Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'm also speaking in support of this amendment. It reflects the amendment the NDP has put forward as well. I want to remind all of us...and we're not going to go over all the testimony we've heard. I want to thank my colleague for her very eloquent summary of some of the key concerns.
When you have 16-year-olds who can be detained, what that means is they're going to end up in provincial prisons. We've already heard that under the current system, our immigration detention centres get pretty packed, and on a daily basis we have people who have to be housed in prisons. We've also heard about some of the circumstances around that.
I'm a mother. Mind you, I think my 27-year-old isn't making the right kinds of decisions and all kinds of things. You know, moms are always moms. To imagine that a 16-year-old would be housed in a prison, it's just not sitting right with me. I don't think it's something that would sit right with Canadians.
There's also the social impact. When you put young people at the age of 16...and you need to know, Mr. Chair, that I've worked with youth all of my life, as a teacher, as a counsellor, and as a community worker. One thing I do know is that the age of 16 is a very vulnerable age, both for girls and boys.
There is the social impact of detention that we have to take into consideration. I'm not saying no one should be detained, except for very limited reasons. I'm really pleading with my colleagues across the way, as parents and grandparents in some cases, to take a look at this, and say that a 16-year-old is not necessarily an adult. That kid, when he jumps on the boat, if it's a boat, is not saying, “Hey, I get to make an independent decision.” He's escaping something.
The other issue I want to discuss is that children under 16...the parents have a choice. It's left up to the parents to determine. It seems very much like Hobson's choice. The previous iteration said everybody would be detained and then the later iteration, the current iteration, says, “Well, if you're under 16, your parents get to decide.”
I absolutely agree that if children under 16 arrive, without any parents or family members, they would go to the state and the state would proceed. But when parents arrive escaping some pretty horrendous situations and are fleeing because their lives are at risk, I find it difficult to say to them, “You have two choices”, and they're real choices. The choices are, “You can keep the children in prison with you, or you can give them up to strangers, who you don't know, who will look after them for you while all this is happening.” As a parent, that would not be a choice for me because I would want to keep my kids with me.
Let us not keep children in prison, because we know the impact that prisons have on families.