Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Minister, I'm truly pleased to be here because I have some experience I'd like to share with you, if you'll allow me. Before becoming a member of Parliament, I was a police officer, and it was my pleasure to have been chosen by the chief of police in Winnipeg to be one of the trainers for the YCJA when it became legislation.
As a result, I was heavily involved with crown attorneys, etc., who were involved in putting forward the Youth Criminal Justice Act in our province. They had to make some decisions based on the guidelines as to waiver forms and those kinds of things. I was pleased to have been consulted on a number of facets of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. I must say that as I trained the police officers of the Winnipeg Police Service, it became very apparent to me that this was a piece of legislation that was going to cause us an enormous number of problems with our youth.
We could see from the beginning that our youth were about to fall through the cracks, that the paperwork was going to be horrendous, that our youth were not going to be served, and that they were going to be exploited by adults who saw the Youth Criminal Justice Act as a tool to use our children to commit serious offences for which they themselves would suffer serious penalties. Under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, they could use children to commit these offences, knowing very well there were no deterrents, no denunciation, and no penalty. Unfortunately, our predictions came true.
I have to say that as a police officer who had to use the Youth Criminal Justice Act, this is probably one of the worst pieces of legislation I had to deal with in my tenure.
I'm going back, so I'm pleased as a member of Parliament to add to this discussion, because I hope to go back with some tools I can use to protect our kids--all our kids--because some of the kids involved in the criminal justice system are not there willingly. They are there because they have been exploited.
I want to share with you exactly what happened when the warnings, caution, and referral program came into play under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. I would arrest a child for drugs. The Youth Criminal Justice Act said I must now warn. Have you ever seen a warn demonstrated, sir?