Our overall concern is that this bill seems to have a law and order approach, get tough with young offenders. And we believe that the result of the bill as it stands will be that there will be more young people in custody. That truly causes us concern.
I want to talk briefly about two things. First are the principles under subclause 3(1) of the act. People have spoken about this before.
We're moving away from a focus on youth, addressing the circumstances underlying their offences and rehabilitation. We're moving to a focus on public safety, and not even long-term public safety. We're talking about public safety, and we believe this will just incarcerate more kids, and that's not what we should be doing.
We think this section fundamentally changes what the act is about. By moving it away from youth to public safety, I think we have in some ways gutted the original intent of the act. So I would suggest that this be looked at very carefully before people change it.
I've had some comments that it's really just a reordering of the intent of the principles. If you look at it clearly, it's more than that. And if it's simply reordering, maybe it should just be left alone. That might work well.
With regard to institutions, Les has talked a little bit about our experience. But in large institutions we see two groups: we see victims and we see bullies. And when we talk about the victims, just read the inquests about kids in state care in Ontario. I'll speak to Ontario because it's what I know best.
James Lonnie was a young man who was 44 hours in a concrete box intended as segregation for one person. He was placed with another aggressive young man who understood that Lonnie was a rat and he headed out to get him. And Lonnie spent that time screaming and yelling for help, without getting any. In the end he was beaten to death.
We have David Meffe, who was so bullied in a detention home in Toronto that he hanged himself. At the inquest that heard that, which was not made up of bleeding hearts, these ordinary citizens were so appalled by the conditions that they said the institution should be closed. That was their first recommendation.
And I listened to the young man this morning and I could see no reason why the things he was saying, the help he got, could not have been given to him outside a lock-up. He talked about the relationship with people and so on. I'm not sure you have to lock people in custody to get that kind of assistance. We should definitely see the kinds of things people are locked up for, and we should see locking kids up as a last resort.
On the other side, you have bullies. You have kids who are smart; they get in and they affiliate themselves with the toughest group in the place. They may never have beaten up anybody or stolen their food or just had them do degrading acts. Suddenly they are in an institution where, in order to survive, that's what you do.
Martha spoke about people coming out and wanting kids to be rehabilitated in the long term, and that's the safety feature. If we're going to get there, that's what we need to do.
Les, you have that one closing statement.