Bill C-25 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act

This enactment amends the Youth Criminal Justice Act by adding deterrence and denunciation to the principles that a court must consider when determining a youth sentence. It also clarifies that the presumption against the pre-trial detention of a young person is rebuttable and specifies the circumstances in which the presumption does not apply.

Youth Criminal Justice Act

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to take part in the debate on Bill C-25 to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

I am very mindful of the great struggle of the Bloc Québécois over many years; a struggle led by our former Justice critic, who is now a judge of the Quebec court. I would like to acknowledge the work of our colleague and friend, Michel Bellehumeur, the former member for Berthier—Montcalm.

That struggle has not been in vain. However, we are forced to recognize that it must continue, especially in the face of this Conservative government. It is a right-wing government with a tendency, in terms of the justice system, to adopt a much more punitive approach rather than an approach based on rehabilitation.

We can recall the trip made by a member on the other side of the House, at a time when the Conservative Party was known as the Reform Party. They changed the name. It is a little like Coca-Cola—New Coke, old Coke or Coke zero—in the end it is still Coca-Cola. Whether the party changed the name to Canadian Alliance, the Reform Party or, now, the Conservative Party, it is the same party with the same individuals, and it is the same right-wing ideology that prevails in that party.

When they were in opposition, the Conservatives, in their Reform Party days, went so far as to subsidize a trip by one of their colleagues to study what they call “batting” in Thailand, I think. In that country, young people who do wrong are punished with strokes administered with a bamboo rod. That is what is known as “batting”, with penalties of 50 or 100 strokes. We know those are absolutely useless approaches and that it is totally impossible to export such practices to Canada.

As my colleague for Chambly—Borduas has properly stated, you will understand that the Bloc Québécois is opposed in principle to Bill C-25. In terms of justice, the Bloc Québécois firmly believes that the most efficient approach is, and always will be, prevention. We must attack the causes of crime. I will not repeat the remarks just made by my colleague. He described criminal activity that can be caused by poverty. However, I would add a slight qualifier to what he said.

No connection has ever been established between crime and people from a poor background. Young people from very comfortable backgrounds sometimes commit crimes. Unfortunately, a poor choice of friends, bad habits and drug dependencies can sweep young people down the wrong path. I would not want to play stepmother to my colleague from Chambly—Borduas, but I just wanted to add this nuance, that there is no direct connection, no causal relationship, between poverty and crime. It should be said, though, that poverty often provides fertile soil for the growth of the gangrene of crime among our youth.

We need, therefore, to attack the causes of delinquency and violence rather than waiting until the damage has been done and trying to repair it. The most judicious and beneficial approach, from both a social and financial point of view, is prevention.

Justice for young people is no different in this regard. Young people need to grow up in a healthy environment and not in extreme poverty; they need an affordable education system, and so forth.

Much is made of Canada’s current economic prosperity. We have been hit hard, though, by downturns in manufacturing and forestry. In general, the various governments in power over the last few years have just boasted about economic prosperity and the incredible surpluses they have racked up.

Despite all that, it is still true that 1.5 million children in Canada live below the poverty line. If there are 1.5 million children living below the poverty line, it is because their parents are poor. These children do not have multimillionaire parents. I hope we understand that. These are children from poor families. There are 1.5 million children who often do not have what they need. They have no money. There is nothing in the refrigerator, and these children go to school on empty stomachs.

Talk with people in the field of education. The principals of primary schools in certain areas where there are pockets of poverty have to keep a refrigerator in the staff room filled with string cheese, fruit, fruit juice and yogourt because young people come to school without having eaten. That is the reality. The government needs to understand this instead of just boasting that its budget surplus has reached $11.6 billion.

The Bloc Québécois is aware that there are young people who commit offences. Some people might want to accuse the Bloc Québécois of putting its head in the sand, of not recognizing that there is a crime problem among some young people. However, we know that there is a crime problem and it is completely unacceptable. It is unacceptable. On the other hand, there is a way of treating the disease and healing the wound of the gangrene festering in some of our young people.

