Bill C-3 (Historical)

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

Youth Criminal Justice Act

[Sarmite Bulte, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to have to address my support for Bill C-7, the youth criminal justice act. I have followed the bill with great interest during its passage through the House of Commons, the Senate and now back before us for consideration of one amendment dealing with the overrepresentation of aboriginal youth in custody.

As the House knows, the youth criminal justice act was passed by the House in May 2001. The Senate then approved the bill in December with one small amendment dealing with a very important requirement: to consider non-custodial sentences for aboriginal youth. This is the amendment now before the House.

It is important to remember that Bill C-7 and its predecessors have been before parliament for over three years. It has been the subject of extensive and prolonged scrutiny by the House of Commons and also by the Senate. Many hours of parliamentary time have been spent in reviewing the proposals. Parliament has heard from dozens of witnesses whose views have been taken into account in the amendments that have been approved by both the House and the Senate.

It is important for us to recall that several months were dedicated to parliamentary hearings on Bill C-3 which was the predecessor to Bill C-7. Many hours were spent examining that bill. In fact the House standing committee heard from close to 100 witnesses. It found the substance of many of these interventions very compelling. Some 160 amendments to the bill were actually put forward.

Unfortunately Bill C-3 died on the order paper. It was reintroduced as Bill C-7 in February 2001. I should add that it was done so with the amendments. The overall direction and all key elements were retained, designed to reduce complexity and provide greater clarity and in fact improve flexibility for the provinces.

I must say that as a member of parliament who practised law for 18 years before seeking public office, and as a mother of three children, two boys and a girl age 20, 12 and 17 respectively, I have been impressed throughout the consideration of the bill by parliament, as well as listening to my constituents and the Canadian public as a whole, with just how much support there is across Canada for the government's efforts to provide solutions to respond to this complex area of youth justice.

People are genuinely concerned that our society finds fair and effective ways of dealing with young people who are alleged or are found to have committed offences. There may be some differences of approach in certain areas but I am very encouraged by the fact that the majority of those who appeared before parliament supported the bill's main objectives.

Members of parliament and Canadians from all walks of life have shown support for a youth justice system that is based upon clearly stated principles that emphasize the key features of the type of system we want for our youth who come into conflict with the law. Bill C-7 provides for this.

It acknowledges the fact that young people lack the maturity of adults. It includes an emphasis on rehabilitation and reintegration and holding young people accountable in a manner that is consistent with their reduced level of maturity. It requires that interventions with young persons be fair and proportionate, encourage the repair of harm done, and involve parents and others in a young person's rehabilitation and reintegration. In addition, interventions must respect gender, ethnic, cultural and linguistic differences, and respond especially to the needs of aboriginal young persons and of young persons with special requirements.

The bill is aimed at reducing use of the formal justice system and increasing the amount of diversion for the vast majority of youth crime. In fact experience in other countries shows that measures outside the court process can provide effective and timely responses to less serious youth crime as well as the opportunity for the broader community to play an important role in developing community based responses to youth crime.

As an aside, in my riding, community impact statements are something which my community has always called upon. In a sense, Bill C-7 addresses that with respect to young offenders.

Canadians also support a reduction in the overuse of custody in this country. It was amazing for me to learn that Canada has the highest youth incarceration rate in the western world, including the United States.

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

This bill also contains measures for the rehabilitation and reintegration of those who in fact do go into custody, putting an emphasis on assisting a young person to successfully make the transition back to the community. Young people can be reintegrated if they receive the proper support, assistance and opportunities.

The proposed youth criminal justice act will ensure a fairer and more effective system as well as address our overreliance on incarceration in this country. For those who do go into custody, it will increase their opportunity for reintegration into the community. Those appearing before parliament have reinforced that legislation alone will not change the course of youth justice and will not in itself reduce youth crime. That is why the legislation is part of a broader youth justice renewal initiative which was launched in 1999. The legislation is the centrepiece, the cornerstone of the federal government's youth justice renewal initiative.

There is more to the initiative however. The broader initiative recognizes the legislation will need to be carefully and effectively implemented. Officials and professionals implementing the new legislation will have the training and the tools they need to successfully implement it. In addition, public legal education materials will be available in easily accessible language to reach everyone involved, including youth themselves, parents, victims, schools and others.

This initiative includes significant resources to stimulate new youth justice programs consistent with the federal policy objectives and new partnerships with child welfare, schools, crime prevention workers and others for more enduring solutions to youth crime. The federal government has fostered consultations and funded projects as part of the strategy, inviting collaborative, multidisciplinary approaches to the developmental challenges facing children and our youth. Youth crime is a complex problem that cannot be effectively answered by discipline working in isolation.

The federal government has also made offers of financial support for youth justice programs under its spending power authority and consistent with the social union framework agreement. These offers are for five year financial agreements totalling more than $950 million to the provinces and territories in support of the policy objectives of the youth justice renewal initiative. This amount does not include the significant additional federal resources to support the intensive support and rehabilitative custody and supervision orders intended to provide therapy and support for the most violent and troubled youth.

Moreover, about $27 million of resources, that is, $12.7 million this fiscal year, $7.5 million in the last fiscal year and $7 million the year before that, have been made available to the provinces and territories to assist in preparing for the new legislation through training, encouraging partnerships, improving information systems, addressing implementation contingencies and preparing for reintegration planning and support.

The federal government is also firmly committed to preventing crime. The federal Department of Justice began the government's community crime prevention initiative in 1999, which includes children and youth as priorities for the $32 million available annually for community based crime prevention initiatives.

On July 5 last year, the Government of Canada announced that it will invest a further $145 million in the national strategy on community safety and crime prevention to strengthen its efforts to support community based responses to crime. This is in addition to the national children's agenda which focuses on supporting children's development, particularly for the critical ages of zero to six years.

I ask that all members of the House support Bill C-7, a bill that has been debated and looked at by both houses. We are here now to finally approve the final amendment. Let us start working together to stop youth crime.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to a bill that I consider very important. Since my election I have been sitting on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and have had the opportunity to thoroughly examine what is proposed in Bill C-7.

Today I wonder if I live on another planet. I hear my colleague from the Bloc and my colleague from the New Democratic Party, who do not seem to understand at all the fundamental aspects of this bill.

I congratulate my colleague, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, for his recent speeches on this issue and also the former minister of justice for the work she has done. What she proposed is a modern bill that is in keeping with international conventions signed by Canada throughout the world, particularly concerning the protection of the rights of children.

The bill goes back some years. In 1985 the present Young Offenders Act, which applies to young people who commit crimes in Canada, was passed.

In 1997 there was a proposal that the youth justice system be changed and a bill was introduced, Bill C-68, which was subsequently amended by Bill C-3.

In September 2000, more than 160 amendments were moved with respect to the bill, and after my election, when I became a member of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, I had before me Bill C-7, a modernized piece of legislation that satisfied all the criticisms.

We must not delude ourselves; within our Liberal delegation there are some members who are concerned about the future of Canada's young people. They have proposed amendments, There have been numerous discussions to improve the system proposed for our young offenders.

Today, therefore, I am very pleased and proud to see that this government is proposing a rehabilitation based system for young offenders. Those who claim otherwise have, unfortunately, not read the bill.

I have had the opportunity to meet with the directors of the youth centre in my riding of Laval East, the Centre Jeunesse de Laval, and I can tell hon. members that the Bloc Quebecois opposition is greatly exaggerating when it states that all Quebec stakeholders are opposed to the bill.

As a government, we cannot of course please all the pressure groups. We have to make decisions. Had the bill been based on the proposals of the Quebec bar association, we would be accused of playing along with the lawyers and faulted for that. In this bill, the government chose from among the proposals that came from all sides.

I can only regret the opportunism of some members in the opposition, in the Bloc Quebecois, who have been very skilled at voicing criticisms connected with the existence of a so-called Quebec coalition.

As far as that so-called coalition is concerned, I have had the opportunity to look into just how serious a list this is. I can state in this House—

[Martin Cauchon, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, the debate has begun.

Let us have some fun. They want to talk about the time spent on reviewing the bill, which is not up for debate today.

The process began in 1995. Hearings were held across the country, including in Quebec, by a House committee, which tabled its report in 1997. We had Bill C-68, followed by Bill C-3 and then Bill C-7.

The House of Commons committee heard 93 witnesses, while the Senate committee heard 72 witnesses. The bill was under consideration for a total of 75 hours in the House committee and 40 hours in the Senate committee, and over 160 amendments were put forward.

What we have before us, namely Bill C-7, is good legislation. People now want us to move forward so we can work together as partners to implement this legislation and the measures needed to promote the rehabilitation of young offenders.

[Martin Cauchon, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, what we are dealing with today is called overstatement. It should be pointed out that those members have a tendency, when they speak about Quebec, to claim that they do so in the name of all Quebecers.

I would simply tell them that I have also been elected by Quebecers, like many other members of the Liberal Party caucus. There are people on the government side who come from Quebec, who are proud to be Quebecers and who are doing a very good job of protecting the interests of the whole population of Quebec.

With regard to meetings, one only has to look at the work that was done on Bill C-7, for instance, by the Standing Committee on Justice. Ninety-three witnesses appeared before the committee on Bill C-7 and Bill C-3.

In the Senate, 72 witnesses were heard. I believe the time has come to move on and to find a way to work together to implement a bill that will serve the whole population of Canada.

[Martin Cauchon, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, again I will be precise. The bill does not come back to the House. It is the amendment that comes back to the House.

Regarding the question of the government listening to people and being open minded about the bill, I remind the House that the process started in 1995 with some amendments to the legislation. We then proceeded with Bill C-68 in March 1999 and Bill C-3 in October 1999. Before those bills were introduced we proceeded with a full hearing across Canada by a standing committee of the House which tabled a report in 1997. After that the bill came before the House. We are talking of course about first reading, report stage and third reading. Altogether we have been discussing the bill in the House for almost 19 hours.

When we compared Bill C-7 to Bill C-3 we went through over 160 amendments. If opposition members have been unable to make their point with all this discussion they will never be able to.

[Gurmant Grewal, Canadian Alliance, Surrey Central, BC]

Madam Speaker, the Bloc Quebecois has a different agenda with respect to the criminal justice system pertaining to young offenders. I remember debating Bill C-3 and Bill C-7 in the House. There were a series of problems with those bills. The Bloc had a filibuster in committee at one time, so it has a different agenda.

The bottom line is we will not accept the amendments to Bill C-7 which will enshrine racism within the criminal justice system.

[Gurmant Grewal, Canadian Alliance, Surrey Central, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a great pleasure to rise on behalf of the people of Surrey Central. Today I stand on their behalf to register my opposition regarding the Senate amendment to Bill C-7, an act in respect of criminal justice for young persons and to amend and repeal other acts.

Before I begin let me say that today is an historic day in parliament. One of the very prominent, renowned and hardworking members of parliament has resigned and today is his last day. The member of parliament for Calgary Southwest made a wonderful speech. His contribution to the House is unwavering and unparalleled. He is a visionary thinker, reformer and analyst who is full of determination, perseverance and substance yet is still down to earth. I pay tribute today to the hon. member for Calgary Southwest. He certainly made Canada a better country. All of us have enjoyed working with him. He has had a significant effect on my life, which I would like to acknowledge here before I begin my remarks on the amendment to Bill C-7.

The Senate amendment I speak of seeks to create a race based sentencing system for young offenders, whereby consideration of the circumstances of native offenders would be elevated above those of young offenders from other groups in the population.

This is another example of the failure of the government's aboriginal and justice policies, especially with respect to native young offenders. We know that the criminal justice system in this country, particularly the Young Offenders Act, simply provides criminals with a slap on the wrist. There is no justice for the victims. This system is not a deterrent but rather a motivation to commit crime.

The justice minister took a long time before she acted on this file. There have been consultations time and time again. There have been promises and studies but little action from this government. That is simply not acceptable to Canada and Canadians. The former justice minister promised the House that she would act on this file. She always used the infamous phrase that she would act on the file in a “timely” fashion. It took over six years for this minister to act on the file. Finally today we are surrounded with this controversial amendment to Bill C-7, which will put race into the justice system.

Given the past Liberal mismanagement of aboriginal issues, this is certainly not a step forward for Canada's aboriginal people. A full generation of policies seeking to improve the condition of Canada's native population has failed to achieve any meaningful improvements in the quality of life indicators of native people.

It has been over 30 years since the Prime Minister was the Indian affairs minister. He failed native Canadians then and his government is failing them now. After three decades of failure, I would think that some political parties would reassess their approach toward our aboriginal communities, our first nations people of this country. However, Bill C-7 shows that 30 years of native suffering has not moved the government to act in a meaningful fashion. Instead, it has come back with this weak bill and the amendment from the Senate, which clearly shows that it is stuck in the same mindset that it was back in the 1960s and 1970s.

The world has moved on but the Liberals have failed to keep pace. They are still victims of the mistaken logic that says one can promote equality through policies that force unequal treatment on different groups of people based on their ethnicity, based on their race. All this does is single out ethnic groups, in this case natives, our first nations people, for reprisals from those who resent the special status afforded to these groups. It is an even worse idea to do this on the basis of ethnicity or race because of visible differences that make them easy targets for reprisals by misguided and violent minorities. The Senate amendments to this defective bill unwittingly promote legislative racism by singling out one group of people above others.

I will talk about the background of the bill. It is part of the government's long ignored promise, since 1993, to change the Young Offenders Act. Usually I would say better late than never, but even after a long delay the bill leaves much to be desired. Extensive cross-country hearings on the Young Offenders Act were held in 1996-97 and resulted in a report entitled “Renewing Youth Justice”. Despite the fact that the Liberals had expressed the need for an overhaul of the Young Offenders Act since 1993, the government took until 1999, a full six years, for the justice minister to introduce any legislation on the issue.

Between 1997 and 1999 the then Reform Party pleaded non-stop with the government to introduce legislation for the sake of Canadian youth, who are most often the victims of youth crime. As we know, the Liberal response came at the beginning of the second session of the 36th parliament when the justice minister introduced Bill C-3, but that bill was so gravely defective that over 250 amendments, over half of them proposed by the Liberal members, if we can imagine, because they knew the bill was defective, were proposed during the nearly 12 months the bill was before committee. Many of the amendments sought to correct drafting errors in the bill, which shows that the government rushed to table it in the first place. However, the government had previously indicated that it was not open to changing Bill C-3 in any way, shape or form so it ignored all 250 amendments that were proposed as well as extensive witness testimony, tabling the bill in the House unchanged. That was shameful.

Liberal politics ended up winning out over youth justice and the well-being of Canada's native people. Bill C-3 was allowed to die on the order paper when the election was called prematurely for November 2000.

Now the government has indicated it is willing to impose closure on debate rather than let parliament have its say. First it postponed the bill for political reasons and now it wants to limit debate on the issue. I am wholly opposed to this way of doing business, but this is somewhat typical of the government. It is not new. This is not about partisan terms like hard or soft justice systems. It is about making sure that this bill is an effective tool for justice, making it as fair a tool as possible, fair for the victims and fair and effective for the criminals in order to hold them accountable for the crimes they commit.

This is an important point since the justice minister responsible for this bill is now the Minister of Health. Canadians have already rejected a two-tier health system. Why are they being asked to accept a two-tier or multi-tier justice system? If she tolerates it in justice, what does this mean for health care? I do not like what this holds for the future of health care in Canada.

This approach should not surprise anyone since the government has already been willing to support ethnically based fisheries in this country, an ethnically based tax system, with the result that they do not pay tax, and there is discrimination in GST payments based on race. There is discrimination by this government based on race with regard to mining rights, multiculturalism and the ministry for aboriginals. Many other ministries and departments in the government work based on race. There is therefore more generous access by one group of people over others. That is not acceptable.

If we want equality in this country then we cannot treat people based on their ethnicity, nationality, background, race, language or other things. That is completely unacceptable. Equality means that the justice system, our law and order, in the country should be blindfolded. It should not be based on race or ethnicity or anything like that. As I have already said, this legislation perpetuates the dismal record of this and other governments in their treatment of Canada's aboriginal people.

The policies of this and previous governments in addressing the needs of native people, our first nations people, have failed miserably and utterly to improve the lot of aboriginal people. The government is now attempting to fix this by creating special sentencing provisions for a certain class of criminals, based exclusively on race. This does nothing to address the circumstances that contribute to crime or the basis of discrimination they suffer in the first place.

The solutions offered in the Senate amendments to Bill C-7 are the worst of all possible solutions. The provision for reduced sentencing guidelines not only hurts the justice system as a whole, it diminishes both the suffering of the victims of crime and the recognition they deserve. Why should an aboriginal victim see less punishment for his or her perpetrator than a non-native? Are they less deserving of justice? Of course not. No member in this House will accept that and Canadians certainly do not accept that. The proposed changes would provide race based criteria for judges to apply in sentencing aboriginal offenders. There is already enough discretion available through existing sentencing guidelines without specifying race in the justice system.

Canadian Alliance members vigorously oppose the creation of a special kind of criminal based solely on ethnicity or race. We stand for equality. We will accept nothing less than the equality of all Canadians before the law.

Race has no place in sentencing considerations for youth justice in our national institutions. As I have said, justice should be blind to a person's ethnic background. Justice should be and ought to be colour blind. To create different systems based solely on personal characteristics or background violates the fundamental Canadian belief in equality. In regard to health care, the Canada Health Act states that all Canadians have dignity regardless of income level or ethnicity or their standard of living. In education, a debate rages about the future of our public education system if private schools gain increased access to funding.

However in justice, one of the most basic and important policy areas of all, we are expected to disregard these principles of equality and opt for different systems for native and non-native young offenders. That is shameful. Justice should be doled out based on the severity of the crime and not on the ethnicity of the criminal or the victim. We do not support discrimination in health care. Why should we support it in the justice system or other departments of the government?

The government should bring forward meaningful change that would help enhance native opportunities instead of fostering racism. The weak and arrogant Liberal government must restore justice in the justice system and other government departments.

I hope that I have made it clear why I oppose the Senate amendments to Bill C-7. It is because they give special sentencing consideration to aboriginal young offenders above those given to any other young offenders belonging to any other population group. The use of race-specific wording in criminal law is not only harmful, it is dangerous as well.

The goal is to achieve equality for all people in this country. We cannot justify race-based sanctions under our criminal law. Can we expect tolerance and respect for all when some offenders are singled out for less serious sanctions than offenders of another ethnic group or population base?

The government is legislating tolerance and blocking any movement toward true acceptance of native groups by creating a two-tiered young offenders justice system based on race. If this is not racism, what would hon. members call it?

My amendments are not even needed since Bill C-7 already provides specific guidelines for judges to take account of every young offender's circumstances when handing out sentences.

We are proud of Canada's diversity and multiculturalism. We want to strengthen the multicultural fabric of this country. It is an asset, not a liability. We need an integration of different groups in this country.

We need to promote tolerance, which the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and her department are doing, but acceptance as well. Tolerance means that I may not agree with some people, I may not like some people, but somehow I will tolerate them. When we talk about all Canadians being equal, tolerance is not enough. We must accept them as part of Canada's multicultural fabric.

I am opposed to the amendments because they allow for criminal law to create racial distinctions among different classes of offenders and that is not acceptable. In my humble opinion, and many Canadians agree with me, the government is going in the wrong direction. We are sending the wrong message to Canadians. I ask the government not to make these amendments to Bill C-7 based on race.

[Gerald Keddy, Progressive Conservative, South Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my NDP colleague for accommodating a hectic schedule.

I would like to comment on Bill C-7 and specifically, as the Bloc members have drawn attention to, the amendments that were made in the Senate. I will preface those comments with a comment to the member for Langley--Abbotsford.

I am always surprised when I hear members say categorically that they will not accept anything that comes from the Senate. I make no bones about the fact that I have always believed we should have an elected Senate, one which is elected by the people of Canada. There could be regional representation. The country could be broken into five regions. Everyone could be represented equally and we could have a Senate that was effective and equal.

I have certainly heard the member for Langley--Abbotsford spout the same thing, that he believes in an elected Senate as well. However, one cannot believe in an elected Senate and in empowering it and at the same time say the Senate should have no power. It does not work. It does not fit. It is not logical.

Regardless of whether members sit on the government side or on the opposition side, under our Constitution and the system that we have, we are in no position to say that our amendments to legislation are more important or better than amendments made by the Senate. We have to accept them. If we do not like that, then change the basic flaw in the way parliaments are set up.

Bill C-7, the youth criminal justice act, has returned from the Senate with amendments. The bill would repeal the former Young Offenders Act at great cost to the Canadian taxpayer. It would have real and philosophical ramifications as well as financial consequences, not to mention the effect it would have on the next generation of young Canadians across this vast nation.

As legislators, we must first realize that no bill can satisfy all. I think most people would agree.

My colleague, the member for Pictou--Antigonish--Guysborough, who is the PC/DR coalition justice critic, will attest to the many faults of the Young Offenders Act. However, abandoning the whole system is akin to throwing the baby out with the bath water. While there may be a number of improvements in the bill, the serious problems that will face police, lawyers, judges and those who will deal with this new legislation daily far outweigh any positives.

As seriously flawed as the bill is, the amendments proposed by the Senate manage to shed light on a serious problem found not only in the bill but also within the Canadian justice system. Noting differences for difference's sake is unacceptable to most Canadians. However, when these inherent differences lead to inequality for whatever reason, the knowledge that they exist can lead to a better understanding of the problem. With this knowledge, we can focus change where change is needed most.

If one positive can come from this debate, it may be that the amendments proposed by the Senate demonstrate at least in some cases the societal differences between aboriginal and non-aboriginal youth. Justice should be absolutely blind to race, ethnicity and gender. In a perfect world perhaps that would be true. In this case, with the evidence that has been collected and compounded and put before us, I do not think we can ignore the obvious.

Specifically, while this amendment is a good first step at recognizing the inequalities in the system, it does not go far enough in terms of explanation or direction.

Upon examining original Bill C-7, it became evident that clarity was not essential in the minds of the government. Many seasoned professionals have examined this piece of legislation and today they are no further ahead than when they started. It is convoluted and complicated. More important to many of us, it will also be costly.

The bill in essence has been seven years in the making, from Bill C-68 to Bill C-3 to Bill C-7. Expert after expert has said it is unmanageable, too long, too complicated and too expensive. It is interesting to see the legislation come back to the House with these minor, albeit significant, changes.

It has been said before that the justice committee could have heard the complaints of numerous individuals from every region of the country concerning the bill. Before the committee could even begin to consider the witness list from members of the committee, the parliamentary secretary cut off all further debate and moved to clause by clause consideration.

Surely this is not the so-called Liberal democracy that most Canadians voted for. Surely Canadians did not vote for a government to simply put an issue aside and go directly to clause by clause without hearing all the witnesses and without finishing debate. Surely there is something wrong.

In my mind, the fact that these changes were necessary at all speaks to the fundamental problems in this legislation. In its haste to cater to Liberal pollsters, the government overlooked section 718.2( e ) of the criminal code when addressing sentencing issues, leaving this legislation open to constitutional challenge. It is hard to imagine a bill so poorly crafted. While amendments from the upper chamber should alleviate a constitutional challenge on the grounds of discrimination in this regard, the bill will most certainly be challenged on other grounds. The amendment states:

All available sanctions other than custody that are reasonable in the circumstances should be considered for all young persons, with particular attention to the circumstances of aboriginal young persons.

I think that excludes race and ethnicity without ignoring it. That is an important part of the amendment.

Some have argued that this in and of itself is discriminatory. Yet through the application of section 718.2( e ), using the framework of analysis as set out by the court in Regina v Gladue, we can improve the situation of aboriginals in the legal system. Surely that is something we all wish to do.

As Senator Pierre Claude Nolin pointed out, the framework of the analysis outlined must include systematic and background factors which explain why aboriginal offenders often appear before the courts: poverty, level of education, drug or alcohol abuse, moving off a reserve, unemployment, domestic violence and direct or indirect discrimination. Surely this does not preclude that same type of analysis being given to all young people who will be charged under the act.

The framework of analysis set out by the court includes the types of sentencing procedures and sanctions which may be appropriate in the circumstances for the offender because of his or her particular aboriginal heritage or connection. I find it surprising that this framework of analysis is not applied to all as it could be applied to all.

Setting that aside, the inclusion of this section of the code was necessary and is necessary to deal with the over-representation of aboriginal people in prison and to encourage sentencing judges to have recourse to a restorative approach to sentencing.

I reiterate, the importance of this amendment is paramount to the fundamentals laid out within this document.

I concur with hon. Senator Andreychuk who rose in support of this amendment put forth by the Liberal side of the Senate. Quoting her, “Too often in this place we do have to be prodded to raise issues concerning aboriginal youth”.

The issue has been raised. Aboriginal leaders, the administrators of our judicial system and experts alike have agreed that our adversarial model of justice oftentimes does not fit the needs not only of first nations, but of other groups within our society as well.

I would also argue it is past due that we at least tried to grapple with this issue. I am not saying this issue is over or this somehow will alleviate all of the injustices in the world, but certainly it is a start.

After first reading it is evident those considerations of rehabilitation or reintegration into society are secondary in overall terms of the provisions as laid out in this bill. They are secondary in terms of thought and in terms of financial compensation to the provinces.

There are a number of extrajudicial measures sketched into the bill, but practicality seems absent. For example, the bill says it wishes to encourage families of young persons, including extended families and the community, to become involved in the design and implementation of these measures. This looks good on paper, but are these measures practical?

How do we as legislators or for that matter, the people on the front line such as police officers, social workers, parole officers and teachers convince the community to become involved? I would think that would be an arduous job. It would be very difficult to convince people to become involved without having some type of compensation package provided by the federal government.

We could ask the front line police officers if things are getting easier or if youth crime is down. They would answer quite truthfully that so-called minor youth crimes are not being reported due to overworked police forces which are stretched too thin to deal with such crime. They have more important matters to deal with or in the vernacular, they have bigger fish to fry. If they are stretched too thin now, things for our provincial counterparts will become even more difficult.

Saskatchewan's minister of justice, Chris Axworthy, pointed out that his province will need time and resources. The minister told the Senate that at least a year would be necessary in terms of the implementation of such an act. He said:

We need to develop extensive training plans across various sectors, including police, legal workers, court staff, community based organizations delivering youth services, aboriginal court workers, educators and health providers.

He noted that in all cases new training would be necessary. The justice partners will need to unlearn the processes they have become familiar with under the old Young Offenders Act. They will need to replace this old knowledge with new knowledge of a more complex nature.

In his estimation, Saskatchewan alone will spend around $10 million just to upgrade its information services; I repeat, just to upgrade their information services. We could easily multiply that by 10. Probably in some provinces we could multiply that by a great deal more. If it costs $10 million to implement this in Saskatchewan, in provinces with larger populations it may cost twice as much.

In terms of prevention, various social programs funded by the provincial governments are used to keep young offenders out of the courts. These provincially administered programs are supposed to receive 50% of their funding from the federal government, yet under the Liberal government the provinces have seen the federal share drop to as little as 30%.

Decreased funding equals children not receiving the service they need and oftentimes rehabilitation does not occur. The provinces barely have enough money now to deal with the justice issues. This bill is certain to bankrupt the system.

I urge the new Minister of Justice to reconsider at the very least the immediate implementation of this act. Certainly the government would be much better off to send this flawed piece of legislation back to committee, allow witnesses to appear and work on this important piece of legislation in a co-operative and concentrated way.

A delay for at least one year and the justification for such a delay are compelling. As the Speaker is aware a number of witnesses who appeared before the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs called on the government to provide an adequate amount of time for the various stakeholders to reach a consensus on the administration of this most complex and extensive new legislation.

Among those testimonies certainly it should be noted was the testimony of the Canadian Police Association which outlined precisely the obstacles not only the police but other agencies that work within this system will face in terms of new responsibilities.

It should be noted that the Progressive Conservative Party submitted numerous amendments to the youth criminal justice act in its various forms over the years and the government did not listen. As a result we are left with the piecemeal mishmash of legislation that nobody is certain of how it will affect young offenders.

Perhaps we will not be able to change this piece of legislation in the House. Perhaps the amendment from the Senate will achieve its desired goal. We should just give that a moment to sink in.

We are dealing today with what at the very least is a seriously flawed, bureaucratic and impractical mess. At the very best it may cause irreparable harm to the justice system, albeit the amendment from the Senate may have improve it slightly.

However as legislators and representatives of people from coast to coast to coast in Canada we should take a very serious look at this piece of legislation. I think we will have a great deal of difficulty sending it back in any form, let alone its amended form.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague from Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys.

Last fall the House of Commons passed Bill C-7, the youth criminal justice act, at third reading stage. The bill has now been returned from the other place with an amendment which must now be considered by the House. The amendment came from the Liberals in the other place and the government is supporting it. I will oppose this amendment for reasons I will go into in a moment.

If memory serves me right, a similar amendment was proposed by the government at the justice committee during deliberations on Bill C-3, which of course died on the order paper at the last election call. Interestingly though, it was not in the bill when it was reintroduced as Bill C-7 but now it shows up from the other place.

This amendment would in part change the purpose and the principles of sentencing, requiring that “all available sanctions other than custody that are reasonable in the circumstances should be considered for all young persons”. I take little issue with this. Of course we should consider all reasonable options before resorting to incarceration for many offences, especially minor first offences.

The second part of the amendment requires youth court judges to pay particular attention to the circumstances of aboriginal youth at the time of sentencing, similar to section 718.2(e) of the criminal code, which we opposed in the 35th parliament for similar reasons.

Personally, I do not believe that race has any place in criminal law sentencing provisions, be it adult or young offender. A sentencing judge is already required to consider “any other aggravating and mitigating circumstances related to the young person”. These would normally include factors such as family and social circumstances, background and special needs, among other things.

Further to that, the bill's declaration of principles says in part:

--measures taken against young persons who commit offences should...be meaningful for the individual young person given his or her needs and level of development and, where appropriate, involve the parents, the extended family, the community and social or other agencies in the young person's rehabilitation and reintegration, and...respect gender, ethnic, cultural and linguistic differences and respond to the needs of aboriginal young persons and of young persons with special requirements--

These requirements are already sufficient for a sentencing judge to give consideration to any young person. The operative word here is any. There is no reason whatsoever to bring a person's race into play. I believe that the injection of race specific wording in the criminal law is dangerous. Criminal law should be blind to race.

I think we have all heard comments about the aboriginal community being over-represented in our jails. I acknowledge that, but I do not for a moment believe they were incarcerated for being aboriginal. They are there because they have been convicted of committing a criminal offence. If, as it is sometimes argued, it is shown that bias against aboriginal offenders exists in the courts or in the system in general, then that is wrong and by all means it must be rectified.

Also I do suspect that in many cases incarceration is the only option available to the court due to the lack of resources and support mechanisms in the community. I think we all agree that those issues must be addressed and remedied. Equally as, if not more important, the substandard social and living conditions experienced by many aboriginals both on and off reserve must be rectified. That being said, I do not believe that the criminal law is the appropriate place to address those issues.

