in our ridings, in touch with the people. How many times have people come to me saying “Look, Mr. Desrochers, if the gas price keeps going up, I will no longer be able to drive to work, about 10 miles away from home, because I already have a house, two kids, a car and I cannot make ends meet”.

The government does not seem to care, since it does not have any qualms about the oil companies getting richer on the backs of the ordinary citizens. The current government, which has been in office since 1993, has worked extra hard to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. We have huge debates on market globalization and global economic integration, but we do not get to the bottom of these issues.

When we talk about concentration, as in this case with oil companies, and when we talk about market globalization, as we are doing today, people get worried. When they see Americans, Asians or Europeans, who have a different mentality than North Americans, Canadians and Quebecers, move into their communities, people are afraid they might lose their jobs.

These are direct consequences of market globalization. It is a direct consequence of corporate concentration. These things are all happening under the federal government's nose. The federal government should closely monitor them, if it wants to maintain a sound economy. But no, the government would rather boast. It is pleased to see our heritage being sold. Who is paying for all this? It is ordinary workers.

The average salary back home has nothing to do with the figure provided Statistics Canada, because it makes no sense. Back home the average salary is around $25,000 or $30,000 a year, and I am being generous, for a family with two children and a mortgage.

Recently, I saw an add showing a person who was choking and losing his voice. I am losing my voice today, but it is because, like many, I was caught off guard by the sudden changes in temperature. But that person was losing his voice because he continuously felt choked. The same thing is happening in our ridings. People come and see us because they feel choked. They do not know how they will manage to pay their bills at the end of the month. They do not know how they will be able to plan for their holidays.

This is all because of the little games played by oil companies. This year, they were rather nice, they did not hit us too hard during the Christmas season. But I can guarantee that we will pay dearly when the nice weather comes, in May and June.

It is not for nothing that some oil companies have already begun changing the prices at the pumps. It is no fluke that Ultramar, to take one example, has set its sights on being able to post a price of $1 on its pumps. These people know what is in the wind. They point to international rulings, but they have some leeway and they do not approve.

Bill C-3 is not the way to sort out the whole business of increases in gasoline and heating oil prices.

We hope, through comments such as these in the House, to bring home to the federal government the human misery—I am not afraid to say it—that is taking hold in our regions.

I will not go over the entire history of Bill C-2, the employment insurance bill. It has been addressed at length this week. As I was saying a few minutes earlier, in everything it does, the federal government is overlooking the middle class. The middle class is fading right out of existence.

Yet it is the middle class that paid most of the taxes levied by the members across the way. It is totally unacceptable. Will we go back to social democratic values, family values, values of mutual support and solidarity to save Quebec society? I doubt it.

Lastly, I want to mention that the Bloc Quebecois is in favour of Bill C-3, but it condemns all of the government policies adopted in the last few years concerning the concentration and the consolidation of oil companies. It also condemns the government for ignoring those who always end up paying: the poorest among our workers. I have this to say to the Liberals: wake up.

[Jocelyne Girard-Bujold, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is with rather mixed emotions that I rise this morning to speak to Bill C-3. There are so many important issues that should be discussed with some urgency in the House that I do not see the point in debating the bill before us today, because it will not change much of anything for Canadians, in my opinion.

There certainly is a problem in the oil industry throughout Canada, but the government is ignoring it and keeps on introducing bills that do not do anything to solve the problem. It is as if the government were telling us that it wants to keep the House busy.

Bill C-3 is entitled an act to amend the Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and Divestiture Act and the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act

In short, this enactment relates to the mandatory provisions in the articles of Eldorado Nuclear Limited—now Cameco Corporation—and Petro-Canada. It provides that the articles of Cameco Corporation will have to contain a 15% individual non-resident share ownership limit for voting shares as well as a cap on aggregate non-resident share ownership voting rights of 25%.

It also provides that the articles of Petro-Canada will have to be amended to allow for a 20% individual share ownership limit, while the aggregate non-resident share ownership limit will be eliminated.

The prohibition of the sale, transfer or disposal of all or substantially all of Petro-Canada's upstream and downstream assets will be replaced with a similar prohibition on the sale, transfer or disposal of all or substantially all of its assets, without distinguishing between the upstream and downstream sectors of activity.

Today, I will be focusing mainly on the provisions concerning Petro-Canada, but I still want to say a few words about Cameco.

In the press release announcing the proposed changes to the legislation, the minister made the following statement, to reassure the public, I guess:

These amendments conform to the Government of Canada's policy on non-resident ownership in the uranium mining sector and do not impair Canada's ability to fulfill its commitment to nuclear non-proliferation.

We could carry on for hours and hours about the issue of nuclear non-proliferation. I have the honour of having the Minister of the Environment in front of me this morning. The Minister of the Environment is currently promoting nuclear energy at the international level while industries throughout the world are opting for new approaches. I find that rather bizarre.

Actually, it is not that bizarre when one is aware that the Canadian government is trying to sell its Candu reactors to underdeveloped countries, just to make money.

We went through the same thing last autumn, during the previous parliament, when a very hot topic, the transportation of MOX, gave rise to heated debate throughout the country.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all the residents of the Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean and the hundreds of thousands of people who opposed the movement of MOX from Russia and the United States for testing in a nuclear plant. In his last report, dated December 2000, the auditor general says these nuclear plants are now very dangerous because they have not been well maintained. Huge investments are needed to make them properly operational.

During the debate on this, the Minister of Natural Resources, the hon. member for Wascana, consistently refused to hear the voice of the ordinary people, despite what was stated in the Baird commission report. In this report it was said that before moving forward in such an important area there had to be public consultations.

I think this week we have had yet another example of the kind of government we have. In its 1993 red book, the Liberal Party had solemnly committed to appointing an ethics counsellor who would be accountable to parliament. This week, representatives of that party broke their promise.

They are not here to protect the environment for the future; they are here to work on a piecemeal, short-sighted basis.

I am concerned, and I think the MOX issue is a good example. I can tell the House that we will not give up, that we will scrutinize what the hon. member for Wascana says and does to ensure that he does what he said he would do when answering the questions I asked him during last parliament.

I wonder about the relevance of the government's approach. Is it really necessary to seek more foreign capital for the extraction of uranium? I hope the minister will adequately answer our questions in committee. However, I would be remiss if I did not mention that the head office of Cameco is located in the minister's province, Saskatchewan.

Petro-Canada has its head office in Alberta because it used to be a crown corporation. Now, the federal government owns approximately one fifth of its shares. In our opinion, this corporation already belongs to foreign interests. Therefore, even if the individual share ownership limit is increased from 10% to 20%, this will not impact on the problem of competition in the gasoline market.

It is amazing to see this bill being presented when the Conference Board is currently conducting a review of this whole issue. Would it not have been preferable to wait for the conclusions of that review before making any changes in the share ownership of Petro-Canada?

The report from that review, commissioned by the Minister of Industry during the last parliament, should be tabled soon. It was to be submitted at the beginning of January 2001, but we have not seen it yet. The review will cost nearly three quarters of a million dollars.

In my opinion it would have been better to wait for that report before making any commitments. Studies are now underway which might give us another standpoint on whatever is happening in the gas industry, on the issue of competition in that industry and on whatever is being said across the country.

Also surprising is the fact that Petro-Canada contributed a little over $5,000 to the campaign fund of the Liberal Party of Canada in 1999. I would like to give our viewers some information regarding other contributions made that same year. The Alberta Energy Company contributed $17,233 to the Liberal Party campaign fund; Amoco Canada, $14,433; Canadian Occidental Petroleum, $52,676; Golf Canada Resources, $7,233; and Imperial Oil, $25,000.

I suppose that when the CEOs of these companies ask for changes to the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act, close attention is paid to what they have to say. All roads lead to the campaign fund of our friends across the way.

As for the review being carried out by the Conference Board, I want to remind the House that a parliamentary committee examined Petro-Canada and the fuel industry in 1998. In one of its recommendations, the committee warned against a possible merger of Petro-Canada and another oil company. This is another fine example of the Prime Minister ignoring the work of his own members. Despite all the work that was done, he is trying to hide the fuel issue by commissioning the Conference Board to conduct a review.

The federal government is not only collecting fuel taxes, it is grabbing part of the huge profits being registered by the oil companies this year. Petro-Canada's profits increased by $195 million during the second quarter of the year 2000. That is a 304% increase. To increase its tax revenues, the government will stop at nothing. During the next campaign, the Liberal Party theme could very well be “We want nothing but your good, and your goods”.

Increasing the foreign ownership limit to 20% will not allow an individual to take control of Petro-Canada. However, 20% of the shares of a company can give someone a lot of power.

We, in the Bloc, think that competition is one of the major problems in this industry. The federal government identified a dangerous level of concentration in the industry, but it decided against doing anything until the problem reached crisis proportions since the winter of 2000.

The Bloc Quebecois has been demanding for some time that the federal government make sure there is more competition in the Canadian oil industry. Three refiner-marketers control 75% of the wholesale trade in Canada, which is reason enough to wonder if there is any real competition in this industry.

The Competition Act should be amended to guarantee competitive prices for consumers. The House committee that has been poring over this legislation for a year has clearly indicated that the Competition Bureau had a very hard time enforcing the law. There are two things that could be done immediately in this regard: first, there could be changes made to the onus of proof with respect to anticompetitive behaviour and, second, the Competition Bureau could be given the authority to initiate investigations.

Despite what the government says about Canada's refineries, right now Esso, Shell, Petro-Canada and Ultramar have a monopoly on distribution. The four oil companies serving the Canadian market posted a record overall net profit of close to $2.5 billion in the first nine months of 2000. It is a bonanza for shareholders.

Petro-Canada alone made record profits of $893 million in the last year, almost three times more than the preceding high of $306 million reached in 1997.

There is other problem with the federal government's attitude with respect to fuel price hikes. Only 17% of federal taxes on fuel are invested in the transportation infrastructure on a Canada-wide scale.