There are acts that have been committed by young offenders and they must answer for them in the courts. The Bloc believes that the government has a duty to take action and use the tools available to it so that Quebeckers and Canadians are able to live peacefully and safely. However, the measures brought forward must have a genuinely positive impact on crime, and must be more than just words, more than mere rhetoric, more than fine high-sounding pronouncements to try to put everyone to sleep, or more than a campaign based on fear.

As well, it does not necessarily have to be a model copied from George Bush's United States. We could talk about that at length. The result is familiar to us all: the United States has a high crime rate. Despite the fact that some states apply the death penalty, the United States has a homicide rate three times higher than in Canada and four times higher than in Quebec. In the United States, they still apply the death penalty. Anyone who believes that the death penalty operates as a deterrent is mistaken. The best way of deterring crime is to tackle the sources of the problem and have treatment that will be effective in the long term for our young offenders.

The Bloc Québécois also deplores how lightly the Conservative government is taking these amendments to measures that reflect the very foundations of the justice system. By shifting the burden of proof to the accused on the question of pre-trial release from detention, Bill C-25 offends the presumption of innocence, which is a fundamental principle of law. The Bloc Québécois completely understands that pre-trial detention may be necessary for certain individuals, but in those cases the measure must be the least restrictive possible in the circumstances.

I see I have one minute left, Mr. Speaker, and so I would like to say that in the past, Quebeckers have opted for a system of individualized justice, based on a flexible judicial process, adapted to each case, with the positive results that we are familiar with in Quebec. When it comes to the youth criminal justice system, we have traditionally opted for rehabilitation and reintegration in order to rescue these young people from the vicious circle of crime.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of the important things about the bill and the challenge we have with it is perhaps the consequence of taking some of the progressive elements out of the criminal justice system that need to be worked on, such as prevention. Despite the government not bringing forward the prevention strategies, part of the Youth Criminal Justice Act has it as its core now that the content of declaration of principles include prevention of crime. It also talks about help for young people who have committed crimes to make the right decisions.

Does my colleague have some specific examples in Quebec about those types of programs?

Ontario has been successful on a series of community based programs that help youth fix the mistakes they have made by either getting retraining, or ensuring they are getting proper counselling and also even going back to school and having that type of a comprehensive program.

A number of those organizations have suffered from lack of funds. They have been able to get at issues related to gang violence or issues in the community related to their specific problems out of the way because they have had that support.

Does my hon. colleague have other ones in Quebec that need the same support?

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. In a previous life, before becoming a member, I had the opportunity to practice law, and worked in youth law in particular. In Quebec, the whole point of reception centres and social service centres is to work with young people instead of judging them and sending them to prison or to places that would help feed in to their anger and develop their criminal tendencies.

It is true that if a young person deserves to be punished, it is because he has done something wrong. If he stole a purse from a 91-year-old woman—this happened to one of my aunts—if he pushed her down and she broke her wrist, we do not just give him a little swat on the bottom and tell him not to do it again; that will not do. We must provide them with guidance and support and explain why what they did was wrong. In Quebec, with the youth centre formula, we have reception centres for boys and others for girls, where there are more secure wings for young people who have committed much more serious crimes.

The youth are supervised by social workers and live in a structured environment. They can take courses while they are still at the reception centre. When they turn 18, they have some skills as they enter the job market. There is a transition period, a short time before they turn 18, when the youth live in a group home, where they are much more autonomous. Quebec has been successful in treating its young offenders—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Trois-Rivières should know that there are two minutes left for questions and comments.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the hon. member for his speech.

He is absolutely right when he talks about poverty which, unfortunately, is not declining in Canada, as the Liberals had promised us. This was an aggravating factor, and also the violence that exists in our society.

Having said that, there is no doubt that the Quebec model, which is based on rehabilitation and social reintegration, is important, at least to us. Our children are precious, and we want to keep them. We could talk at length about how we succeeded in reducing crime in Quebec, thanks to all these reintegration initiatives. I should also point out that the process begins in school, where remedial teachers take the children under their wing when the problem occurs.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to quickly add a comment.