I have heard the point made that children coming to Canada from parts of the world where war, civil strife and violence are commonplace may be more predisposed to antisocial or criminal behaviour as teenagers or adults than are children born and raised in Canada. However at no time have I ever heard anyone suggest that those people representative of parts of Southeast Asia, the Balkans, or parts of Africa, to mention but a few, be singled out by race in the criminal code for special consideration. The courts consider their mitigating factors in the same way as any other offender, as I described earlier.

If our goal is to achieve the equality of all people, how can we justify race specific sanctions under the criminal law? Can we reasonably expect tolerance and respect when some offenders based solely on their racial origin are singled out for less punitive sanctions than offenders of all other racial origins, all other things, including circumstances of the offence being equal?

Imagine for one moment the well deserved hue and cry if we were to legislate the opposite, that individuals of one race be singled out for more punitive sanctions than all others.

I would like to quote Gail Sparrow, a former chief of the Musqueam Band in British Columbia. She was commenting on a case in which two Musqueam youths, one of whom was already on probation, were given conditional sentences for their involvement in a severe beating in Vancouver that put 17 year old Joel Libin into a coma and left him brain damaged.

Former Chief Sparrow said:

The message for younger kids now is, “Hey, they got off, and I can get off too, because there's a special law for us”. You're going to put the community at risk.

She went on to say that the sentences have left the Musqueam community angry:

The undercurrent here is that people are afraid to speak up because of the repercussions. They're asking, “Why do we have a separate set of laws for us? Now my son will go and beat somebody up and think it's no big thing because it's home arrest”. A lot of people didn't support that action. They're very upset.

Before some of my colleagues begin falling all over themselves to label me as a racist, anti-Indian and anything else that they can think of for opposing this amendment, I would remind them that the words I have just quoted were spoken by a former chief.

I oppose this amendment because it allows the criminal law to treat one specific group of people differently from all others based solely on their racial origin and nothing else. That is wrong.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am always pleased to rise in the Chamber on behalf of the constituents of Pictou--Antigonish--Guysborough, my colleagues in the Conservative coalition and to simply be able to address the House, particularly on such an important bill as this.

The debate today centres around an amendment to the new youth criminal justice act that will replace the Young Offenders Act. Arguably one of the most important tasks that we could undertake in this place is to put in place a more effective and more accountable system of criminal justice for youth.

The act in its entirety will replace the Young Offenders Act at great cost to the country in terms of delay, in terms of implementation and certainly in terms of cost to young people. The country will quickly come to understand that the bill is virtually unenforceable in its complexity and in its costs associated with setting up these new programs.

Throughout the deliberations at committee, where we heard from numerous witnesses from all aspects of the youth criminal justice system, one of the statements that was most telling, and which has stayed with me to this very day, came from a very senior judge who had spent a great portion of his life on the bench dealing with the enforcement of the Young Offenders Act. He told members of the committee that he had read the bill no less than five times and was not able to comprehend fully what the bill was seeking to achieve.

I can only equate that level of complexity with the Income Tax Act in terms of new provisions, convoluted references and cross sections.

I have many friends in the practice of law, many of them practising criminal law specifically and spending a great deal of time in youth court which preoccupies, unfortunately, a great deal of the time that is set aside for hearings. They have indicated to me that, as lawyers, they are happy about the new legislation because of the new appeals and the new work that will result for the legal community. I say that in seriousness, with no degree of sarcasm. The bill would be a make work program for lawyers.

I want to take a moment to congratulate the new Minister of Justice. I am quick to note that he has inherited the bill as did his predecessor. The new minister, sadly, seems to have adopted the approach that we will fast track the bill, get it through parliament as quickly as possible and then wash our hands of it.

That is very unfortunate because although the amendment, which I will speak to in more detail in a moment, is very much an attempt to improve upon what I would call a bad bill, it does not address the overwhelming need to look at the convoluted, costly, cumbersome nature of the legislation that is being thrust upon the provinces.

My grandfather had an expression that aptly sums up what is happening with the amendment. It is an attempt to improve a bad situation. He used to say that we can sometimes come across a good stick of hardwood in a manure pile. This is an amendment that will improve upon a bill but the bill itself is so flawed in its entirety that it is difficult to even recognize the merit of what will occur.

As legislators we have to be very adamant about recognizing that no bill will satisfy everyone. As a former crown attorney who worked with the current Young Offenders Act and has some working knowledge of the previous Juvenile Delinquents Act, I never thought I would come to the conclusion that the old Young Offenders Act would be better than anything that we could come up with in a serious, studied and informed way.

Upon arriving in Ottawa after being elected in 1997, I was convinced that through the work of the justice committee, through the input of the entire forces of the Department of Justice and all of the minions and lawyers who work in that department, surely we could come up with something better than the Young Offenders Act.

Well, much to my dismay, we have produced, after eight years of study under this Liberal administration, a bill that is terribly wrong and cumbersome.

The bill was intended to simplify and streamline a system so that young people, in particular, their parents and those who are tasked with the enforcement of youth criminal justice would be able to work in a more suitable and responsive fashion, in a way that would be quick to adapt to the changing times and the way in which young people find themselves facing tough decisions which lead to their involvement in the criminal justice system.

I would be quick to embrace the philosophy of the bill. The intent clearly is to somehow codify a system that would allow for early intervention which would allow for the proverbial pre-emptive strike in dealing with young people when they make those decisions that challenge the law. Yet, sadly, what we have done is put layers on top of layers and have created a system that will result in numerous delays and new court challenges.

This new approach that was supposed to achieve so much will have the polar opposite effect. It will result in these delays which follow that old legal maxim that justice delayed is justice denied. This system will not allow young people, and their parents in particular, to grasp what is happening.

Many who work in the system would certainly agree that accountability and responsibility are paramount to any youth justice system. What this does is separate that nexus of accountability.

When a person finds himself or herself charged with a criminal offence, he or she meets first with a lawyer, if possible. My friend from Palliser has identified a very important problem: the lack of resources for legal aid, for crown attorneys to deal with the volume of cases, for police, for social workers and even for judges. The system has ballooned. It has expanded.

This new, complex, convoluted system adds to that voluminous bureaucracy that is building like mould around our justice system and expanding like a snowball going downhill. We need to strip away, like old shingles, some of the buildup that has occurred over the years in the justice system and allow people to understand in a more fundamental way how the system works. Further to that, people need to have access to the system. They do not need to be given more sterile delays in the system.

Because of the lack of lawyers and the systemic delay that results from these new procedures, months, if not years, can go by from the time the charge is made to the time of conviction or acquittal. The system to transfer youth to adult court is more complex than it is to conduct a trial and secure a conviction or an acquittal, as the case may be. We seem to be in reverse when we look at the cause and effect of Bill C-7.

While there may be a number of improvements, when we spoke to police, as I mentioned, lawyers, judges and legislators from the provincial side, the negatives far outweigh the positives. I want to talk for a moment about the new responsibilities that will fall on police, on the law enforcement community.

What police are currently doing in exercising discretion under our current system is making judgment calls in the field. Very often, rather than charge a young person, they may decide to reprimand on the spot, to take them home, to enter into discussions with parents and to essentially do what police are supposed to do: exercise that proper discretion.

What we are doing here is trying to somehow codify this system of discretion, telling police that they can now issue warnings, that they can now issue cautions and that these have to be written up in a certain way. We are superimposing these responsibilities in an artificial way, telling police that they must be counsellors and caseworkers, and that they must document all of this, do the paperwork and spend less time out on the street and more time being administrators and paper shufflers.

This imposition, on top of the current responsibilities of law enforcement and the demands upon the men and women who are currently carrying out that important task, is, I suggest again, a great deal of delay and a great deal of unnecessary, unsubstantiated work that is currently outside the realm of police in terms of where they should be concentrating their efforts.

The police are extremely worried about having the ability now to use this information for a very important judicial exercise which is called a bail hearing. I pointed out to the minister, as well as to members of the justice committee, that under this new system of cautions and sanctions that the police can use, they will no longer be able to use the information they have gathered for the purpose of a bail hearing.

The purpose of a bail hearing, as the Speaker would know and other members are aware, is the ability that the system has to take young people out of society and incarcerate them if there is a judicial finding that they are about to commit a criminal offence or they are a risk of fleeing the jurisdiction. However it is very much integral to the system to be able to intervene quickly.

Under this new system, which is just perverse to me, they are told to gather information and then advised that they cannot use it in a bail hearing. It is absolutely unjustifiable that we would allow that system to remain.

There are a number of serious flaws in the bill but the amendment that has been proposed by the Senate does manage to shed light on a very serious problem that can be found not only in the youth system but the Canadian justice system at large.

Noting differences for differences' sake is unacceptable. What we see here is a recognition of the inherent differences that do exist, sadly, on native reserves in this country. My colleague from the NDP has alluded to the social and economic differences and that the consequences those have on young people are very acute. I have two reserves within my federal constituency at Pictou, Afton and Antigonish county. I think that around this country this is very much to our shame, and one of the inequities throughout our entire country with which we are still wrestling. It stands to reason that we are trying to in some way to recognize a problem. This is not tantamount to the solution, it is simply a reminder to those in the judiciary that this has to be taken note of.

If there is one positive that can come from this debate it may be that the amendment proposed by the Senate demonstrates that the societal differences between aboriginal and non-aboriginal youth are recognized. Justice should be blind to race, ethnicity and gender. In a perfect world we would not need the leviathan, but this is not a perfect world and those societal inequities remain and are evident today.

Clause 38 of the youth criminal justice act deems to lay out the purpose and principles of sentencing under clause 42. It states:

The purpose of sentencing...is to contribute to the protection of society by holding a young person accountable for an offence through the imposition of just sanctions that have meaningful consequences for the young person and promote his or her rehabilitation and reintegration into society....

Yet in the bill sent to the Senate, a fundamental truth about our system was not addressed. It is currently the case in the adult system. Therefore to be consistent--and my friend from the Alliance party might say we are being consistently inconsistent, but I would submit that we have to be consistent between the youth and the adult system--we have to have similar protection under this new youth criminal act.

Statistics and studies have consistently shown that there are a disproportionate number of aboriginal youth incarcerated in our system. In keeping with the purpose and principle, the bill might ask what constitutes just sanctions. Specifically, while the amendment is a good first attempt at recognizing the inequities in the system, I submit that it does not go through sufficient explanation and direction.

As we examine the original Bill C-7, it becomes evident that clarity was not essential in the minds of the government when the bill was passed on to the Senate. Seasoned professionals have examined the legislation and today they are no further ahead than when they started. Several friends and colleagues have spent approximately three years examining the bill and are still at a loss on the overall effect it will have on our justice system.

The bill has, in essence, been more than that. It has been almost eight years in the making and it has gone through several incarnations, Bill C-68, which alludes to a whole other type of bill that we are aware of, Bill C-3 and now Bill C-7.

It is interesting to note that there were 160 amendments, demonstrating the flawed nature of the bill. It is too long, too complicated and too expensive. It is interesting to see it come back with rather minor yet albeit significant changes.

The justice committee could have heard more input on this particular issue, if there was any doubt left in the minds of some members of the House. However, the committee was not given that opportunity. It was brought directly back to parliament, again demonstrating the government's angst and anxiety over the bill and its attempt to get it through quickly.

In my mind, these changes were necessary and yet it speaks to the fundamental problems of a piece of legislation when in our haste to cater to pollsters the government overlooks such an important section as 718.2(e). There are many people in the country, including Joe Wamback from Ontario, who have expressed their desire to revisit the bill. Provincial attorneys general, those who work in the criminal justice system every day, have requested that the government at least revisit the implementation of the bill and give the provinces an opportunity to brace themselves financially, if nothing else, for the costs associated with its implementation. Yet this new minister appears to be charging ahead.

While the amendments of the upper Chamber should alleviate a constitutional challenge on the grounds of discrimination, the bill will most certainly be challenged on other grounds leading to incredible delays and backlogs in a system that is already on the verge of collapse.

The amendment states that all available sanctions other than custody that are reasonable in the circumstances should be considerable for all young persons with particular attention to the circumstances of aboriginal young persons. What could be more straightforward than that? Deliberate, informed debate on such a subject should and could continue. Broadening the spectrum for judges to enable to take this issue into account is a good in and of itself.

In response to comments made by the Canadian Alliance critic, I would reiterate that we take victims as we find them. I do not believe that there is a race or ethnicity issue associated with the particular clause. It is consistent with current criminal code provisions. It is not about specializing the interests of the accused or the victim. It is simply putting into legislation a recognition that the situation which aboriginal people find themselves in today is worthy of note in coming to a conclusion as to what the appropriate sentence is that is meted out by the sentencing judge.

Some have argued that this is in and of itself discriminatory to have a clause like this in the criminal code at all. Yet in our justice system we have to recognize that the courts have made an important pronouncement and it was alluded to. Queen v Gladue set out quite clearly that we can improve upon the situation of aboriginals in our legal system by this recognition of their circumstances. It is one of simple consultation and it allows judges to recognize what is inherent in the country today.

As Senator Pierre Claude Nolin of the other place pointed out, the framework of analysis outlined in section 718.2(e) must include systemic and background factors which explain why aboriginal offenders often appear before the courts. They include: poverty, level of education, drug or alcohol abuse, leaving the reserve and facing systemic prejudice, unemployment, domestic violence and direct or indirect discrimination.

The framework of analysis set out by the courts includes the type of sentencing procedures and sanctions which may be appropriate in the circumstances for the offender because of his or her particular aboriginal heritage or connection.

The inclusion of this clause in the code was necessary to deal with the overrepresentation of aboriginal people in prison and to encourage sentencing judges to have recourse to a restorative justice approach which is consistent with the theme and the philosophy of the bill.

I reiterate that the importance of the amendment is paramount to the fundamentals laid out within the entire document and I concur with hon. Senator Andreychuk who rose in support of the amendment put forth by a Liberal senator on the other side. She said:

Too often in this place do we have to be prodded to raise issues concerning Aboriginal youth

I and the PC/DR coalition support wholeheartedly the amendment, however we take great issue with the problems found in the entire bill. We oppose the implementation and adaptation of the new youth criminal justice bill and will continue to do so for reasons that have been enunciated at length by others and myself.

[Dick Proctor, NDP, Palliser, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by sincerely congratulating the critic for the Bloc Quebecois for the fight that he has made on the bill. Formerly it was Bill C-68 and then I believe it was Bill C-3 and Bill C-7.

As members know, I do not serve on the justice committee, but from a distance I know some of the work the member has put into the legislation to try to point out to the justice committee and to other members the shortcomings of the bill before us. At the same time he has tried to point out what seems to have worked well in Quebec and the puzzlement as to why the Young Offenders Act, which was passed some time ago, has not worked as well in the rest of Canada.

We have to acknowledge what has happened. It is unfortunate that even at this eleventh hour we are not making terribly significant changes and have only one amendment before us.

The amendment simply suggests that when all other available sanctions than custody are being considered for young offenders, “particular attention should be paid to the circumstances of aboriginal young people”.

Generally the amendment fits well with the position that we have taken on the legislation in all its incarnations.

When the legislation was first in this current parliament, as well as previous ones, the NDP caucus took the position that one thing the youth criminal justice system regime should be was more responsive to the situation that young offenders actually found themselves in. We hope that the amendment before us today will provide for greater latitude in sentencing aboriginal young offenders by allowing them to receive alternative sentences that may have more to do with restorative justice and other aboriginal principles involving their communities.

We have contacted the Assembly of First Nations and it is generally supportive of the amendment. However, it feels that little is likely to come of an amendment with wording that consists of a should rather than a more forceful direction. I would draw that wording to the attention of the justice critic for the Alliance who spoke about his concerns with that legislation. Obviously the Assembly of First Nations would feel that a shall would be more appropriate and that a should gives an undue degree of discretion.

The Assembly of First Nations also has concerns with the legislation in general in terms of its flexibility and discretion around sentencing. The assembly finds that when sentences are discretionary for aboriginal youth that those aboriginal youth tend to be more harshly penalized for their actions than non-aboriginal youth.

The AFN position fits in well with what we have said about the legislation in the past, that the problems of youth justice have much more to do with economic and social deficiencies than inequalities. We feel that one problem with the legislation is it makes the regime more complex and institutionalizes this flexibility and discretion. We feel these issues would be better resolved with more community policing and a closer relationship between young offenders and police officers, as well as other justice providers in their communities.

Various provincial governments, including NDP governments in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, have been concerned that while this legislation is more complex and changes the system for young offenders, there are not enough resources being provided to the provinces that would have to implement the legislation to make these changes truly effective. To that extent I concur and listen closely to the justice critic for the Canadian Alliance Party who obviously has firsthand knowledge in this area as a former minister of justice in the province of Manitoba.

The NDP does support the amendment without reservation. However we believe it is too flawed to support without addressing the concerns I mentioned about community policing, the new complexities of the legislation, and especially the fact that under the legislation young offenders would have to prove they should not be sent to adult court rather than the crown having to prove they should. It is a reverse onus with which we do not agree.

I do not intend to speak to the bill very long. As I said, I am not the justice critic for our caucus. However before I take my seat I want to report to the House that during our break over Christmas and the new year I held some meetings in small towns in my riding of Palliser. I was frankly surprised by the number of people who came out to talk about their concerns about justice and young offenders. These are towns in rural parts of Saskatchewan that tend to be populated by older Canadians.

As I indicated, these people are apprehensive about what is happening in their communities. They tend to believe, rightly or wrongly, that the people perpetrating the burglaries, crimes, car thefts, et cetera are not from their own small communities but from larger centres. They believe most kids either in their communities or elsewhere are law-abiding but that there are a few who are not. They say the police seem unable to apprehend them and when they do the justice system seems to break down.

By the same token there are encouraging signs that we are intervening earlier. Earlier this month I had the opportunity to visit an inner-city school in Regina, the Kitchener Community School, where there is a new head start program and early intervention. These are some of the things that will help in the years to come.

Based on the meetings I held while touring my constituency I have no doubt the Canadian public will be watching the changes brought forward in the youth justice bill very closely and with great interest.

Young Offenders

[Martin Cauchon, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, it is important to understand that Bill C-7 is a reincarnation of other bills. Let us take the previous version, Bill C-3.

Indeed, many people provided input on Bill C-3, with the result that more than 160 amendments were made to it. A great number of the requests made by all the different stakeholders have been met by Bill C-7, which is, once again, a flexible piece of legislation.

Bill C-7 no longer allows for referrals to adult court, this is a fact. It is also a fact that it will divert—

Young Offenders Act

[Kevin Sorenson, Canadian Alliance, Crowfoot, AB]

Madam Speaker, there is an old saying: “If it ain't broke, don't fix it”. The implication is that if it is broken it needs to be fixed.

I grew up on a farm and have an old pickup. That pickup truck is so old and there are so many things wrong with it that if I tried to fix it I would not know where to begin. It does not run well. It blows oil out the back. The mirrors are broken and the windshield is shot. If I wanted to build the thing into a new truck I would not start by replacing the mirrors. I would not know where to begin.

We have seen over the past period of time that the Young Offenders Act is broken and needs repair. The government has said it is broken. There were things in the Juvenile Delinquents Act that were unacceptable. There were contentious parts of the act that the government and all sides of the House said needed to be repaired.

Bills and proposals have been brought forward such as Bill C-3 and Bill C-7 which the government has tried to tinker with. As we heard from the Liberal member across the way a new bill has been brought forward, but we are looking at it and asking if it will solve the young offender problem we have in the nation.

One of the things we will grow accustomed to in the House through the years is people standing in the Chamber and saying we need to fix the Young Offenders Act. I believe if we were to ask members opposite they would say yes, there are areas of the act that are not what we would like them to be and they should be fixed, changed and repaired. However the act we have in place does not do that.

The Canadian public would say we need to fix the act. They would say we see many repeat offenders and many teachers who go to school not knowing their students are young offenders. Some are violent offenders yet their teachers are not aware a threat exists.

The recidivism rate for young offenders clearly shows that the Young Offenders Act is broken and its provisions are ineffective. They are ineffective in many areas, particularly with respect to violent offences such as sexual assault. The current maximum sentence of only three years does not provide adequate time for rehabilitation to occur. These are, without a shadow of a doubt, young people whom we want to see rehabilitated. We want to see them reintegrated into society as young men or women who can contribute.

It takes years in some cases for an offender to develop a behaviour and it sometimes takes years to reverse it. The maximum sentence of seven years proposed by my private member's bill would provide judges with greater sentencing options for the most severe cases. Currently judges' hands are tied when they feel that a longer disposition is necessary for the benefit of the offender and the protection of society.

The late mayor of Cornwall, Ron Martelle, said:

Sentencing is the key ingredient in stopping victimization. Sentences must reflect public repudiation of criminal acts by swift, substantial punishment.

I do not recommend longer sentences if we do not first ensure that all prison facilities have mandatory rehabilitative programs.

Those who oppose longer sentences point to the high recidivism rate of young offenders who have been incarcerated. They wrongly conclude that increasing sentences would be ineffective. Others say prison facilities do not provide effective rehabilitation and that this contributes to higher rates of reoffending.

They say this is partly due to limited money and resources. Time does not afford me to go on with the list. However, I implore all members of the House and the general public to read my private member's bill and understand that it is a bill of principles. It outlines requests made to me by the people of Crowfoot and the former member for Crowfoot who, as has been noted here, worked diligently in justice issues, especially with respect to young offenders.

The bill would help restore integrity and sanity to our justice system by making the protection of society its guiding principle.

There are many opportunities through social programs to get to the root causes of youth crime. We need to do that. We need to implore our provincial governments to make sure social programs dealing with education, poverty and a vast number of issues are met.

As legislators in the House, it behooves us to bring down laws that first, would protect our society and communities and then would allow young offenders to be reintegrated into society so they may be contributors.

[Kevin Sorenson, Canadian Alliance, Crowfoot, AB]

moved that Bill C-289, an act to amend the Young Offenders Act (public safety), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, I rise tonight to speak to my private member's bill, C-289, which attempts to amend the Young Offenders Act and to achieve a number of objectives.

Before I proceed, I would like to point out to the House that I initiated the drafting of the bill before the justice minister introduced Bill C-3, a carbon copy of Bill C-7 that died on the order paper at the dissolution of parliament with the call of the 2000 federal election. Bill C-3 was an act to enact the criminal justice act.

Bill C-289 reflects the sentiments expressed to me by many of the Crowfoot residents during that 2000 federal election campaign, sentiments which have been reverberating throughout the country since the Liberals took power in 1993.

I made a commitment to the people of Crowfoot to restore some sanity to a justice system that has, for far too long, in their opinion, coddled offenders, particularly violent young offenders. Canadians from coast to coast are concerned about their personal safety and the safety of their children.

The Liberals made a promise to Canadians. In successive elections, they promised to make our homes and our streets much safer. It is evident from the lenient justice legislation introduced and subsequently enacted by this majority government, including the subsequent lax amendments to the Young Offenders Act under Bill C-37, that the Liberals have not lived up to those promises; indeed, the Liberals have broken those promises.

The Liberal government's soft on crime position will not enhance public safety and personal security. The Liberal's soft justice legislation, such as that enacting conditional sentences, threatens the safety of all Canadians.

The Liberal justice minister, despite having overwhelming support from people throughout the country, does not have the fortitude to enact the necessary tough measures to hold murderers and other violent offenders, including violent young offenders, fully accountable for their heinous crimes against innocent citizens.

In 1996, the justice minister mandated the standing committee on justice and legal affairs to review the Young Offenders Act following the 10th anniversary of its enactment in 1984. After months of cross country hearings, submissions and presentations by people with vested interest in youth justice, and at a cost of almost half a million dollars, the committee tabled a report in April 1997. The report contained a number of recommendations for the Young Offenders Act.

Despite the committee's report and despite the justice minister's promise in June 1997, immediately following that federal election, to make amending the Young Offenders Act a priority, it took her more than two years to do so.

Thinking that old habits die hard, immediately following the election I requested the drafting of Bill C-289 anticipating that once again the justice minister would move slowly and drag her feet on bringing in changes to the most despised piece of legislation in Canada, the Young Offenders Act.

The minister proved me wrong and did introduce Bill C-3 relatively soon after the 2000 federal election. She did, however, true to her form, bring in a bill with little or no teeth.

At this time, I commend my colleague from Surrey North for repeatedly pointing out the inadequacies of Bill C-3.

The fundamental purpose of Canada's youth justice system is the protection of society, which entails dealing effectively with an offender after a crime has been committed. It was not designed to repair social flaws. It was not designed to deal with dysfunctional families. It was not designed to deal with economic hardships. It was not put into place to deal with the deficiencies of our education system. These root causes of youth crime must instead be addressed through effective social programs, sound economic policies, support for Canadian families and early detection and intervention programs.

By failing to recognize this simple fact, successive federal governments have diluted and weakened the effectiveness of Canada's criminal justice system. Young offenders are no longer being held accountable for their actions in a proper and effective manner. As a result, Canadians have lost faith in their ability to protect their families and their property.

If this all sounds familiar, it is because it is taken from the Reform Party, our predecessor, minority report in response to the justice committee's report on amending the Young Offenders Act. A significant amount of time has passed, actually four years, since that minority report was product. Nothing was different as far as youth crime goes. Therefore, our position has not changed.

The first and perhaps the most important amendment I seek through the private members' bill is to make the protection of society and the safety of others the first purpose of the law respecting young offenders. Appearing before the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs in October 1996, Victor Doerksen, who was a member of the legislature of Alberta, said:

In listening to Albertans, one lesson became very clear. The protection of society should take priority over all other considerations and there must be some accountability on the part of all offenders...Alberta also recommends that the declaration of principles within the act be amended to give the protection of society and offender accountability priority over all other considerations.

Bill C-3 does not, as recommended by this Alberta member of the legislature and many others who appeared before that standing committee, make the protection of society the first and guiding principle of the youth act. According to the declaration of principles, the safety and security of Canadians is secondary to the rehabilitation and reintegration of young offenders back into society.

Beside failing to make the protection of society the guiding principle, the new youth criminal justice act effectively enacts the most contentious parts of the old Juvenile Delinquents Act; that is the portion that wrongfully promotes an inequitable application of criminal law, in that it allows or provides far too much discretion to the youth court.

Bill C-289 also serves to support section 43 of the criminal code in that it attempts to reinforce the principle that reasonable force may be used to discipline young persons by those with authority over them. Those in positions of authority over youth, including parents, teachers and police officers, should not be afraid to use reasonable means of discipline or intervention in minor incidents.

Schools are effectively diverting police officers from far more serious matters by calling them unnecessarily to settle disputes that could be handled by teachers or by other students. However, teachers fear that they themselves may be charged if they inadvertently harm a student while trying to stop a fight or dealing with an uncontrollable student. They are reluctant to do anything but standby, stand back and watch until the police arrive. That must be changed.

Bill C-289 attempts to do a number of other things. It attempts to lower the maximum age of the Young Offenders Act from 17 to 15 years of age. Sixteen and seventeen year olds are legally allowed to drive cars. They are allowed to get married. They are allowed to live on their own. They have the knowledge and the capacity to know right from wrong. They also have the physical strength of most adults. In some cases perhaps more physical strength than what most adults would have. For all intents and purposes, in my opinion 16 and 17 year olds are adults and should be treated as such under the criminal law. That opinion is shared by a number of people who appeared before the committee as well. It is shared by the former Attorney General of Ontario, Charles Harnick, who said before the standing committee:

Our first recommendation is that a young offender be defined as a person aged 15 years or under. Until the passing of the Young Offenders Act in 1984, the maximum age for young offenders in Ontario under the Juvenile Delinquents Act was 15-years old. For the purpose of criminal law, 16 and 17-year-olds were considered adults... A 16-year-old can legally drive, work, get married and have a family. If, as a society, we accept a younger person's ability to make serious choices such as that, then we must accept that 16-year-olds have the moral capacity to understand the consequences of doing wrong and should be held accountable for their actions.

My private member's bill also attempts to lower the minimum age limit of the Young Offenders Act from 12 years to 10.

Numerous witnesses appeared before the standing committee, including a city councillor from Scarborough, Ontario. That councillor spoke in support of lowering the age of criminality. Councillor Brad Duguid said:

--I'd like to see the age lowered in terms of the applicability to 10 years or under. And that's not an attempt to try to throw 10 and 11-year-olds in custody or in jail...It's simply an attempt to try to give the police a little more legal ability to intervene, and I think that's the key, is being able to intervene...

Regarding lowering the age limit, Constable Sue Olsen, who is a native resource officer with the Edmonton police service, testified. I loved the quote she gave at the standing committee. She said:

I work in the inner city school. One of the issues that comes up for us as street police officers is that there is a gap with the under 12-year-old children who get involved in criminal activity. We're in a sit and wait process, waiting until they're 12 before we can get them into services and deal with them before they become more of a problem down the road.

The officer was saying that as it now applies we must sit and wait until they are 12 years old so that they can get the help they need.

Some of these young people in inner cities throughout this nation need intervention at an early age. This is not so that people can be incarcerated. This is not so we can take 10 and 11 year olds, hold them in custody and throw them in jail. This is so they can get the rehabilitative programs they need so that they will be successfully integrated into society.

On April 18, 1996, Superintendent Gwen Boniface, a member of the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs, said in regard to the anonymity of the Young Offenders Act:

--while valuable from the perspective of not labelling first offenders and for all the very valid reasons that we know of, it is often outweighed by the ability of young offenders to deflect responsibility. The flaw with the system is that it countermands the basic principles that all responsible parents attempt to instill in their children--namely, to accept responsibility for one's actions.

In response to the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and in response to Albertans, who support a partial lifting of the ban, my private member's bill seeks to allow for the publishing of all the names of all violent offenders. I believe that the public has a right to know if a violent offender has been released or may reside in their community. I believe that knowledge far outweighs any privacy considerations for the offender. Parents have the right to protect their children.

I would submit that they cannot do so if they do not know with whom their children are associating; perhaps with a convicted drug dealer or a violent offender.

In recognition that some youth make minor mistakes that they do not repeat, I believe, as does my party, that their privacy should be maintained.

The recidivism rate for young offenders clearly shows that the sentencing provisions of the Young Offenders Act have been ineffective. Particularly in cases of violent offences such as sexual assault, the current maximum sentence of only three years does not provide an adequate period of time for rehabilitation to occur.

It has taken years for the offender to develop this behaviour and it takes years to reverse it. The maximum sentence of seven years proposed in my private member's bill would provide judges with greater sentencing options for the most severe cases.

When I campaigned in the election the people of Crowfoot said that we needed an act that was not simply there to punish but was also there to rehabilitate. Bill C-289 does that.