The federal government then feels it has to set up infrastructure programs in order to gain more visibility.

The member from the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean area who sits across the way was a Progressive Conservative, then an Independent and is now the Liberal member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord. He says that he is a regionalist.

I have a brief comment for him. The federal government collected $35 million in fuel excise taxes in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean in 1997-98. Our return on this was 0.8%, because all the federal government reinvested was $287,000 on highway 175. What happened to the other $34.3 million?

The member is still staying that Quebec does not look after the regions. I am going to give an idea of what is being said. The Quebec government collected $37 million and reinvested $30 million for highways in my region alone. That is an 80% return.

The cat is now coming out of the bag. As we say back home, the truth will come out, and it will, faster and faster. We will discuss the real issues. Right now, this government is taking money from the pockets of Canadian and Quebec taxpayers and using it to pay off its debts. That money is being used to pay for something other than what it is collected for.

I find it hard to see the relevance of this bill. I am not opposed to it and nor is the Bloc Quebecois. But I wonder why the government is introducing this bill now. Is it because some foreign investor who is anxious to invest in Petro-Canada and contribute to the Liberal Party's campaign fund needs a higher ceiling for foreign ownership?

I suppose the Minister of Natural Resources will be able to explain to us in committee why this bill is being introduced now and why the government does not deal instead with the issue of competition in the gasoline market across Canada.

[John Duncan, Canadian Alliance, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we are speaking on Bill C-3 this morning, which pertains to the Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and Divestiture Act and also to the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act. The enactment relates to the mandatory provisions in the articles of Cameco Corporation and Petro-Canada. Cameco was formerly Eldorado Nuclear Limited, to which many Canadians can relate.

This enactment provides that the articles of Cameco Corporation will have to contain a 15% individual non-resident share ownership limit for voting shares as well as a cap of 25% on aggregate non-resident share ownership voting rights. The enactment also provides that the articles of Petro-Canada will have to be amended to allow for a 20% individual share ownership limit, while the aggregate non-resident share ownership limits will be eliminated.

In addition, the prohibition on the sale, transfer or disposal of all or substantially all of Petro-Canada's upstream and downstream assets will be replaced with a similar prohibition on the sale, transfer or disposal of all or substantially all of its assets, without distinguishing between upstream and downstream sectors of activity.

That is a pretty concise legislative summary.

I think what is important to many Canadians is that, one, we are dealing with two assets that Canadians, either historically or today, have considered strategic assets. One of course is uranium and that is why we had special rules for Eldorado Nuclear. The other is the grand experiment known as Petro-Canada, which was brought in by the Trudeau government in 1975. This all became part of the national energy program of the early 1980s, so as a consequence it has been very controversial.

We have heard much discussion recently about the possibility that Petro-Canada could be on the chopping block in terms of the remaining ownership of shares held by the Government of Canada. That is in the amount of 49.4 million shares. As of a week ago, at an ownership or market price of $36.70, the shares would be valued at approximately $1.8 billion.

The question is, is this the platform to sell off the remaining shares in Petro-Canada? Bottom line, that would still not recoup the government's investment in Petro-Canada, but I think many Canadians, the international community and certainly the business community would be satisfied if the government was finally out of this business.

It is important if we are going to take that step that the government does the right thing in terms of what it does with those moneys that would be accrued at that time. My personal view is that seeing as how the taxpayer subsidized this and it has contributed to our previous deficits and our debt and is currently the subject of interest payments coming from all of us, the moneys should go to debt retirement automatically, without debate.

As for Cameco, this bill ensures that foreign ownership is capped, thereby eliminating the risk of foreign ownership of uranium resources.

On this question I believe Canadians think very differently than they do about our oil, gas and other resources. The main reason is the fact that uranium, obviously, is involved in nuclear energy and nuclear fuel. That whole area is one that we want to tightly regulate and highly regulate, which is appropriate. There is a big difference. If we look at the oil and gas sector, for example, when this whole national energy program was put into place Canadians were told by the government that we had less than 20 years' worth of recoverable oil reserves and that a high gasoline tax burden was justified in order to conserve for future energy needs.

Canada is in a unique position. We know now that was an incorrect statement. We now know that in northern Alberta alone we have 400 years' worth of recoverable oil reserves in the tar sands, which will obviously supply our needs well into the future, and that changes everything. We are very skeptical about the need for government to retain any ownership in Petro-Canada for any purpose.

In 1991 the government decided that Canada no longer needed a crown corporation in the energy business and began the privatization process. We all know that. That is why current ownership is at 18%, not something much higher. In the end it became clear that after fluctuations in the markets, business setbacks and the ever present political struggles, Petro-Canada ended up basically as an oil company, much like any other in Canada except that the taxpayer still owned 18% of the company and was the single largest holder of the stock. No one but the government could own more than 10%.

In 1994 we questioned why the government would not sell off its national oil company while the industry was strong to recoup some of the billions of taxpayer dollars that were used to create Petro-Canada in the first place. In 1994 we asked the government why it would not do something significant and use the revenue from the sale of Petro-Canada to reduce Canada's debt burden. We know there was a crushing debt burden in 1994. It is still a crushing debt burden, but it was much worse in 1994 because we were still incurring annual deficits at that time.

In 1995 a Liberal budget promised to totally privatize Petro-Canada. We can see how reliable Liberal budget promises or even red book promises are. Indeed, that is something we should consider deeply, particularly after the events of this week which saw the government say that if its members voted for a red book promise it would be a confidence motion and the government could fall if its own members voted to keep a government promise. This turns parliament and parliamentary principle upside down.

The fact remains that Petro-Canada cost Canadians over $5 billion. Petro-Canada has never provided a benefit to Canadians that could not have been provided by the private sector, and when it was finally privatized, guess what? Petro-Canada started making a profit and competing effectively.

Governments since Petro-Canada was established have never had the courage to admit to Canadians that they will be able to recover less than $2 billion, 40% of the original cost of Petro-Canada. If Bill C-3 is indeed, as we think it is, the first step in the process of the government selling off its remaining shares of Petro-Canada, my only response can be that it is finally time, long past time.

I am curious about why we are getting this bill now. Petro-Canada's share prices have moved up in anticipation of the government selling off its shares. The shares have gone up by at least 50% this year and there is potential for the price to go higher. Also, with the bill in place, foreign ownership restrictions are removed, which will allow for an expanded market and that theoretically should expand the price once again.

As a business proposition this was a poor one. We are recovering less than 40% of what we put into the exercise and that is with rather inflated dollar revenues and non-inflated costs. This has basically been a disastrous business transaction. Since taxpayer dollars originally paid for Petro-Canada, I have already explained that the best way to go would be to put it into debt reduction.

There are other things that might be considered, such as our looming crisis in transportation needs and the need for transportation improvements. Or we could actually be really revolutionary. I know when it comes to these kinds of initiatives that the government has great difficulty prying its fingers away from these revenues, but we could be really revolutionary and use these moneys to cut taxes. However, that is a rather clear cut, simple, direct way to deal with the problem, so as a consequence it may not occur.

The bill does some things I can support. Referring to Petro-Canada, it does move toward opening up ownership of the company to national and international interests while still ensuring that the majority of the company is Canadian. The legislation clearly states that resident Canadians must still make up the majority of the board of directors. It also stipulates that the head office will remain in Calgary. The Canadian Alliance supports the removal of restrictions on Canadian businesses to allow for both domestic and foreign investing. We expect to see that Petro-Canada, once it is no longer manipulated by the government, will continue to show profits and growth.

Of course the legislation does not just address issues surrounding Petro-Canada. It addresses issues relating to the sale of shares in Cameco, Canada's largest uranium producer.

Canada's Kyoto commitments have increased the need for Canada to find green energy. One option of course is nuclear energy. That needs to be examined. At this point today I do not want to get into a debate about the merits or lack thereof of nuclear energy. However, the fact remains that uranium is a resource that, should nuclear energy be a factor in the world's efforts to reduce CO2 levels, will become a very important resource.

We all intrinsically know this. Nuclear energy has become a very controversial way of providing for our energy needs, but we have some nations in the world that are almost singularly reliant upon nuclear energy. We do not think about that from time to time.

France, for example, in the European community is over 70% dependent upon nuclear energy for its needs. That has all occurred over a long period of time. It continues to be the way that it functions. Its operations have never created an incident that has been worthy of international comment. That is a wonderful track record. We need to keep our minds open and our options open in terms of that whole field of endeavour.

The bill regarding Cameco raises foreign and individual ownership limits. Individual non-resident ownership increases from 5% to 15%. The limit on the total amount of non-resident ownership of shares increases from 20% to 25%.

I am pleased to see that the legislation is still mindful of the possible consequences of high levels of foreign ownership of our uranium resources. The lower limits on Cameco shares reflect across the board government restrictions on foreign activity in uranium mining.

While the Canadian Alliance is all for Canadian businesses having the opportunity to succeed, we must also be conscious of the need to keep such a potentially volatile resource within Canadian control. The bill in effect allows for greater flexibility in the selling of shares in Canadian companies. We can certainly support that effort.

As I have already stated, if the legislation leads to the government finally selling off its remaining shares of Petro-Canada, it would be legislation that is long overdue. We will just have to see what initiative will come next from the government.

At this point in time the government and many parts of the public have long since forgotten what the original purpose of Petro-Canada, emanating from the government of the day, was actually supposed to be. Unfortunately, many taxpayers have also forgotten how much money was sunk into this enterprise, never ever to be recovered.

Our policy document in regard to this whole initiative says:

We will foster a healthy economic environment for the benefit of consumers by pursuing free and open trade at home and abroad, including the elimination of inter-provincial trade barriers. We will withdraw government from areas of the economy where the private sector could deliver the same services more efficiently and will end the unfair practice of providing subsidies to industries, businesses and special interest groups.