My colleague has put a lot of emphasis on the Quebec model. If the Conservative government had been honest when it passed the motion to recognize Quebec as a nation, it would have recognized that Quebec has a system that is different, that is independent and that is working. One simply has to look at the statistics on youth crime. We are not at the top of the list but, rather, at the bottom of it.

If the motion proposed by the Conservatives really meant something, this government would accept the Quebec specificity, and it would recognize that the Quebec system for handling offenders is the best one that exists.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to congratulate my colleague, the member for Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, on his excellent analysis of the Bloc Québécois position, the situation in Quebec, and Quebeckers' attitude and values with regard to delinquency. No one can have failed to understand that Quebeckers favour rehabilitation and prevention over deterrence, which is what this Conservative government is determined to impose on us.

Since his analysis was so thorough and since my colleague from Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord did such a good job of recounting his experiences, I would like to approach the issue from the standpoint of Quebeckers' values.

First, I would like to reiterate the Bloc Québécois position. I want to explain why we are really opposed to Bill C-25 in principle.

The Bloc Québécois firmly believes that prevention is still the most effective approach to justice and always will be. We have to attack the causes of crime. Attacking the causes of delinquency and violence, rather than trying to repair the damage once it is done, is the most appropriate and, above all, most profitable approach from both a social and financial point of view.

Could this be any clearer? The first step must be to deal with poverty, inequality and exclusion, which create a fertile breeding ground for frustration and its outlets, which are violence and criminal activity.

Youth justice is no different. Young people need a healthy environment, free of extreme poverty, and they need access to affordable education. In each of these areas, Quebec has made choices that set it apart. We have only to think of tuition fees, which are among the lowest in North America, the network of day care centres, which has served as a model in this area, and so on.

Obviously, the Bloc Québécois is aware that young people commit criminal acts they must answer for. It is the government's duty to take action and use the tools at its disposal to help Quebeckers and Canadians live in peace and security.

The measures that are introduced will really have to have a positive impact on crime and go beyond mere rhetoric or campaigns based on fear. They will have to be more than a weak imitation of the American model, which has had less than stellar results.

Where young people are concerned, the Quebec model, with its focus on rehabilitation and reintegration, produces real results, as my colleague from Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord explained.

Bill C-25 should have, on the one hand, focused on what is already working and, on the other hand, allowed Quebec to pursue its successful approach based on rehabilitation and reintegration so that today's young people do not become marginalized in the future.

I would now like to explain another aspect of this bill that is important for Quebec. On November 27, 2007, this Parliament made an important decision, recognizing that Quebeckers form a nation. Incidentally, just last week, the last time I mentioned this in the House, two Conservative members started laughing, as though they had pulled a fast one on Quebeckers, as though they did not believe at all in the value of this recognition for Quebeckers. They thought they had tricked us, which is why they were laughing. Fortunately, those members are not here right now, so they cannot laugh.

This recognition was the result of a motion moved by the Bloc Québécois in this House a few days earlier. Thus, the Conservative government, which did not believe in it at all—as we saw again last week, in many ways, and Bill C-25 only reinforces that—set a trap for us and tricked us. It was a trap set for the Bloc Québécois. They thought we would completely fall for it.

From now on, given that the Conservatives have adopted this motion, they must be taken literally. We must ignore their laughter and believe in the motion they passed. The Conservatives must put their money where their mouth is. With Bill C-25, we do not see how they can do that, since we do not see how they are respecting the different values of Quebeckers, who form a nation.

They must therefore recognize the fundamental rights of Quebeckers, the fundamental rights of a nation, which can be expressed as different values. Bill C-25 clearly reveals the values of the Conservative Party, which include repression, law and order, and prison for the bad guys.

However, Quebec's values of rehabilitation and prevention cannot be seen in it.

Perhaps when I talk about the nation, it may seem to have little to do with Bill C-25. On the contrary. It is at the very heart of this bill.