Message From The Senate

[The Deputy Speaker]

I have the honour to inform the House that when the House went up to the Senate chamber the Governor General was pleased to give, in Her Majesty's name, the royal assent to the following bills:

Bill C-12, an act to amend the Judges Act and to amend another act in consequence—Chapter No. 7.

Bill S-24, an act to implement an agreement between the Mohawks of Kanesatake and Her Majesty in right of Canada respecting governance of certain lands by the Mohawks of Kanesatake and to amend an act in consequence—Chapter No. 8.

Bill C-8, an act to establish the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada and to amend certain acts in relation to financial institutions—Chapter No. 9.

Bill S-17, an act to amend the Patent Act—Chapter No. 10.

Bill C-17, an act to amend the Budget Implementation Act, 1997 and the Financial Administration Act—Chapter No. 11.

Bill S-16, an act to amend the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act—Chapter No. 12.

Bill S-3, an act to amend the Motor Vehicle Transport Act, 1987 and to make consequential amendments to other acts—Chapter No. 13.

Bill S-11, an act to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act and the Canada Cooperatives Act and to amend other acts in consequence—Chapter No. 14.

Bill C-13, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act—Chapter No. 15.

Bill C-26, an act to amend the Customs Act, the Customs Tariff, the Excise Act, the Excise Tax Act and the Income Tax Act in respect of tobacco—Chapter No. 16.

Bill C-22, an act to amend the Income Tax Act, the Income Tax Application Rules, certain acts related to the Income Tax Act, the Canada Pension Plan, the Customs Act, the Excise Tax Act, the Modernization of Benefits and Obligations Act and another act related to the Excise Tax Act—Chapter No. 17.

Bill C-3, an act to amend the Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and Divestiture Act and the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act—Chapter No. 18.

Bill C-18, an act to amend the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act—Chapter No. 19.

Bill C-28, an act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act, the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act and the Salaries Act—Chapter No. 20.

Bill C-9, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act—Chapter No. 21.

Bill C-25, an act to amend the Farm Credit Corporation Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts—Chapter No. 22.

Bill C-4, an act to establish a foundation to fund sustainable development technology—Chapter No. 23.

Bill C-29, an act for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the public service of Canada for the financial year ending March 31, 2002—Chapter No. 24.

Bill S-25, an act to amend the Act of Incorporation of the Conference of Mennonites in Canada.

Bill S-27, an act to authorize The Imperial Life Assurance Company of Canada to apply to be continued as a company under the laws of the Province of Quebec.

Bill S-28, an act to authorize Certas Direct Insurance Company to apply to be continued as a company under the laws of the Province of Quebec.

Pursuant to order made on Wednesday, June 13, the House stands adjourned until Monday, September 17, at 11 a.m. pursuant to Standing Orders 28 and 24.

(The House adjourned at 5.26 p.m.)

Youth Criminal Justice Act

[Rick Casson, Canadian Alliance, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to speak to the bill today. It takes me back to the first year I campaigned for this job in 1997. When I went door to door, one of the topics at the time was the Young Offenders Act and the changes that people wanted to see.

I remember one business that I went into. The gentleman was completely distraught over the fact that he could not get any justice for the problems he had been having with young offenders. It is interesting to note that many years later Bill C-7 still does not address the issues that so many Canadians are concerned about.

I compliment my colleague from Surrey North who has made it his life's work to bring in proper youth justice in Canada. Some of the amendments he put forward would have made great additions to the bill. Every amendment we put forward would have strengthened the bill, made it more receptive to the needs of Canadians and would have made our streets safer. These were the underlying factors for putting forward our amendments to the new youth justice act. We wanted our streets to be safer so people could feel more comfortable in their homes and in their daily lives. The member for Surrey North put a lot of effort into those issue. He knows from personal experience what can happen when young offenders go wrong.

One of the things our party proposed and probably one of the most contentious was the lowering of the age range from 12 to 18 to 10 to 16. People said that we would be locking up 10 year olds but that was not what we were talking about. We were talking about helping young people in trouble, and heading in the wrong direction, to get back on track and become better citizens in order to contribute to society in a way that all Canadians should.

Our party wanted a clear definition of a violent offence. We wanted a schedule of offences so there would be no necessity to play legal word games in the courts and no need for millions of dollars to be spent in legal costs for arguments and appeals. We should have a list of what a violent offence means. We should include the offence of murder plus all the listed offences in schedule I and II of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. These are the offences Canadians want to see listed as violent offences. Those were in the amendments we brought forward.

We proposed the deletion of the term presumptive offence within the legislation. We preferred the term violent offence to determine when a young person ought to receive adult punishment. We proposed the deletion of the term serious violent offence because we felt that all violent offences were serious and that it should be left up to the courts to decide the punishment in those circumstances. However violent offences must be handled in a specific manner to protect our citizens and our communities.

We proposed an overriding principle making the legislation the protection of the public. We heard time and again that the government placed more emphasis on the interests of the offender than on the protection of citizens. The protection of our communities should not take second place to anything.

We proposed the limitation of extrajudicial measures to first time non-violent offenders and only if those extrajudicial measures were adequate to hold a young person accountable. Accountability is a part of the act that really needs to be highlighted. Young people and their parents have to be held accountable. If we did that it would put some real meaning into the legislation.

We proposed a requirement for the attorney general to inform victims of their specific rights. We felt that was important. We proposed that the principles of denunciation and deterrence be included within the legislation. A big aspect of any youth justice act should be methods of deterrence.

We proposed that an adult sentence be imposed on young persons who commit violent offences after their 14th birthday. The range of adult sentencing would still be left up to the courts, and that would include youth style punishments, but 14 and 15 year olds who commit violent offences would be held accountable for potential adult sentencing. Some people felt that proposal was fairly harsh but we were talking about serious, violent and repeat offenders. We must deal with those people in such a way that our communities will be safe and our public will be protected.

We proposed that young persons who commit violent offences be identified for the protection of the public. People wanted to know who those young offenders were and what they had done. They felt they had the right to know if somebody who was capable of a violent offence was living in their community.

We proposed that a young person who received a life sentence through adult court should receive parole eligibility between 10 and 15 years at the discretion of a judge. This was an increase from the present range of 5 to 10 years, to put a little more bite into the legislation.

We also proposed an increased maximum sentence for violent offences other than murder. Bill C-7 would bring a custody period followed by a supervisory period with supervisory time to be one-half of the custody time.

We put forward all these proposals as amendments to the legislation. They were researched and had the benefit of the firsthand knowledge of the member for Surrey North. Not one of them was accepted.

We ended up with a bill that appears to be the same as Bill C-68 and then its subsequent Bill C-3 and now Bill C-7. There is no change. There is no more bite in the bill and no more protection for Canadians than there was in the bill introduced as Bill C-68. After months of review and hearing experts from all aspects of youth justice, the only changes made include many of the technical amendments proposed by the government to correct errors in Bill C-3.

The government has not been open to change on any aspect of the legislation. There were hearings where witnesses came forward with many good ideas and with firsthand experience. People involved in the youth justice system brought forward excellent ideas that were not accepted. All the opposition parties, except the Bloc, presented substantive amendments to Bill C-3. None of them received debate in parliament. None of them appear to have been considered by the government.

The provinces will be tasked to administer this legal nightmare but the federal government does not seem to care. The government has not been open to serious discussion over the proposals in its youth justice law. There needed to be more willingness on behalf of the government to listen to Canadians, the experts and the other parties in the House of Commons to improve the law.

The government has promised $206 million over the first three years for the implementation of the bill, but it would not even come close to meeting the responsibility of providing 50% of the funding for youth justice. The government has allowed federal funding to slip to about 20%.

This does not only apply to the bill. We have seen that in other areas of government responsibility where it has historically committed funding to a certain level to help the provinces administer the laws that are created here. The funding has decreased from 50% to 20%.

The provinces have to carry that financial burden and to take that extra cost into their own budgets to administer a law that many of them are not happy with because it does not go far enough.

An initial review of Bill C-7 indicates that the government has made it even weaker likely to appease the Quebec government and the Bloc Quebecois. That was one thing we saw. It said that if the Canadian Alliance thought it was too soft and the Bloc thought it was too severe it had to go right down the middle of the road. We do not agree with that at all.

The age range of application will remain at 12 to 18. Many people thought 10 to 12 year olds that were starting to get into trouble needed some help. They needed someone there to pull them back, to help them out and to put them back on the right road. That has not happened and these young people are still out there without direction.

The restrictions on naming violent offenders have not been put into the legislation. It is up to the courts to do that. That was something of critical importance to Canadians.

After the entire process of bringing the bill forward three times this will be its last debate before it is voted on this evening. We still do not have what Canadians have asked for. A lot more could have been done with the overall philosophy that the protection of Canadians as a whole should be the meat of the bill. If the government had kept that in mind, it would have had a bill that Canadians would have appreciated and supported.

[Jerry Pickard, Liberal, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in debate at third reading of Bill C-7. The introduction of Bill C-7 followed a lengthy period of consultation and review.

I remind members not only of the breadth and depth of the study that preceded the introduction of the bill but of the very strong arguments that were put forward to make sure the Young Offenders Act and the youth justice system would be changed. I further point out the extent to which the youth criminal justice act responds to the recommendations of task force and standing committee reports tabled over a number of years.

When the current Young Offenders Act was last amended in 1995 the government reiterated its commitment to conduct a comprehensive review of the legislation and the operation of the youth justice system. After a decade of experience with the Young Offenders Act it was time to step back and assess how the legislation and the youth justice system were working, and how they could be improved in ways that took into account the concerns and values of Canadians.

The standing committee on justice and legal affairs was asked to undertake an extensive review of the youth justice system. In carrying out its review the committee convened round table discussions, held a national forum, canvassed various parts of the country, heard from witnesses representing more than 100 different organizations and received more than 100 written briefs. The standing committee on justice and legal affairs released its report entitled “Renewing Youth Justice” in April 1997. It included significant findings about the youth justice system and made 14 recommendations for change.

Contributing to this comprehensive review by the standing committee was the report of a federal-provincial-territorial task force on youth justice. The task force, established in 1994 by the federal-provincial-territorial ministers responsible for youth justice, was given a mandate to review the Young Offenders Act and its application. The task force was composed of provincial, territorial and federal officials with expertise in youth justice. Its members worked in prosecution services, correctional services, statistics and research, youth law policy and law enforcement.

In proposing its response to the standing committee report entitled “Renewing Youth Justice” the federal government took into account not only the findings and recommendations of the report but also the findings of the task force and calls from Canadians across the country for a strategy to change the Young Offenders Act.

As a result, a strategy for the renewal of youth justice was released in May 1998. The strategy sets out the basic themes and policy directions contained in Bill C-7 and, perhaps more important, the rationale. The strategy identifies three key weaknesses in Canada's youth justice system.

First, not enough money is being put into the system to prevent young people from falling into a life of crime. Prevention has been mentioned by almost everyone in the House. My colleague who preceded me was very much of that mind and many members of the House have said very clearly that prevention is important. This is the direction in which we need to go.

Second, the system must improve the way it deals with the most serious violent youths, not just in terms of sentencing but in terms of ensuring they are provided with extensive, intensive, long term rehabilitation that considers their interests and those of society.

Third, the system relies too heavily on custody for the vast majority of non-violent young offenders when alternative, community based approaches could do better. The system must instil social values, help right wrongs and ensure that valuable resources are targeted where they are most needed.

In response to these weaknesses, the new strategy proposes to renew Canada's youth justice system with a focus on three key areas: crime prevention and effective alternatives to the formal youth justice system; meaningful consequences for youth crime; and rehabilitation and reintegration of young people. All of these, working together, will help society have a better system.

It commits us to target custody as a response to the more serious offenders and to provide more meaningful community based sanctions for the vast majority of youth crime, thereby contributing to a reduction in Canada's youth incarceration rates, which are among the highest in the western world.

For provincial and territorial governments, the federal financial commitment takes the form of a five year financial arrangement worth a total of $950 million to support the implementation of the youth criminal justice act and the overall policy objectives of the youth justice renewal initiative. The new agreements promote and support a wide range of services and programs considered most likely to assist in the rehabilitation and reintegration of young persons in conflict with the law and in reducing reliance on the youth court system and incarceration.

Additional federal funding would also be available to support the development of programs required for the implementation of the new intensive rehabilitation custody and supervision sentencing option. These financial arrangements are an important component of the flexible implementation phase undertaken in close co-operation with the jurisdictions.

Through the youth justice renewal fund, provincial and territorial ministries responsible for youth justice may apply for grants and contributions to assist in the preparation for and implementation of the youth justice renewal initiative. Funds are available for activities related to training, community partnership development or expansion, reintegration planning and support and implementation contingencies. Examples of such activities include: assessment of staff training needs in light of new legislation; development of policies that will govern youth justice committee work; review of policy and procedural materials; and development and delivery of orientation sessions on the new legislation for frontline workers, managers, administrators and youth justice committee members.

With respect to the legislative process, let me note that prior to the third reading of Bill C-7's predecessor, Bill C-3, the election call came. However, the government's commitment to move forward with new justice legislation remained strong. The Speech from the Throne to open the first session of the 37th parliament of Canada stated that the government would reintroduce legislation to change how the justice system deals with young offenders. New legislation would encourage alternatives to custody for non-violent offenders, emphasizing rehabilitation and reintegration into society while toughening consequences for more violent youth.

This commitment to reintroduce youth justice legislation has been kept. Bill C-7 was introduced in the House of Commons on February 5. Bill C-7 is basically the same bill previously introduced as Bill C-3, except that Bill C-7 incorporates government amendments that were made public before the election call. The inclusion of these amendments demonstrates once again the ongoing consultation that is accompanying this bill as it moves through the parliamentary system.

The government has consulted and listened. Many views have been expressed, some diametrically opposed to others. The overriding goal is to put in place a youth justice system that is fair and effective, and that is what Bill C-7 would do.

The substance of Bill C-7 has been open to public scrutiny for a long time. Its introduction was preceded by lengthy studies and consultation. Now is the time to move forward and replace the Young Offenders Act with the youth criminal justice act, an act that would instil values such as accountability, responsibility and respect, which are long overdue in all of our systems. This is an act that would result in the kind of youth justice system all Canadians want.

[David Anderson, Canadian Alliance, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, we are here today to talk about the youth criminal justice act. The question I have this afternoon is: Why do we even need the act? The answer is obvious. Youth crime has increased in the country. It is something that touches everyone including the government, and it has finally realized that there is a problem.

We have a Young Offenders Act that has been demonstrated to be clearly inadequate. Since 1993 the government has promised change. The committee on justice and legal affairs held extensive cross country hearings in 1996 and 1997. It presented its report to parliament called “Renewing Youth Justice”.

There was a change of ministers in 1997 and at that time the reform of the act was to be a priority. In 1999 the government finally introduced Bill C-68. It was reintroduced in October 1999 as Bill C-3 and it hung around until the last election. It was revived again this spring. The bill has had a longer life than some of the young people it was supposed to protect.

We expected that when it did come forward it would deal with the issues but it clearly did not. It not only demonstrates a lack of ability to deal with children's issues but it demonstrates the government's inability to address the real issues in the country. It shows the government is out of touch with its people.

The definition of arrogant is having an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities. I would add a second half to that definition. It shows a refusal to accept one's responsibility. Arrogance is shown in how the bill has been handled. It has been reintroduced for the third time with a new name. Simply calling something by a different name does not change it.

The Liberal government has refused to apply responsible amendments. It has applied some of its own technical housekeeping amendments, but it would not accept responsible amendments from other parties. They have not even been considered so Bill C-7, which was Bill C-3, which was Bill C-68, is the bill we are discussing today.

First, there is a general refusal in the bill to deal with the issues. There is a refusal to take responsibility for young offenders. The bill does not deal seriously with the youngest offenders. It still leaves children of 10 and 11 years of age to child welfare and social services. We are not suggesting that children of this age should be locked up, but it is essential that they are involved with the justice system to get the help they need.

Some of these kids need a structured solution. In the newspaper in the last few weeks there was a case involving a young person who was so out of control in his community that the community was asking someone to come in and do something.

I have worked with young people for many years and one thing I know is that they need structure. The younger they are, the more important it is to give them a direction which they do not necessarily have. The bill deprives them of that.

Second, there is a refusal in the bill to take responsibility for older offenders. In our previous Young Offenders Act, offenders aged 14 and up could be transferred to adult court for a very limited number of offences. That provision was used very rarely. Bill C-7 would allow for even more latitude in this area. Provinces could essentially opt out of this provision in whole or in part. They could change the provision so that it only applies to 15 or 16 year olds. Some kids need to be in adult court to get access to the services they require.

There is also a refusal in the bill to take responsibility for the communities. In terms of identifying young offenders, Bill C-7 would prevent a limited number of instances where young people could be named to protect their community. The list is restrictive. It does not include all violent or dangerous offenders. It would provide courts with discretion to override the identification of the offender.

We saw last night, in the government's defeat of a good amendment that was presented to it, its lack of commitment to these kids, the communities and the school systems that need to deal with young people. We saw it vote en masse to restrict the provision regarding the naming of young offenders.

I have been involved somewhat with education and with young people. Educators and other people in our schools need to know who these young people are in order to deal fairly and squarely with them.

In Bill C-7 the protection of the public is second to understanding the circumstances and the perpetrator. There is an extensive emphasis on rehabilitation and reintegration. We have already seen the results of that approach in my area.

Regina has been attacked by car thieves for years. Some of these kids have been arrested dozens of times, with little or no consequences for their actions. Where is the deterrence when people can keep going back again and again to the same offences and grow into adults who have little regard for the law?

The protection of the public is not an overriding principle in the legislation. Why should the protection of our communities take second place?

The bill also refuses to take responsibility for crime seriously. People have always been concerned about the three year maximum sentence in the Young Offenders Act. We heard about that often. We heard about extreme circumstances and an extreme crime that took place, and young people were not held accountable for more than the three years maximum sentence.

Bill C-7 would actually reduce the maximum custody period from three years to two years. The maximum is three years but a supervisory period must be included. For most offences we are looking at two years of custody and one year of supervision being the maximum sentence young people can face. One of the main concerns of Canadians about young offenders is being ignored in the bill.

There is also refusal to take responsibility for provincial governments. The government would download the bill on to underfunded provincial governments. At present the cost sharing program is at about 75%, with the provinces paying 75% and the federal government paying 25%. Our position is that the federal government should be paying 50% of that cost.

It is a strange situation when the federal government has responsibility for criminal law but absolutely no obligation to fund the implementation of it. There have been long term shortfalls in financing and there has been a shortage of consultation with the provinces.

There is also a refusal to keep things simple. The bill is extremely complicated. As one member mentioned this morning, the Young Offenders Act has gone from 30 sections to 70 sections, to over 200 clauses in the current bill.

The bill sets up rules. It sets up procedures. It sets up exceptions to the same rules. The court may or may not name offenders and adult sentencing may or may not be imposed. Many of these things are left to the court's discretion. It is so complicated that there were problems in trying to define a violent act or a serious violent offence.

I have worked with kids, as I mentioned before, but the real problem is not with youth crime. It is policy that destroys families. Every one of us would recognize that the family is the foundation of society. We need strong families if we are to have stable young children.

We have many government policies that cause community and family breakdowns and family stress. We have parents who want to be at home when their kids get home from school. They want to be at home when their kids leave in the morning. However they are not able to be because of their financial situation brought about by government policies. There are families that cannot keep up in the world unless both parents work.

There are some things that need to be done to address the problem of family stress. The government needs to take a fair look at its taxation policies. At every turn people are being taxed to death. Taxes continue to increase. We hear daily about the government's huge supposed tax cuts that took place, but they just do not register with people and they do not register on their paycheques. We have property tax. We have income tax. We have fuel tax. We have sales tax. The list goes on and on. The government needs to take a look at its taxation policies and how they affect families.

Our monetary policies have a great deal to do with family stress. We see our dollar falling. We see Canada falling behind in production. We see that people must work harder and harder to break even, which continues to put pressure on the people who least need that pressure on their families. People are forced into the workplace. Some of them do want to be there. Families are under stress.

Earlier I talked about arrogance and defined it as an exaggerated sense of one's importance or abilities. The whole bill smacks of that. It seems to be a congratulatory and ineffective piece of legislation. It is unfortunate that it does not deal realistically with the problems of youth justice in a concrete way.

The problem has existed. It continues to exist and it will continue to exist. Our kids are being left at risk. The government should not be wasting our time and taxpayer money, but I am afraid that is exactly what the bill would do.

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

Mr. Speaker, I just want to make a comment. When I heard the member for Laval East compare the youth centres to prisons, I thought to myself that she must not have set foot in a youth centre in a long time, because these centers really focus on rehabilitation in the community.

I have met several of the 319 young persons she mentioned when I toured Quebec, and especially on the North Shore. I spent a whole morning talking to the parents of these young persons and to the people who implement the Quebec legislation on a daily basis. The youth centres are not prisons. That is the kind of misinformation we can expect from the member for Laval East. She should go over the bill more carefully.

I would like the member to comment on what the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine said this morning about the Quebec coalition for youth justice making its position about Bill C-3 and Bill C-68 known, but not about Bill C-7.

No later than today, Pierre Lamarche sent out a press release where he said:

We have to realize that the federal government is going ahead with a backward bill that is totally inconsistent with what is going on in youth crime in Quebec as in the rest of Canada.

My question concerns the comments made by Mr. Lamarche, who is the president of the coalition of the various organizations that were mentioned earlier, saying that, according to the coalition:

—Instead of wasting public money to implement a new system that is not needed, the government should spend wisely and use the money to strengthen the current Young Offenders Act, instead of drafting a new legislation.

What has the member to say to Mr. Lamarche on this issue?

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

Madam Speaker, at the outset, I want to point out that I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel.

I want to focus on some aspects of the bill that I find particularly worrisome. First, we see once again that if members of the Bloc Quebecois were not here to stand up for Quebec, we certainly could not rely on federal Liberal members to do so.

Everyone in Quebec agrees on one thing. We do not want Bill C-7. We do not think it reflects the reality in Quebec. Despite what members on the other side might say today, Bill C-7 deals with Canada, with the problems faced by Canada, and we believe that the situation in Quebec is quite different. Unlike the other provinces, we have been successful.

Earlier, when the member for Laval East gave us what she called alarming statistics, she said that over 1,000 young persons were sent to prison in Canada. I would have liked to know how many Quebecers were among these offenders.

I was here, during last parliament, when Bill C-3 was introduced but could not unfortunately be passed. It was both fortunate and unfortunate that this bill could not be passed. When the House of Commons reconvened, we thought we would see some changes to the bill. We detected a certain amount of electoral opportunism with the tabling of Bill C-3. We noted that the efforts of the Minister of Justice were directed at charming the electors. We all know the results.

We would have thought, when she again submitted her bill to the House that she would have provided for a little more realism and openness in the case of Quebec and the rest of Canada. That was not the case.

I was a journalist for 16 years, and worked at the Quebec City court house for two and a half years. In Bill C-7, what I really object to is the talk of releasing the names of young offenders. It permits publication of the name of an adolescent serving an adult sentence. Reference is made as well to an adolescent serving an adolescent sentence for violent crimes.

There is no point saying that the worst punishment a young person could be given is to have his or her name, picture and background published in the papers. Even today, we see in the case of repeat young offenders who have reached adulthood, 18 or 19 years of age, that the effect is incredible. The harshest punishment a criminal can be given is to have his or her background exposed in the media.

Let us imagine a young adolescent, male or female, aged between 14 and 18, who for all sorts of reasons has committed an offence, and we know our society is undergoing profound change, these are turbulent times, and that we publish his or her photo and background in the papers while this young person is in high school or college. The effect is extremely negative and may harm the individual. He or she will carry this image and have a really hard time, despite the best of efforts, in rehabilitation. The media trial will be with him or her a long time.

As politicians, we are always on parade, facing the media and we often make a statement and then retract it the next day. The retraction may appear in a corner somewhere, while the day before we made the headlines.

The same goes for young offenders who find themselves in a similar situation. Indeed, even after a fair trial, a trial that has taken into account all the circumstances, the young offender will be haunted by the media coverage of his trial.

People often only remember the original story. When there is a retraction, or when a sentence or a verdict is handed down later on, people have completely forgotten.

What they remember is the front page news with the original story, a story that is often taken directly out of the police investigation, but whose impact is not fully known.

I cannot believe that Bill C-7 will now allow the media to get hold of this information. If we let the media get hold of such stories, the young offender will be judged by the media and will not be able to make it, regardless of the rehabilitation efforts.

I also want to point out the fact that, once again, we see that the situation in Quebec and the one in Canada are very different. Some are trying to claim that the hon. member for Berthier—Montcalm and the members of the Bloc Quebecois have been conducting a misinformation campaign, but it is the other side of the House that is leading such a campaign.

When Liberal federal members talk, we hear the word Canada constantly, and from time to time the word Quebec, but they seem to forget about the consensus that exists and the coalitions that were formed against Bill C-7. They always follow the party line. They always hide behind the objectives of Bill C-7 and forget what really matters, the Quebec reality.

Today, just a few hours away from an important vote that will certainly have an impact on our young people, I am asking, on behalf of my colleagues, on behalf of young offenders and on behalf of Quebec youth, that the present government show some openness and allow the government of Quebec to continue the good work it has been doing with the current infrastructures.

This situation could allow us, Quebecers, to continue to function with a system that has already been proven effective, while respecting the other vision people from western Canada and maybe also people from Ontario have with regard to young offenders.

What we are saying today is that we would like to opt out of Bill C-7 so that Quebec may continue the good work it has been doing for many years.

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

Mr. Speaker, finally we are reaching the last stage of bringing forth a new law in respect of young criminal offenders.

When I first came to this place in 1997, I remember the minister commenting on how youth justice was on her list of priorities and had been since the previous spring. It is now the spring of 2001, four years later. Four years for this piece of legislation is just a little much, especially when we look at the lack of the quality of this bill.

Canadians soon became disenchanted with the Young Offenders Act when it replaced the Juvenile Delinquents Act, but just wait until this youth criminal justice act begins its journey through our courts and through our justice system. It is an abysmal attempt to relegislate our youth justice law. It is complicated and will be extremely costly, as legal argument after legal argument is made over what parliament's intention was when it is passed.

The bill will unduly delay justice for young offenders, for victims of youth crime and for communities. Anyone listening to this speech will quite naturally ask why. Because this government was never interested in listening to sound arguments and suggestions for improvement. Why? Because the government had a preconceived strategy to merely go through the motions over a number of years and appear to hear from interested parties from one end of this country to the other, while having no intention of deviating from its own determination of what was right for its citizens.

I will spend just a few moments to outline the progress of this legislation.

In 1997 the justice committee completed a cross country review of the Young Offenders Act and made a number of recommendations. One of the most significant recommendations of that committee was to include 10 and 11 year olds under the youth justice legislation. Remember that Liberals controlled the committee as they made up the majority of the body. The committee heard of a number of tragic cases whereby 10 and 11 year olds were committing serious and violent crimes, and thumbing their noses at police and the justice system. These young law breakers knew that the present law would not touch them.

The committee also heard case after case whereby social welfare or children aid facilities lacked the expertise and the resources to properly assist these delinquents to get back on to the straight and narrow.

The justice committee recognized the necessity to bring 10 and 11 year olds into the more formal youth justice process for the safety and security of communities, but especially for the interest, guidance and protection of the offenders themselves. There should be a definite desire to address misbehaviour before it develops into more serious criminal activity and before it becomes too late.

Bill C-7 fails to include 10 and 11 year old offenders. Those who are in so much need for assistance and redirection will not get it. The government does not seem to be interested in helping those who desperately need it. The minister's answer seems to be that we should just leave it to present social welfare organizations even though it has been acknowledged that they are failing and have failed in that regard.

In 1997 the provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and Ontario came to an agreement on youth justice at what was known as the Prince Edward Island conference. One of the proposed amendments to the Young Offenders Act was to reduce the age of criminal accountability. As I already mentioned, this aspect was completely ignored by the government's youth legislation even though those provinces represented a significant portion of the country.

Those provinces also agreed on a number of issues, such as: first, providing for easier transfer to adult court and automatic identification of repeat and serious offenders; second, application of their victim surcharge to young offenders; third, restriction of legal aid to circumstances where youth or the guardians cannot afford to pay for legal services; and fourth, mandatory custody for offences involving the use of weapons.

Needless to say the government did not listen to these provinces. Their proposals were ignored and disregarded. This was in spite of the fact that it was the provinces that were on the ground floor, so to speak, on the whole aspect of youth justice.

In Canada the provinces have constitutional responsibility to administer our youth criminal law. The federal government merely makes the law and leaves it to the provinces to try to administer whatever mess the legislation creates. No wonder we often question why the provinces and the federal government seem to be at odds with each other over so many areas of mutual involvement.

Our constitution could not have been drafted any better for the federal government. It writes the law and then when the law causes difficulty, impossibilities, criticism and outrage, it merely points an accusing finger at the provinces and their administration of the legislation.

As we can see, the government refused to listen to its own justice committee and it refused to listen to the provinces, its partners in the youth justice process. I do not know how much influence the minister even had over her own legislation. We all hear how the Prime Minister's Office seems to dictate and direct almost everything that happens in parliament. I do know that she is ultimately responsible as this legislation has her name on it.

However, so far I have only spoken about the situation back in 1997. She still had a lot of time to rectify legislation that was so far off track. After all, she still had debate in this place to consider. The justice committee would also have had the opportunity to review the legislation and propose changes, and the House would have had the opportunity at report stage to consider further proposals.

I remember very well the fall of 1997 and spring of 1998 because it was when I first came here. For a number of months the minister kept answering questions about legislation to replace the Young Offenders Act. Upon her appointment as Minister of Justice in the early summer of 1997, she stressed that a new youth justice program was among her priorities. She also characterized the Young Offenders Act as “easily the most unpopular piece of federal legislation”.

For the rest of 1997, all 1998 and into the spring of 1999, the official opposition pressured the minister to introduce her long promised legislation. We all should remember her continual claims that it would be coming to the House in a timely manner or fashion.

In March 1999 it finally arrived as Bill C-68. It was little more than a revision of the Young Offenders Act. A significant number of experts and persons involved with the youth justice process criticized the legislation as being as bad as or worse than the Young Offenders Act. Others characterized it as being essentially the Young Offenders Act with a new name, the youth criminal justice act. In any case, the government merely brought in the legislation to put off the pressure that had been coming from all directions over just where the youth justice legislation was.

Not much was done with Bill C-68 when the House recessed for the summer of 1999. Over the summer the Prime Minister prorogued parliament and the bill died on the order paper. It should have stayed dead.

At the beginning of the second session of the 36th parliament, the justice minister again talked about youth justice legislation appearing in a timely manner. She then reintroduced her legislation as Bill C-3. It was nothing more than Bill C-68 with a new number. From its introduction in October 1999 until parliament was dissolved in October 2000, the government had clearly indicated that it was not open to suggestions. After almost a year before the justice committee, and after a significant amount of witness testimony, the Liberal dominated justice committee referred the bill to the House of Commons unchanged.