There is a lot of wisdom in that statement. If the government of the day had subscribed to that policy statement we would not have sunk money into a sinkhole. We would not be looking at a multibillion dollar loss at a time when the country had a debt. That added to our debt and contributed to our interest payments today.

Even today with all the health care debate that we are going through on an almost daily basis, we are paying twice as much federally to service interest on the debt as we are in contributing to health care transfers to the provinces. That is a very strong indictment of mismanagement of the first order and just displays what a country Canada could have been if we would have had appropriate fiscal management throughout the years.

The people know it. That is why they endorsed this policy when it was created. As a matter of fact they were instrumental in creating this policy.

We are in favour of privatizing Petro-Canada. This bill does set the stage for doing that. The legislation ensures that foreign ownership of uranium resources will be monitored and capped. It is important for us to make sure that our support of free market competition and access does not however give away our uranium resources to foreign ownership. I want to be very clear on that and I think I have been consistent throughout my statements today that that is a direction we are simply not coming from.

I recognize that I have not used up all the valuable time of the House but I certainly put across the points that I wanted to get across today on Bill C-3.

[Jim Peterson, Liberal, for the Minister of Natural Resources]

moved that Bill C-3, an act to amend the Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and Divestiture Act and the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on behalf of the Minister of Natural Resources who unfortunately cannot be with us.

Bill C-3 is an act to amend the Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and Divestiture Act and the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act. This is the same bill as Bill C-39 which received second reading last fall but died on the order paper.

At that time, three out of four of the opposition parties in the House agreed to support that bill. I do hope that we will have their support for the bill today.

Members will recall that when the bill was first introduced, it was done extremely capably by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources, the member for Timiskaming—Cochrane. He spoke eloquently of the merits of the bill and of our natural resource sector. He pointed out that resource industries are not relics of the past. They are important engines of economic growth in Canada.

Energy, mining, forestry, geomatics and related industries currently account for 11% of our gross domestic product and 22% of new capital investment. They employ directly 780,000 Canadians and drive the economies of over 600 of our communities from coast to coast.

In 1998 the resource sector exported $97 billion worth of goods and services. Our resource sectors are in fact dynamic and vital elements of not the old economy but the knowledge based economy of the 21st century.

Resource companies are not in competition with high tech businesses. They are high tech businesses. They are investing $35 billion a year in leading edge technologies and other capital. Their productivity is growing three times faster than the rest of the economy.

Several factors explain the excellent performance of the resource industry in the world economy. The policies based on economic tendencies and markets which successive Liberal governments have implemented are good examples of this.

That being said, this kind of work is never finished, and our constant challenge is to ensure that the Canadian resource industry remains competitive and continues to support our economic prosperity. We must keep fine tuning our legislative and strategic framework so that companies in the resource industry have the leeway and capacity they need to make strategic decisions and secure a better position on the Canadian and world markets.

That is the rationale for the bill. The legislative amendments being proposed today are intended to allow two of our major performers in the natural resources sector, Cameco Corporation and Petro-Canada, to continue their record of economic growth and environmental stewardship.

I would like to quickly review the history behind these proposed amendments.

At one time both Cameco and Petro-Canada were crown corporations wholly owned by taxpayers. By 1995, however, the Government of Canada had sold all of its shares in Cameco, which is the dominant company in Canada's world leading uranium industry. As for Petro-Canada, although the government currently owns 18% of its shares, it does not influence the management of the company.

At the time of privatization, certain ownership restrictions were placed on both these companies. These restrictions were implemented at that time for good reasons, but circumstances have changed within the continuing evolution of global energy markets. The bottom line today is that some of these ownership restrictions have outlived their usefulness and are actually preventing these companies from taking advantage of new business opportunities.

Changes are needed, obviously. Restrictions on ownership provided in the two statutes do not give these companies the freedom enjoyed by their competitors to be able to grow and face competition on the world market. If Cameco and Petro-Canada are to continue performing well as private businesses, we have to ensure that the rules of the game are the same for everybody. The government also intends to ensure that these two corporations continue to make their decisions in Canada, with due consideration for Canadian interests.

To accomplish that, the bill will modify or remove certain restrictions that are limiting the ability of Cameco and Petro-Canada to attract new investment capital to forge new strategic alliances.

Specifically, the bill amends the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act to increase the limit on individual ownership of shares from 10% to 20%. It will also eliminate the 25% limit on the quantity of shares that could be collectively owned by non-residents of Canada. In other words, we are removing the restrictions on foreign ownership of Petro-Canada.

As for Cameco, we continue to believe in the need for some restrictions on foreign ownership. The bill therefore proposes to increase the limit on individual non-resident share ownership from 5% to a maximum of 15%. Similarly, the cap on total non-resident ownership of Cameco will increase from 20% to 25% of the company's shares. The current ownership limit for individual Canadians, which is 25%, will remain in place.

At the same time, the bill insists that these two corporations remain in Canada and be managed in Canada.

To further ensure that Cameco remains under Canadian control, the legislation will continue to require that the company's head office be located in Saskatchewan and that the majority of its directors be Canadian residents.

The legislation also requires that Petro-Canada's head office be located in Calgary and that the majority of its directors also be Canadian residents. The 20% limit on individual ownership of voting shares of Petro-Canada will prevent a takeover by a large multinational.

Finally, Petro-Canada has reoriented its major activities so that they are truly Canadian. They are concentrating on the east coast offshore and on the oil sands.

Bill C-3 will prevent Petro-Canada from disposing of all or substantially all of its commercial or production assets. The goal is to give Petro-Canada far greater freedom in administering its portfolio of assets, at the same time ensuring that it cannot dispose of these assets through a wind up.

The outstanding Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources made it clear in the previous debate that the sole intent of these changes is to give Cameco and Petro-Canada increased agility and better global positioning. It does not reflect a major shift in energy policy. These changes confirm our commitment to allow market forces to work, but within reasonable and responsible limits.

Officials of both companies have strongly supported these changes, showing that they are not trying to entrench their management positions as some might have otherwise suspected.

In closing, I should like to address briefly two of the other issues that were raised in debate when this matter came before parliament last spring.

First, let me reassure members that the proposed amendments will have no impact on the price of refined petroleum products. Gasoline and diesel oil prices in Canada rise and fall with crude oil prices, which in turn are set by supply and demand in a global market. They are not set by ownership rules applying to any one company in the Canadian petroleum industry.

Second, let me assure members that Bill C-3 does not affect Canada's commitment to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons or to nuclear security.

As I outlined earlier in my remarks, these amendments have been supported and endorsed in principle by a big majority of the House, with most hon. members recognizing that these changes will be good for the two companies, will be good for investors and will be good for all Canadians.

In this spirit, I welcome the opportunity to speak briefly this morning and I commend the bill to all members of the House, asking humbly that it receive quick passage at second reading and go to committee for full discussion.

Business Of The House

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to answer the Thursday question of the hon. opposition House leader.

This afternoon we will continue with the Bloc opposition day.

On Friday, tomorrow that is, we will debate second reading of Bill C-3 respecting Petro-Canada. Should that item conclude, I do not foresee calling any other business for tomorrow.

Next Monday we will debate Bill C-4 respecting the sustainable development foundation. This will be followed by Bill C-5, the species at risk bill.

Next Tuesday will be an allotted day.

Next Wednesday we will return to the species at risk bill that is to be started on Monday, or commence it if it was not begun at the earlier session I have just described.

On Thursday of next week at 10 a.m. there will be a special joint sitting of the Senate and House of Commons in the Commons Chamber to hear an address by the prime minister of Britain, the Right Hon. Tony Blair.

My present intention for Friday of next week is to call the marine liabilities bill.

Youth Criminal Justice Act

[Carole-Marie Allard, Liberal, Laval East, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Vancouver Quadra.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-7, the youth criminal justice act. Before I begin, I would like to congratulate my colleagues in the Quebec caucus for the great work they did in suggesting amendments to Bill C-3. It must be pointed out that thanks to their efforts and the valuable input from stakeholders we are able to introduce a bill which offers a balance between the need to protect society and the needs of adolescents, who will be responsible for the society of tomorrow.

I have looked at Bill C-7 using the eye's of a lawyer, one who has had experience in Young Offenders Act cases, and I find that it respects the rights of young people more and leaves more leeway for the frontline workers, including the police and community organizations involved in crime prevention in the regions.

The preamble of the bill sets out society's responsibility to address the developmental challenges and the needs of young persons and to guide them to adulthood. It also provides the need to prevent youth crime by addressing its underlying causes.

I was staggered to hear the Bloc Quebecois critic say that it was preferable to have an adolescent's record handled by the crown prosecutor. He said “Mr. Speaker, currently, when an adolescent commits a minor offence, the matter is referred to the crown prosecutor, who determines whether the young person needs help. If so, the Quebec system rehabilitates him immediately”.

Why would a crown prosecutor be in a better position to decide the future of a young person than a neighbourhood police officer or a community agency long involved in the field? Why the outcry when clause 6 proposes letting the police decide whether “to take no further action, warn the young person, administer a caution,—or, with the consent of the young person, refer the young person to a program or agency in the community that may assist the young person not to commit offences”.

What is the problem with wanting the young person to be treated in his community instead of sending him to detention when he commits a minor offence?

For the sceptics, I add that clause 7 of the bill gives the attorney general or any other minister the authority to establish a program authorizing the police to administer cautions to young persons instead of starting judicial proceedings.

In my riding of Laval East, the Centre Défi-jeunesse in Saint-François is set in a middle income community where the social structure is 91% focused on the family. Young people aged 13 to 18 represent 10% of the population and are especially hard hit since they have to deal with issues like welfare and single parent families or are trying to make it on their own on a low income.

The Centre Défi-jeunesse Saint-François was established in 1992, eight years ago already, to extend a helping hand to young people with emotional, social and relationship problems linked to their family, social or criminal situation or to their substance abuse.