I want to say a few words about how Quebec addresses crime, although my colleague from Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord made an excellent presentation on this.

As I was just saying, the Conservative government's directions, ideas and mentality are different. It has a different way of finding solutions to problems in our society. In Quebec, we found our way a long time ago. We take care of young offenders. We take better care of their needs and their difficulties. We try to rehabilitate them and—if I may say so—turn them into responsible adults whenever possible. Statistics show that in most cases it is possible.

In Quebec, we try above all to find solutions to the underlying problems that cause these youth to commit small, medium and large offences. I have to say that in Quebec, we are succeeding and we have the statistics to back that claim. In Quebec, the youth rehabilitation program works very well. Now we have this Conservative government barging in and wanting to send youth to prison to punish and deter them. We know full well that criminals, even adult criminals, do not know what prison sentence they will get for the crime they plan to commit. They do not know beforehand or during the crime. Increasing prison sentences or creating harsher sentences usually does not deter young offenders from committing an offence.

Quebec should have been exempt from this reform. We should have had the possibility of keeping our intervention strategy, which is based on the needs of youth and focuses on prevention and rehabilitation.

The Conservative government does not have the same values as Quebeckers. Quebeckers are a nation, and the government has recognized that. We have our own values, and this government, this Parliament, must recognize that when it comes to anything, big or small, and especially when it comes to bills. Everyone here in Parliament must now walk the walk. We know that the Conservative government has a hidden right-wing agenda that it is trying to sneak in bit by bit, usually behind our backs.

This bill to criminalize young people, kids as young as 12, is further proof of that. I am not even talking about bilingualism. The Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages, the Conservative member for Quebec, said it herself. Her government is not protecting the interests of Quebeckers or their language; her government is protecting bilingualism. This government can therefore not protect Quebec's interests because Quebec's interest is its language, French, Quebec's common public language. The Conservatives have no intention of promoting French, but they do intend to promote bilingualism. They do not even respect Quebec's bill 101 in their institutions or in the services they provide to citizens. They do not respect Quebeckers' language.

The Conservative government does not have the same values with respect to the death penalty either. Contrary to what it has done in the past, Canada failed to support an international institution's resolution opposing the death penalty, thereby sending a clear message to specialists around the world that the government had altered Canada's fundamental position on the death penalty. This government is changing Canada's and Quebec's basic values. It denies this right up until it presents us with a fait accompli. Quebec wants nothing to do with the death penalty. Quebec wants nothing to do with the Conservatives' hidden agenda.

Bill C-25 is another Conservative government bill that does not reflect Quebeckers' values, but instead reflects the Conservatives' right-wing ideology. The government is far from walking the walk when it comes to the Quebec nation. For Quebec, this bill is a step back. Quebec has some excellent solutions, an excellent rehabilitation program for teenagers. The Conservative government is trying to spoil everything.

This is yet another good reason for the Quebec nation to decide to have its own country and take care of its own children in ways that respect Quebec's values.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-25. I know that other members of the NDP have spoken today and there will be others speaking as well. We have a number of concerns about this bill.

I have been sitting here listening to the debate and thinking about this issue. One of the problems with Bill C-25, An Act to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act, is that it is another example of the Conservative government bringing in legislation with really very little reflection and thought about its impact.

This is part of an overall drive to create this core issue that Conservatives believe they have around crime and justice, to create a “them” and an “us”, and to play on people's fear about crime, which obviously is very strong in most communities. When we actually go through the bill and see what it seeks to accomplish, there is no evidence that what it proposes is actually going to build safer communities.

Having said that, I note that there is one aspect of the bill that the NDP does support. It has to do with pretrial discretion of the judge. We agree because it is now practice in the judiciary that judges often do take into account whether there has been a previous serious offence and whether the young person poses a risk and therefore should not be released. In the law, technically speaking, there is a presumption that the youth in pretrial would be released. We do agree that there should be discretion within the system to allow judges to make a determination for those young individuals who do pose a serious threat to society. Judges should have the tools and the availability to make sure that such individuals are not released.