The committee did not deal with any of the submitted amendments. It received approximately 250 proposed amendments, including roughly 150 from the government itself which were primarily technical in nature. The Bloc submitted two amendments. In summary, its amendments were to keep the Young Offenders Act or exempt Quebec from the youth criminal justice act, allowing the province to continue operating under the Young Offenders Act.

The Progressive Conservatives had some very practical suggestions that would likely have received support from many members of the official opposition. The NDP proposals were not generally in accordance with our views and we likely would not have supported them.

I proposed approximately 50 substantial amendments which followed much of what had been heard through the justice committee process, as well as a number of changes to simplify what many experts deemed to be a complex piece of legislation that would become a haven for legal arguments throughout the various court levels. Youthful offenders would be subject to inordinate delays, legal aid costs would sore, as would costs for court administration, crown attorneys and police.

At report stage of Bill C-3, the opposition parties and the government resubmitted their committee amendments. In addition, the Bloc decided to filibuster the process and presented more than 3,000 proposals to send a message of its dissatisfaction with the bill. Consequently, Bill C-3 died on the order paper with the election call in October 2000.

The legislation was essentially reintroduced as Bill C-7 in this parliament. It was almost in the same format as it was when it was known as Bill C-68 in 1999. In over two years the government merely reaffirmed its intention of refusing to accept any significant change.

Just recently the minister, in response to one of my questions in the House, attempted to confuse Canadians when she suggested that she had made some 182 amendments to her youth criminal justice legislation. Yes, she made about that number of changes, but at least 90% of them were as a result of poor drafting in the first place. The government, after almost two years as a priority and after months of promises to bring forth legislation in a timely fashion, ended up rushing the law into parliament with a significant number of French translation problems and a number of inconsistencies between various clauses.

Other amendments included in Bill C-7 were as a result of the government finally recognizing some of the problems created by its legislation. Some things would just not work as set out in Bill C-68 and Bill C-3.

Other changes came about as a result of lobbying by special interest groups because they came from left field and had never been discussed or argued before the justice committee. However not one word changed as a result of the work of the justice committee or the amendments proposed by the opposition. As I said before, the government was obviously not ever in a position to consider amendments through the parliamentary review process. It was a done deal.

The whole process of parliamentary review has been in fact a sham. The opposition, the government backbenchers, the committee process are merely window dressing to assist the government in selling its program for youth justice. There has never really been an open review toward improving proposed legislation. It has already been decided that only the powers within this government know what is best for Canadians. Some might say that is indeed a shame.

I say it is essentially a fraud on the Canadian people. We are all sent here to do a job as best we can and to have our input into having legislation take into account the interests and concerns of all the various parts of the country. When we are essentially placed in a position of merely going through the motions for appearances sake, the something is drastically wrong with the process.

Some listeners may suggest I am being unduly harsh and critical of this legislation. I do so because of my concern for a proper and effective response to the universally accepted failure of the Young Offenders Act. When the country fails to properly address youth crime, we fail those young persons who get themselves on the wrong side of the law. When the process becomes so time consuming and complicated that many offenders are able to beat the system, we lead them and their peers into believing that they can get away with breaking our laws. When we fail to properly rehabilitate those young offenders, we do them no favour as it often becomes too late to subsequently bring them back on track.

It is not just the offender. What about the family of the offender who sit on the sidelines to witness that young person repeat and perhaps move on to more serious and violent crime? What about the victims of those initial and repeat crimes? It is a common fact that the most common victim of youth crime is another youth. Young people assault other young people. Young people sexually assault other young persons. The list goes on. What about the communities? When a young offender does not receive proper guidance and reformation, that person will likely reoffend against the same community against which he committed his original crime.

No wonder citizens and communities do not feel safe and secure these days. We have all heard the horror stories of the failure of the Young Offenders Act. I am afraid we will hear the same stories when this youth criminal justice act works its way through the system.

The government has had almost four years to bring in an efficient and effective bill to address the youth justice problem. It has had the opportunity to hear from experts and professionals from right across the country. It has had the opportunity to hear from the provinces to address their concerns. It could have done a much better job than Bill C-7.

I fully appreciate that many members and Canadians have not had the opportunity to spend the time on this legislation as I have. I have been the official opposition justice critic responsible to watchdog this particular piece of legislation. As well, I have been a member of the justice committee since the bill first saw the light of day back in 1999.

I would like to cover a few aspects of my concerns. The minister likes to play lawyer games and provide half truths and worse about this bill. It is her job to sell the legislation after all. She needs the support and she is forced to sing the song to get it.

First, the bill formerly recognizes a process of what has been described as diversion or alternative programming. The process has been around for a number of years, and I have worked with it myself for over five years now. It is essentially an informal process of dealing with the young person who becomes sidetracked and breaks our criminal law. Specified members of the community, the offender and perhaps the victim get together and decide how to best recognize the damage done and how best to have that offender address the misconduct and the misbehaviour. The offender accepts blame, faced agreed upon consequences and moves on with his or her live hopefully having learned the error of his or her ways. The program has a good success rate, when limited in scope.

The problem with Bill C-7 is that this procedure is not restrictive. It is open for repeat offenders and is available for violent offenders. Being an informal system, there will be little, if any, accounting to ensure that the offender has learned the error of his or her ways if the system permits offence after offence without a more formal and serious reaction by society to the criminal behaviour.

The minister said that it would be up to the provinces to police or administer. We proposed to limit this scheme to no-violent first time offenders, essentially a one time opportunity to avoid a criminal record and get back on track. The minister refused to consider this proposal and has merely dumped the problem on to the provinces.

The problem of extrajudicial measures is very similar to the government's introduction of conditional sentencing a few years back. Conditional sentencing was brought in for adults to permit less serious offenders to serve their sentences at home. However, in that case as well, the government did not limit the use of that form of more lenient sentencing. We have seen our courts provide home sentencing to violent, serious and repeat offenders. Victims and communities are outraged.

The minister has finally recognized that there is a problem and that it should now be studied. Are we to end up with the same problem with youth extrajudicial measures when it is allowed for violent and repeat youth offenders? I thoroughly support diversion and alternative measures but their use must be restricted, otherwise its whole use will come into disrepute. Once again, however, the government will not listen.

There is also major concern over the legislation and its presumptive offence scheme. For some reason the government has severely restricted the list of offences for which a young person is liable for automatic adult sentencing and identification. The minister has been saying that there is provision for naming those who receive adult sentences. What she has not said is that there is also provision for those young persons to apply to have their identity protected.

There is also major concern over the lack of sufficient resources for our youth justice process. For years now the federal government has been delinquent in paying its share of the 50/50 cost of youth justice with the provinces. The minister has been trumpeting the fact that the government has allotted $206 million over three years toward the initiation costs of the new youth criminal justice act. Nowhere has she acknowledged the already significant shortfall on the shared financial obligation toward youth justice.

Two hundred and six million dollars sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but it is over three years and it is for all the provinces. The provinces are already raising the red flag that there has been no real cost analysis of the increased demands of the changes proposed by the legislation.

Obviously in the past this government has not been too concerned about ensuring that young offenders receive sufficient and proper supervision and rehabilitation. The government's cheating on the 50/50 formula is evidence of that. It is no wonder there is so much skepticism about whether the $206 million will be adequate to address the additional demands of this law. We are going into the new initiative with no idea of its cost. Only the Liberal government operates in this fashion.

Then there is the opting out clause, clause 61, whereby the provinces can create a different criminal law from province to province. Under this clause, an offence as serious as murder would be treated differently depending on the province in which it is committed.

The government is not too keen to hear criticism of the legislation. It is bringing in closure on debate of the bill. Whenever it gets into trouble it does that. How many Canadians realize that the legislation would reduce sentences for the most serious offenders? The bill would mandate a supervisory or probationary period after custody. That period would be half the custody period. Therefore, instead of serving a maximum sentence of three years in custody, as was done under the Young Offenders Act, the most serious offenders would only need to serve two years in custody and would be able to serve another year at home under some form of supervision.

The minister often relies on the fact that the Bloc criticizes the legislation as too harsh and the Canadian Alliance criticizes it as too soft. She says that she has a balanced approach that is between the two alternatives.

With all due respect, if the bill is hopelessly flawed—and I would use stronger terms but that might be unparliamentary—then it is expected that the opposition parties will disagree with it from different angles. The minister's response is a copout. She has failed in her duty to develop proper and effective legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I know you are aware that about eight and a half years ago my son Jesse was murdered as he walked home with two friends from a party on a Saturday night. He was murdered in what was determined to be a random, unprovoked attack on the street by six total strangers. He was knocked to the ground unconscious, beaten, pummelled with a shopping cart and stabbed once in the back as he lay on the road. A 16 year old was charged and eventually convicted. I can therefore say that I have experienced the youth justice system from an entirely different perspective than most members in this place.

My family and I spent 20 months in the courts. We experienced the youth justice process. We heard the excuses. We went through a transfer hearing. We heard counsellors come in and say that the offender did not need to be transferred to adult court because all he needed was to finish high school and receive alcohol counselling.

In the ensuing years I have come to know many families of victims of young offenders.

Less than a week after my son was murdered there was a case in Courtenay, British Columbia, where a young girl, six years old, was murdered by her neighbour. He was 15 at the time and was on probation for sexually assaulting three young children a year earlier. The reason that happened was that under his probation conditions no one was monitoring him and he was allowed to play with young children. The police did not even know about him and his neighbours certainly did not know about him.

That opened my eyes to the whole issue of anonymity for young offenders. I have been a firm believer ever since that people must be aware when they have sex offenders in the community, even if they are young offenders.

There is also the case of Mr. Graham Niven, a 31 year old man murdered on the street by a 15 and an 18 year old. The last thing Mr. Niven did in his life was help out a 14 year old by giving him the last of the change in his pocket to take a taxi home. A few minutes later he was dead at the hands of a 15 year old.

I went to court with that family and had to sit through the snickering, laughing and high fives that went on continuously between the accused and his friends. That is the attitude some of these young people have with our court system.

As a sideline, that offence occurred in Coquitlam. The mayor at the time was Mr. Lou Sekora, a former member of this place. I recall like yesterday the hoopla that Mr. Sekora raised. He said he would come to Ottawa and change the Young Offenders Act. However after a photo op with the former justice minister and a bit of press for about a week we never again heard from Mr. Sekora on the issue, even when he came to this place as a member. It was more Liberal lip service.

Another case is that of Mrs. Jeanne Richter, a 79 year old widow beaten to death by a 15 and a 19 year old. Young girls in the courtroom who were friends of the accused were partying, winking, smiling and laughing as if it were something that happens every day. Again, that is the attitude.

I do not suggest for one minute that this is a reflection of all young people. It is a very small minority. Unfortunately the government, through this legislation and philosophy, chooses to treat these young people the same way it would treat a 12 year old shoplifter. That is wrong.

Yesterday during report stage debate I heard some of my colleagues in the Bloc speak of an actor who spent time in a youth facility studying for a part in a particular project and decrying the treatment of young offenders in prisons. Things could be done to improve the lot of young offenders who are incarcerated. I certainly do not argue with that. However I think the actor might like to spend time with me and my family, even eight and a half years later. Within the last month two of my son's best friends have seen the birth of their first children. He should see how we deal with that.

There is a family in Alberta mourning the loss of a 16 year old son just last week. Maybe the actor would like to spend a week with them and see it from their perspective.

After my son's murder I made a commitment to try to effect change. I have spoken at schools for the past eight years. I have spoken with young people, parent groups and legislators. I appeared before the justice committee a couple of times before I came to this place. I have done so to increase awareness and to make young people understand what they are doing, what they are getting into. I think it gets through to most of them.

As I said before, I work with a diversion program because I believe it is more important to prevent crime in the first place. However that does not mean that those who choose to persist in criminal behaviour or commit serious or multiple repeat offences should be treated with leniency. As long as the philosophy persists that killers and rapists should be treated in the same manner as shoplifters, Canadians will never accept the process.

I will close my comments by saying that this is definitely not the last we will hear of the youth criminal justice act. We will be back time and time again to debate its failures and propose changes. Instead of trying to get it right the first time the government seems more intent on getting it passed as is and leaving it to others to rectify. Unfortunately the bill is such a mess that it will not and cannot be remedied piecemeal after it passes this place. The bill is doomed to failure and as parliamentarians we are failing Canadians by allowing it to become law.

[Gurmant Grewal, Canadian Alliance, Surrey Central, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the constituents of Surrey Central to participate in the report stage debate on Bill C-7.

The Liberal government appears to have only reintroduced its previous legislation, Bill C-68 and Bill C-3. In Bill C-7, the name of the bill was changed for window dressing but the problems remain. On top of that, using closure to stop debate and move the bill through clearly shows the government does not care and lacks the political will to have effective legislation in the youth criminal justice act.

I would like to ask if this is what happens to the top priority of the justice minister. It is shameful. The amendment we are currently debating, put forth by the fifth party in the House, calls for a requirement to divulge the identity of a young offender to any professional or other person engaged in the supervision or care of a young person. This requirement to make known the identity and record of a young offender falls on the shoulders of the provincial director, a youth worker, the attorney general, a peace officer or any other person engaged in the provision of services to young people.

This amendment kicks in if such disclosure of this information is necessary, and the bill says it is necessary to ensure that the young person complies with orders under the act, to ensure the safety of staff, students and other persons, and to facilitate the rehabilitation of the young person.

This amendment is reasonable. It is the least of what this side of the House is asking of the government. It is a shame the Liberals are stuck with their heads buried in the sand, refusing to allow even basic amendments to their bill even though they have introduced or accepted 182 amendments, 180 of which are just technical in nature, which shows that when they drafted the bill it was poorly drafted from just a technical point of view as well.

The amendment we are debating today is what the Canadian Alliance asked for at committee stage of the bill. People in our society such as teachers, counsellors, camp counsellors, volunteers, sports coaches, supervisors at religious events and many others need to know that there is a young person in their midst who is capable of violent behaviour.

It is with regret that I watched the infamous video clips on BCTV when a student in a school badly beat his schoolmate while other kids watched. Someone from the group secretly videotaped it. I saw in yesterday's or today's news that this aggressor has joined boxing to let off steam. I believe that Canadians want such aggressive behaviour or the offenders in those cases identified, in this case to the coach and to other officials who are responsible for management and supervision of other youths in that group.

The refusal of the government to accept an amendment that would notify people in supervisory roles about the presence of a young offender in their midst is typical of the way the government has handled the bill.

After months of review and after hearing so many experts on all aspects of youth justice systems, the only changes the government has agreed to make are technical amendments proposed by the government to correct the technical errors of Bill C-3, the predecessor to Bill C-7. The government has not been open to changing any aspect of its legislation.

All of the opposition parties except the Bloc presented substantial amendments to Bill C-3. Those amendments did not receive debate in parliament. What a shame that we are not debating those amendments here. They were not accepted in the committee. They do not appear to have been considered by the government at all.

The Minister of Justice has tried this legislation three times and three times she has struck out. The Canadian Alliance, through its former version, the Reform Party, and the justice committee first endorsed alternative measures for first time non-violent offenders. The minister has once again failed to restrict this form of conditional sentencing. It is open to repeat offenders and it is open to violent offenders.

The list of presumptive offences for which an adult sentence may be imposed is severely restrictive. The list includes murder, attempted murder, manslaughter and aggravated sexual assault. It does not include sexual assault with a weapon, hostage taking, aggravated assault, kidnapping and a host of other serious violent offences.

In Bill C-7 the minister has further weakened the legislation by limiting presumptive offence procedure even more. Through clause 61 any province may decide that only 15 year old or 16 year old offenders who commit offences such as murder could be transferred to adult court, while 10 year olds and 11 year olds would still not be held criminally responsible for their crimes. There is a free ride.

The legislation would create a patchwork or checkerboard system of youth justice as many of its provisions permit the provinces undue discretion in deciding whether to seek adult sentencing, in publication of names and in access to records, to name just a few.

The legislation provides some movement toward victims' rights but even those are not ensured and are still woefully inadequate.

The provinces will be tasked to administer this legal nightmare but the federal government does not seem to care. This weak Liberal government, which is so arrogant, which lacks vision, which lacks backbone, does not care. The Liberals have not been open to a serious discussion of the proposals in their youth justice law.

The Liberals have promised $206 million over the first three years for the implementation of the bill, but that will not even come close to meeting their responsibility of providing 50% of the funding for youth justice. The Liberals have allowed federal funding to slip to about 20%. The provinces have to carry the can financially for these proposals, the costs of which will rise dramatically through legal argument and procedure.

Initial review of Bill C-7 indicates that the government has made it even weaker, likely to appease the Quebec government and the Bloc Quebecois.

For instance, the presumptive offence provision that moves youth 14 years of age and older automatically to adult court for murder et cetera, now permits the provinces, that is, Quebec, to raise the age to restrict the transfer to only 15 year old and 16 year old offenders. Age of application remains at 12 years to 18 years, and there are still restrictions on naming violent offenders.

The bill still has an emphasis on attempting to understand the circumstances underlying criminal behaviour and on rehabilitation and reintegration. The protection of the public plays second fiddle. Denunciation and deterrence seem to be foreign words to the government.

If the legislation passes, the complexities and loopholes would cause horrendous delays and costs to our youth criminal justice process. Legal bills would be phenomenal. The government should understand that deterrence should not be a motivation to commit a crime. The amendment, if accepted, would provide for deterrence. It would also provide an opportunity to develop solutions for a safer environment.

[Serge Marcil, Liberal, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to recall the facts about Bill C-7 now under consideration.

In the last parliament, the government introduced a bill to amend the Young Offenders Act.

We already had a Young Offenders Act which was enforced differently in different regions of our country. Each province would enforce it in its own way and Quebec is a model in that regard. Quebec has its own culture and thus its own way of approaching problems.

The Bloc Quebecois was very much opposed to the first bill tabled at that time. It had even received the unanimous support of the Quebec national assembly, which had passed a motion in November 1999 asking the federal Minister of Justice to suspend passage of Bill C-3 and to allow Quebec to continue implementing an intervention strategy based on prevention and rehabilitation.

The Bloc Quebecois had moved almost 3,000 amendments. In fact, it had moved 2,977. That was a lot of amendments for one bill, to delay what we call at home—in political language or at least in parliamentary language—filibusters. We came back and we moved amendments; we moved them to play for time and to prevent passage of the bill.

In February 2001, the Government of Canada introduced in the House of Commons Bill C-7, the youth criminal justice Act. There was also a reason for this. Most of us, Liberal members here in Ottawa had met with some members of the Quebec national assembly to know about the inherent objections to passage of Bill C-3.

Of course, after some discussion, five points stood out and we made representations to the federal Minister of Justice. A specific answer was given to the five points raised by the members of the national assembly in their letter. Of course, not all the members of the national assembly signed the letter. We did not have consultations with the sovereignist members of the national assembly. We had consultations with the federalist members of the national assembly because this is also a federal bill. We really wanted to know their position.

We answered the five concerns raised about Bill C-3. We have amended the bill to completely resolve these issues.

We now learn Quebec's national assembly has unanimously agreed to another motion expressing its opposition.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the motion as it is identical to a motion I submitted. It has been put forward because of evidence presented to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

The Canadian School Boards Association, the Saskatchewan School Trustees Association and others have presented an argument to the effect that subclause 125(6) of the bill be changed to mandatory language from its permissive nature. What I mean is that the subclause uses the word may and the motion changes the word to shall. Instead of saying that maybe we should be getting schools involved with the youth justice process, we would be saying that we shall get schools involved.

Schools are an important partner in the youth justice process. Our schools, by law, must be accessible to young offenders. Our schools are obliged to facilitate attendance and educational success. Like any employer, our schools have a statutory obligation to ensure the physical safety of their employees, to say nothing of their obligation to protect the safety of their students. These are all noteworthy objectives.

However, as with most noteworthy objectives, there is often a but or an exception. In this case it is this: To properly participate in the rehabilitation and reformation of young offenders, schools must be informed when young offenders enrol within the school environment.

As I have stated, our schools have a number of obligations to the various participants in the system. The interests of employees, students, the community and the school system must be considered along with the interests of the young offender.

The present wording of Bill C-7 states that the provincial director, youth worker, attorney general, peace officer, et cetera, may disclose to those engaged in the supervision or care of a young person, including schools and other educational institutions, information contained in a youth record if such disclosure is necessary to ensure compliance with an order of the court, to ensure safety of staff or students or other persons, or to facilitate the rehabilitation of the young person.

All the motion is saying is that if it is necessary to ensure compliance with a court order, to ensure safety of a school population or to assist in the rehabilitation of a young offender, the necessary information from the youth records shall be disclosed.

Some will argue that this type of mandatory disclosure will abuse the privacy rights of the offender. First, I have difficulty swallowing that argument when the legislation already permits disclosure in some circumstances. The clause says that information may be disclosed. Where is the privacy protection there?

Second and far more important are the security rights of staff and other students at the school. The institution must know the background of the student to provide proper safeguards for all to work and learn in its surroundings. Surely this is an example when the rights of the many should come ahead of the rights of the few, especially when the many are innocent and law abiding and the few have voluntarily decided to break the laws of society.

Other critics talk about the fear that education professionals will not respect the confidentiality of the information. That is also bogus and it is a red herring. Bill C-7 already permits the disclosure of this type of information. It is just not mandatory. There seems to be little concern for breach of confidentiality in these few cases.

As well educational people are professionals. They deal with confidential material every day whether it has to do with child welfare involvement, police investigation or even student disclosure in confidence. There is little, if any, concern about abuse of confidentiality by school board personnel.

Lastly there is the argument of civil liability. I can readily foresee, especially with the way society has been rapidly moving toward holding others civilly liable for damage and harm, that we may be placing the taxpayer at risk by failing to provide this type of information to school board officials. I can imagine a day when a violent young person is released from custody and placed in one of our high schools without anyone knowing the background of the youth.

Should that youth commit another violent crime such as a sexual assault and it becomes known that there was a previous record of violent behaviour, I cannot help but think that the victim and/or her parents would have a case to pursue to obtain compensation for damages and suffering.

After all, we have the state permitting a young person to surreptitiously enter the community and the school, yet we are not providing any notice whatsoever to prepare unsuspecting school employees and students. It is like putting a time bomb in a school and not telling anyone. Surely our courts will hold someone accountable when this occurs.

The government's feeble response to the cries of our citizens to replace the despised Young Offenders Act is most disappointing. For the past number of years I have been actively involved in the review of Bill C-7 and its predecessors, Bill C-3 and Bill C-68. The minister and the government have been quite clear that there is to be no deviation from or improvement on the government's idea of what is best for Canadians when it comes to youth justice.

I am not holding my breath for the government to accept this motion. However it is my job as a critic to present changes such as this motion after hearing from various groups and witnesses from many parts of the country. Nonetheless I urge members of this place to have a serious look at what is a relatively simple proposal. I also urge members to consider whether they want to be responsible for failing to support school boards and institutions across the land.

I will conclude by reading a paragraph from a letter I received from the British Columbia School Trustees Association. It reads:

As school boards, we have the responsibility to ensure the safety of our staff and students, and to provide the best educational opportunities for every student in our care. We also work through our school communities to prevent crime. Young offenders are often students in our care. In order to provide a safe school environment and also facilitate the education (and rehabilitation) of a young offender, it is vital that we have access to information about the young offender.

I urge all members to support the motion.

Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization And Divestiture Act

[The Speaker]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at third reading of Bill C-3.

Business Of The House

[Marlene Catterall, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Discussions have taken place among all parties and I believe you would find consent for that if a recorded division is requested Monday, April 30 on a motion to refer Bill C-16 to committee before second reading, pursuant to Standing Order 73(1) it shall be deemed deferred until the end of government orders on Tuesday, May 1.

Discussions have also taken place among all parties and there is agreement pursuant to Standing Order 45(7) to further defer the recorded divisions requested earlier today on third reading of Bill C-9 and third reading of Bill C-3 from Monday, April 30 until the end of government orders on Tuesday, May 1.

Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization And Divestiture Act

[Bev Desjarlais, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on Bill C-3, an act to amend the Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and Divestiture Act and the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act.

I do not think there has been any doubt where the New Democratic Party is on the bill. It was indicated yesterday by speakers from our party that we intend to oppose the bill.

I just want to give a bit of a summary for Canadians who are listening to what is happening in the House. I am pleased to indicate that when I go around my riding there are a number of people who watch what goes on in the House, so it is important that we take the time to have some discussion in debate and to maybe let Canadians know exactly what is entailed in the different bills that come before the House.

The bill relates to the mandatory provisions in the articles of Cameco Corporation, formerly Eldorado Nuclear Limited and Petro-Canada. Bill C-3 was first introduced in the 36th parliament as Bill C-39 and subsequently died on the order paper with the dissolution of parliament in the fall of 2000 for that wonderful election time.

The enactment provides that 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 stipulates 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 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 the activity.

I am sure that left a lot of people out there guessing just what the heck we were talking about. The bottom line is that once again it is the sell off of Canadian resources to foreign companies with no other party in the House speaking out against it except the New Democratic Party.

Yesterday the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources made some comments about it not being a big worry because there was only a certain percentage of foreign shares in Petro-Canada. Even though it could be as high as 20%, there are a mere 6% or thereabouts that are under foreign shares. We are going to open the door wide and say that we are for sale.

Petro-Canada, the last hold on any kind of control over that energy resource in Canada, is up for sale. We are going to throw it out on the open market. This is the last opportunity for any kind of control, as limited as it is, because the previous federal governments put it up for sale like they did with so many of our other very important national programs.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources indicated that he did not see it as a big issue, that he did not see anyone buying it and that it would still be controlled by Canada. People will have to excuse me for not having much faith in that because that was the same argument the previous governments used for CN and CP, and will probably be the same one this government will use for our airline industry. Little by little it is chipping away and saying that Canada is for sale. Canadians will no longer have control over our important resources and programs. Therefore I obviously have very little faith in that.

When it was indicated that I would get an opportunity to speak today, I reviewed the debates that took place yesterday. I was extremely impressed with my hon. colleague for Palliser and I want to thank him for his in-depth speech. If anyone wants to really get the true picture of what is going on, one needs only refer to yesterday's Hansard and read the hon. member for Palliser's comments, his experiences and the situations that are out there.

As I read his comments, as well as some of my other colleagues' comments, I also had the opportunity to read the comments of one of the Alliance members. I was shaking my head and thought that this is truly the form of the Alliance. It was the ultimate double speak that I had ever read at any one point, and I want to make reference to it.

I have been quite surprised that politicians literally speak out of both sides of their mouths. They are in favour of this or that because they want to use their householders or ten percenters and have everyone on their side. The bottom line is there are differences. We cannot always be on everybody's side because there are times when there are important issues and politicians want to be there for Canadians and support what is beneficial for them. A politician does not want to get every vote. There are principles involved.

I want to reflect on the double speak from yesterday. It was the member for Athabasca who was speaking. His comments were:

I am pleased to see that the legislation is mindful of the possible consequence of high levels of foreign ownership of uranium resources.

The New Democratic Party has always been concerned over the possible consequences of foreign ownership of our very important natural resources. The Alliance member is acknowledging that, but then goes on to say:

The lower limits on Comeco shares reflect across the board government restrictions on foreign activity in uranium mining.

He is saying that because we do not allow more foreign shares to be sold that is a real issue. That means we have to be concerned about foreign shares, but then we are concerned that we cannot sell them. He goes on to say:

While the Canadian Alliance is all for Canadian businesses having all the opportunities to succeed, we must also be conscious of the need to keep such potentially volatile resources within Canadian control.

He used the words volatile resources in Canadian control. Then his next line is:

The bill allows for greater flexibility in the selling of shares in Canadian companies, and I support that effort.

Has anyone ever heard more double speak in such few short paragraphs? It got better when he went on to talk about Petro-Canada and basically said much of the same thing.

I say to parliamentarians and to all Canadians that uranium is a volatile resource but so are our oil and gas resources. Are they not crucial resources to Canada? Should we not be concerned over the total sell off of those resources to foreign companies?

I wonder if members of the Alliance, Liberals or Conservatives believe that it is okay if they are bought up by Americans? There is a serious risk in selling off our resources in totality to any foreign company. We as Canadians must retain control of those resources.

I would like Canadians to recognize the type of doublespeak that goes on here and to emphasize the importance that the New Democratic Party places on having Canadians controlling our natural resources. We felt that way about our railways, our airlines and our water because they were serious issues.

When I hear this kind of doublespeak from members of other parties, I wonder how they would protect our water resources. Would they do things any differently when all they can see in their minds is the ideology of privatization? Their answer is that everything is for sale.

I am sure that if they could find out how to privatize the sweat off somebody's back and make a profit from it, and they do those kind of things anyway through their labour legislation, they would figure that is okay too. They believe anything can be privatized. It is time that members of parliament and all Canadians take a serious look at the drastic consequences of allowing open season on all our natural resources.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very glad to be able to join the debate on Bill C-3. I am probably one of those people who the member for Prince Albert was talking about. I firmly believe the federal government has not just a role but an obligation to try to ensure that Canadians have good access to affordable energy, especially in our harsh winter climate. Energy is not a luxury commodity it is a necessary commodity.

Something that is our birthright, something that is our common wealth, something that is part of our Canadian heritage should be accessible to Canadians at a preferential price than we sell it offshore. I am proud to say that on behalf of Canadians.

Many Canadians, especially people in my riding, have phoned me and asked for help, for some relief, for the federal government to stop being so impotent when it comes to giving them access to affordable energy. They are asking why it cannot be that way. They sent us here to represent their interests. This winter their interests or needs were better access to affordable energy because they thought they were being gouged, ripped off and cheated by big oil.

There was a time when Canadians collectively decided to try to take steps to represent their interests when it came to energy. That is when people with more vision apparently than those who occupy the House today came up with the idea that perhaps we should not have our entire energy industry foreign owned and foreign controlled because we do not know when we are being gouged or overcharged.

They did not say, as the hon. member for Prince Albert was trying to imply, that we should nationalize the whole industry. They did not come on that strong. They said we should have one oil company, a watchdog, a window on the industry. We would be part of the industry and we would have one company owned by the people of Canada, not owned by the Liberal government.

What is wrong with that idea? What is it about that idea that so frightens small minded people? The hon. member also tried to imply that crown corporations are owned by the party in power. I get tired about hearing about it.

It is very fitting, timely and appropriate that we are having this debate today because I think energy is a top of mind issue for most Canadians. Certainly judging from the calls I have received in recent months, frankly this past winter, Canadians are very concerned about a constant and reliable supply of clean, affordable energy.