The organization can rely on well-known supporters like the Saint-François police department, the CLSC des Milles-Îles, the Fleur Soleil school and the merchants of the Promenades de Saint-François shopping centre located nearby.

The organization recently launched a project called Défi sans violence, spearheaded by community police officers and nurses from the CLSC. They were able to reach 400 young people. It is because our government believes in prevention that it has provided almost $32 million to crime prevention programs, including more than $4 million in Quebec.

The Centre Défi-jeunesse just received $50,000 for its project called Rassembler les deux mondes. It would be able to send a facilitator to Iqualuit, the capital of Nunavut, to give workshops on violence and crime prevention in collaboration with organizations working in the field.

Others projects will be coming soon. I spoke to the director, Mrs. Talbot, who told me that thanks to that experience, young people have learned to work with police officers and now the rapport between the two groups is nothing short of extraordinary.

Under Bill C-7, it would no longer be possible to place in custody a first time young offender who commits a minor offence. Why should we absolutely incarcerate a young person who commits a minor offence? Do people realize what it means to have an open file in a youth court? Do they realize what it means for parents who have to parade before the court when there are other solutions? If this is what is currently going on in Quebec, let us debate the issue.

I know crown attorneys who work at the youth court. I would rather trust the police officer walking the beat in a neighbourhood because, in my opinion, he certainly has a better idea of what is going on than the crown attorney in his ivory tower at the courthouse, if only because the latter is often overburdened following all kinds of budget cuts.

I also think that we can better rehabilitate young offenders by putting them, as provided under clause 6, in the hands of stakeholders or experts in the community who know criminal gangs and street gangs in that area.

In this morning's edition of Le Devoir , the following title is eloquent:

Baril passes harsh judgment on youth services.

The article mentions that:

...the youth protection system is overjudicialized and suffers from continuous breaks in the delivery of services.

The picture is not rosy in the youth assistance network. Rehabilitation centres are constantly clogged up. The administrative component takes precedence over the clinical component and the legal component, takes precedence over social law.

In October, Quebec's Commission des droits de la personne et de la jeunesse condemned the repressive nature of the living conditions imposed on young people in youth centres. Such is the situation of Quebec's network.

I would like our friends opposite to reflect on Quebec minister Gilles Baril's view on an approach that judicializes young people too quickly.

I would like the members opposite to think before they argue in favour of the status quo, giving as their reason that Quebec has a low crime rate. It is too simplistic to claim that because Quebec's crime rate is very low, the system is working well in Quebec. Some caution is in order.

Who is telling us that this reduction in violent crimes by young people in Quebec is not due to the work of our neighbourhood police, our community crime prevention organizations and our stakeholders, such as the Centre de défi-jeunesse de Saint-François, which has been working for eight years in the area of youth crime prevention?

What we must realize, and this is fundamental, is that the most prevalent crime among young people is theft. In the case of violent crimes, simple assault, the less serious kind, tops the list.

Who is telling us that we cannot attribute this drop in violence to the zero tolerance policy enforced by our police officers in Quebec, to the schools and to other stakeholders?

This is what the Bar said in its brief on Bill C-3. It never said that crime was down because of the intervention of crown attorneys and the incarceration of young first time offenders.

What minister Baril revealed to Quebec was not just the reality of the situation, but I would add that the reality is worse still. If members were to take a stroll through the youth courts, they would see that the system is not working at all.

Members should ask young people how many times they have had to appear in court, how many times their case has been rescheduled because of the backlog, how many times they have had to miss school and their parents have had to miss work to appear before the youth court only to be told to come back another day.

In conclusion, I think—

[Bill Blaikie, NDP, Winnipeg—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, this is my first opportunity to participate in this debate in my new capacity as justice critic for the New Democratic Party. I listened intently to those who preceded me and I signal my intention to listen intently in committee and to try to learn as much as I can.

Even though I might not always agree, I would like to learn as much as I can from my colleagues on the committee who are more experienced than I. To that end I listened to the minister, to the member for Provencher, to the former minister of justice in my own province, and to my colleague from Quebec.

This is the third time the bill has been introduced in the House. It was at one point known as Bill C-68, then as Bill C-3, and now as Bill C-7. Noting that the bill has been before the House before, I would like to pay tribute to my predecessor as NDP justice critic, the former member for Sydney—Victoria, Mr. Peter Mancini. Unfortunately he was not re-elected and therefore could not continue as our justice critic. He had the opportunity to put forward our party's position and he put it forward well the last time he spoke to the bill in the second reading context on October 21, 1999.

It is unfortunate that the bill has not gone ahead. As with various other projects of the Liberal government, a combination of government delay, lack of will and an opposition resistance that has its own merits, has meant that the government has not been able to act. We collectively have been unable to act to possibly improve the Young Offenders Act which we all know to be deficient.

We now have some 15 years of experience with the Young Offenders Act and it has not lived up to expectations. I am one of the few people in the House who was here when it was debated and brought in as a replacement for the former juvenile delinquents act. There was great expectation at that time that the Young Offenders Act would be a great improvement on the older legislation which I think went back to the turn of the century, if I remember correctly.

The fact that the Young Offenders Act has not worked out the way many people thought it would and the fact that we now have before us a new bill should perhaps give us pause and make us all a bit humble when we realize that the act did not work. Youth crime, even though it may have gone down in some respects in the past few years, is certainly up overall when we consider what the statistics would have looked like when the Young Offenders Act was brought in or prior to that.

If acts of parliament alone were enough the problem would have been solved by now, but we still have problems. The minister, by her own description, has tried to strike a balance between those who want her to be tougher and those who want her to seek more and better alternatives to incarceration, particularly with respect to young non-violent offenders in the first and hopefully last stages of their encounter with the criminal justice system.

In the coming days and weeks as we debate it further in the House and as we get into committee, I think the debate will be on whether it is true that the minister has struck an appropriate balance or whether she is, as the criticism has been levelled at her, trying to be all things to all people without really coming up with an effective piece of legislation. I will certainly be trying to make my own judgment in that respect in the context of our overall opposition to the bill, to which I will speak shortly.

The minister has said she has tried to make the bill more flexible, particularly in respect to the amendments that have been introduced since the last time it was before the House. I understand there has been some attempt to try and satisfy some of the concerns raised by the Bloc Quebecois as to the ability of the youth criminal justice system in Quebec to continue to do what it is doing now, which by all accounts is a comparatively successful attempt to deal with youth crime.

Some people have said, and I have no reason to doubt them, that Quebec is one of the few provinces that has been able to do with the Young Offenders Act what was intended when it was first brought in. Whether this is true or not, it is certainly the case if we look at rates of youth crime and the approach the province of Quebec is taking.

To give credit where credit is due, it is fair to say that Quebec is doing something right. It may not be reproducible in an uncritical way in every province because Quebec, after all, is a distinct society. It may be that things which are possible in Quebec are not as possible in other provinces, but certainly it would seem to me that we have much to learn from the approach taken in Quebec.

If the bill is not flexible enough at this point, if it can be demonstrated that it is so inflexible as to render impossible the ability of Quebec to keep doing the things it is doing right, then surely that is a criticism the minister should take seriously.

One of the inadequacies identified in the current Young Offenders Act has been what my predecessor referred to when he was speaking in the House as an absence of discretion. I will quote from Mr. Mancini who said on October 21, 1999:

We know, and again I can give some evidence of my own, that in many cases what happened with the old Young Offenders Act is that there was an absence of discretion, that police officers, school teachers and people who routinely came in contact with young people ended up referring matters to the courts, even if they were the most simple matters where some cautioning or some exercise of discretion may well have dealt with the matters.

I have seen in the courts young people coming in charged with damage to property because they got into an argument with a schoolmate over a school locker or where young people end up in court on trespassing charges because they walked across a neighbour's lawn. There is no need to clog the courts up with these kinds of offences when we have serious matters that have to go before the courts.

I think that is a particularly insightful criticism of the Young Offenders Act. I think it points to the heart of the matter when it comes to finding the right spirit in dealing with young people.

I am reminded, as I often am with justice matters, of a person in my family, my grandfather, Alex Taylor, who was the chief of police in Transcona for many years, and before that a constable. Subsequent to being the chief of police, he became a justice of the peace. Although he has been gone for 40 years, I still run into people on the doorstep who say “your grandfather gave me a boot in the rear end once when I needed it”, or “your grandfather took me home once when he could have taken me to jail” or “your grandfather put me in jail for the night when I needed a lesson”. This was long before there was a charter.

All these things demonstrate to me a certain amount of discretion, mercy and exercise of judgment when it comes to young people that sometimes can only be exercised by people who know the community, or who know the family or who know that young person.

In that context, I make the argument for more and better community policing. Our young people should be policed by people who know them and who know their communities. They should not be policed in the impersonal way that they are now so often policed in our larger cities where police do not work in the communities they live in or where they are transferred all over the place and nobody knows anybody anymore.

It seems to me that this absence of discretion is a key element of what is wrong with the Young Offenders Act. However, there was another absence, and this is one that I like to also dwell on. There was an absence not just of discretion, but of resources to deal with the process that was set up by the Young Offenders Act. We see that same mistake repeated in the new youth criminal justice bill. This is one of our fundamental concerns.

As has been said by members who spoke earlier, the act is quite complex, cumbersome and lays new responsibilities down for the provinces. It introduces new layers at the same time it does a good thing by introducing discretion. It does not introduce the resources to make the exercise of that discretion happen in a way which would be both constructive and speedy.

One thing we all know, and I think all the literature agrees on, is that when it comes to young people, it is important that there be as short a time as possible between the action and the consequences. What the minister has done is create a process by virtue of the increased complexity of the process and the lack of resources committed to making that complexity work, if that is possible. By doing this, the minister may well have created a situation where the length of time between action and consequence has been stretched out even further. It would seem that this is indeed one of the key criticisms that will be brought to bear on this legislation.