However, beyond that, this bill is very problematic. It concerns us a lot. Certainly we believe that if it goes to committee we should take a serious look at it. In fact, we probably should be cutting out large sections of the bill. The two particularly problematic areas have to do with the introduction of adult sentencing principles that have to do with denunciation and the question of deterrence.

We need to recognize that throughout our history there has always been a difference in the way the judicial system treats adults and juveniles, young people. It is based on the understanding that sometimes young people, for whatever reason, out of impulse, ignorance or anger, commit crimes that they do not necessarily think about. These crimes are not necessarily premeditated and there is this idea that sentencing based on denunciation or deterrence is not necessarily going to work. So in 1999 and 2000, when the Youth Criminal Justice Act first came in, the act was based on the idea that a different model needed to be created. That was a good thing. We generally supported that.

The bill today is taking us yet another step closer, because of the Conservatives' agenda, to where those lines become indistinguishable and where how we treat young people in the justice system would become more blurred in terms of how we treat adult situations. I think that is a very serious problem.

We should not proceed with this bill in a mad dash just because it happens to be another bill that the Conservatives have brought forward and just because it happens to meet their political agenda. I actually find it very offensive that so much of the legislation we have debated around the crime issue has been based on this political agenda rather than on evidence based information about what works in a criminal justice system.

I have been listening to our colleagues from the Bloc, who have been telling us something about the way it works in Quebec. In my own community in east Vancouver, we have issues around crime and safety, like other inner city urban communities, and we often use Quebec as an example of a different approach based on rehabilitation, on taking the young offenders with the goal of returning them to society. In fact, that should be so for all people where possible, but particularly for young people. I think we have a lot to learn from Quebec about the system it has used, yet this bill would actually undermine that and take us in a completely different direction.

I was reading an article the other day and was horrified to learn that the Conservative member for Kitchener—Conestoga sent out a householder claiming that the rate of violent youth crime had increased 22%. In actual fact, according to Statistics Canada, violent youth crime had fallen by 2%. This is not a huge decrease but at least it is a decrease.

However, that information is being put out there. My concern is that it is like the oldest game in the book. We know that people are worried about crime, even though crime overall has gone down. We know that people want to see effective strategies. It is so easy to keep throwing more laws at the problem and to say that we need tougher enforcement, that we are going to have tougher regimes and that is going to solve the problem.

Let us look at justice department studies, however, and at what happens in the United States. In fact, after debate on this bill is concluded we will be moving on to another bill, the minimum mandatory sentencing for drug crimes, a very severe bill in terms of its approach. It seems to me that we are not looking at the evidence that is so starkly there, the overwhelming evidence that we have in our own country in terms of what does and does not work and what we actually see in other jurisdictions.

We do not often refer to countries beyond the United States. Different models are used in Europe and have much more focus on rehabilitation and a sense of restorative justice. In east Vancouver, we had a number of incidents in the Commercial Drive area. People were very worried about youth at risk who were on the streets. Various incidents had taken place. People had been assaulted. I think it was easy to have that initial response of saying that we should just have a get tough approach and get those kids off the street, that those kids should be in jail.

However, we held a community forum. We invited local residents and some of the community organizations. We invited young people and the businesses. We had a very thoughtful discussion about what we needed to do in our own community and what was our response. Certainly relying on the Criminal Code and on police resources was a part of that discussion and that response, but beyond that, there was a lot of reflection about how we needed to develop programs at the very local level, right at the grassroots level, to deal with problems at the street level.

For example, we started a whole series of meetings about restorative justice. I have a very high aboriginal community population in my riding. This is something that has been really well thought out in that there are some programs, not enough but some, whereby people are taking a very different kind of approach rather than having this knee-jerk reaction to crime. That is what I feel we need to do. Unfortunately, that is what this bill does not do.

That is why in the NDP, although we agree with some parts of the bill and are willing to see it go to committee, we have very serious concerns about this idea that we will move juveniles closer and closer to the criminal system and that somehow we are going to fool people that it is going to fix the problem, that this is going to work. I feel that is a big mistake.