I am mostly concerned about the homeowners who live in my riding. They are my primary concern, but small businesses, schools, hospitals, institutions and non-profit organizations are reeling with shock and horror at what is happening to their operating costs, for seemingly no rhyme or reason. Seemingly arbitrary skyrocketing prices in energy are what infuriates Canadians the most. That is why recently people such as me in my private member's bill have been advocating some kind of government intervention, some kind of regulation, no matter what form it takes.

If it bothers the hon. member for Prince Albert so much, we will not call it a national energy program. That seems to irritate him. It seems to set him off. We do not want to provoke him and make him any more hostile than he already is, so we will call it something else. Let us call it an energy price commission. There is a good moderate sort of phrase. It would not have broad sweeping powers to nationalize every oil industry.

All we are saying is we want some stability and some regulations. If we had an arm's length energy price commission, the oil companies would have to come, whether producers or retailers, to that commission and justify why they deserve a rate increase, a hike.

We would not let it happen every long week. Perhaps twice a year or perhaps every six months, they could come before that panel and argue the merits of their case as to why they deserve an energy price increase and then that would be it. If it were justifiable, the people of Canada would know the rationale and they would not feel so gouged, cheated and ripped off as they do today.

The hon. member who spoke previously can call that whatever he wants. I call it a good idea. I call it advocating on behalf of Canadians. It is not just the NDP that seems to think that way. The Government of Newfoundland introduced such a thing a short two months ago. We have been talking about it all winter. I am sure it was not our initiative that gave it the idea. It actually learned it from the Government of Prince Edward Island because it had been doing that for 40 years.

The Government of Prince Edward Island had the common sense to represent the interests of its own people and put the interests of its citizens before the interests of big oil. It could stand up on its hind legs and stand up to big oil. Now Newfoundland has followed. Perhaps now it does not sound like such a crazy idea to the small minded people who are afraid of that concept. Canadians would be proud of us if they could hear a debate in the House in which we represent their interests and not the interests of big oil.

We have heard a lot about energy pricing today. I should like to raise another element. The member for Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge talked about the real costs of margins from the producer to the refiner. I should like to talk about the whole cost of energy.

We have to start viewing energy pricing. We have to look at the whole cost of burning fossil fuels. When we look at the whole cost of oil as a fossil fuel it is amazing. It is not the $12 a barrel that it costs to produce a barrel of oil in the tar sands. It is not the $28 a barrel that we are charged by OPEC. It is more like $150 a barrel when the cost of the American military to keep the gulf shipping lanes open is factored in. When the environmental degradation that takes place every time we burn a litre of fossil fuels is factored in, that is the whole cost.

When it is viewed that way all other sources of alternative energy such as solar power or wind power seem like a bargain by comparison. Demand side management becomes the logical choice. Instead of trying to find ways to get cheaper access to fossil fuels and soiling our own nests to the point where we cannot live on the planet for very much longer if we carry on, we should be looking at ways to enjoy the same quality of life or even an improved quality of life using less and less energy.

Canada should be a centre of excellence in demand side management. Obviously we have needs that most countries do not have in terms of a harsh winter climate. We should be experts in the field of doing more with less. I certainly advocate that as being the direction we should go.

To meet the actual immediate needs of Canadians I believe there is a role for government to play in intervening to represent the interests of Canadian citizens before the interests of oil companies. The idea of a national energy program should not be frightening. It should not be met with such fear and trepidation. It is not a two headed monster. It is looking after people's interests.

The only real thing that we have seen the government try to do to recognize the plight of Canadians this last winter was the gas rebate, the home heating rebate program. I received a phone call from a person in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. I do not know how he got my number. It is not in my riding, but the argument was the rebate system was flawed and that we should think about what it does to northerners. Northerners make higher salaries because of the increased cost of living. Nobody in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, got the $125 because none of them were at the low income cutoff line that we see in most cities.

Even though they have $500 and $600 per month home heating bills in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, nobody was getting the rebate. The rebate of $125 would heat their houses for one week but they did not get a penny. It was getting so bad that the home heating retailer would not give credit any more. People had to show up with cash on the barrelhead to purchase a barrel of home heating oil because he was concerned that they simply would not be paying those bills because they did not have the money. That is the kind of crisis we are facing when we do not intervene on people's behalf.

We have heard a great deal about energy supply and energy strategies. Now we are starting to hear about a continental energy strategy, that George Bush has a vision of being able to tap into the resources of the whole hemisphere. We heard recently he now plans to open up the natural gas fields in Alaska, causing the need for the Mackenzie Valley pipeline or a pipeline like it to run down through Yukon or through Alaska into the southern states.

I can see why he is interested. There is 33 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in that one natural gas field. It seems like an astronomical number until we consider that every year the United States uses 22 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. He is going to open up the north and arguably, although I think the argument is pretty good, it will do serious environmental damage to Canada with the Mackenzie Valley pipeline that has been studied to death. There is no way to build this pipeline without serious interference with the flora and fauna of the Yukon territory so that the United States can have natural gas for one and a half years. He will do all that damage for one and a half years of natural gas.

This is staggering to me. It is probably the best and most graphic illustration I can find to make the point that we cannot continue to do what we are doing. The jig is up in terms of energy consumption in North America.

David Suzuki had a good statistic recently. He said that for everyone in all the developing nations to live with the same level of energy use as we live with in Canada today, we would need six more planets. There are not enough resources on this planet for everyone in China to have 2.2 vehicles in the garage, an outboard motor and all other things we use energy for. There simply is not enough. There simply would not be enough air to breathe if we were fuelling that many vehicles.

We need to take a sensible approach to an energy strategy. I would argue that our energy price commission would comment on alternative forms of energy. This would not only help set the price of energy and the length of time at which those prices would be fixed, but it would also promote alternative sources of energy. It would promote Canada as a centre of excellence for alternative energy sources so that we could develop the technology and export it. This would benefit the planet instead of just flooding the world with more and more natural gas and oil.

If we used an interventionist hand or at least took a regulating role, the Government of Canada could not only benefit Canadians by better access to affordable energy but also benefit the world in terms of showing some vision and some recognition that what we are doing is wrong and sooner or later we need to wean ourself off fossil fuels.

In terms of being a fiercely proud Canadian nationalist, Bill C-3 seems like the death rattle of a national dream. I hearken back to a time when people in the Chamber had enough sense, foresight and political courage to take active steps to represent the interests of Canadian citizens before the interests of oil companies. That manifested itself in a national energy program, part of the strategy which had one oil company owned by the people of Canada so that we had a watchdog on the industry and a window into how the industry really operated.

That was a time of courage. That was an era when people had some vision and some political courage. That has been eroded and stripped away by the mania that everything must be deregulated, the free hand of the market must prevail and the government must not intervene whatsoever.

It has not served us well. It was the mantra of the Business Council on National Issues and groups acting out of self-interest and not the common good. We used to have people who were taking steps for the common good. What a concept.

I believe our precious natural resources are part of our common wealth. It is a term we also do not hear too often. Some of us feel strongly that the oil under our feet is part of the common wealth we all share as Canadian citizens. Our children should be proud of it and we should be able to feel secure about it.

One of the galling things is that we have now watched successive governments trade away our ability to intervene on behalf of Canadians when it comes to preferential pricing of energy products even though it is ours, is under our soil and we seem to have quite a bit of it. We have an abundance of natural gas.

I used to work on the oil rigs in Alberta. Every time we hit natural gas everybody would collectively curse under their breath because they did not want more gas. We would cap those wells off and move on to the next well. That is a fact. One cannot swing a cat in northern Alberta without hitting a capped off natural gas well. There is no shortage. There is a manufactured shortage if anything so prices can be jacked up.

Returning to my original point, there was a time in 1975 when men and women in this place with political courage, with vision and with a fierce national pride inspired whole generations.

I was a young man then and I was very proud of the fact that we were taking active steps to represent ourselves and make sure we did not lose whole industries to foreign ownership.

In fact, Liberals such as Walter Gordon and Paul Martin Sr. and people like them were against too much foreign ownership. They passed laws to regulate how much of our industry should be controlled by foreigners. Frankly we want the interests of Canadians to be put before the interests of others. That is only natural.

Why, then, would successive governments, the Tory government under Mulroney and now the Liberal government under the current leadership, trade away to our export market our ability to make sure Canadians have access to our precious energy resources at a preferential price? I call it economic treason when someone trades that away.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge, ON]

Madam Speaker, once again I have an opportunity to give a brief illustration of some of the concerns I have with Bill C-3.

Let me state from the outset that I will be supporting the bill. It is a timely bill. We are debating a bill on a day in which Canadians, short of what happened in the House of Commons in the past 24 to 48 hours, are beginning to wonder whether or not a nation so blessed with energy is being put in the situation where it is being manipulated by its own resources. Canadians are seeing prices that they could never have imagined a few years ago.

Some time ago members on this side of the House took under their own wings the idea of looking at the gas and oil industry. I am proud to say that the industry is doing extremely well in Canada, but not as proud to say that for most of my constituents it is doing far too well.

I would like to indicate where the bill could be improved because it is clear that its intention is to divest, among other things, federal government shares which it currently owns in Petro-Canada. Petro-Canada was created out of the national energy policy. As a young assistant I sat in the gallery and watched as the act unfolded. Back then it was an issue for me. Amazingly enough at the age of 38 it is still an issue for me and it will continue to be an issue for most Canadians.

I will provide my colleagues with a description of where the energy sector is going. There has been a lot of interest in the idea of a continental energy policy. I had an opportunity to make some observations on that during the take note debate last evening. The most interesting comment that I have heard came from the former governor general of the country, Ray Hnatyshyn, who as a young member from Saskatchewan referred to a continental energy policy as it related to Canada and the United States at the time as being a bit like “swapping partners with a bachelor”.

The difficulty is trying to explain to Canadians that when there are opportunities to provide more energy for other parts of the world desperately in need of energy, there inevitably becomes a consequence to one's own consumption and to one's own domestic situation as far as the market is concerned.

It would probably shock and surprise Canadians to know when they are fuelling up with gasoline or buying home heating fuel, or truckers who are using diesel fuel, that all our energy is priced in U.S. terms because of the differentiation between the Canadian and the U.S. dollar.

The standard benchmark for oil as set by West Texas Intermediate is about $26, $27 or $28 a barrel in the U.S., which is $42 or $43 in Canadian terms. That number has to be divided by 159 because a conventional barrel of oil yields 159 litres of gasoline. That makes it about 25 or 26 cents a litre. That is the breakdown of why people in Ontario are paying 80 cents a litre for gasoline and perhaps more.

Crude oil in Edmonton today is selling for about 26 cents a litre. It takes about one cent to push it through taxpayer funded pipelines which we gave over to the oil industry as an apology for the energy program many years ago, so it is now 27 or 28 cents a litre.

Refiners in Ontario and across the country will then transform the crude product, the bitumen, into a rack price, which is known as the wholesale price. This usually costs them about two or three cents a litre. However the margin today is 18 cents a litre. Of the refinery's production, 15 cents is going into the pockets of oil companies. I am not so concerned about their ability to do it. They say it is economics 101 and it is their right to do these things because that is the way it is done in other markets.

In the U.S., the average refinery margin is hovering about nine cents a litre. However, because we are Canadians and because it is our own product priced in U.S. dollars, not including taxes, we are being forced to pay an extra eight or nine cents a litre. That may not mean a lot but when we consider that 35 billion litres of gasoline a year are sold in Canada, we are talking about a transfer, for every penny where there is no competition at that level, of some $350 million from the Canadian consumer's pocket to the oil companies. Some members may wish to nod their heads approvingly or disapprovingly but the facts and the proof are in the pudding.

The record profits that are being made in the downstream, in the refining and retailing of gasoline, is testament in and of itself of the evidence that something has gone completely wrong with the industry and for which there is no oversight.

I would now like to talk about the retail margin. If I am an independent I would be buying gasoline today for about 74 cents a litre including tax. I would have about four to five cents to work on. That is usually what is needed to turn a pump on, to pay for staff and to keep one's nose above the water line.

Since 1993 we have seen the sustained policy of oil companies, using their huge profit at the refinery level to cross-subsidize. That never gets challenged because there is no competition there. They do not mind losing money at the retail level.

Big, beautiful gasoline sites are being put up by the integrated major oil companies in the country. It costs millions of dollars to acquire the land, to put up the infrastructure and the capital, and yet they are running on margins of one cent a litre or half a cent a litre, and in some cases negative one or negative two cents a litre.

This would be completely illegal in the United States. Shareholders would get upset at losing money at the retail level because retailing and refining gasoline are completely different. Also anti-competitive questions would be raised. To build a facility like that on the most expensive sites to attract people to the site would be prohibitive. It would likely reflect in the cost.

Hence when we go to the United States, and many of us have done that although with our weaker dollar it has been more difficult, we go to a little gas station on the side of the road. It is an ugly, beaten up looking thing. The guy is outside with his dirty hands and his wife is pumping gasoline. The gasoline at this station is 10 cents a gallon less than the Mobil across the street. A product cannot be offered at cost or below cost unless money is being made somewhere else.

There are opportunities for the government to look at the issue of segment reporting. One of the benefits that I hope would not be lost, in any attempt to sell the final 18% of Petro-Canada shares, would be segment reporting. One of its advantages, because it is a publicly held company, is that it tells people what it made at the retail level. It has not engaged in predatory pricing versus what it has lost or made at the refinery level.

Finally I want to talk about what makes up the cost of gasoline. We have 26 cents for crude. We have 18 cents as a refiner margin today in Ontario, particularly in Toronto. We have taxes in the area of 24.7 cents, which consist of 10 cents for the federal excise, 14.7 cents for the province and about 5.6 cents for the GST. Of course the GST goes up with the cost of the product. The final point I want to put into this cost, and why it is so important for us to consider it now in Bill C-3, is that in the future when it comes to being able to measure these companies we will have less of an opportunity to do so. Yes, the books will be open, but they will be open for shareholders.

Will there be guarantees, as we see with a current partially held public company, that these companies will be held to a higher standard? Will there be guarantees to ensure that all reporting is not combined and that it is not simply put in and consolidated, as we see with Imperial Oil and Sunoco? They tell us what they made in crude and of course what they made in the entire downstream, which is refining and retailing. As we know, they are two completely separate businesses.

There are opportunities for the federal government and parliament to begin to look at the impact a possible continental energy policy would have on product. For instance, in regard to transferring a certain amount of product from Canada to the United States, priced in U.S. dollars, if we do not take into account the fact that there will be an impact on Canadians, a cost push in higher prices, then I think we are engaging in a fool's errand. There is no doubt in my mind that a continental energy policy must take into account the impact it could have on Canadians.

I believe it is important that we head in that direction and that we begin to look at ways in which we can co-ordinate our valuable energies and our resources. However, if we fail to estimate the impact on Canadians, we will lose the very people who give this place legitimacy.

Right now gasoline is at 80 cents a litre in Toronto and there is an 18 cent a litre margin at the refinery level, which not too many papers, media or members of parliament want to talk about. We tend to spin around and worry about the taxes that are part of gasoline. I think they are important, but there is not a single member of the House of Commons who does not know that those taxes go back into general revenues and are there for the common good of the country. We can dismiss re-election for every member of parliament here if we do not like the way our taxes are spent, but there is no accountability for the chairman of Imperial Oil.

That money that we call taxpayers' money, which is part and parcel of the cost of crude, does not go up on long weekends and every Canadian knows that. Canadians also know it goes to pay for our hospitals and for our roads. Equally, they know that if we are dealing with the subject of taxes maybe we ought to look at how the oil industry is spending those taxes.

It may come as a surprise to some members of the House of Commons that an oil company will charge an independent cash on the barrelhead, taxes in, for delivery of goods and products, for their product, the gasoline. They demand the taxes up front. However, because they are large companies they get to keep that tax for 30 to 40 days as a float, simply because they happen to be large players. That is part of their general revenue. Never has working with the government been so profitable.

For this reason I find it rather ironic that we are dealing with what appears to be a rather casual housekeeping matter in Bill C-3, that we should proceed with this. However, make no mistake about it. Most of us here know that we are proceeding with the further privatization of a company that has done very well from the marketing point of view considering where its shares were a few years ago. I applaud the company for that. They are now at $40.72 in trading. That is quite a whack of cash. Some $2 billion is what the federal government has at stake here if it decides to sell its common shares on the open market tomorrow.

I would argue very passionately that this money is only a small amount of the money Canadians put toward creating Petro-Canada in 1990 as a result of a decision by the House of Commons. I think the time has come to do something, given the high cost of energy and the anticipated even higher costs down the road. The oil companies use the excuses of warmer summers and colder winters or shutdowns in Kuala Lumpur or wherever in order to justify these high prices. The excuses are predictable, but they are certainly not exhaustive.

For that reason I think it is important for the House of Commons to consider taking that money and do nothing else, short of putting it in the general revenue, but to give it to every single Canadian on his or her income tax in the form of a grant, a credit or however the system can be worked. I would advocate very strongly for that because I think it gets us away from the arguments being made by members on the other side that the solution to high costs of energy is somehow related to taxes.

Members on the other side know only too well, as my colleagues here from New Brunswick know, that when the provincial government of New Brunswick in 1992 gave back two cents a litre to consumers, delivered through the oil companies, the public never saw the savings. The hon. member for Peterborough knows this very well and has said it very eloquently to a lot of his constituents.

Consumers felt that the government was heading in the right direction by dropping taxes, for whatever reason, and it was one of the more difficult environments in which to do it, but the public never saw the savings. This was reason the Liberal committee on gasoline pricing recommended that if we were to take the tax off taxes on gasoline, we must ensure that the resulting savings go to Canadians, not to the bottom line of oil companies.

That was true then and we have evidence of it having occurred in real terms in Canada. It is one of the reasons that, yes, even the right wing government of Mike Harris in the province of Ontario agrees with the findings of the committee. It is one of the reasons they have done nothing with their 14.7 cents a litre.

I also take the liberty at this time to explain and remind members of the House of Commons that when it comes to diesel, the fuel that keeps our trucks going to and fro, the federal government takes a mere four cents a litre, not 14.7 cents, not 22 cents and not 25 cents. We recognize the importance of that industry.

As my hon. colleague from Peterborough explained, which I did not know, when a farmer or a construction company buys coloured fuel no taxes are paid from the federal point of view, period. There may GST on it but that is quickly remitted.

The federal government, as it relates to taxes, is on very strong ground. I believe that some day there will be the ability for us to afford a tax cut in that area, but consumers are not fooled. Only six months ago crude oil was at $38 a barrel and the price at the pump was 77 cents in Ontario. It is now down to $26 a barrel for crude and the price has gone up to 80 cents a litre and rising.

No matter how many analysts or how much of the public's money is being used to bamboozle the public about how gas pricing occurs, the public is not fooled by these rather shameful tactics to use their money to make them feel like complete idiots when it comes to how pricing occurs.

I would not be so passionate about the question of energy or gasoline if I did not think it was a problem that existed elsewhere in other industries. I have talked to other colleagues about this before. I believe we have some problems with respect to concentration. If the oil industry can get away with this, then I am sure there are other industries that can do the same.

I want to finally end by simply saying that I call upon all colleagues and members of parliament on both sides. I am certainly interested in hearing their questions. Believe it or not, I had no intention to stand and talk on this bill but it begins the process of coming to grips with the changes around us.

If we do not begin to understand the market structure to which we are making changes, we will have done a disservice to the public. We will have failed in our mission to create good public policy. I plan to work with the government. It is a good bill but let us do it in a manner considerate to the context in which Canada currently finds itself with high energy prices.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will add my comments on this very important bill a little later, but I would like to ask for a comment from the hon. member.

He will recall that it was his party in 1990 that began the process of selling Petro-Canada. At the time it was seen as a very wise move given the need for capitalization and the changes that were necessary. Ten years later, we see that gasoline prices have now hit their highest levels and that although retail margins are a little weak, we are now seeing refinery margins in the order of 18 cents a litre. By the way, that never gets discussed by the press because for some reason there seems to be a conspiracy of silence, whatever the case may be.

More specifically, to the question of the number of shares held by the Canadian public through the government, it is 49.4 million shares out of 271 million common shares in Petro-Canada, at $40.72, which is about $2 billion in potential revenue.

I wonder whether the hon. member has given any thought to the idea that rather than the $15 billion, if we amortize that over a number of years, that has been spent by the Canadian taxpayer to create Petro-Canada in the first place—and we can debate the merits of whether it was there to remove refinery capacity in the country, because that is exactly what has happened—would he consider or at least give some thought to, based on what Bill C-3 is proposing, the notion of returning $2 billion in income taxes to Canadians as opposed to simply returning it to general revenue?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, I listened to the hon. member's speech about his points of view on Bill C-3, which would see us doing away with our last influence on or ownership of anything to do with a public sector energy strategy, at least, or an energy strategy in the public interest, if we could put it that way.

Could the hon. member explain to me the motivation, this seeming passion, on the part of government and obviously on the part of his party to divest ourselves of any interest whatsoever in our energy sector? Why do he and his party think that all things publicly owned are bad and all things privately owned are good and somehow better run and better managed just because they are in the private sector?

I will let him answer, but I would argue that many Canadians want more government intervention in the energy sector at this time because they are facing spiralling, out of control energy and fuel costs. They want the government to take an active role. How does he juxtapose that reality with his party's and the government's fixation on privatizing everything in the energy sector?

[Gerald Keddy, Progressive Conservative, South Shore, NS]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand today to speak to Bill C-3, an act to amend the Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and Divestiture Act and the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act.

The bill opens up two Canadian companies to greater foreign ownership and expands the individual ownership provisions. The intent of the bill is to allow greater flexibility on the part of the two companies, Petro-Canada and Cameco, to better position themselves within the global marketplace.

Within their industries Petro-Canada and Cameco are national and world leaders respectively. Petro-Canada is familiar to most Canadians because of its retail gas outlets. However it also has significant oil and gas exploration and development initiatives in Canada's north and along the east coast. It is involved in the Alberta tar sands as well.

We all know the oil and gas sector is doing well and benefiting enormously from the high price of oil and gas. Petro-Canada is well positioned within the sector to profit from both upstream and downstream production. However it continues, like any company, to look for growth opportunities. The legislation is expected to give Petro-Canada greater flexibility for strategic management as the oil and gas sector continues to evolve.

While the lessening of restrictions on foreign and individual ownership is one issue addressed by the legislation, the bill would also allow Petro-Canada to sell, transfer or otherwise dispose of its assets without separate provisions for upstream and downstream operations.

Upstream operations such as development in the Alberta tar sands, offshore oil exploration in Newfoundland and natural gas exploration in western Canada are some of the core businesses of Petro-Canada. Downstream operations, including the nearly 2,000 retail and wholesale outlets across Canada, make Petro-Canada one of the more recognizable names in the gas delivery business and the second largest petroleum refining and marketing company in Canada.

Petro-Canada has recently focused on its core businesses, specifically the oil and gas production that has proven successful on the east coast and in western Canada. The legislation could provide the company additional leeway to concentrate on areas that have proven successful while allowing it to dispose of operations that do not meet its core focus.

The legislation should allow the federal government to divest itself of its remaining 18% stake in Petro-Canada. Oil and gas companies are profiting from current market conditions and it is a favourable time for the federal government to get out of the industry. We all know to buy low and sell high. If the government wants to maximize its investment now is the time to sell.

How the government manages the windfall from such a sale is another question. It was the Canadian taxpayer who footed the bill when the government established Petro-Canada as a crown corporation in 1975 and it should be the taxpayer who benefits now. That does not mean further health care cuts or increased devolution of services to the provinces without corresponding increases in transfer payments.

The Nova Scotia government has recently been addressing its own problem in the oil and gas industry: insignificant royalties from east coast oil and gas development. Nova Scotia sees only 18 cents of every dollar generated by the offshore. The remainder goes to the federal government.

There must be a more equitable sharing of revenues between the federal government and the provinces. Petro-Canada has its headquarters in Alberta. That province manages to operate in the black because of the substantial royalties it accrues from resource companies like Petro-Canada. Nova Scotia is asking for a similar setup so that it too can realize the benefits of oil and gas development.

Last year Petro-Canada had record net annual earnings of $893 million, easily surpassing the previous year's earnings of $233 million and almost tripling the previous high of $306 million. Petro-Canada is clearly doing something right. Still, no company should rest on its laurels. If this legislation provides greater flexibility and allows for strategic positioning within the industry, it is important to support it. The PC Party does so.

The legislation affects another Canadian company, Cameco, the world's largest uranium supplier. Cameco supplies 30% of the western world's uranium, some 18 million pounds.

The legislation would provide greater flexibility to the company in terms of foreign ownership, although a fixed limit of 25% would remain in place. There is a big difference, however, between the oil and gas sector and nuclear energy.

Although both sectors provide energy sources and both have inherent risks associated with them that can have grave environmental impacts, Canadians remain skeptical about nuclear energy and the safe use of such energy. Radioactive waste is one aspect of uranium mining that concerns all Canadians.

I would like to spend some time today looking at radioactive waste and the role that public perception plays in uranium production. With legislation that opens up foreign ownership of this Canadian uranium producing company, the world's largest, I think it is important to understand what issues are really at stake here.

For instance, the briefing material provided by the Department of Natural Resources respecting the legislation clearly indicates that nuclear proliferation standards will be maintained and are not impacted by the legislation. However, when one looks at uranium mining there are serious environmental questions that need to be addressed, not just the issue of nuclear proliferation.

The report, “Inventory of Radioactive Waste in Canada”, examines radioactive waste in Canada according to three categories, nuclear fuel waste, low level radioactive waste, and uranium mine and mill tailings. At the end of 1998 the total waste of these three categories were, respectively: 5,600 cubic metres, 1.8 million cubic metres, and 210 million tonnes. Again, those three categories were nuclear fuel waste, low level radioactive waste and uranium mine and mill tailings.

The report estimates that by 2035, the year when the last power reactor is forecast to shut down, the waste totals will be: 14,500 cubic metres, 210 million cubic metres, and 248 million tonnes.

The report goes on to state:

Radioactive waste is currently managed in a safe and environmentally responsible manner by storing the waste away from the public and isolating it from the environment. The management of those wastes meets the requirements of the Atomic Energy Control Board, Canada's independent nuclear regulator.

It is interesting to look at what has been happening recently respecting the organization that oversees nuclear reactors and public safety in Canada. On May 31, 2000, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission replaced the Atomic Energy Control Board. In his December 2000 report, the auditor general devoted a chapter to the review of nuclear safety, with a focus on power reactor regulations.

In his report, the auditor general noted that the risk analysis of power reactors is not rigorous, raising questions about the safety of Canada's 22 existing nuclear power reactors. While Cameco may not be in the business of supplying nuclear power reactors, it is directly affected by undertakings within the industry because of the impact this has on Canadians' acceptance of nuclear products, nuclear energy and nuclear waste.

Supporters of nuclear energy advocate that it is one of the cleanest sources of energy available and one that can help meet future demands as fossil fuel sources are depleted. Certainly it is true that nuclear energy is a possible solution for energy, one that some countries have been more open to than others.

France has embraced nuclear power as its primary energy producer, relying on nuclear energy to supply 75% of its electricity production, the result of a 1974 initiative to be energy independent. However, to be supportive of nuclear energy we must also have a method of dealing with the byproducts and the residues of nuclear energy exploitation.

Cameco addresses these issues on a daily basis because, as a result of its mining operations, the company must dispose of its waste materials. This can range from mine tailings to the protective clothing worn by employees.

Currently the low level radioactive waste produced as a result of nuclear power production is compressed and disposed of within nuclear reactors. This is not a long term solution, however, and other disposal methods have been discussed, including the availability of other sites as possible receptacles for this waste material.

The Canadian shield, because of its stable rock formation and low water levels, could be opportune in this regard and is something that the Canadian nuclear fuel waste management program has discussed since 1978. Public acceptance of such disposal methods will determine whether this is a long term solution to radioactive waste disposal.

Cameco is a well respected and successful company. However, like Petro-Canada, it too needs the flexibility to adapt to new market conditions and strategically position itself within the global marketplace.

While I have some concerns about the application of nuclear energy, particularly in regard to waste disposal and byproducts, the intent of this legislation is to help these two companies grow and expand within their respective industries. The PC Party supports this initiative.

A recent Cameco press release announced that reserves at McArthur River in northern Saskatchewan, the world's largest and highest grade uranium mine, is now expected to exceed anticipated production by 50%. As Cameco continues to develop mine sites like the McArthur mine, it will need the flexibility to attract new investment and diversify its holdings. This legislation should be one step toward providing that flexibility. The PC Party supports the legislation for that very reason.

[Dick Proctor, NDP, Palliser, SK]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate today. At the outset I wish to say that my caucus colleagues and I vigorously oppose Bill C-3, an act to amend the Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and Divestiture Act and the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act.

The bill relates to the mandatory provisions in the articles of Cameco Corporation, which was formerly known as Eldorado Nuclear Ltd., and Petro-Canada which was created in 1975.

Bill C-3 was first introduced in the previous parliament and died on the order paper with the dissolution of parliament last fall. The bill provides that the articles of Cameco Corporation would 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 stipulates that the articles of Petro-Canada would be amended to allow for a 20% individual share ownership limit while the aggregate non-resident share ownership limits would be eliminated.

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

Energy, mining, forestry, geomatics and related industries currently account for approximately 11% of Canada's gross domestic product. They employ directly nearly 800,000 Canadians and account for 22% of new capital investment. The resource sector exported $97 billion worth of goods and services in 1998 and it drives the economies of over 600 communities across Canada.

Canada is the world's largest producer and exporter of uranium, and Cameco is not only a Canadian state of the art company which accounts for about 25% of the world's uranium production but also the western world's uranium chemical conversion facility.

At one time Petro-Canada and Cameco were both crown corporations wholly owned by taxpayers. The Government of Canada sold its shares in Cameco in 1995.

Although the government currently owns 18% of Petro-Canada's shares it does not influence the management of the company. At the time of privatization certain ownership restrictions were placed on both these companies.

I wish to talk about Petro-Canada because I remember it fondly, not as a member of parliament but as a very proud moment in the life of the federal New Democratic Party. Those with longer memories will recall that in the minority government era of 1972 to 1974, the creation in 1975 of a publicly owned oil and gas exploration company with downstream stations was part and parcel of this party's support for the Liberal minority government following the 1972 election.

I recall how Petro-Canada was talked about as being a window on the industry with the other multinationals that were operating in the country. Members will recall that at that time we were going through some extreme price shocks following the crisis in the gulf and the six day war in the Middle East in 1973. We had some very sharp price hikes.

There were concerns about the rapid increase in gasoline fuel prices in the country. Some rules were put in place to regulate or to make sure that there was a flow through in terms of how much product there was in the lines at the time. As I recall, it was 60 days before some provinces would allow a price increase after a world price change was announced because that is how the price was determined in terms of the fuel that was in the line at that time. That was a very important time and a very important rationale for Petro-Canada to come into being.