The complexity was alluded to by the Alliance critic but probably not as explicitly as I would have expressed it. That might have to do with the fact that the Alliance critic is a lawyer. He alluded to the fact that this was going to be a field day for the litigious. I think what meant was that this could well be the biggest job creation program for lawyers that we have seen in a long time. However, it is not the first job creation program for lawyers that I have seen go through this place.

For example and as I understand it, the reverse onus provisions change the existing situation whereby the state now has to argue for youth between the ages of 14 and 17 to be brought before adult court. Under this new law it will be the youths themselves who will have to say why they should not be advanced. This is debatable in itself.

Leaving that aside for a moment, who is going to make these arguments on behalf of these 14 to 17 years olds? Are they going to make the arguments themselves? These arguments are going to have to be made either by the lawyers who their parents hire or, given the fact that a great percentage of the youths who get into such trouble do not have parents who can afford lawyers, it is going to mean a whole new dimension of legal aid and costs which have been put on the provinces without the added resources.

What we see is a pattern of downloading costs onto the provinces which is quite unacceptable. Unfortunately, it is part of pattern that we have seen not just in justice but in other areas, for instance medicare. The federal government wants to set the rules, but it allows its participation financially in the administration of those rules to constantly erode. At the moment the federal government is only participating to the tune of about 25%. That is high compared to health care which is 9% to 13%, depending on whose figures we believe.

There are other things that I could have spoken about, but time flies while having fun talking about the Young Offenders Act.

One of the things the bill does not do and I am glad that it does not do, and I want to put this on the record, is it does not deal with children under 12 in the context of the bill. That is a position taken by the federal NDP, which we continue to support. It does not mean there should not be a strategy for dealing with children under 12. One of the things that the Manitoba NDP government is looking at very seriously is how to deal with young offenders 10 and 11 years old, both in the context of what they do themselves and also what they are led to do by others who are using their young age to their advantage.

It was mentioned earlier that one of the virtues of the old piece of legislation, the Juvenile Delinquents Act, was that it dealt with children under the age of 12. We need to find, subsequent to this bill, a way for the federal and provincial levels to co-operate in facing up to the fact that we have a problem, in more cases than we would care to admit perhaps, with children at that very young level. We need co-ordinated federal-provincial strategy for dealing with that. It should be, at least as I see it at the moment, outside the ambit of the way we deal with 12 to 18 year olds.

I want to say that we support the release of names in some circumstances, but we believe that in this respect there should still be a role for judges in exercising discretion as to when and in what circumstances names should be released. The reason we have judges is to make these kinds of judgments. It is consistent with our overall argument that there ought to be more discretion built into the system not just for judges but also for police officers.

The rest of my speech will address the fact that not only do we need to be, in an appropriate sense, tough on crime, we also need to be tough on the causes of crime. Had I another 20 minutes, I would certainly go into all the social and economic measures which I think would help to support families and to create and reinforce the kind of values in our society that would go a long way in preventing young offenders from offending in the first place.

[Michel Bellehumeur, Bloc, Berthier—Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to try yet again, and perhaps with examples, to convince the Minister of Justice that she is off track with her bill, seeming in a way to want to criminalize young people in difficulty with the law.

Quite honestly, I listened very carefully to the minister's speech and equally attentively to the member of the Canadian Alliance representing the riding of Provencher.

It seems to me that everyone in the House should see very clearly that there are two faces to Canada. There are two visions completely opposed. In a matter such as that of young offenders, it is obvious.

If I understand what the member of the Canadian Alliance had to say, the bill does not go far enough. There are shortcomings and things that do not work. We should be far more severe with young people involved in crime. We should even lower the age of responsibility below the age of 12. We should make changes to try to get better control over these young people. There is the whole issue of the victim. It must be made more complex.

For the Bloc Quebecois and, quite honestly, for the vast majority of Quebecers—I know that these days the expression consensus is a bit overworked—if there is one subject of real consensus, it is the treatment of young offenders.

Regardless of political stripe in Quebec—this is even more true in the national assembly—Péquistes, members of the Action Démocratique or Liberals, the members of the national assembly unanimously passed a resolution calling on the minister to suspend consideration of Bill C-3, now C-7—and I will come back to this shortly—in order to visit the provinces, look at the issue and see what does not work.

In Quebec, in short, the Young Offenders Act is properly applied with good results. I will come back to this in a bit. After checking with the Quebec departments of justice and public security and other agencies in Quebec, the minister decided not to travel throughout the country to see what was going on in the provinces, and particularly in Quebec.

Some department officials met with the members of the coalition and the agencies that enforce the Young Offenders Act on a daily basis, but the minister did not go to Quebec to see what was going on over there and to find out why Quebec was getting such remarkable results. Why was there a consensus in Quebec? It was to tell the minister “We do not want the YOA to be amended or repealed because it is working for us. The problem, if there is one, is not with the legislation but rather with the way it is enforced in other provinces”.

The minister did not come to Quebec but the officials she sent were there to do a sales job. They were not proposing a social vision, an educational approach or a rehabilitation program but rather a product. They were simply trying to sell a product. I will come back to that later on because there are limits to what one can say and what one can try to sell to Quebecers on such an important issue.

Of course there are times in the House when we are tempted to play politics. We are in politics, not in religion. However, on this issue I have never tried to influence groups and get them to take part in our political games. They have always been free to do whatever they wanted to do and to say whatever they felt like saying. These agencies held press conferences and wrote to newspapers. I never tried to apply pressure as the Department of Justice is trying to do now and tried to do in September, October and November.

Indeed, people in the Department of Justice were not involved in the election campaign. They were out in the field and they even promised money to certain organizations. There is nothing they did not try to do to convince certain members of the coalition, certain groups that work with the Young Offenders Act on a daily basis, to support the minister's amendments.

Right now I think the minister and the people in her department have failed. Time will tell. As for me, my opinion has not changed with regard to these bills, whether it is Bill C-68, Bill C-3 or Bill C-7.

When a bill is ill-conceived from the very beginning, one can try to improve it by whatever means but it will still remain an ill-conceived bill. Such is the case with Bill C-7.

The bill proposed by the minister is based on false premises. Alliance and Liberal members saw an opportunity to play politics at the expense of young people with delinquency problems that are sometimes serious. Using certain complicitous tabloids and certain ads, they managed to make a big fuss about certain crimes of a rather vicious nature, I agree, but nevertheless extremely rare.

It goes without saying that the idea of a grandson hitting his grandmother to get a few dollars is unbearable. However beyond the specific and individual incidents covered by the media, the facts are actually very different. And this has to be said.

Juvenile crime has been in constant decline for a number of years. According to the data compiled by the Department of Justice, last year in the year 2000, the juvenile crime rate was the lowest of the past 20 years. Just since 1997, youth crimes—and these figures are taken from reports published by the Department of Justice—involving homicides have dropped by 9%.

Do not try to tell us, as the member for Provencher seems to be doing, that these figures have been fudged because the crimes were not reported. We are talking about confirmed homicides. Files were opened and police investigations were conducted. The figures show that since 1997 homicides committed by young offenders have dropped by 9%.

There has also been an 8% drop in robberies and a 1% drop in sexual assaults. Some might say that a 1% drop is not much, but at least the number of these crimes has been going down over the past four or five years. As for crimes in general, the drop is around 1.2%.

What is most striking when we look at these statistics is that since 1997 the juvenile crime rate in Quebec has dropped by 23%. I agree that this is not enough but it is a significant reduction.

Quebec—and I am using the data published by the Department of Justice—has the lowest crime rate in Canada. In Quebec, the recidivism rate is the lowest in Canada. The number of cases where a file is referred to the court and young criminals are remanded in custody is also the lowest in Canada. The former minister of justice and now Minister of Health even said once that Quebec was a model for the way it implements the Young Offenders Act.

The then minister of justice even said that since Quebec was enforcing the Young Offenders Act properly, and the financial programs linked to the Young Offenders Act did not favour the approach taken by Quebec, Quebec was in fact being penalized. As a result of Quebec enforcing the act properly, the federal government now owes Quebec about $850 million in constant dollars of 1997.

The federal program linked to the act is built in such a way that it encourages erecting concrete walls, putting bars in windows and imprisoning young offenders, instead of rehabilitating them and ensuring their reintegration.

Quebec was simply implementing the policy statement in section 3 of the Young Offenders Act, which put the emphasis on the needs of young people. It said that we had to focus on the rehabilitation and reintegration of young people in order to protect society in the long run. This is what we have been doing for years.

In Quebec because we abide by and enforce the law correctly and efficiently, we are being penalized in terms of the distribution of funding for the enforcement of an act that was not passed by Quebec but by the federal government.

To justify the Liberal government's approach, to justify the position adopted by the Liberal minister who is a member from western Canada, a member from Alberta, a province where the Canadian Alliance is known to be strong—bearing in mind that, based on its own statistics, her department recognized that there was no need to amend the Young Offenders Act because it was not the act, but its enforcement that was the problem—to justify those amendments, they went on a crusade a long time ago.

There is misinformation. The original premises are wrong. The wrong data are knowingly being used. Department of Justice officials, among others, have suggested in press conferences that things are worse than they really are. There is an attempt to lead people away from a clear understanding of the act, which needs to be enforced. Some figures are even being fiddled with, and I will explain what I mean.

I am very saddened to see that the Minister of Justice herself is using these figures when she knows very well that they have no value. Then there is the poll carried out by the Department of Justice. This poll was authorized by the Liberals and paid for with our taxes, and public servants did a sales job on it.

Mr. Speaker, you might tell me that I do not have as much experience as you, as I have only been a member of parliament since 1993, but I have always held federal public servants in high esteem. I have always greatly respected them for the non-partisan nature of their work.