We all have a responsibility to speak truthfully about these issues, even when politically it may appear on the surface to respond in the way that people want us to. There are those lines that we tend to come out with, such as the lines about more enforcement, more officers and getting tough on crime.

If we emphasize more crime prevention and building healthy communities, whether it is through training, better health care, housing, and certainly more opportunities for young people, then I think we would be minimizing at the beginning the number of young people who end up in situation where they become at risk and where they may become young offenders. It seems crazy to me that we load everything up at the other end, the end that is the most expensive and the end that has the least amount of impact.

I have concerns about this bill. Obviously we will see what happens in committee. The NDP will support some of its elements and we will address our concerns.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Richmond Hill, Afghanistan; the hon. member for Mississauga South, Privacy.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Yukon.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I was delighted to hear the member talk about restorative justice and those items. Virtually everyone who has spoken today has given ideas to the government as to how it can rescue its failed crime agenda. Obviously that agenda has not been successful. There are a lot of things wrong with it. There have been a lot of good suggestions made by members. I noticed that the member was not finished, so I would invite her to talk more about prevention and the root causes of crime.

There was a wonderful show on CBC in the morning, I think last week, about how the prison system is failing prisoners in the federal system, prisoners who need education and anger management, the things that would protect victims. We have to stand up for victims of crime. The things that could be done to help them are not being done. That was an example.

In Ottawa there was an open house, like the one the member talked about, for restorative justice week. People talked about how restorative justice failed and how crimes were repeated 38% to 45% of the time. However, the regular criminal system failed 73% of the time, so restorative justice is actually a success. As the member knows, the Conservatives tried to pass a bill to get rid of a lot of the restorative justice alternatives.

I would ask her to comment on how we can improve the justice system, help victims of crime and make Canada safer.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I know that the member for Yukon has some experience in these matters. He mentioned the situation in Ottawa. I know that the new Ottawa chief of police is very strong on restorative justice and has a whole history with it. It is wonderful to see a major entity like the Ottawa police taking this very seriously under its chief.

In terms of the ideas I put forward, one of my main concerns is that a lot of these programs manage on very limited funds. They have to beg and borrow to keep going. They are actually very successful. To me, the ingredients we need to look at are that programs have to be locally based and come out of the local community and they have to involve different stakeholders. A program may involve young people who may be at risk and the offenders themselves, of course, and their victims, but I think it has to encompass a broader dialogue within the community.

We started to do it in east Vancouver and were doing it with really no resources. It was only what we could do through my office with a number of really good organizations that were contributing their time voluntarily. We had really good discussion and dialogue.

I know that certainly within the aboriginal community there is a much stronger emphasis on returning to traditional practices of dealing with issues and concerns in the community. Then they are dealing with their peers, so the sense of understanding the wrong that has been done and the impact it had is something that--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Trois-Rivières.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague from Vancouver East on her speech. I recognized in it the member with whom I worked on a very complex issue, namely prostitution. I would like her to say a few words about that.

In the case of prostitution, we could see how repression put the lives of these women in danger. Repression is certainly not a solution. Many women turn to prostitution because of problems related to mental health, poverty or different types of abuse.

From the moment repression is used instead of an approach targeting the causes of prostitution, people are sent to prison, they are not allowed to go to certain places and their lives are threatened. That just makes the problem worse.

I would like the member to elaborate on that because the connection with this bill seems very obvious to me.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member and I served on the subcommittee together and I think we learned a lot.

I would agree that if we use the blunt instrument of law enforcement to solve a problem, all we are really doing is further entrenching at risk individuals in a system where it is hard for them to make changes. We learned a lot in committee. We have learned a lot from programs in our community.

The approach the Conservatives have taken of getting tough on crime, of heavy-handedness, of a reliance on enforcement, rather than prevention, rather than building healthy communities, rather than making sure that people's rights are upheld, will fail, and that is what we are seeing--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Brome—Missisquoi.