There were additional benefits as well that were well recognized. We talked about the ability to have a two price system to take advantage of some of the enormous resources that exist in Canada. We are a rich storehouse of resources. Canada is blessed with some of the greatest natural resources in the world, such as oil and gas reserves. We talked about a two price system that would not only be a benefit to consumers but would also be an incentive to make our products more competitive and sell better abroad.

The world has changed dramatically in the last 25 years, and in particular in the last 10 years. We cannot do that any more, thanks to the free trade agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement and undoubtedly the FTAA when it is put into place in three or four years from now. We cannot set a two price system. We cannot have a price for Canadian products or a domestic product in Canada and export our commodities and our resources south of the border, or for that matter to any other part of the world, without running afoul of these WTO, FTAA and NAFTA arrangements.

The Prime Minister was on his feet earlier this week in the House of Commons trying to defend his position on natural resources. He said that he wanted to keep the control of them in this country. We have news for him. We have lost that control already. We lost it some time ago. We lost it when we signed the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

We cannot turn off the spigot any more and say that we want to protect our resources so we will restrict the amount of our exports. We can only do that if we turn off the spigot to our people and our companies. It has to be done in direct relationship, so that the whole two price system and our ability to control our resources is very much hamstrung as a result of these agreements.

These restrictions are causing hardship, distress and a good deal of genuine inability to comprehend. I want to take a moment to inform the House that this morning on my voice mail in my Moose Jaw office there was a very worrisome call from an individual named Chris. He said that he was trying to put food on the table for his family but gas prices were going up, natural gas was increasing and electricity was going up. He said there had to be a ceiling on prices because they were getting crazy. “How the heck are we going to live?” was what this individual said in his voice mail.

What this individual fails to understand is that there is very much a restriction on what a government, either at the provincial or federal level, can do any more as a result of these free trade agreements and the WTO. We do not have the ability any longer to step in and say that yes, those prices are rising dramatically and that we will take some action to lower them. That was the case before.

When the government talks about more democracy and that free trade agreements, NAFTA and FTAA will result in greater democracy, people fail to understand because the fact of the matter is that governments are more restricted today than they were before in terms of what they are able to control and regulate. That is what Chris is concerned about, although with great respect to him, he fails to understand the connection between what is happening in the world and the ability of governments to have any bearing on it. The fact of the matter is we are in a time and a society where what we are paying is exactly what the market will bear. The notion that we can have control on prices seems to be a far off dream.

All of this reminds me of what was said by Clay Yeutter who was the U.S. trade representative in 1987-88. He said at the time the initial free trade agreement was signed between Canada and the United States that “Canadians do not understand what they have signed. Within 20 years they will be sucked directly into the U.S. economy”. That was 14 years ago, and I would say that Mr. Yeutter's projections are fairly much on target.

We have no answer to the question of more democracy. As I was trying to say a moment ago, governments are no longer able to influence the cost. We have the invisible hand of the marketplace at work.

Let me talk just a minute about the impact this has on the agricultural sector because in 1995 about 12% of total input costs were energy related. They have skyrocketed since then.

Unfortunately I do not have the tables and the information to show how much they have skyrocketed, but if we talked to any farmer in any province in Canada he or she could give us lots of facts about how much transportation costs have gone up as have fuel bills, fertilizer bills et cetera.

I believe that all these sharp increases in prices run contrary to the government's assumption that we would be and we were on a long term low cost trend in terms of gasoline and fuel products. The fact of the matter is that we have an extremely tight gas market at the moment.

As a world, we require between 8 and 8.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas every day just to stay current. There is a lot of talk about big developments in Alaska and in the Mackenzie Valley. Each of them might bring on stream perhaps one billion cubic feet of gas per day. That is when they are developed in about 10 years from now. We are only going to be standing still at the very best.

The point I am trying to make is that I do not see prices coming down. I see them continuing to escalate in the days, months and years ahead.

With respect to oil, the U.S. requires about 19.5 million barrels of oil each day to maintain all the things that run on oil. A lot of people are talking about the Alberta tar sands as being a big vast rich reserve of oil, which it is. However it is also very costly. As David Suzuki pointed out last Wednesday night at the environmental conference in Quebec City, developing the Alberta tar sands would result in about 1.35 million cars on the road each and the greenhouse gas effect that would have by developing that very costly oil from the Alberta tar sands.

Transportation is the fastest growing cause of greenhouse gases in the world. There has been an explosion in transportation over the last 50 odd years because one day's trade today is equal to about one year's trade 50 or 55 years ago.

The point I am trying to come to is that Petro-Canada was a very good idea at the time. It could still be a viable project if the crown corporation was allowed to continue to work both here and abroad. The government, with its ties to big business and the oil industry, is simply not interested in that at all. That is why we see this legislation before us this afternoon.

What is privatization? It is the commercialization, nothing more nor less, of the public sector, the part of society owned and controlled by the public through government. These include things such as medicare, schools, education, social services, pensions and crown corporations. The privatization of all that is when they are sold off and deregulated. In short, privatization basically is transferring public dollars into private hands at a profit.

From the creation of this country back in 1867, Canada relied rather extensively, probably more so than many countries certainly more so than the one immediately to the south of us, on federal crown corporations. They played a central role in the economic, cultural and political development of the country.

In 1937 Trans-Canada Airlines was created. The federal government began to restructure many of its economic enterprises into federal crown corporations. Currently there are over 40 federal crown corporations providing a vast array of services to the Canadian public and Canadian business. They range from large national enterprises, Canada Post Corporation being one, to smaller more localized operations.

Although many operate in competitive economic environments providing services which are also provided by private sector companies on a market basis, the purpose of a crown corporation is markedly different than that of private sector companies. While many, such as Canada Post, are supposed to operate on a break-even basis, it is recognized by the auditor general that surplus revenues may be used to help support non-profit oriented endeavours devoted to serving the public interest.

The public welfare orientation of crown corporations was recognized by the federal treasury board. The treasury board's president in 1998, in the annual report, evaluated crown corporations on criteria such as improving service to clients, exporting expertise and contributing to Canada's social and economic development. Profitability was never included in the list of items to be evaluated.

In 1996 the province of Saskatchewan, which I have the privilege of representing, conducted a major review of its crown corporations to determine future direction. Crown corporations form a significant part of Saskatchewan's economy, beginning with the Douglas government back in 1944, and currently make up a little more than 33% of its gross domestic product. Saskatchewan's crown corporations are some of the largest employers in that province.

Several important findings emerged throughout that review. People in Saskatchewan believed that the role of commercial crown corporations was to provide universal access to essential services. They also believed that crown corporations should be used to create employment and promote economic development.

The majority of submissions indicated that public investment through crown corporations had a major role to play in the province's economy, and that even partial privatization of these enterprises would pose a major risk to Saskatchewan's economy. Most people there believed that crown corporations were much more publicly accountable than private corporations.

Despite those findings, at the federal level in recent years we have witnessed a massive privatization of major federal crown corporations. The de Havilland Aircraft of Canada, Canadian Arsenal Limited, Teleglobe, CN, Air Canada and now Petro-Canada are but a few of the public assets which have been auctioned off to private sector investors, abandoning the long held belief that a public presence in industry resources and finance is necessary to promote broader public policy purpose objectives.

The federal government has adopted an approach based on the ideological assumption that less public intervention is an objective of state policy. Indeed under the current finance minister, the government adopted a policy of privatizing and commercializing government operations wherever feasible and appropriate. That is what we are seeing today with Cameco Corp. and Petro-Canada.

This policy framework also has been applied to justify the privatization and cutbacks in numerous federal government operations, boards, departments and agencies.

The whole point of all of this is that we need a democratic process in the country. Most of the privatization has occurred without any meaningful consultation with Canadian citizens and certainly without the support or consent of trade unions and associations representing the workers involved.

Privatization has been justified on the basis of misinformation in too many instances. Promises and commitments made beforehand were abandoned soon after the shares were sold and the investors were making their money.

The debate around privatization must be expanded to include societal values in addition to the economic consequences. Public ownership implies a sense of accountability to the collective welfare of society, which is unknown in the public sector. Public ownership implies democratic access to decision making through elected officials and representatives who are responsible to public forums.

Public ownership of major economic institutions provides governments with important economic levers to influence private sector behaviour, both in terms of investment decisions and their employment and managerial practices. The struggle to preserve federal crown corporations is part of a greater struggle to define our values and who we are as a nation.

I will branch off a little and stay with crown corporations. However I will first talk for a moment or two about the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan which was a huge money maker for the provincial government in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was sold off when the Conservatives came to power in the province after the 1982 election.

The Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan, PCS, still exists. It is now privately owned and makes record profits every year. What a boon it would have been to the Saskatchewan economy when the Devine government was racking up billions of dollars in losses every year and the red ink was flowing widely. The potash corporation could have been a great boon had that government had the wisdom to hang on to it, but of course it did not and it is gone now, probably forever.

The same could be said of Northern Telecom, Nortel. The Canadian market and the Toronto Stock Exchange are dependent these days on how much Nortel rises or falls. People probably do not remember that Nortel was once Northern Telecom, a crown corporation which did a lot of good for the country. It was sold off by an earlier government into private hands and is now making gazillions of dollars for a few investors some of the time. However the only benefit is on taxes paid, and it is not nearly as much of a benefit for Canadians generally now that it is in the hands of the private sector.

I will go back and talk a bit about the new higher price of energy because the bill is on energy. As these price increases reverberate throughout our economy they are causing a great deal of economic and social dislocation.

A number of commentators have reminded us that nearly all economic recessions in the U.S. over the past 60 years have been preceded by a spike in energy costs. Like a new tax or a change in interest rates, the new price of energy benefits a few and costs many others.

We have seen huge profits racked up in the oil industry in North America in recent years, particularly in the last couple of years. The energy industry worldwide is benefiting from a market in which the growth in demand has recently outstripped the growth in supply and from which spare capacity has almost vanished.

Reports in the oil and gas journals cite industry experts who predict a tight natural gas market in North America for years to come as the gas business races to replace wells that are playing out. The industry must find the equivalent of between eight and eight and a half billion cubic feet of gas per day just to stay level.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, is in firm control of the world market and is successfully maintaining its base price of about $25 U.S. a barrel. The gasoline market is tight because demand is high but also because just in time management techniques in the refining industry are turning out to be more profitable for individual companies than for the economy as a whole.

Officials are warning consumers in both Canada and the U.S. of price spikes for gasoline this summer. We have seen that in the province of Saskatchewan in the last 48 hours.

What does more expensive energy mean for agriculture? Agriculture uses a great deal of energy. I mentioned the figure of $4 billion in 1995 while gross farm receipts in the country were just over $32 billion. That would be in excess of 12%, and it would certainly have gone up a lot in the intervening six years.

It seems the government has been taken by surprise. It did not expect energy prices to deviate from a long low cost trend. Thus far the government's response to the critical energy situation facing North America has been to offer more, not less, energy to the Americans.

The Prime Minister's new sources of bountiful energy, the tar sands and the gas in the Beaufort Sea, will not reverse the trend toward higher energy prices. These are tremendously expensive resources in terms of both extraction costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

Massive public and private expenditures are required before additional synthetic crude or new Arctic gas can be brought to market. A $10 billion pipeline might bring a billion cubic feet of gas per day down the Mackenzie Valley, but if we compare that to the eight billion cubic feet of gas per day the industry now needs just to stay even we see the problem.

The U.S. demand for petroleum products hovers around 19.5 million barrels a day. It takes billions of dollars and several years to increase tar sands production by just 150,000 barrels per day. A supply solution to high energy prices is not in sight. Lowering demand would be a more effective route to lower prices.

Many farmers are already lowering energy consumption through techniques such as zero till, or zero tillage, to pronounce it fully. Farmers rightly look to the federal government to redirect money and effort it now spends on increasing the energy supply toward a more productive and effective investment in demand management strategy.

I listened with care to the parliamentary secretary's comments that there is no restriction on foreign ownership and no need to worry about the Foreign Investment Review Agency. Yes, we know that very well, and I think it is to the great regret of the vast majority of Canadians.

We were assured that CN and CP, particularly CN, would not be subject to foreign takeover. However we now know that the vast majority of shares in our two major rail lines, which may soon become one, are held by people who live outside our borders. I already mentioned what we saw with Nortel and the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan.

All these points suggest that the bill, instead of being named Bill C-3, should be named Bill C-745, the faint hope clause, in the hope that none of these things will come to pass.

What is the New Democratic Party's position? We believe now is not the time to give up our last meagre interest and influence in these vital energy sector corporations. Opening the door to more foreign control of our energy sector is shortsighted and not in the best interests of Canada.

The government would have us believe the proposed changes to Petro-Canada's ownership restrictions would have no bearing on the price of refined products such as gasoline. However by giving up its last stake in the company the government would guarantee that Canadians have no voice at all in the energy sector in the future.

By abolishing the 25% cap on aggregate non-resident share ownership voting rights, the bill would ensure that Petro-Canada ends up sooner or later in the hands of foreigners.

At a time when high energy costs are hurting many Canadian industries, small businesses and low and middle income families, most Canadians want more government involvement to address the skyrocketing cost of fuel. Instead the government turns its back and walks away.

The Government of Canada sold all its shares in Cameco by 1995. In our opinion it is now, by letting go of any semblance of interest in a sector that has global implications, opening it completely and utterly to foreign control. It is for those reasons that the New Democratic Party firmly opposes Bill C-3.

[Dave Chatters, Canadian Alliance, Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise once again on Bill C-3 to discuss the amendments to the Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and Divestiture Act and the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act. These two acts placed restrictions on individual and foreign ownership when Petro-Canada and Cameco were first privatized some years ago.

The bill intends to increase the companies' access to domestic and foreign capital and enable greater flexibility in using share exchanges and asset pooling to make acquisitions and strategic alliances. I cannot help but hope the bill will finally pave the way for the government to sell off its remaining 18% ownership or 49.4 million shares of Petro-Canada.

The bill does a number of things to make room for the sale. It raises the limit on individual ownership of shares from 10% to 20%. The 25% limit on shares that can be owned collectively by non-residents is removed. While it gives the company greater flexibility to manage its asset portfolio, the bill also provides a check against the company winding up its activities through the outright sale of assets.

The parliamentary secretary has told us that the introduction and passage of Bill C-3 does not pave the way for the sale of Petro-Canada. He says that the government will wait for the most favourable market conditions before proceeding with the sale. However, I, and I think most other Canadians, cannot conceive of a more favourable time than today. The industry is healthy, the company is strong and the conditions in my opinion could not be more favourable.

Given that, what does all this mean? Petro-Canada was created in 1975 as one of the mechanisms of the national energy program. The feeling of western Canadians, certainly myself and those representing ridings in the region, are well documented when it comes to the national energy program. We never did buy the Liberal line that the program was a vehicle for nationalist dreams and a ticket to energy self sufficiency. At the time Canadians were told we had less than 20 years worth of recoverable oil reserves and that high gasoline taxes were a justifiable means of guaranteeing our future energy needs.

When we look at where the oil industry in Canada currently stands, we see that our skepticism was appropriate. Twenty-five years later we know those empty threats were little more than Liberal hogwash, a simple money grab and a flagrant breach of the principles of Confederation by the federal government, a Liberal federal government. We now have proven oil reserves that will supply Canada's energy needs well into the future.

There is in excess of 200 years of recoverable reserves in the tar sands of northern Alberta alone. The Liberal government might have thought that it had fooled Canadians but we knew that it was the federal government poking its rather large and unwelcome nose into the oil and gas industry, an intrusion that was totally unasked for, unappreciated and clearly unnecessary.

Although the national energy program was eventually dismantled, Petro-Canada lives on, fed by taxpayer dollars without their approval.

Eventually the government changed its mind and in 1991 decided that it no longer needed a crown corporation in the energy business and began the privatization process. In the end, with the fluctuations in the markets, business setbacks and even the present political struggles, Petro-Canada ended up as an oil company much like any other oil company in Canada.

However, the government, or should I say the taxpayers, still owns 18% of the company and is the single largest holder of stock. Only the government could own more than 10%.

Back in 1994 I questioned the government why it would not sell off its national oil company while the industry was strong in order to recoup some of the billions of taxpayer dollars that were used to create Petro-Canada in the first place. I 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. In 1995 a Liberal budget promised to totally privatize Petro-Canada. We can see today how reliable that Liberal promise was and, like so many other budget promises, it is something that we should consider over the coming weeks.

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

Governments, since Petro-Canada was established, have never had the courage to admit to Canadians that they would only be able to recover less than $2 billion of the original cost of Petro-Canada. If the bill is indeed the first step in the process of the government selling off its remaining shares of Petro-Canada, my first response is that it is about time.

I am curious as to the timing of the bill. On Bay Street investors have driven up Petro-Canada share prices in anticipation of a move by Ottawa to sell its shares. Today Petro-Canada's shares are trading at $32.75 per share. That is over a 46% increase so far this year. There is the potential for the price to go even higher.

Bill C-3 would remove foreign ownership restrictions allowing for an expanded market and potentially an increased price. If the government were to sell its shares it could optimistically find itself receiving $1.6 billion. That is a $3.4 billion loss on what Canadians originally paid for Petro-Canada, a business transaction that anyone could identify as a total disaster.

However, the government could find itself in possession of $1.6 billion. What would it do with that money? Since it was originally taxpayer dollars that paid for Petro-Canada, the funds should return to the taxpayers in a direct fashion rather than being dumped into the general revenue fund that Liberal cronies could dip into whenever they felt inclined.

I would like to see the money go to debt reduction or into transportation improvements. Perhaps we could really be revolutionary and put the money toward lowering gas taxes. What an original idea. The Liberals recently voted against that in the House. I do not expect that they would really show too much interest in returning taxpayer dollars directly to taxpayers. That is too simple, too clean cut and too direct a responsibility for the government.

Bill C-3 does a number of things that I can support. Petro-Canada is moving toward opening up the ownership of the company to both national and international interests while ensuring that the majority of the company is Canadian. The legislation states that resident Canadians must make up the majority of the board of directors. It also stipulates that the head office of the company must remain in Calgary, which is a common practice of the government and one that is not necessary as it ties the hands of a number of companies that the government has followed this practice on.

The Canadian Alliance also supports the removal of restrictions upon Canadian businesses to allow for both domestic and foreign investing. We expect that Petro-Canada, once it is no longer manipulated by the government, would continue to show profits and growth.

Bill C-3 does not only address issues surrounding Petro-Canada. It also addresses issues relating to the sale of shares of Cameco, Canada's biggest uranium producer. Canada's Kyoto commitments have increased the need for Canada to find green energy. Nuclear energy is one option that is being examined. I do not wish to get into a debate on the merits of nuclear energy. That is a debate for another day. It is clear, however, that it is part of the package the government is examining in relationship to the Kyoto accord, along with the emission reductions that we are trying to achieve.

Uranium remains a source of nuclear energy. It is a vital factor in the world's efforts to reduce CO2 levels. It has been and will increasingly be a strategically important resource for the country. The bill raises foreign and individual ownership limits for Cameco. Individual non-resident ownership would increase from 5% to 15% and the limit on the total amount of non-resident ownership of shares would increase from 20% to 25%.

I am pleased to see that the legislation is mindful of the possible consequences of high levels of foreign ownership of 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 all the opportunities to succeed, we must also be conscious of the need to keep such potentially volatile resources within Canadian control. The bill allows for greater flexibility in the selling of shares in Canadian companies, and I support that effort.

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 wait and see if that is the case. If Petro-Canada is sold off, we will see how much the Liberals think Canadians have forgotten the original purpose of Petro-Canada and the amount of money that taxpayers put forth to establish the company in the first place.

The Canadian Alliance and I will be supporting the bill as we have at each stage. We will continue to support the bill at third reading. We are pleased that the government is showing the initiative in opening up these companies to better investment and a bit more flexibility in the way that they operate.

[Ben Serré, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Natural Resources]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak to Bill C-3 at third reading.

The Canadian economy is still strong, thanks in part to the solid performance of the resource industries.

Canadian companies in that area are proving that they cannot only prosper in the knowledge economy of the 21st century but also contribute to its dynamism and vitality.

However the prosperity of the resource sector should not be taken for granted. The industry must be able to make strategic decisions and to better position itself on domestic and foreign markets.

The changes proposed in Bill C-3 will allow two actors in the natural resources sector, namely Cameco Corporation and Petro-Canada, to continue contributing to the economic growth and environmental stewardship by lifting restrictions that have no more reason to be and which prevent them from attracting new investments and concluding new strategic alliances.

Those two companies used to be crown corporations. The Government of Canada sold all its shares in Cameco in 1995. It has kept an 18% participation in Petro-Canada, but it is a carried interest and the government has no say in the management of the corporation.

At the time of privatization the government imposed restrictions on the proprietary interest of the two companies. It had good reasons to do so, but some restrictions have since outlived their usefulness and only prevent the two companies from taking advantage of new business opportunities.

In particular, Bill C-3 changes the restrictions imposed on share ownership and the disposal of property by the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act. It also amends the share ownership provisions of the Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and Divestiture Act, which governs Cameco.

With regard to Petro-Canada, Bill C-3 will raise from 10% to 20% the limit on individual shares ownership. Moreover, the 25% limit on the total number of shares that can be owned by non-residents will be eliminated. In other words, there will be no more restriction to the foreign ownership of Petro-Canada's shares, except that an individual, of whatever origin, will not be allowed to own more than 20% of the shares of the company.

Despite the abolition of the limit on foreign ownership, Petro-Canada is likely to remain under predominantly Canadian ownership in the foreseeable future.

First, the 20% limit on individual ownership of voting shares in Petro-Canada prevents any potential takeover by a major multinational.

Second, there is far greaten interest for Petro-Canada among Canadian investors than foreign investors. As a matter of fact the foreign participation in the company does not exceed 16%, while the existing act allows up to 25%.

Third, under the Canada Business Corporations Act corporations subjected to share ownership restrictions like Petro-Canada are still required to be run by a board of directors comprised of a majority of Canadians.

In order to give Petro-Canada more latitude with the management of its assets, 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 which makes no distinction between upstream and downstream assets. The bill maintains just the level of prohibition necessary to prevent the company from shutting down operations through the sale of all its assets.

In the case of Cameco, Bill C-3 eases restrictions currently imposed on foreign ownership without eliminating them completely. The limit on individual non-resident share ownership will be raised from 5% to 15%. The limit on collective non-resident share ownership will increase from 20% to 25%. As for the ownership limit for an individual Canadian shareholder, it will remain at 25%.

In spite of the reduction of the foreign participation restrictions, Cameco will always be controlled by Canadians and the majority of its capital will remain held by Canadians in the foreseeable future.

First, the 15% individual non-resident share ownership restriction rules out any possibility of takeover by a major multinational.

Second, with the 25% limit on collective non-resident share ownership, control over Cameco cannot fall into foreign hands.

Third, Cameco generates much more interest among Canadian investors than among foreign investors. Indeed, foreign participation in the corporation does not exceed 6% right now, whereas the current legislation allows a 20% participation.

Fourth, under the Canada Business Corporations Act, corporations such as Petro-Canada which are subjected to share ownership restrictions are still required to be run by a board of directors comprised of a majority of Canadians.

Bill C-3 has the support of both corporations, which see the current restrictions as unfair in that they do not apply to other corporations in their respective sectors of activity.

In my opinion the legislation will be well received by all investors both in Canada and abroad. At the same time it will protect the Canadian status of Petro-Canada and Cameco. The headquarters will remain in Canada and the majority of the board of directors will be made up of Canadians.

I can assure my colleagues that in the case of Petro-Canada the proposed amendments will have no impact on the price of refined petroleum products. A recent study carried out by the Conference Board of Canada confirmed that the price of gasoline is established mainly according to supply and demand and has nothing to do with property rules governing one company of the Canadian petroleum industry.

I can also assure the House that the proposed amendments will have absolutely no impact on the competitiveness of the Canadian oil and gas industry.

Also, this bill is not a prelude to the sale of the government's shares in Petro-Canada. Although its holdings in Petro-Canada no longer serve any of its political purposes, the government is waiting for the right time to sell off its shares. In other words, it will wait until the market conditions ensure optimal yield for Canadian taxpayers.

I also want to inform hon. members that the proposed changes to the Cameco legislation will not change anything in the commitment Canada made toward non-proliferation of nuclear weapons or nuclear security.

Uranium is a regulated substance of strategic importance. The Canadian policy concerning uranium exportation is subject to the support regulations of the Nuclear Safety and Control Act and to permits delivered under the Export and Import Permits Act. Canadian substances, equipment and technology cannot be used to manufacture nuclear explosive devices.

The Government of Canada has not only urged its trading partners to ratify the non-proliferation treaty but it has also entered into nuclear co-operation agreements providing an additional control mechanism.

The Government of Canada, and hon. members can rest assured of this, thinks that it is still necessary to impose restrictions on the foreign ownership of uranium. Bill C-3 gives Cameco better access to foreign capital and allows it to develop new strategic alliances, but it does not in any way compromise the Canadian control of the company.

I would like also to underline that Cameco has the support of another element of the public sector, and I am referring obviously to the government of Saskatchewan. It has indicated that it totally supported the proposed amendments to Bill C-3.

Obviously the bill is consistent with sound management of public affairs. During the discussions in committee there were no serious objections. In fact, hon. members of most parties have expressed their support for the bill.

This bill is good for Petro-Canada, good for Cameco and good for all Canadians. I urge my colleagues to adopt the legislation.

Youth Criminal Justice Act

[Gurmant Grewal, Canadian Alliance, Surrey Central, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the people of Surrey Central to participate in the debate on Bill C-7, the Liberal government's latest attempt to replace the Young Offenders Act with new youth criminal justice legislation.

All my colleagues in the Canadian Alliance have tried hard to improve the youth criminal justice legislation. In particular, I would commend my neighbour, the hon. member for Surrey North, for his contribution in this area.

The bill provides principles, procedures and protections for the prosecution of young persons under criminal and other federal laws. It is the third attempt by the government to bring forth young offenders legislation. The bill, with very few changes, is the same as what has been introduced previously. This version of the bill has been updated just to include over 160 technical amendments from the last government.

Here are some specifics. The list of offences for which adult sentences may be imposed is severely limited. The goal of sentencing is solely to contribute to the protection of society by having meaningful consequences for young persons which promote rehabilitation and reintegration, so the goal of protection of society is hardly a concern.

Even for offences that could be treated in adult court, the judge must first consider the least restrictive sentence and only impose adult sentencing as a last resort. Maximum sentencing has not changed for youth sentencing purposes. It is still ten years for murder, with six years in custody and four years under supervision in the community; seven years for second degree murder, with four years in custody and three years under supervision; three years for any offence having an adult sentence of life imprisonment, with two years in custody and one year under supervision for all others.

The deterrent that society demands and needs to cause resistance to commit a crime is effectively not there. Rather, the lack of serious consequences, commonly called the slap on the wrist, acts as a motivation for the youth to commit a crime or for the youth to be used to commit a crime.

I will read from the Canadian Alliance policy book, which of course is dictated by our grassroots membership, unlike the policies of any other political party in the House. Sections 28 and 30 state:

We will make providing safety and security for Canadians, their families and their property the overriding objective of the criminal justice system. We will support rehabilitation programs designed to safely restore offenders to society.

We will introduce measures to hold young lawbreakers accountable to their victims and the larger community. We recognize that custody is not always the most effective way of dealing with young offenders. Detention facilities for youth will be separate and emphasize skills training, responsibility, and community service. Violent or serious repeat offenders 14 and over will be tried as adults, as will all offenders 16 and over.

In various ways this legislation seems to place the safety and security of Canadians behind the interest in rehabilitating and reintegrating the offenders back into society.

We have attempted to encourage the government to amend the bill to make it clear that protection of the public is to be the paramount principle behind this legislation, but the minister refuses.

The legislation does not ensure that violent or serious repeat offenders will be tried as adults. We have proposed amendments to previous portions of the bill to limit extrajudicial measures to first time non-violent offenders. This means no court, no criminal record and community designed informal types of sanctions or punishment. Again the minister refuses to accede to this request. Repeat and violent offenders may never have to see court, be convicted and receive a criminal record.

It was the justice committee and the Canadian Alliance through its former version, the Reform Party, that first endorsed alternative measures for first time non-violent offenders. The minister claims credit, but she once again fails to restrict this form of conditional sentencing. It is open to repeat offenders and it is open to violent offenders.

The list of presumptive offences for which an adult sentence may be imposed is severely restricted. The list includes murder, attempted murder, manslaughter and aggravated sexual assault. It does not include sexual assault with a weapon, hostage taking, aggravated assault, kidnapping and a host of other serious violent offences.

In Bill C-7 the minister has further weakened the legislation by limiting presumptive offence procedure even more. Through clause 61, any province may decide that only 15 year old or even 16 year old offenders who commit offences such as murder could be transferred to adult court, while 10 year olds and 11 year olds would still not be held criminally responsible for their crimes.

The legislation will create a patchwork or checkerboard system of youth justice, as many of its provisions permit the provinces undue discretion in whether to seek adult sentencing, in publication of names and in access to records, to name just a few.

The legislation provides some movement toward victims' rights, but even they are not ensured and are still woefully inadequate.

The government has not been open to change for any aspect of the legislation except for some technical amendments. All of the opposition parties except the Bloc presented substantive amendments to the former bill, Bill C-3. Those amendments did not receive debate in parliament and do not appear to have been considered by the government. In fact, the government is not serious about discussion, so the Liberals are ignoring those amendments.

The provinces would be tasked to administer this legal nightmare, but the federal government does not seem to care. The Liberals have promised $206 million over the first three years for the implementation of the bill, but this would not even come close to meeting the responsibility of providing 50% of the funding for the youth justice system. The Liberals have allowed federal funding to slip to about 20%. The provinces have to carry the can financially for these proposals, costs of which are going to dramatically rise through legal argument and procedure.

An initial review of Bill C-7 indicates that the government has made it even weaker, likely to appease the Quebec government and the Bloc Quebecois. For instance, the presumptive offence provision that moves youths 14 years of age and older automatically to adult court for murder, et cetera, now permits the provinces, Quebec in this case, to raise the age to restrict the transfer to only 15 year old or 16 year old offenders.

Restrictions on naming of violent offenders are still not taken into consideration. The bill still has an emphasis on attempting to understand the circumstances underlying the criminal behaviour and rehabilitation and reintegration. Protection of the public takes second fiddle. Denunciation and deterrence seem to be foreign words for the government.

If the legislation passes, its complexity and its loopholes will cause horrendous delays. The costs to our youth criminal justice process in legal bills will be phenomenal.

In conclusion I would like to say that the official opposition carries on with its job of holding the flashlight and showing the Liberals their darkness. We gave the Liberal members a chance to improve on the legislation. They should look at our amendments through the lens of issues, not political stripes.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I want to thank our justice critic, the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, for the work he has done on this which extends way beyond this parliament.