Overall, until seeing what is going on within the Department of Justice, I was generally very satisfied with the work being done by the public servants. However, as far as justice is concerned, particularly in the area of young offenders, their work is no longer fair-minded, it is totally partisan.

As far as Yolande Viau is concerned—I am taking the time to give her name, and have no qualms about doing so, since I have laid a very formal complaint with her superior, but what she was doing was supposedly normal—when she tells us about the poll, when she says that 58% of Quebecers agree with the federal approach, she is lying. It is not honest to say that.

If the poll is examined in any sort of detail and with any sort of honesty and informed knowledge, one realizes that the department, and Ms. Viau in particular, cannot reach those conclusions. Why? Because according to the same poll only 10% of Quebecers can give at least three of the amendments to the Young Offenders Act. There cannot, therefore, be more than 10% who approve of such a law.

Closer scrutiny of the poll reveals that 10% of Quebecers are opposed to the minister's bill. Are these the same 10% who can list at least three components of the bill? Are they opposed because the more they are familiar with it, the more they oppose it? No doubt.

This, however, is an indication of the unacceptable lack of rigour in a department like the Department of Justice, particularly in connection with an issue that affects young offenders, young people in trouble with the law.

I would hope that Ms. Viau and the Minister of Justice will not use this sort of tactic again. It is my opinion that Ms. Viau is playing politics in her interpretation of these figures, that she is selling her line, some sort of commodity, in this case, a bill.

In addition, she said when she met the press “Go ask the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse du Québec about whether they are as good as all that in applying the law”. Yes, because they had financial problems, but that is a whole other matter.

If Ms. Viau had any intellectual honesty, she would have taken the brief submitted by the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse, when its representatives testified before the committee, and she would have seen what the commission had to say on this with respect to the Young Offenders Act.

For the benefit of Ms. Viau and the minister, I will quote from what the commission said in its brief to the committee:

By focusing the new legislation on the seriousness of the offence, the implication is, necessarily, that the present law does not significantly respond to juvenile delinquency, especially when the offence is of a greater objective gravity.

Further on, it reads:

The imbalance created by new legislation based solely on the principles of public protection and the responsibility of the young offender compromises all the work done to date with young people in difficulty.

That is the true message of the commission. I am not distorting the facts. I am just quoting from a brief the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse has submitted to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, which examined the bill.

If I may briefly outline the background, this is not the first time the minister tries to impose her views through a bill such as this one.

Bill C-68 was introduced on March 11, 1999, as everybody will recall. Then we had Bill C-3, which was introduced and read for the first time on October 14, 2000. The purpose has always been the same, that is to make the Young Offenders Act tougher and to revoke a piece of legislation that is very effective in Quebec, for the sake of heeding just English speaking Canada's views.

The minister then realized her bill was severely flawed and did not make sense. She tabled 172 amendments in the House. About 60 witnesses, half of them from Quebec, appeared before the committee dealing with the bill.

Witnesses from Quebec submitted to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights at least 15 briefs. Not a single witness from Quebec supported the justice minister's position. Not a single group mentioned that the minister was right to revoke and throw away an effective piece of legislation like the one on young offenders.

Of course we had witnesses from western Canada who came to tell us that we should lower the age even more and that we should even let children in diapers have criminal records. I exaggerate but not much considering what I heard during the committee hearings. This is not the solution.

The debate went on for several months. I tried by all kinds of means, including endless speeches, to convince the minister. Many editorials and articles were written on the subject in Quebec and in English Canada. If I had the time I would like to read them. Lawyers, practitioners, experts, professors, criminologists, psychologists and all kinds of people came to tell the minister that she had it all wrong.

After the last federal election the minister introduced a brand new bill, Bill C-7. It has a new number but it is not new at all since it is a carbon copy of old Bill C-3. The 172 amendments moved by the government have simply been incorporated into the bill.

A bill that has so many flaws cannot be corrected by way of amendments. What we need to do is scrap it and draft a brand new bill. While that is being done, the minister should travel around and consult the people who work with young offenders, with young people in trouble with the law.

The minister would see that she is going the wrong way. I will surely have an opportunity later on to give specific examples. Whenever she has the chance, the minister says “The hon. member from the Bloc Quebecois never gives any specific examples”. However, I gave her several examples. Over the course of 27 hours of debates, in the speeches I made in committee, I gave several examples showing that the new bill would make it impossible to keep the approach taken in Quebec with young people in trouble with the law.

I asked questions in the House. Yes, we have time constraints and we cannot get into details but the examples I gave showed that with the changes put forward by the minister it would no longer be possible to take the educational and rehabilitative approach developed in Quebec over the last 20 years.

It is wrong to claim that there is some flexibility. Too much in the bill is automatic to give provinces a minimum of flexibility. The minister does not seem to understand or, rather, she does not want to understand that. I think this is a better explanation.

What is the approach in Quebec? Are there any members in the House who are at least aware of what it is? One might say that it is based on rehabilitation and reintegration.

In every case, the young person is given priority. Each case is considered individually. In each case, we look at what we should give the young person in question to rehabilitate him as quickly as possible. There is a reason for this, since in section 3 of the Young Offenders Act, the declaration of principle clearly states that young persons are not adults and that they must be treated accordingly. Indeed, young persons are human beings in training. They cannot be treated as if they were adults, even in very serious cases.

Yes, there are hopeless cases. Yes, there are cases where a young offender is a bum and will remain a bum.

In some murder cases, the young offender does not deserve the same treatment as the one used for rehabilitating young people. However the current Young Offenders Act does allow the provinces to decide to have a young person tried in adult court. This is not hypocritical, this is clear. We know where we are going. It is true that we apply this in Quebec.

Perhaps we may contradict the minister's numbers, because according to the Department of Justice in Quebec City it is not true that 23 cases were referred last year. I am convinced that more cases are referred in Quebec than in Ontario but perhaps not 23.

Why are more cases referred in Quebec? Simply because there is a difference in treatment in Quebec. A young person who under the referral principle is tried in adult court and sentenced will not end up in the same place as a young person who is treated as such. However, in the western provinces, whether a young offender is dealt with under the law as a young person or as an adult in adult court, he will often end up in the same place and get the same treatment, that is no treatment at all.

In Quebec there is a difference. We invest in a young person who has a chance of being rehabilitated. In Quebec the repeat offender rate is the lowest in Canada because we enforce the law. We do what the law allows us to do. We apply the statement of principles that puts the emphasis on the young person's needs. This statement of principles was interpreted by the higher courts and it took about 15 years for the Supreme Court of Canada to hand down a clear ruling on what a young offender is entitled to.

It took 15 years to assess what the real needs of young people are. Everything that has been accomplished so far is being thrown out today. The intent of the law is being completely changed. From now on the young offenders' needs, the underlying principle of the Young Offenders Act, will no longer be the guiding principle in interpreting the act, in guiding youth court judges in sentencing young offenders, it will be the seriousness of the offence, as we said at the beginning.

This whole bill is focused on the seriousness of the offence. Even though there have been attempts to include all sorts of details and to use the word “need” in the bill, this in no way changes the fact that the courts will interpret it based on the principle of the seriousness of the offence. This runs counter to Quebec's approach, which is focused on the needs of the young offenders.

Moreover, in this new act the minister wants to impose on Quebec, which is all about the seriousness of the offence, there is a whole series of automatic sentences preventing those who want to hand down the appropriate sentence to young offenders from doing so. The young offenders will even have the right, not currently available to them, to avoid rehabilitation.

In many cases, if a young offender is given the choice between serving his time inside, as they say, or going to a rehab centre and working on his case, what will he choose? He will choose to serve his time. It is much easier to do two-thirds of an eight year prison sentence than to do eight months in a rehabilitation centre where one has to work with psychologists and other professionals who will ask questions and work hard to turn one into a responsible citizen who realizes what he has done.

It is much easier for a youth to do his time, read books and count the days left until his release than for him to try to find out what his problem is and why he acted the way he did.

Now that is exactly what the minister is handing to our youth on a silver platter and crown attorneys will no longer even have the opportunity to compel the young offender to go through all that.

The bill is unacceptable for several reasons. The youth justice system the minister is proposing looks increasingly like adult justice. This so-called youth criminal justice act, which will turn our youth into criminals, looks more and more like the criminal code.

If the application of the criminal code were a big success with adults, I might think that the government is trying to achieve the same results with young offenders but it is the opposite. The application of the criminal code is, in many respects, a disaster but the government wants to impose it on young offenders. Some expressions were changed but these were cosmetic changes.

Under Bill C-7, young offenders no longer face penalties. Instead, they are liable to face them. Bill C-7 now imposes sentences. The legislation no longer reprimands a young offender, it corrects his behaviour. It includes extrajudicial measures instead of extrajudicial sanctions. This is all very nice, and while it is good to include terminology that is less aggressive, the meaning of the act remains the same.

The minister says that she understood Quebec's demands, but she did not understand anything, in my opinion. We did not want changes to the wording or synonyms. We simply wanted the minister not to touch the act.

I mentioned that under the bill it is impossible to review each case based on its own merits. Certain types of crime are stereotyped and compartmentalized: this sentence applies to that crime and that sentence applies this other crime. Where is the flexibility that would allow Quebec to have its own approach?

All the experts and even lawyers agree that the bill will promote legal quibbling. Those who have been to the courthouse realize that there is no benefit in it.

It is an extremely complex bill that no one will understand. The bill took something out of the existing act, which was made for young people and also parents, since there are parents who take an active interest in what young people experiencing problems are doing. It is not just thugs who end up in court. It is not just young people without parents. A bill as complex as Bill C-7 will not be understood except by judges and lawyers who will have a field day.

The bill does not help the cause of justice for young people or the society.

I will give other examples and I hope some public servants are listening if the minister is not. With this bill Quebec will have to change its approach.

I spoke earlier about the whole philosophy underlying the bill and I want to come back to this briefly. The current Young Offenders Act talks about the needs of young persons. The basic principle of Bill C-7 is the seriousness of the offence committed by the young offender.