As hon. members well know, this bill has been introduced and reintroduced. In fact, it goes back to three parliaments ago when it was originally brought in to update the Young Offenders Act, which we know has been a very troubled piece of legislation since its inception. I point out that the Young Offenders Act has gone beyond the life of young offenders. It is 17 years old.

The member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough pointed out on a number of occasions that the present Young Offenders Act does not deserve much of its present reputation. The government could do a number of things to improve the act.

He pointed out that Bill C-7, the youth criminal justice act, from the outset looked very encouraging. It talks about early intervention. It talks about preventive measures on youth who could be embarking on a life of crime. That is of course what we want to prevent. A reversal of one's behaviour can come about only by interventionist activities on the part of professionals that can help steer young people in the right direction. That is very commendable.

However it is the shear complexity of the bill with which most of us have some major concerns. The previous speaker had a copy of the bill in his hands. The physical size of the bill is double the size and the complexity of the existing legislation, the Young Offenders Act.

Quoting from a previous speaker, the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, in remarks made in the House on February 14:

This particular bill in its current form is so complex, so convoluted and cumbersome that were it to be enacted it its current form, the delays, the interpretations, the legal jargon and the manipulations that would result would be astronomical.

He and other members have mentioned the convoluted nature of this piece of legislation. That has been borne out by judges and others who have worked in the youth criminal justice system over the years. A number of opinions have been rendered on that. They simply say that interpretation of the act would be very difficult for some of our most skilled members of the legal profession.

We have other examples of what we should do and how the bill could be reconstructed, but basically the problem we see is that the present government has refused to give to police the tools needed to do their jobs and the proper resources to effectively implement the present act, let alone any new act. The government's failure to address the problem has allowed the Young Offenders Act to become synonymous with the problems involving youth crime in Canada. There is a need to restore public confidence in the system.

As I mentioned earlier, we have had over seven years of delay and numerous promises in regard to the bill. Originally the government, back in the early nineties, introduced it as Bill C-3. That was replaced with Bill C-68 in the last parliament. We are still talking but nothing is happening.

The bill was criticized by all parties, including the Liberal Party, and all youth justice experts around the country. The reasons were that the bill was too long, too complex and too expensive for the provinces to implement. If the provinces do not have the financial resources to implement the bill, what good would it be, despite its good intentions?

As a result of the frustration of members of parliament in the last parliament during committee hearings on the bill, the member for Berthier—Montcalm filibustered for 27 hours in a determined effort to derail this particular bill. The bill to which we are speaking has only minor technical amendments. Experts still think the bill is too long, too expensive and too complicated.

One of the models we often point to is the province of Quebec. Certainly in terms of the treatment of young offenders, it has a lot of which to be proud. Quebec is certainly miles ahead of the rest of the provinces. The bill attempts to reflect that but without giving the provinces the resources to do it. It is going to complicate and exaggerate the differences between a province like Ontario with that of Quebec.

Bill C-7 does not offer any real disincentive for youth criminals. The Liberals say that crime rates are falling and that opposition parties are only fearmongering when speaking about the need to crack down on violent crime in Canada. Last July Statistics Canada announced that crime rates had fallen to their lowest level in 20 years. However, it did not mention youth crime.

The overall decline in crime masks a sharp increase in violent crime and a staggering rise in youth crime. While less serious crimes have petered off, violent crime is actually up by 57% over the last 20 years and violent youth crime is up by over 77% in 10 years. It is quite obvious that this is not fearmongering. It is a real problem when we look at an increase of 77% in 10 years.

I will not end there because the numbers get even more disturbing. Violent crime by young girls has risen 127% since 1988, with most of those statistics coming from categories such as murder and hostage taking. Obviously we have read about stories like that. There was one in the National Post on July 20, 2000, if anyone is interested.

Lack of accountability for the crimes committed by young offenders is no deterrent. Even when young criminals are convicted, they are often given a custodial sentence which can often be served at home. They are sentenced on average to a single month. It is not much wonder that 40% of all young offenders are repeat offenders.

Almost half of the convicted youths between the years 1998-99 were simply placed on probation. Seventy-five per cent of custody sentences were for three months or less, and 90% of those sentences were for six months or less. Only 2% of these convicted offenders got more than a year. We are talking about serious crime, not petty crimes. Only 0.1% of youth crimes made it to adult court between 1998-99. I believe the last point or the numbers are precise. Forty-eight per cent of those convicted had at least one previous conviction.

If we ask frontline police officers if things are getting easier, their answer is absolutely not. They say so called minor youth crimes are not being reported due to an overworked police force that is stretched to deal with too much crime. Too many young offenders are being dealt with through what they call extra judicial measures. They do not become part of the government's statistics. If it is not reported, it did not happen.

Frontline victim groups are upset that under Bill C-7 crimes such as common assault are not considered by the government to be violent in nature. That would not be included in the violent crime statistics, thus helping to further massage the government's statistics to support its theory that violent crime is decreasing.

It is hard to believe that children under 12 years old are committing serious crimes and many of them are not being charged at all. I would like to give the House an example.

On August 23, 2000, Ms. Margaret Moore, an elderly woman in Calgary, was mugged and beaten at noon hour by two young girls aged 11 and 13. The 13 year old faces one charge of robbery and the 11 year old is too young to be charged under the Young Offenders Act. That is an important point to make. It is obviously a flaw in the Young Offenders Act.

Another example is an 11 year old boy walked into an Edmonton bank in broad daylight a few weeks ago and proceeded to rob it. The young boy was wearing a ball cap, sunglasses and carried a knapsack. He handed the teller a note demanding money. Being only 11 years old, the system has no means of dealing with this young offender.

Children under 12 and older youth are expected to be dealt with through provincially administered programs which are supposed to receive 50% of their funding from the federal government. Obviously they do not because every province, including my home province, is complaining about the lack of funds from Ottawa to help in rehabilitation. Under the present government, the provinces have seen their 50% share drop to as little as 30%. This decreased funding equates to children not receiving the services they need and rehabilitation does not occur. That is the key. If we want to look to any part of the country where rehabilitation has worked we would obviously look to the province of Quebec.

Victims of youth crime could give us stories behind these statistics. They could give us stories about the lives that have been taken and the hurt that has been caused. They could give us stories about the victims who have been left behind to fight for recognition from a Liberal justice system which is concerned more with the rights of the young offender than with the pain of the victims and the need to be accountable to the public, which is scared that these young offenders will continue to get off with a slap on the wrist.

There are not many weaknesses in Bill C-7. However, if we are reintroducing or bringing in a new bill, we have to provide the provinces with the tools and resources to implement it. The bill simply puts an impossible burden on the backs of the provinces, especially the poorer ones.

We have a couple of things that could happen.

First, judges could be given more power to impose mandatory treatment or therapy for troubled youth. The key is obviously treatment and therapy.

Second, serious violent crime offences involving young offenders could be automatically transferred to adult courts.

Third, we should enact a parental responsibility act to make the parents of young offenders financially responsible for the criminal acts of their children.

Fourth, we should lower the age of accountability to include violent criminals of all ages. Currently, as we well know, violent offenders below the age of 12 face no punishment for their crimes. At least in cases involving serious crime, the justice system should be able to bring a child under the age of 12 into the youth justice system in the same manner that a young offender can be transferred into the adult system for serious crimes.

Our party, although we risk being accused of this when we speak in such terms, does not intend to incarcerate youths in inhuman or cruel facilities. None of us want that. However we do support mandatory youth access to adult criminal rehabilitation resources and increased accountability for violent youth crime.

Through such services we hope to prevent young adults from continuing a life of anti-social criminal activity. We can make a positive change in the area of law enforcement by making a commitment to action in at least three areas.

First, we should reform the youth criminal justice system.

Second, we should build safe communities through the promotion of anti-violence and by providing adult mentors for our young people, especially our youth at risk.

Third, we should give law enforcement agencies the resources they need to do their jobs.

In the last parliament, as the House is well aware, we put forward a number of amendments. We will do the same in this parliament. We put forth amendments to Bill C-3 and Bill C-68, and we plan to do the same for Bill C-11.

The bill should be scrapped, but Liberal members are obviously unwilling to listen to the public. We hope they will at least take a close look at our amendments which aim at improving this piece of legislation.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will mention at the outset that I will be splitting my time.

This debate by and large generates more heat than light and has, over the past seven years of these last three parliaments, generated a great deal of heat. I do not know how much light we actually came to over the course of those three parliaments, but this occupied the 35th parliament. The justice committee reported in May 1997 on this issue and that formed the basis for the 36th parliament's Bill C-68.

In the course of dealing with Bill C-68, parliament was prorogued and that bill became Bill C-3. In the course of dealing with Bill C-3, we in the justice committee had extensive hearings, as did the previous justice committee, hearings that were nationwide. In the course of those hearings, we heard from pretty well every corner of the country and from every interested jurisdiction. Bill C-3 has now become Bill C-7 and we are now in the 37th parliament and back to debating this issue.

While I have some discomfort at times about time allocation, there comes a time when time should be allocated. I believe this is one of those occasions where we finally have to deal with the evidence we have heard, the testimony we have heard and the manner in which the government has put it forward in a bill after extensive hearings.

May I say that at the point where we were just about to get down to clause by clause in the justice committee, the Bloc Quebecois decided that would be a good time to filibuster. The Bloc took up something in the order of 27 hours of the committee's time on a filibuster which ultimately had to be returned to the House, with the net result that the bill was not heard and not dealt with prior to the election in November 2000.

I submit that we are not going to make everybody happy. There are times at which government just has to be government. Parliament does its thing and expresses its view because, after all, this is a talking shop. We do talk and we do advise, but ultimately it is the government that makes decisions.

I want to commend the Minister of Justice on her willingness to listen to evidence and to change significant portions of the bill based upon the evidence she heard at committee.

The first change is in the area of the preamble and principles of the bill. Members will notice that clause 3 has been changed. Again, this is as a direct result of what she heard at committee.

The first statement of principle will now read as follows:

(a) the youth criminal justice system is intended to

(i) prevent crime by addressing the circumstances underlying a young person's offending behaviour,

(ii) rehabilitate young persons who commit offences and reintegrate them into society, and

(iii) ensure that a young person is subject to meaningful consequences for his or her offence—

As I say, a number of people before the committee said that we had the principles in the preamble as a declaration of principle and that was not correct. The Minister of Justice listened and the Minister of Justice has put that into the bill.

Second, the importance of timely intervention is recognized in the principles. In some respects that may be stating the obvious, but in testimony after testimony we heard that a youth would commit an offence in May of one year and not be dealt with until a year or 18 months later. At the best of times one has difficulty bringing together the consequences of one's activity with the punishment, and the result is that the youth loses all appreciation for the justice system, so the importance of timely intervention is right in the declaration of principle. Again, the minister changed this.

There is another change. A reference to the needs and level of development of the youth has been added to the principles. Subparagraph 3(1)(c)(iii) reads:

(iii) be meaningful for the individual young person given his or her needs and level of development and, where appropriate, involve the parents, the extended family—

and so on.

Those are significant additions and, again, are based upon evidence we heard. Again I have to commend the Minister of Justice. She listened to the testimony. The changes were made in the bill.

When she attempts to come before the committee members opposite filibuster. I cannot quite see how that is being a responsible parliamentarian. Members are forever saying that they have no impact on legislation. Frankly, the justice committee did have an impact on this legislation. Frankly, the justice committee spent a lot of time listening to the evidence. Frankly, the minister reacted with significant amendments. Yet members opposite say that we have to debate this some more and that members opposite are irrelevant and do not have any impact on legislation.

With reference to the interests of victims, that was probably a flaw in the previous bill and has been referred to in the preamble of the bill where it has been incorporated by reference. It states:

Canadian society should have a youth criminal justice system that commands respect, takes into account the interests of victims, fosters responsibility and ensures accountability—

I do not know what else can be said in terms of how to incorporate those kinds of principles into a bill.

We heard a great deal of testimony about how Canada treats its youth when they come in contact with the law. What became clear in the course of listening to our evidence was that we overrely on incarceration, particularly on incarceration for aboriginal youth. I can recall the testimony of one youth justice of the Northwest Territories who gave a rather sad commentary on our youth justice system. He said that one of the reasons he puts aboriginal youth in jail is that he knows they have no real alternatives, that they either go back on the street to dysfunctional families or go back on the street to no families at all. As a consequence, he saw it as his only option to put kids in jail. That is a pretty sad commentary on our situation.

Canadians would be interested to know that we incarcerate youth at twice the American rate. That is a pretty shocking statistic and is frankly something I had not heard prior to becoming a parliamentarian. That contrasts quite distinctly with the fact that Americans incarcerate adults at four times the rate Canadians do.

The other point of interest that came up in testimony had to do with learning disabilities. It became clear that a disproportionate number of youth offenders have learning disabilities. The low estimate was something in the order of 35%. The higher estimate was something in the order of 80%. More than one out of every two young offenders cannot read. In this society, people who cannot read will likely be marginalized. If they are marginalized, they are likely going to be hanging out with people they should not be hanging out with and doing things they should not be doing. The consequence is that they will be involved in conflicts with the law.

We also heard that young offenders drop out of school at twice the rate of their peers. At some level this is not really news and at another level it is a profound recognition of societal failure, which brings us into conflict between the needs of criminal justice and the needs of social justice. That is a kind of philosophical divide that we all straddle in some manner or another.

One of the pieces of testimony that really caught my attention was that of professor Allan Leishfield of the University of Western Ontario.

I know he is not from Queen's, Mr. Speaker, but he still probably has something to say in this area.

He states:

There is simply not enough evidence to support the notion that incapacitation through incarceration of relatively large numbers of youth is an effective way to promote community safety. The second is partly drawn from the first and that is that the cost of providing custody for large numbers of youth is considerable and not justified given the poor outcomes recorded in the vast majority of the programs that rely on incapacitation.

Members opposite should know that it costs about $106,000 a year to keep a youth in jail, whereas referrals to other non-custodial situations cost somewhere in the order of about $9,500.

When something is costly and is not working, there is something wrong. When we are faced with that situation we have to look at other alternatives.

I respectfully submit that this bill has looked at other alternatives, that this has been completely and thoroughly debated by members opposite, and that it is time to deal with the issues that criminal justice presents to all of us.

Committees Of The House

[Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, Northern Development and Natural Resources relating to Bill C-3, an act to amend the Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and Divestiture Act and the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act. It was agreed on Thursday, March 22, to report it without amendment.

Modernization Of House Of Commons Procedure

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

Mr. Speaker, it has been a long day, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this very important issue of parliamentary reform. It is the backbenchers who are most affected by the way this place has been operating in the past while.

The fact that we are debating this issue at all is, I believe, a strong indication of the frustration that we are facing in attempting to represent our constituents in this place.

In an effort to place my individual concerns on the record, I would like to take a few moments to outline how I have been personally affected by what has been going on over the past few years while I have had the fortune and the honour to represent the constituency of Surrey North.

A couple of years ago, in carrying out my parliamentary duties and my responsibilities, I was developing a number of amendments to a government bill. It was my understanding that I was working with the staff of the House of Commons in a confidential manner in an effort to bring forth proposed amendments and changes to a government initiative concerning its youth criminal justice law. I found it more than a little disconcerting to discover that the clerk of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights was in possession of my amendments prior to my submitting them to the committee for consideration.

I immediately embarked on a question of privilege in this place. To make a long story short, it appears that there had been a restructuring within the organization of the people whose considerable expertise and valuable assistance we rely on to do our jobs. I also note that after much debate and deliberation the Speaker at the time ruled that my privileges were not harmed by what had occurred.

The government side explained that the restructuring was necessary to enhance and promote the team concept of providing assistance to members of parliament. Let me be clear that I certainly do not question the Speaker's ruling, as he could only decide on the basis of the information that was provided to him at that time. I would be remiss if I did not add that there was subsequently quite an extensive debate and investigation by the procedural and House affairs committee into this operational change that had occurred without the consent or knowledge of the members.

I also note that while everyone involved in the decision making finally decided that nothing was wrong and the members of this place were not disadvantaged by the change, we have since reverted to our former status quo. In short, although it was decided that nothing was broken, we decided to fix it anyway. It is my understanding that now when I as a member employ legislative counsel to draft proposed amendments, those amendments will no longer be placed on a database for numerous employees to use and potentially abuse.

The listener may well question these comments. One could wonder, I suppose, just why I am raising the issue when everything is back to normal and the battle appears to have been won. My concern is that what should have been a fairly straightforward example of breach of confidentiality of lawyer-client privilege was never formally recognized as such. Politics had come into play. The government, the ultimate controller of the staff in this place, refused to accept that harm had occurred and refused to hold anyone accountable for that harm.

We had a manager within this institution who unilaterally changed the operation of the solicitor-client relationship between a member of parliament and House legal counsel. That person was able to avoid censure, and through the failure to properly address what happened, I wonder when something similar will again occur and which member of parliament will be on the receiving end of it. I have had my turn, but I do not wish anyone else to be similarly affected.

As an aside, I should point out that my relations with the clerk of the justice committee at the time were somewhat negatively affected by that situation. It was my sense that he took the position that I was attacking him and trying to cause him some grief for having access to my confidential amendments. I assure members that nothing could have been further from the case. It was the system as it was set up within the legal department of the House of Commons that permitted, and for that matter required, the clerk to become involved as he did. The clerk was not responsible for that.

I would suggest that the standing orders include the concept of solicitor-client privilege to protect the information that passes between individual members of parliament and their assigned legal counsel. Members of parliament are entitled to an expectation of confidentiality with counsel in order to do their job, especially in the political environment that exists in this place.

Another concern I have and would like to discuss has to do with committee work. We hear time and time again about the importance of our committees in threshing out the problems and nuances of all forms of legislation before it comes up for a vote in the Chamber.

I take my committee duties seriously, as I am sure all members do. I am present at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights quite regularly. I also understand the importance of presenting amendments through the committee so that its members are provided with the opportunity to review and debate those proposals. It is, after all, the committee members who are tasked by parliament to conduct indepth review and analysis of legislation through witness testimony, debate, proposing amendments, et cetera. The committee members gain a more thorough knowledge of the issues raised by the legislation and use that gained experience to assist the House with improving the legislation.

It is my opinion in the time that I have been here that some of the best work of the justice committee was accomplished during the time that the late Shaughnessy Cohen, rest her soul, occupied the chair. While we did not always agree, as I am sure members know, she was a most determined individual. I do believe that she always tried to do what was right and what was fair. The fact that the two parliamentary secretaries sat as members of the committee did not appear to intimidate Ms. Cohen. She took control of the committee's work.

Too often I can see that a committee chair can become intimidated by the presence of a parliamentary secretary. Too often I can see that the committee's work becomes a mere formality. It is the parliamentary secretary who gives the government members their marching orders on how to proceed and ensures that no one strays from the government's agenda.

However, I understand that this particular issue will be discussed further by others and perhaps even in another venue; of course I am referring to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

My real concern over committee work relates to what happened during the last parliament with the Youth Criminal Justice Act, Bill C-3. The committee conducted an indepth, extensive review and heard from many witnesses. The committee members then presented a number of amendments, approximately 250 in all, of which about 150 came from the government itself. Instead of dealing with those amendments, the committee sent the bill back to the House unchanged.

To my mind, the committee failed the House, as it did not fulfil its function. It spent a large number of tax dollars to hear from witnesses. It occupied parliamentary staff and tied up government officials for months on an important piece of legislation, but in the end it essentially accomplished absolutely nothing. The House was deprived of the position on the bill from the very people it had tasked to review and return with their advice and experience.

Surely there is something wrong here. Surely it is more than an inconvenience. It is an abject failure. I fully appreciate that there was a filibuster of sorts going on in the committee but filibusters are nothing new in this place or in the committees. They are addressed one way or another. We do not run away from them. The government had the same type of majority on committee as it does in this Chamber. It had a number of ways in which it could have addressed that problem.

By abdicating its duties, the committee forced the reintroduction of all those amendments in this Chamber and we are all aware that the number of amendments then swelled, up into the neighbourhood of 3,000, which had to be addressed by all members of parliament. The actions of the committee made a bad situation worse.

When members of the official opposition, the Progressive Conservatives, the NDP and yes, even the government itself, lose their amendments in the shuffle, so to speak, it is an injustice. For the members of those parties to be denied the opportunity to debate those amendments with their peers in committee is also just not right.

At times I left with the distinct impression that work done in committees was merely a game or a sham. The government was going through the motions to make it appear as though legislation was thoroughly reviewed and analyzed. I regret feeling compelled to adopt this attitude, and that is why I wanted to speak to this important matter of parliamentary reform.

I implore all members to take a serious interest in improving the way we do things around here. We have been elected to represent Canadian citizens. At times the burden can become heavy, but we knew that or we certainly should have known it before coming here. There is much work to be done but we need the right tools to do the job properly. We need significant changes to our procedures to do just that.

Standing Orders

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

I hear the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs say the government is responsible because it is gagging the opposition. In gagging the opposition, it is also gagging democracy. Does the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs think this is a responsible government? I understand he is the best liked minister in Quebec as well.

Why is the motion today, and I think it must be read, borrowing from the United Kingdom's house of commons? Even though we have a British history, the United Kingdom's house of commons does not have the same legislation as we have.

Before speaking, I was wondering. The government wants to gag the opposition, because we are doing our job. Yes, I plead guilty to bringing forward 3,000 amendments on a bill. Once again, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs is applauding.

If I brought forward 3,000 amendments on the young offenders bill, it is because, in Quebec, no one wants the minister's bill. Thanks to my 3,000 amendments, the government did its homework even further, because it moved 170 to 200 amendments on the same bill. In some of these amendments, and I invite members to read them, it changed some commas. Are these frivolous amendments, as the motion implies?

Mr. Speaker, when you will rule on this issue, will you reject one of the government's amendments? No. The government House leader is staring at his papers, and so he should, because if I were in his shoes, I would be ashamed of doing this.

This is a strange country indeed, where the opposition can be gagged. I can be denied my constitutional rights, my freedom of speech in the House.

When it comes to the Hell's Angels, the government does not dare to do anything. They have constitutional rights. The mafia and organized crime have constitutional rights too. But members who have been democratically elected are denied these rights. It is ironic. I cannot understand how Quebec members can vote for this.

Nowadays, under the charter of rights, just about everything can be done. You can even have a website with slanderous comments. The supreme court even ruled that one can draw pornographic pictures at home if it were for personal use. That is what is called freedom of expression.

Members of the House have been given a legitimate mandate in an election. We are here to stand for our constituents. That is what I did with my 3,000 amendments to the young offenders bill. It was not a kind of power trip. I wanted to represent adequately the people of Quebec, something the ministers from Quebec are not doing at this time. They just sit on their behinds and keep an eye on their limo.

They should be supporting the Bloc Quebecois on this kind of bill, but they are not. Where are the members from Quebec in the government caucus? Where are they, when they should be standing for Quebec?

It is even worse than that. The issue today is above partisanship. It is a matter of democracy. Some day, you will be back on the opposition benches.

Where is the member for Laval West when it is time to fight for the interests of Quebec on an issue like the Young Offenders Act? She hides behind the curtains like all the ministers in the front row, like the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. Where is he? Today, he will hide behind a motion in which the Liberals refer to the United Kingdom, but the United Kingdom does not have the Canadian constitution, the magnificent constitution of the best country in the world, as the Prime Minister says, with the mounted police and whatnot.

Sincerely, and I will repeat what my leader said, I do not envy your situation, Mr. Speaker, once the motion is carried. I am anxious to see what the words repetitive, frivolous and vexatious mean for you.

Was the amendment moved by the Minister of Justice to move a coma in Bill C-3 frivolous? Was that vexatious? We know that the legislator does not speak for nothing, a small comma can make a big difference in the interpretation. I do not say that the minister should not have made that change or changed words as she did. What I am saying, Mr. Speaker, is that you will be in a very uncomfortable position when time comes to decide what is to be considered frivolous and what is not.

Honestly, you are going to have a very hard time ruling on that. and eventually, that will turn against one person: the one in your chair.

Canada Foundation For Sustainable Development Technology Act

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

At the outset, I would like to congratulate you, Mr. Speaker, on your appointment, and the new Speaker on his election. I am sure you will show fairness and impartiality in your work.

This is my first time speaking in the 37th parliament. I would have liked to rise before, but I was unfortunately gagged during the debate on Bill C-2. I wanted to speak on behalf of my constituents from Sherbrooke, but unfortunately I was unable to do so.

I would also like to salute my constituents and to thank them for the trust they put in me last November. I know many members talked about their majority when they rose for the first time and I will limit my comments to the fact that I increased mine 11 times. Figures should be interpreted when they are most favourable.

The bill before us today had been introduced before parliament was dissolved. It was then know as Bill C-46. The new Bill C-4 aims at establishing a foundation to fund sustainable development technology. Incidentally, the word foundation is reminiscent of the sad chapter of the millennium fund.

At the beginning of this session, it is difficult to see in what direction the government is aiming. Of course, the throne speech and its promises could provide interesting leads. We realize that all that can be found in that document looks like déjà-vu.

In fact, the legislative program looks the same as what it was before the election was called. Just consider the legislation concerning young offenders and the employment insurance program. Even with regard to Bill C-3, a minister's assistant said only the cover page was changed. That is a nice program. Even the Cabinet remained unchanged. The old federal reflexes of interfering in everything and anything are likely to carry on.

Let us put things briefly in context. Bill C-4, formerly Bill C-46, sponsored by the Minister of Natural Resources, would create a corporation, the Canada Foundation for Sustainable Development Technology. The objects and purposes of that foundation would be to provide funding for projects to develop and demonstrate new technologies to promote sustainable development, including technologies to address climate change and air quality issues.

The establishment of the Canada Foundation for Sustainable Development Technology is one of the initiatives that the federal government announced in its February 2000 budget to promote environmentally desirable technologies and practices. The foundation would operate as a not for profit organization. It would consist of a chairperson, six directors and eight members, some of them appointed by the government.

The foundation would have to table in parliament an annual report of its activities. The foundation would also have to administer a sustainable development technology fund, which would be provided with an initial amount of $100 million.

According to the backgrounder entitled “Canada Foundation for Sustainable Development Technology”, which was released by the government when the bill was introduced, the foundation would provide funding in two dominant areas: new climate-friendly technologies that hold the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and technologies to address clean air issues. This undertaking is not as clear in the bill, however.

The funding would be for specific projects. In order to benefit the maximum number of innovative sources, the foundation would accept proposals from existing and new collaborative arrangements among technology developers, suppliers and users, universities, not-for-profit organizations, and organizations such as industrial associations and research institutes. Small and medium size enterprises would be strongly encouraged to participate and lead projects supported by the foundation.

The foundation's activities would complement other government programs encouraging technological innovation, such as the Technology Early Action Measures component of the Climate Change Action Fund, and Technology Partnerships Canada in the case of environmental technologies.

The creation of a funding agency responsible for promoting the development of ecological technologies was recommended by the Technology Issues Table. In its December 10, 1999, report on the development of technological innovations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Technology Issues Table recommended the creation of a fund to develop climate change technologies in order to encourage the development of target technologies with the potential to reduce greenhouse gas effects and stimulate international sales.

The technology issues table called for an initial investment of $20 million annually, to be increased to $200 million annually starting in the fifth year. It also recommended that 50% of the funding come from federal sources, 25% from provincial sources and 25% from private sources, although it felt that this could vary from one project to another.

Noting that one of the major challenges of innovation is the initial introduction of new technologies and new services in the market, the issue table also recommended the creation of a climate change technology demonstration program that would offset some portion of the financial risks involved in early domestic commercialization of greenhouse gas mitigation technologies.

According to the issue, this option should ramp up from $60 million per annum for year one to $300 million per annum for year five. The federal government should provide, on a portfolio basis, up to 30% of the investment, with the remainder originating from provincial and industry sources. The federal component would be repayable.

In this context the government decided in its budget 2000 to create the Canada Foundation for Sustainable Development Technology, which would support both development and demonstration activities but would not limit itself to climate change technologies.

Instead, it would fund various projects aimed at promoting technologies that contribute to sustainable development. Thus, this is a category of much larger projects.

While the government said it intended to put the emphasis on the funding of new technologies relating to climate change and clean air, the bill does not reflect this priority. It simply deals with the funding of sustainable development technologies, particularly those that are aimed at bringing solutions to climate change and air pollution issues.

Under the definition of “eligible project” in clause 2, the bill does not give express priority to the latter type of projects. Therefore, it might be up to the foundation alone to determine, under clause 19, what types of projects relating to sustainable development it would be prepared to fund.

It is important to note that the definition of eligible recipient in clause 2 refers to an entity that meets the criteria of eligibility established in any agreement entered into between the government and the foundation. It is not clearly indicated if this power, whose concrete aspects are not defined anywhere in the bill, could be used by the government to restrict the definition of “eligible recipient” to those claimants that carry on specific types of projects, thus influencing or restricting the foundation's funding decisions.

In other words, could the government and the foundation agree on eligibility criteria that would impact on what is an eligible project? It would be appropriate to get some clarification on that point, particularly since the government said that the foundation will not be an agent of Her Majesty.

The round table on technologies recommended initial funding of $80 million for the two phases of the projects, that is $20 million for development and $60 million for demonstration. It also recommended that this amount be increased to $500 million after five years, or $200 million for development projects and $300 million for demonstration projects.

Under the bill, the foundation would get an initial amount of $100 million to support development and demonstration projects. Now, since the foundation's mandate goes beyond the financing of technologies linked to climate change, one could come to the conclusion that the financing provided is insufficient, at least for the initial period.

I would also like to talk about some Liberal commitments regarding the environment. I would like to remind the House of some promises made by the Liberals during the last election campaign and contained in the third edition of the red book. However, the events of last week have shown the real usefulness of such documents. They do not seem to stand the test of time, since the authors of the promises contained in the red book voted against a motion containing one of those promises word for word.

Here are some of those promises which are directly linked to the subject matter of today's debate. Again, these are promises made by the Liberal government. They are the following:

(1) A new Liberal government will help the private sector by maintaining R&D tax credits that are already among the most generous in the world, and by working to commercialise discoveries made in government and university labs.

(2) A new Liberal government will act to significantly improve air quality for all Canadians. We will make special efforts to clean-up the air of our cities, where the population and the pollutants are most highly concentrated.

(3) A new Liberal government will continue to support the development of cleaner engines and fuels, and we will strengthen emissions standards for vehicles. We will greatly reduce sulphur in diesel fuel.

(4) A new Liberal government will attack the problem on several fronts under our Action Plan on Climate Change. We will promote increase energy efficiency in industry and in the transportation system. We will fund the development of new energy technologies, such as fuel cells, and help farmers to reduce agricultural emissions through improved farming methods.

Those are promises still. I continue:

We will increase Canada's use of renewable energy, such as electricity from wind and ethanol from biomass. We will encourage consumers to buy more energy-efficient products by providing information and setting high product standards.

That makes a lot of promises. In the throne speech, the government essentially repeated the same things. It said, for instance.

As part of its efforts to promote global sustainable development, the Government will ensure that Canada does its part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It will work with its provincial and territorial partners to implement the recently announced first national business plan on climate change.

I am not going to comment on these statements and promises one by one. A number of them, however, were already known. For instance, the action plan on climate change was announced last October 6.

In the 1997 and 1999 throne speeches, the Liberals announced that they would make the environment one of their priorities, that they would address the matter of climate changes and commit to promoting sustainable development on an international scale. Yet the budget allocated to the environment has done nothing but decrease since 1994-95.

How then can the Liberals be believed? We have no choice but to conclude that there is a lot of difference between talking the talk and walking the walk. For example, Environment Canada announced several months ago that it was going to call for tenders for the design of an import-export policy for PCB contaminated waste. This was made necessary by budget cuts at Environment Canada. As a result of these cuts, the private sector was entrusted with the mandate of designing policies on the import and export of hazardous waste. Really now.

I have, nonetheless, retained a few words from the vocabulary used in the promises and the throne speech: “on several fronts”, “provincial and territorial partners”.

Several fronts suggests a shotgun approach, in all directions and none at the same time. I presume that the government has good intentions and is acting in good faith. However, what does such concern hide? We saw the government move on several fronts in the case of the millennium scholarships and other initiatives in the education area, but its partners are given very little consideration. The federal government always acts as if it was the holder of absolute truth.

Let us now turn briefly to what the environment and sustainable development commissioner said. If the federal government really wants to take the path of sustainable development, it should start by examining its own operations to identify the areas it could improve before telling people that they should consume more ecological and energy efficient products. In his report for the year 2000, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development said:

Since 1990, the federal government has made commitments to Canadians that it would green its operations. Yet, a decade later, there is a lack of rudimentary information about government's vast operations, the costs of which are likely more than $400 million annually for water, energy and waste disposal. We found that the government does not have complete and accurate data on the annual cost of running its buildings and on the environmental impacts of its operations.

When compared to Liberal commitments, this statement by the commissioner reveals that what is probably lacking the most at the federal level is concerted action. After the fiasco of the heating bill visibility operation we see clearly that the government does not have a long term vision.

Also, I would be remiss if I did not underline the recent findings of the auditor general on various appointments. The establishment of a foundation necessarily implies the appointment of a board of directors. I hope that the ministers who will make the appointments will base their decision more on the competence of the candidates than on their political allegiance.

Another point is the fact that Canada clearly will not fulfil its Kyoto commitment. Not only does Canada not appear to be on the way to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, but it actually appears to be increasing them.

In the February edition of Le Monde diplomatique , it is reported that Canada is part of group of countries called the umbrella group. Reference is made to the November 2000 conference held in The Hague, which ended in failure due to these countries' intransigence.

These countries are attached to loopholes such as the unlimited emission rights instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and insist on taking forests into account in the determination of efforts made by each country. Organizations have already denounced the hypocrisy of Canada, which is hoping to boost its reactor sales by trying to include nuclear energy among clean tools of economic development.

At the Vancouver environment and natural resources ministers conference, Ottawa tried to address only public awareness measures and investment projects in less energy consuming technologies. And yet, if the trend holds, greenhouse gas emissions in Canada could be 35% above what they should be.

We must therefore conclude from these examples that what Canada is lacking is the firm political will to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Resorting to its age old strategy of invading provincial jurisdictions rather than developing a joint strategy, Canada will not be able to meet its international commitments.

The establishment of foundations and other similar initiatives will only ease the Canadian government's conscience without leading to any tangible result.

Would this be a new hobby aiming at shrinking the provincial role? Quebec does not need anybody's advice. As Mr. Pierre Elliott Trudeau used to say:

One way to offset the attraction of separatism is to put time, energy and huge amounts of money at the service of federal nationalism.

No doubt, the environment will be the next area to be invaded by the federal government to try and shrink Quebec's role even more. After the Canadian millennium scholarships, education, the health minister's plans for a family medicine program, the new federal hobby may well be the environment.

In this respect, the bill under consideration, which establishes a foundation to develop and demonstrate new technologies to promote sustainable development, appears to belong to the Canadian government's continued effort to have its way in many spheres of human action. What will the foundation do? How much money will it have at its disposal? The news release announcing the bill states:

The new Foundation will administer the Sustainable Development Technology Fund for the development and demonstration of new technologies, in particular, those aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving air quality.

We are told as well that the foundation will have a budget of $100 million. How will the federal government reconcile the many efforts being made in the area of climate change and sustainable development? How will the money allocated for this foundation differ from the climate change action fund? Part of this fund is intended for cost effective technological projects promoting a reduction in greenhouse gases.

The Liberals have a long tradition of unfulfilled promises with respect to the environment. More specifically, in the area of greenhouse gases, not only is Canada not sufficiently reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, it is significantly increasing them. Rather than making a serious commitment to reduce them, Canada is now one of the group of countries that is looking more for loopholes in the Kyoto protocol than it is for sustainable ways to reduce emissions.

In this regard Quebec's energy choices are exemplary, and Quebec is resolutely committed to reducing greenhouse gases.

Will this foundation support initiatives in the nuclear sector? We could think so, since Canada has lobbied vigorously to have nuclear energy considered green.

In our election platform we noted that an investment of $1.5 billion was required for the environment. The federal government must attack this problem seriously. Had it not implemented the policy of $125 for heating oil, for example, it could have saved $1.3 billion. Will the foundation's $100 million be enough? Only the future will tell.

The Bloc Quebecois of course would support this bill because our party is concerned about the environment.

We would support the bill if it were amended on six factors giving rise to concern and opposition from the Bloc.

The first one is the division of powers. We see this as an underhanded way for the federal government to intrude once again in provincial jurisdiction.

The second one is that Quebec already has such a foundation. The creation of this foundation comes as a surprise, since a $45 million action fund for sustainable development already exists in Quebec.

Instead of creating this foundation, the federal government should transfer the money to Quebec's agencies, which are already working along the lines recommended by the table and which have a good understanding of the issue.

Concentration of powers is another factor. Practically all the directors of the foundation are appointed by the governor in council. Under the bill, the governor in council, on the recommendation of the minister, appoints seven of the fifteen directors. However, the eight other directors are appointed by the very members appointed by the governor in council.

Finally, the chairperson and all directors may be removed for cause by the governor in council. This method of appointment seems to be a roundabout way of allowing the federal government to interfere in an area under provincial jurisdiction and to have control over an organization that is not accountable to parliament.

The fact that the governor in council has the authority to enter into agreements with the foundation to set eligibility criteria regarding eligible recipients shows that this organization would not really operate at arm's length from the federal government. The latter would, in a roundabout way, have a say as to how funding is granted to eligible recipients.

Another factor is the dangerous definitions contained in the bill. For example, since the term “eligible project” deals with technologies that include, but are not restricted to, those to address climate change and air quality issues, this could allow funding for nuclear technology projects justified as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which would be contrary to the commitments made by the federal government in Kyoto.

The fifth factor to consider is the disparity between the recommendations from the table and the bill. The foundation would be responsible for managing funds to support technologies to promote sustainable development. It is certainly a lofty goal, but it is rather vague when used in a bill.

The establishment of such a foundation would not reflect the main recommendation of the table which was to allocate money for the development of technologies to reduce greenhouses gas emissions and to stimulate international sales.

The bill does not reflect the general direction of the recommendations of the technology table, mainly because it does not include a goal oriented implementation strategy. Also, the bill does not promote co-operation between the federal government, the provinces and industry and does not contain a qualitative definition of the benefits and factors contributing to our quality of live for each of the options.

The bill only focuses on two of the eight options brought forward by the technology table.

The last factor has to do with the level of funding. We are concerned about the small amount allocated to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In 1998, the Anderson strategy had a budget totalling $1.3 billion over a period of five years to fight this problem.

On December 10, 1998, the table released a report on the development of technological innovations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in which it recommended that a fund be set up, with an initial contribution of $80 million for both stages, development and demonstration, and that the funding be increased to $500 million after five years.

Since the terms of reference of the foundation are not limited to technologies addressing climate change, the funding for the initial phase is not enough.

In conclusion, I would say that, through its environmental policy, the Bloc Quebecois does support positive and proactive actions, provided they take into account the fact that Quebec is an important stakeholder.

Therefore, we will be moving amendments at committee stage.

Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization And Divestiture Act

[Deepak Obhrai, Canadian Alliance, Calgary East, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise on behalf of the constituents of Calgary East to talk about Bill C-3 pertaining to Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and also to Petro-Canada Public Participation Act, Bill C-39.

Basically the bill allows both companies greater access to sell themselves and to get more outside shares.

The Canadian Alliance has no problem with the bill as such. Our natural resources critic will allay whatever fears he has when the bill goes to committee. We will be supporting the bill as it now stands.

The bill also talks about Petro-Canada and the attempt by the government to increase individual share ownership and remove non-resident ownership. I wish to draw attention to the oil sector as we are talking about Petro-Canada.

Sometime last summer the Calgary caucus, the members of parliament from Calgary, showed through calculations how much money the federal government was taking from Canadians through taxes on gasoline. It was interesting. We highlighted that there was a tax on a tax. The GST on gasoline was a tax on a tax. The government levied the excise tax and whatever the other taxes were, and then the GST came in on top of every other tax.

We came out and said that it was double taxation and it should be removed. We called on the federal government to reduce taxes on gasoline. This was a cry that went out when gas prices went up.

When gas prices went up the government resisted reducing taxes, despite what we showed them. It did so because it was reaping benefits from the tax on gasoline prices. Who was benefiting from increasing gas prices? The federal government. It benefited because of the way the tax structure is set up on gasoline. As prices and the excise tax went up, the 7% GST on top of that started to reap windfall profits.

At no time did the government think it necessary to return the money it was getting, the windfall profits, back to the taxpayer by reducing taxes. No, the government kept the money.

Then the government tried to offer what I will call a band-aid solution to the rise in heating oil prices. My colleague from the Conservative Party indicated to the government that it was a very ill-conceived program.

Let me give an example. I got over 50 calls to my office from Canadians talking about their heating bills and how unfair they were. People say that when the government wants money from them, it takes the money right away through Revenue Canada with no questions asked. However when it comes time to give the money back the government brings in a stupid, ill thought program

Here is what happened. The government decided that those eligible for the GST refund would receive the rebate. Just for a second let us think about the GST refund. It is the goods and services tax imposed uniformly across the country. That is fine. We can understand the government giving GST rebates across the country.

The government is now trying to give money to homeowners, a segment which is not uniform across the country, but which needs money to pay for heating costs. Suddenly people who did not pay heating costs and had no heating bills were receiving the cheques. Those who paid heating costs were not receiving the cheques. Children were receiving the cheques while parents, who paid the heating bills, were not. Naturally they phoned our offices to say it was unfair.

Another point is that the GST rebate is based on the previous year's income. In this case it was based upon income from 1999. The heating oil crisis is in the year 2001, not 1999. Why is the government basing the rebate on the year 1999? There were changes in 2000 where people were not earning the same amount of money and needed help. However they did not qualify because their income from 1999 was slightly higher than it was in 2000.

The government in its haste, without thinking, brought in the plan. We have heard the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance say that the government has given money to 11 million Canadians. It may have given money to 11 million Canadians, but were they the 11 million who needed the relief? Were they the ones paying the heating bills? No, they were not. That is why even prisoners were getting cheques. Does the government think prisoners pay heating bills in penitentiaries?

We now have an ill conceived program, as is normal. Half the programs coming from that side are like that. All my colleagues here have received numerous calls from their constituents on this foolhardy program.

The government gave back $1.2 billion to the Canadian public without thinking. What an idiotic program. If it wanted to really help there were ways it could have done so. It has a huge bureaucracy. Could all those bureaucrats and mandarins not have thought up a plan where those who were paying would get a cheque? No, they did not. They used a quick solution without thinking about it.

The government has wasted $1.2 billion. Canadians notice the unfairness of the system, the unfairness of the high taxes they pay. The government has stated that it will reduce taxes, but the way taxes are being reduced is not uniform.

On behalf of my constituents I needed to bring up the point of the heating oil and let the government and those mandarins know that this is a wrong and ill thought out program that is wasting $1.2 billion.

[Gerald Keddy, Progressive Conservative, South Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to preface my remarks with a comment on the remarks from the member for Winnipeg Centre. He led us through an interesting discussion though I am not quite sure that he was completely on subject. Still, it was a very interesting discussion.

I think the question is not whether Canada wants to have a private crown corporation run oil firm, but how much that firm cost us. Is it responsible and reasonable to continue in that direction today? Is it time to get out from under that burden of debt?

I would like to see a tally sheet of what Petro-Canada has cost us on one side and the profits that we made on the other side. I expect to have that information before we finish the bill in committee. I think then we could get into a very interesting and hopefully enlightening debate on whether or not we should keep the company in Canada.

Bill C-3, an act to amend the Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and Divestiture Act and the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act, will allow for greater foreign ownership of the two companies, Petro-Canada and Cameco. That is plain and simple.

As previous speakers have said, the proposed legislation would provide greater flexibility to both companies in their respective industries. It should allow them to continue as well-respected participants in the oil, gas and uranium fields. It should also provide them with increased opportunities for strategic management and positioning within those sectors.

I would like to repeat something that my colleague from St. John's West said when he spoke to the bill in its previous life as Bill C-39. Speaking as a member from Newfoundland, where Petro-Canada has a large involvement through its development of the Hibernia project and other potential oil and gas fields, he said “Even though we can appreciate, perhaps more in Newfoundland than anywhere else in the country, what Petro-Canada has done for oil and gas development in our province, we also must realize that to grow, companies need investment. We cannot restrict that investment or we are putting companies at a disadvantage.”

I could not agree more with my colleague. We all know that we operate in a global environment. Free trade agreements, technological advances and developing countries and markets require innovative and evolving responses to new challenges and opportunities. It is not in Canada's best interest to restrict any company from taking advantage of those opportunities or from moving into new and unexplored areas and markets.

However, there are other issues respecting the legislation that still need to be studied and examined as the legislative process continues.

First, Petro-Canada is an oil and gas company in a market where the price of crude oil has significantly increased over the past year. Petro-Canada has announced record earnings for the year 2000. In a press release the company says “Petro-Canada's performance reflects both an exceptional business environment and our success in capitalizing on that environment.”

No one would argue that if the government is going to take steps to get out of the oil and gas business, now could be one of the best possible times to do that. The industry is on a high and prices reflect that reality. With annual net earnings in 2000 of $893 million, the company far exceeded its previous high of $306 million in 1997.

We all know that the price of oil and gas has increased. We are reminded of that on an almost daily basis when we fill up our cars and pay our heating bills. While this points out the reason why companies like Petro-Canada are experiencing record highs, it also begs the question of what do Canadian taxpayers get out of this deal.

If the government has indicated that it is going to divest itself of the 18% stake it continues to hold in Petro-Canada, taxpayers who funded the purchase of this former crown corporation in 1975 need to benefit directly from the government's decision to get out of the energy sector. Many Canadians are ready to let Petro-Canada be privatized completely and have that money either paid on our national debt or invested in alternative and sustainable energy.

We can stipulate certain requirements in the privatization process, in this case the location of headquarters, Canadian directors and a limit on individual ownership.

The province of Nova Scotia recently announced that it is selling its share in Nova Scotia Resources Ltd., a company established in 1981 to allow the government to participate in the oil and gas industry. Over the course of time a debt of almost $800 million has been amassed. This is a debt that Nova Scotia taxpayers have had to assume. If the $425 million deal that the government announced goes through it will be one less burden on Nova Scotia taxpayers and the government will reduce its debt load. That deal allows the government to cut its losses.

I would suggest that now is a favourable time to get out, just as it is for the federal government with respect to its position in Petro-Canada. If we are going to privatize, now is the time to do it. It also shows that unless there are public policy reasons for direct involvement, the risk inherent in the oil and gas industry may outweigh the benefits for governmental involvement.

In both cases, Petro-Canada at the federal level and Nova Scotia Resources Ltd. at the provincial level, the decision to get directly involved in the oil and gas industry stemmed from global conditions of the day, namely the energy crisis. Petro-Canada was established as a crown corporation in 1975 by an act of parliament to allow Canada to have a stake in the oil and gas industry and improve exploration and development of new oil and gas sources within Canada. This is precisely what happened. Petro-Canada went on to make purchases that led to a share in the Hibernia project and the gas discoveries off Nova Scotia, as well as the tar sands in Alberta. These are still some of the company's primary areas.

However, the federal government divested its interest over time to the point that today it controls exactly 18.2% of the shares but it has no management involvement. With no public policy reasons for its continued participation in the company, the time is seen as appropriate for a complete divestiture. This bill is one more step toward that objective.

The bill deals with two companies, Petro-Canada and Cameco. While many of the points I have already made also apply to Cameco, their respective industries are significantly different. I would like to discuss those differences for a few moments.

Cameco is involved in the uranium business. In fact, it is the world's largest uranium company. As I mentioned, the similarity with Petro-Canada is that this legislation will increase the percentage of foreign ownership on both an individual and aggregate basis, again stipulating that the head office remain in Canada, in this case Saskatchewan, and with Canadian directors. However, the nuclear industry is quite different from the oil and gas industry and Canadians remain skeptical about the safety issues surrounding nuclear power, perhaps with good reason. The auditor general recently reported to parliament and he highlighted some concerns respecting risk assessments at Canada's nuclear power generators. As well, the issue of disposal of radioactive waste remains largely unanswered.

I have been told that the legislation in no way affects the non-proliferation policy and uranium will continue to be sold only to those countries that are signatory to the non-proliferation agreement.

World markets are changing dramatically, and by loosening rules on foreign ownership, it is anticipated that this will provide Cameco with increased opportunity to take advantage of new opportunities and new market conditions.

What both of these companies highlight is Canada's and the world's dependence on energy sources, whether those sources be oil and gas or nuclear. There are a lot of exciting developments taking place in both of these sectors. The Mackenzie Delta pipeline looks like it could soon become a reality and new nuclear reactors have increased safeguards.

Canada needs to be in a position to take advantage of these new prospects and new technologies. I look forward to studying the legislation more closely at committee to see whether the legislation will benefit Canadian taxpayers and be one step toward helping these companies position themselves for future growth and productivity.

In closing, the issue here is exactly that. Does the legislation benefit Canadian taxpayers? It would be my position that the legislation does benefit Canadian taxpayers. There is a significant difference between developments in the petrochemical and petroleum industry energy sector and the nuclear and uranium industry sector.

That is what we have to take a look at in committee. This is only the first time the bill has been debated. We will have an opportunity to discuss it further, and we plan to have some more numbers to look at when we come back to parliament the next time.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to enter the debate on Bill C-3. Most of the country is seized with the issue of energy as we speak. Many homeowners and small businesses are reeling with the shock and the horror of the rising, out of control, skyrocketing fuel prices, so it is timely that we are having this debate now.

It is timely but maybe not fitting, given the content of the bill. We see Bill C-3 as the death rattle of a national dream. There was a time when Canadians believed that the federal government had some role to play in looking after the interests of ordinary Canadians in terms of access to energy.

In 1975, the minority Trudeau government, held up by the David Lewis NDP, saw fit to enter into the energy industry with some presence, whether it was as a watchdog or a producer. It saw that the whole oil and gas industry was owned by offshore interests.

We really did not know if Canadians were getting gouged. We did not know if we were paying a fair market price or a grossly inflated price. Given that Canada is, first, geographically challenged in that it is huge and, second, that it has a cold northern climate, this was no small issue.

However, in 1975 people had the vision and forethought to try to do something about it. They still believed in the nation state of Canada that we could do something to control our own future and destiny.

When we raise the subject, people look at us as if it is heresy to even recommend that the federal government might be able to do something to help Canadians. Government shrugs its shoulders and says that it actually traded that away in the last free trade agreement it signed, that it used to be able to influence and dictate domestic market prices for our energy resources but it traded that away and cannot help us any more.

Frankly that is why I think it is sad today that we are dealing with the death rattle of a national dream, when people with vision actually had some idea and some awareness of how critical access to reasonably priced energy resources would be to the economic stability of the country.

It is even more galling to Canadians when they realize that our energy resources are part of our common wealth. There is that old term. We used to use that word that in the name of our party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. Our natural resources are part of our birthright as Canadians. They are in the ground. They are under our feet. They are something we all need and we all should be able to share.

We believe some things should be regulated. We all know that capital has no conscience as such, so it is government's role to introduce regulation on the free market to make sure that it meets ordinary people's needs. We could certainly argue that the absence of any national energy strategy is not serving Canadians well. We could ask any homeowner in this country what he or she thinks about the way the free market has served the interests of Canadians when it comes to energy supply. We could ask any small business person or any trucking company representative how he or she likes waking up in the morning not knowing if the price of fuel has arbitrarily fluctuated by six, seven or ten cents.

What really annoys Canadians most is this seemingly arbitrary nature of the wild price fluctuations. That is what really galls people. That is why, when we did have Petro-Canada, when we did actually own a piece of the action, we knew what the real cost of production was. Then we could tell if we were paying the real cost or if we were being gouged like most Canadians feel they are being gouged now.

I am not at all impressed with Bill C-3. It is a huge step backward. It is the end of an era in terms of the nation state of Canada being able to dictate its own domestic price for energy strategy.

There is a growing interest, of course, in the whole issue of energy resources. As prices skyrocket there is a growing realization that we have to do something about energy conservation. We have to get more involved in the demand side of our resources rather than the supply side.

I am a carpenter by trade. I used to build hydro dams and oil refineries. I worked on megaprojects of that nature. It used to be heresy for a tradesperson to advocate demand side management because we wanted the jobs. We wanted to build hydro dams to put people to work.

In actual fact, the more people dig into the subject, we are pleased to be able to say that there are far more job opportunities in demand side management in terms of energy retrofitting buildings like schools and hospitals than there are in building a hydro dam. We have to start considering that a unit of energy harvested from the existing system by demand side management measures is indistinguishable from a unit of energy generated at a generating station except for a number of key things: it is available at about one-quarter of the cost; it creates as much as seven times the number of person years or jobs; it is available and online immediately instead of the 10 year lag time there is to build a new generating station; and it does not degrade the environment, but in fact rehabilitates the environment by reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

That is the type of message we should be getting from our federal government as we enter into an era of energy supply crisis. Instead of throwing money at it with a dysfunctional rebate system, why are we not hearing about a progressive approach to serving the needs of Canadians by demand side management energy conservation? If I heard the government say that even once, it would be of some comfort. Instead we have a token gesture.

Let us start with the federal government itself as a demonstration pilot project. The federal government owns 68,000 buildings in Canada, many of which are absolute energy pigs because they were built in an era when people did not worry about energy conservation. These buildings waste energy like crazy.

All the empirical evidence now shows that we can reduce the operating costs of those 68,000 buildings by as much as 40% by working on the building envelope. I am talking about new insulation, smart thermostat controls, basic caulking and sealing of windows, and smart lighting systems that dim and light up as the day brightens and darkens. All of these measures are easily done and would serve as a demonstration project to the private sector that it too can reduce its fuel consumption and operating costs. We all have to realize that our energy resources are extremely finite and that Canada is the most wasteful country in the world when it comes to energy consumption.

David Suzuki was quoted recently as saying that for the rest of the world to live in the same manner we do or use the same level of energy we do, seven more plants would be required to provide the raw resources. There are not enough energy resources in the world for every man, woman and child in developing nations to live the lifestyle that we enjoy with our energy use.

Let us face it. Essentially the jig is up as far as our cheap access to unlimited energy use is concerned. Conservation is going to be the key and will ultimately save the planet. Sooner or later we are going to have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels altogether.

In regard to the demand side management I described, possibly there would be some optimism and hope on the part of Canadians if they heard our government make visionary statements like that. Frankly, we could show the world how to do it. We could be a centre of excellence for energy retrofitting technology because we are a harsh northern climate and we have challenges in terms of energy supply now. We could develop and export the technology and become world leaders in the sensible use of energy resources instead of showing the world just how wasteful we can be, which is our practice, frankly.

I started by saying that there was a time within living memory when Canadians still believed that we were not impotent as a government, but now as we sign more and more trade agreements we are locking ourselves in deeper and deeper, to the point where we can no longer dictate our own domestic energy strategy. We cannot give preferential pricing to our own customers, our own citizens, our own kids. We are not allowed to because somebody traded it all away. I call it economic treason to trade away our birthright and our ability.

In the 1980s and 1990s in the private sector, in the Business Council on National Issues and the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, everybody wanted to deregulate everything. The idea was to let the free market prevail and get government out of business because it was tying up the free hand of the marketplace. The government sold Petro-Canada. It sold the goose that laid the golden egg. Why did we want to get out of the energy sector just at a time when world prices were going through the ceiling? We sold it off.

Last year, $800 million in profit would have been in the coffers of the federal government, but no, we had to let the free market handle things: all things private, good, and all things public, bad, and the public sector could not organize a peanut stand. Although frankly, with the way the government has managed its energy rebate system there is not much room for confidence in its ability to run anything else.

However, the really galling thing is that we used to own it. We used to have a piece of it. It was called Petro-Canada. Bill C-3 puts to bed any idea of ever getting involved in that kind of thing again because the powers that be simply will not tolerate it.

We are not being served well. Ask Californians with their energy problems how much they like deregulation. They are trying to re-regulate as fast as they can to save their bacon, to save their industries, to save their economic base. Ask Albertans how much they like deregulation. They always say they do, until the price of natural gas goes up 125% in one year. Thanks a million. The free market is really servicing them well. These outrageous gouging costs have to be offset by energy rebates to Albertans every month.

However, we never get to the root of the problem. Rebates are just offsetting the profits of the oil companies. If we are in fact being gouged—and we do not know if we are being gouged or not—rather than the government intervening to try to put some semblance of order into the industry, it is telling us that if we are being charged too much it will help us by giving us a little bit of money, a $125 lump sum payment.

That does not even heat one house for a week in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. I had phone calls from people in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut—I spoke about it in question period today—who were complaining that the fuel oil delivery guy will not deliver now unless customers have cash up front. Many people are defaulting on their monthly bills. They have to pay cash in advance to get oil to heat their homes. That is a desperate situation when it is 40 degrees below zero or worse in Nunavut.

We are not being well served with what is our common wealth, with what we used to consider our birthright and our property. We are not being well served when we cannot even afford to heat our homes or we are paying $500 or $600 a month for an 800 square foot house in Nunavut. The $125 rebate will not even heat that house for a week. One cannot be without heat for more than an hour in that part of the world.

Deregulation has hurt ordinary people. The previous speaker from the Bloc Quebecois was saying that the average joe, the little guy, the working person, has suffered in all of this. People who own shares in the oil companies have benefited while the rest of us have suffered. Who will stand up for us? Who will be our champion, our advocate? Who will say on behalf of the Canadian people that enough is enough?

Who will say that they will find a way to produce and distribute energy resources in a way that is fair and equitable so that all Canadians can share in the benefit of what is ours, not theirs but ours collectively? That was the dream of Petro-Canada. The government is putting the final stake through the heart of that dream as we deal with Bill C-3. That is nothing to celebrate. I have heard other speakers saying it is great that we are moving forward with a whole new way of dealing with our energy resources. We are not. We are moving backward.

People cannot survive without energy. It is one of the fundamental basics. It gets to be an economic development issue because he who has the energy can attract the business. This is why in all the free trade agreements the Americans have been quite up front. They are after our energy resources and our water because without those two resources no country will move forward. They are two resources that we used to have in great abundance.

Now, frankly, that natural gas might as well be in the United States because we have to sell it to our own domestic customers at the same price we sell it to our export partners south of the border, who have an insatiable appetite for our resources. Even if we run short and are freezing in the dark, we are not allowed to turn off the tap once it is turned on. That is the miracle of NAFTA.

This is the frustration that Canadians are feeling. They feel that we are no longer in control and that their freely elected representatives, like us in the House of Commons, cannot even help them. They are right, because in my opinion somebody committed economic treason by signing away our economic sovereignty and giving it away for next to nothing in a trade agreement that we neither wanted nor voted for. It does not serve ordinary Canadians. It only serves the powerful and the elite or maybe those who have shares in oil companies.

We are worried that we have lost the ability to have any kind of national energy strategy. That is why I recently introduced a private member's bill calling on the government to create a national energy price commission. On energy issues the commission would at least be an advocate on behalf of ordinary Canadians. It would champion their issues, so that if the oil companies wanted to raise the price of gas or home heating fuel or whatever, they would have to come before this independent tribunal and justify why the increase is warranted. What is so wrong with that?

Granted, it would be a regulation, and maybe it would be the first tentative step toward a new national energy policy that would in fact set policy which would provide for ordinary Canadians. Maybe that same energy price commission would say that charging the GST on home heating fuel is not only wrong but amoral and fundamentally antithetical to anything Canadians should be standing for.

Maybe that energy price commission would say that we need to start investigating more sources of alternative energy. Maybe it would be the think tank that would actually set some energy policy. Perhaps it would say that the real value of a barrel of oil is not $25 or $27 but that the whole cost of a barrel of oil is about $150, because we have to factor in the price of the American military to keep supertankers in the Persian Gulf to get the oil out of there and then we have to factor in the environmental degradation and the cleanup afterward.

If we look at the whole cost of burning fossil fuels, all other sources of energy seem cheap in comparison. Even if solar energy and wind energy need some investment before we are ready for them, that seems like a bargain when we start really viewing what burning fossil fuels does to our planet and our environment and what the whole cost of that is.

We are ready to move on. We would hope that most Canadians are also ready to move on and into an era of progress and new maturity about our energy resources. That includes taking the bull by the horns and not saying that we cannot do it. We are always making excuses about why we cannot shape our domestic policy. There is a saying I heard that “there are no more prizes for predicting rain, that from now on we are only giving prizes for building arks”. There should be no more excuses.

The government should not tell us that it cannot help us. It must get creative and find a way to make sure there is a reliable supply of affordable energy so that Canadians can heat their homes without breaking the bank.

We do not want more repeat situations like Cambridge Bay where people have to go down to the fuel dealer with five gallon jerry cans and pay in advance to get ten gallons of fuel oil to heat their homes. That is a disgrace.

It is a complete abdication of responsibility by the federal government in not representing the interests of Canadians in this way. Bill C-3 takes us one step further from the complete abdication of responsibility by the government. It simply does not think it has a role in any kind of a national energy strategy, and we think that is wrong.

I look back fondly on the days when David Lewis had the official balance of power in a minority government. He could influence government and demand that government exercise its sovereign right to manage the affairs of the country in terms of energy supply. That was 1975. This is 2001. Bill C-3 will drive a stake through the heart of any national dream we might have in taking care of our own interests.

[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.