So far the precedents make the needs of the young offenders the first priority. The case law leans that way. It has established some models particular to Quebec on rehabilitation. The philosophy behind the bill is completely different. It deals with the seriousness of the offence and hands down harsher sentences. Like it or not, the case law would change at the same time.

The principle of uniformity of sentencing was in Bill C-3. We are no longer talking about uniformity of sentencing but rather about similar sentences in a given region. What does a region correspond to in criminal law?

Is Quebec a region? Is Ontario a region? Are the maritimes a region? In any case, when lower courts interpret what the legislator meant with regard to the seriousness of the offence, it will go to the higher courts and on to the supreme court. When these cases come back before the lower courts, the case law will impact on Quebec if Bill C-7 is fully enforced.

I also said with regard to minor offences—because things are very compartmentalized in the bill—that at present when a young person is caught shoplifting or scribbling graffiti, the police open a file. That file is immediately referred to the crown attorney. He or she examines the reports contained in the file and may determine that the source of the problem is a street gang or perhaps the young person's parents. He or she takes appropriate action immediately to get that young person away from the situation causing the problem.

With Bill C-7, as introduced by the Minister of Justice, the crown attorney will never see the file and will certainly not be able to force that young person to enter a rehabilitation program. The reason for that is that the minister's bill provides for a whole series of successive measures.

If the first offence is a minor offence, like shoplifting, the police will only give a warning. If the same young person travels to the neighbouring town and is caught shoplifting again the same day, he or she will be given another warning. Where will that be recorded? If at some point the offences become more serious, for example large graffiti involving some violence, a cautionary letter will be sent to the parents. The crown attorney will never find out.

The bill would prevent Quebec from doing the right thing at the right time. It is better to invest as soon as the first offence is committed, when it is not serious, than after three or four years of delinquency in a neighbourhood, a town or a region. If the minister's bill becomes law, the whole rehabilitative approach used in Quebec in cases involving minor offences would no longer be possible.

As for cases involving major crimes, the minister's approach is just as harmful. If young offenders are treated as adults, they will also have the same rights as adults. With the minister's new bill, a young person receiving an adult sentence of eight years in prison would get out after serving two-thirds of that sentence, whether he or she is rehabilitated or not.

The approach used in Quebec is to send these young people to a rehabilitation centre. When they get out, they are rehabilitated. Statistics show that the recidivism rate is less than 1%. Is this what the minister wants? Is the minister telling us the approach used in Quebec would be maintained with her bill? No, we would no longer be able to do that. The approach used in Quebec would no longer be possible.

Let us talk about the delays the minister's new bill would entail. We now have appearances in court and preliminary inquiries, and trials by judge and jury. Lots of things are fictitious in the bill. We are told that the youth justice court would deal with serious crime, but if one reads the bill one realizes that it is not the judges of the youth justice court who would hear these cases but judges of the superior court acting as judges of the youth justice court.

There are lots of fictitious things which the minister does not seem to grasp. In the end, the youth court would be influenced. There would be an influence on case law. There would be an influence on the Quebec approach, which has been very effective.

I will conclude. We have in the House right now Liberal members from Quebec, the Ministers responsible for International trade, Treasury Board, Finance, National Revenue, and Intergovernmental Affairs. We also have the new member for Laval East and the members for Brome-Missisquoi, Ahuntsic, and Gatineau. I hope they will stand up for Quebec and for the Quebec consensus on this bill, and I hope that they will talk some sense into the minister.

[Anne McLellan, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

moved that Bill C-7, an act in respect of criminal justice for young persons and to amend and repeal other acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, on February 5, 2001, I introduced into the House the government's proposed youth criminal justice act. Those who have been following the issue will be well aware of the extensive groundwork that supports this initiative.

The government's commitment to reforming the youth justice system is longstanding and firm. We reiterated our intention during the last election campaign and again most recently in the Speech from the Throne.

Bill C-7 has benefited from the extensive review accorded its previous incarnations, Bill C-68 and Bill C-3. Consultations before the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs were exhaustive. As Minister of Justice, I heard from the provinces and the territories. I have met with and listened to individuals and groups who work in the youth justice system.

Bill C-7 retains the overall direction and all key elements but includes amendments from the consultation process which will reduce complexity, provide greater clarity and improve flexibility for the provinces.

We have examined all of the recommendations in great detail over the past months. We compared certain recommendations relating to the provinces' capacity to administer the youth justice system better.

I will not accept the rhetoric from the benches opposite and elsewhere that this piece of legislation is too tough or that it is not tough enough. Those who seek to reduce the discussion of youth justice to such a simplistic paradigm feed misconception.

Canadians want a system that prevents crime by addressing the circumstances underlying a young person's offending behaviour, that rehabilitates young people who commit offences and safely reintegrates them into the community, and ensures that a young person is subject to meaningful and appropriate consequences for his or her offending behaviour. Canadians across the country know that this is the most effective way to achieve the long term protection of society. Bill C-7 constructs a youth justice system which will do just that.

It is also abundantly clear that Canadians are committed to supporting children and youth. They are firm in their belief that as a society we must do everything we can to help young people avoid crime in the first place and to get their lives back on track if they do run afoul of the law.

I will take this opportunity to outline the approach of the proposed youth criminal justice system and why it will be a marked improvement over the current system. With 16 years of the Young Offenders Act under our belts, experience has demonstrated what measures are most effective and where the system needs to be improved.

Let me now address why we believe new youth justice legislation is necessary. Some of the key weaknesses of the YOA are, first, the YOA does not reflect a coherent youth justice philosophy. Its principles are unclear and conflicting and do not effectively guide decision makers in the youth justice system.

Unlike the YOA, the proposed youth criminal justice act provides guidance on the priority that should be given to key principles. For example, the new legislation makes clear that the nature of the system's response to a youth's offending behaviour should reflect the needs and individual circumstances of the youth. However, the needs or social welfare problems of a young person should not result in longer or more severe penalties than those which are fair and proportionate to the seriousness of the offence committed.

Other principles of the youth criminal justice act emphasize that the objectives of the youth system are to prevent crime, rehabilitate and reintegrate young persons into society, and ensure meaningful consequences for offences committed by young people. Pursuing and achieving these objectives is the best way to protect society.

The youth justice system must reflect the fact that young persons lack the maturity of adults. This includes an emphasis on rehabilitation and reintegration and holding them accountable in a manner consistent with their reduced level of maturity. Interventions with young persons must be fair and proportionate, encourage the repair of harm done, and involve parents and others in the young person's rehabilitation and reintegration.

As we also know, the existing YOA has resulted in the highest youth incarceration rate in the western world, including our neighbours to the south, the United States. Young persons in Canada often receive harsher custodial sentences than adults receive for the same type of offence. Almost 80% of custodial sentences are for non-violent offences. Many non-violent first offenders found guilty of less serious offences such as minor theft are sentenced to custody.

The proposed youth criminal justice act is intended to reduce the unacceptably high level of youth incarceration that has occurred under the Young Offenders Act. The preamble to the new legislation states clearly that the youth justice system should reserve its most serious interventions for the most serious crimes and thereby reduce its over-reliance on incarceration.

In contrast to the YOA, the new legislation provides that custody is to be reserved primarily for violent offenders and serious repeat offenders. The new youth justice legislation recognizes that non-custodial sentences can often provide more meaningful consequences and be more effective in rehabilitating young persons.

We also believe that the Young Offenders Act has resulted in the overuse of the court for minor cases that can be better dealt with outside the court. The effect is often court delay and an inability of the courts to focus on more serious cases.

Experience in Canada and other countries has shown that measures outside the court process can provide effective and timely responses to less serious youth crime. Although the YOA permits the use of alternative measures, over 15 years of experience under the YOA indicates that it does not provide enough legislative direction regarding their use.

The proposed youth criminal justice act is intended to enable the courts to focus on serious youth crimes by increasing the use of effective and timely non-court responses to less serious offences. These extra-judicial measures provide meaningful consequences such as requiring the young person to repair the harm to the victim. They also enable early intervention with young people as well as the opportunity for the broader community to play an important role in developing community based responses to youth crime.

Some of the provisions in the new youth justice legislation that encourage the use of extra-judicial measures in appropriate less serious cases include: a presumption that extra-judicial measures should be used with first time non-violent offenders and specific authority for police and prosecutors to use a range of extra-judicial measures, informal warnings, police cautions, crown cautions and referral to community programs.

In addition, the existing YOA has resulted in disparities and unfairness in youth sentencing. Sentences under the YOA often do not reflect the seriousness of the offence. There is often significant disparity between what similarly situated youth receive for similar offences.

As I mentioned earlier, youth often receive more severe penalties than adults receive for the same type of offence. Some young persons are sentenced on the basis of their needs or social welfare problems and receive longer or more severe penalties than that which would be fair and proportionate to the seriousness of the offence committed.

To reverse the current unfairness the new law provides that the consequences imposed on a young person must not be greater than those which would be appropriate for an adult in similar circumstances. The new sentencing provisions also emphasize that every sentence must focus on rehabilitating and reintegrating the young person into the community. This requires that the needs of the young person be addressed within the timeframe stipulated by the courts.

Also, the existing Young Offenders Act fails to ensure effective reintegration of a young person after being released from custody. A weakness of the existing legislation is that a young person can be released from custody with no required supervision and support to assist that young person in making the transition back to his or her community. The new legislation includes provisions to assist the young person's reintegration into the community.

The new youth justice legislation requires that all periods of custody be followed by a period of supervision and support in the community. At the time of sentencing the judge will state in open court the portion of time that is to be served in custody and the portion to be served in the community. Breaching conditions of the community supervision could result in the young person being returned to custody.

Further, the existing Young Offenders Act process for transfer to the adult system has resulted in unfairness, complexity and unacceptable delay. The current process violates basic fairness by providing that a young person be transferred to an adult court before being found guilty of any offence. It has also resulted in wide differences among provinces in the number of transfers of young persons to the adult system.

For example, in 1998-99 Manitoba led the country in transfers, transferring 29 youths to adult court. Quebec was second, transferring 23 young persons to adult court, while Ontario transferred only six people to adult court in the same year.

The new youth justice legislation contains significant changes that address the unfairness of the current transfer process including the elimination of the transfer process. Instead, the youth court has the authority to impose an adult sentence in certain circumstances. The hearing on the appropriateness of an adult sentence will take place only after the youth has actually been found guilty. The assurance is that should a young person receive an adult sentence, it is to be presumed that if the young person is under 18 he or she will serve the adult sentence in a youth facility.

The existing Young Offenders Act also fails to make a clear distinction between serious violent offences and less serious offences. This is a basic theme that underlies many of the other problems with the YOA such as the high rate of youth incarceration and the overuse of the court for less serious offences. When a youth justice system fails to clearly differentiate between serious violent offences and less serious offences, it is not surprising that public confidence in the system is weakened.

The proposed youth justice legislation consistently makes this important distinction at key points throughout the legislation. It is reflected in the fundamental principles in the preamble and declaration of principles, the front end options, the sentencing principles, the rules on adult sentencing and the provisions regarding release from custody.

Unlike the existing Young Offenders Act, a basic policy direction of the new legislation is that serious violent offences are to be treated seriously and less serious offences are to be dealt with through less intrusive yet still meaningful consequences.

Also, the existing Young Offenders Act fails to recognize the concerns and interests of victims in an adequate way. In contrast to the existing legislation, the proposed youth justice legislation recognizes the concerns and interests of victims and clarifies the role of victims in the youth justice process.

The following are key provisions in the legislation. The principles of the act specifically provide that victims are to be treated with courtesy, compassion, and respect for their dignity and privacy. They also should be given information about the proceedings and an opportunity to participate and be heard if they so choose.

Victims have a right of access to youth court records and may be given access to other records. The victim's role in community based approaches such as conferences is encouraged. If a young person is dealt with by an extra-judicial sanction, the victim of the offence has a right to be informed of how the offence has been dealt with.

In developing new youth justice legislation it is important to recognize the limits of legislation and to have reasonable expectations about what legislation can accomplish. That is why the new youth justice legislation is only one part of the government's much broader approach to youth crime and the renewal of Canada's youth justice system.

Increased federal funding, crime prevention efforts, effective programs, innovative approaches and research are all part of the broader strategy for the fair and effective renewal of Canada's youth justice system. This legislation is the first step in the renewal of that system.

Partnerships with other sectors such as education, child welfare and mental health, improvements to aboriginal communities, and appropriate implementation by provinces and territories will be equally important in achieving the goals of the youth justice legislation. The government is committed to ensuring that Canadians are well served by their youth justice system.

In conclusion I encourage all colleagues on both sides of the House to support Bill C-7 as an integral part of our initiative to ensure that all Canadians, especially young Canadians, have a fair, effective and just youth justice system.

Young Offenders Act

[Chuck Cadman, Canadian Alliance, Surrey North, BC]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-235, an act to amend the Young Offenders Act.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Lethbridge for seconding this bill which would amend the Young Offenders Act to make the offence set out in section 7.2 a hybrid offence.

The bill was originally introduced in the last parliament as Bill C-260. The Minister of Justice recognized the value of the legislation as she incorporated it in its entirety in the failed Bill C-3 in the last parliament.

I am endeavouring again to introduce this amendment to the Young Offenders Act that is in currently in force since we have no new legislation yet approved.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization And Divestiture Act

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Natural Resources and Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-3, an act to amend the Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and Divestiture Act and the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Speech From The Throne

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your election. I am absolutely confident that you will make a fair minded and wonderful Speaker.

I also want to thank the electors of Scarborough East for returning me to this Chamber to offer their views on these important issues.

A throne speech is really only a document that gives direction. It is necessarily less specific than some would wish. However, Canadians should really only see the throne speech as a book with a number of chapters to follow. I will comment on one of those chapters which deals with strong and safe communities.

Until now Canada has enjoyed a relatively buoyant economy. Interest rates are relatively low. People's real incomes are rising. We have reduced the national debt and interest rates are down.

The level of prosperity may or may not continue. Some say that it will not. However, with the prudent assumptions of the government we are hopeful that our buoyant economy will return. We are much better positioned to weather a downturn in the economy if and when it comes. For the time being, we can still dream dreams and address some of the pressing needs of our people.

Yesterday I listened to the Leader of the Opposition in his reply to the Speech from the Throne. He was talking tough on crime. He went on to talk about how criminals seem to have all the rights and that victims do not have any.

I would like to take the opportunity to correct the mistaken impression that the Leader of the Opposition may have unintentionally left, namely that criminals have all the rights. All Canadians enjoy exactly the same rights when faced with a criminal offence.

It is simple minded rhetoric to say that criminals have all the rights and victims have none. All Canadians are presumed innocent. All Canadians have the right not to self-incriminate. All Canadians have the right to present a full defence. All Canadians have the right to have the crown prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Those rights, among many others, are enjoyed by all Canadians charged with any crime and therefore, in my view, it does a disservice to victims to speak of victims' rights and criminal rights in a cheap rhetorical flourish.

It is a pity that the hon. Leader of the Opposition has not reviewed the work of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights from the last parliament. Had he reviewed the work of the committee he would have come across Bill C-79, commonly called the victims' rights bill. The genesis of that bill was in the committee's report called, “Victims: A Voice not a Veto”. The report was unanimously put forward to the House by all members, of which one of his members, particularly the member for Surrey North, made a significant contribution.

The bill arose out of that report and was introduced into the House. It came back before the committee and was quickly returned to the House because it incorporated many of the suggestions contained in the report. I have yet to hear any person who represents victims that advocates that the bill is substantively flawed in any way.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition would also have been interested in the work of the committee on drunk driving. Again an all-party committee produced the bill, which, among other things, substantially increased the penalties for drunk driving. His own members contributed to the drafting of the bill. The Minister of Justice was gracious enough to introduce the bill into the House because she was persuaded of its merits. Included in the bill was a potential life sentence for those convicted of drunk driving a third time; three strikes and they would be gone.

I do not think it can be tougher without getting into issues of disproportionality. On this side of the House we are plenty tough on crime. We are not so foolish, however, as to skewer the entire system of justice and the criminal code just to show how tough we really are. If he still wishes to be tough he should look at the committee report on organized crime. Our report was very detailed on how we as a committee felt that organized crime should be dealt with. I was pleased to see that the Speech from the Throne picked up on that issue. It said:

The Government will focus on safeguarding Canadians from new and emerging forms of crime. It will take aggressive steps to combat organized crime, including the creation of stronger anti-gang laws and measures to protect members of the justice system from intimidation.

I, for one, look forward to the opportunity to review our initial work on organized crime and spend time making suggestions to the government with respect to specific amendments to the criminal code and enhancements to the authority of police officers and people in the justice system.

Justice is more than just getting tough. Any fool can be tough, and we may even have some examples in the House. Justice is far more subtle than just merely being tough. A society that incarcerates aboriginals at rates vastly disproportionate to the rest of the population is a society that must look itself in the mirror.

I remember questioning a judge from the Northwest Territories, a former professor of mine at Queen's University, who was gracious enough to come before the committee on Bill C-3. I asked him about the disproportionate incarceration rates of aboriginal youth. His answer was ultimately quite sad. Tragically many justices incarcerate aboriginal youth because they have no real alternatives. Youth homes are either dysfunctional or do not exist at all.

The thinking is that throwing the kid in jail is actually doing him a favour. I submit that this is the brutal indictment of our own society. The throne speech read:

It is a tragic reality that too many Aboriginal people are finding themselves in conflict with the law. Canada must take the measures needed to significantly reduce the percentage of Aboriginal people entering the criminal justice system.

I agree with the throne speech and the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has set a generation bar of 20 years to reduce the number of aboriginals in conflict with our criminal justice system.

I have said that justice is more than just getting tough. Justice means that there will be a sentence after a conviction, not before as some would like. When that sentence is served the convicted person will return to the street, with the exception of those serving life sentences.

Everyone returns to the street some day. One way or another they will return to us, to society, to their communities and to their families. Getting tough by throwing someone in jail, walking away and throwing away the proverbial key creates a lifetime criminal. Since everyone returns to society some time, we either manage the reintegration and rehabilitation or just walk away and leave the criminal to make out as best he or she can. I prefer a system which stands beside the person on the way to completing his or her sentence.

Getting tough with rehabilitation and reintegration is just plain stupid. It is in society's best interest to try to assist individuals so that recidivism rates will be reduced. If an offender is let back on the streets a bit at a time, it only makes sense that the chances of him or her returning to a lifetime of crime are reduced, rather than simply pitching the criminal over the proverbial walls of the jail and hoping that he or she makes out and saying in effect “You are on your own, buddy”.

I look forward to the Minister of Justice following up on the commitment in the Speech from the Throne to reintroduce the youth justice bill, which will:

—encourage alternatives to custody for non-violent offenders, emphasizing rehabilitation and reintegration into society, while toughening consequences for more violent youth.

In closing, any fool can be tough. Being tough on crime is merely a rhetorical flourish, but it is far more difficult to be just. The record of the 36th parliament showed us getting tough on drunk driving, getting tough by taking DNA samples from certain convicted criminals, getting tough on organized crime, and getting tough on child prostitution and sex tourism. In some respects that is the easy part.

The greater challenge is to be just. I believe we have taken some steps in that direction with the victims rights bill and the youth justice bill. It remains to be seen whether parliament will be serious about aboriginal crime, organized crime and youth justice.

I am hoping that over the course of the next number of years the House will have the opportunity to be serious about being just.