Thank you very much, Mr. Lemay.
Your experience that everything we're asking for is within the legislation...I find that I'm incredulous, and I'm pleased that you did find that, because all of the lawyers, legislators, and advisors we have spoken to are telling us that it is not, and it is our own personal experience that it is not. I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to debate with you; I'm an engineer. But we do not have the concept of deterrence and denunciation in the existing legislation. I believe that deterrence and denunciation, meaning that “you do that and this will happen”, and societal denunciation, meaning that we as a society find that particular act or that particular offence so offensive that we need to provide a sanction against that....
One of the major problems we have with the Youth Criminal Justice Act is that, in my very, very humble opinion, it is too lengthy...it takes three and four years to bring a violent young offender before a court. In that three- or four-year period, witnesses lose their memories, testimony is lost, intimidation mounts, witnesses disappear, and the sanctions ultimately mean virtually nothing.
As far as publication bans for names are concerned, we do that currently in aboriginal sentencing circles. As far as kids on the street today are concerned, when somebody commits an act of violence, I can guarantee you that everybody in that community at that age level knows exactly who that is. The people who don't know are the police and the parents of those children.
The boys who hurt my child had 56 prior charges as young offenders, including violent charges. Had we known about that in the community, perhaps we could have taken steps to protect ourselves or our children.
There's a young man in London whose name is Almeida and whose five-and-a-half-year-old daughter was abducted, raped, bludgeoned, and murdered by an 18-year-old who had just finished a warrant expiry for sexually abusing young children. He was moved into the community, nobody knew who he was, and his acts of violence were shrouded in secrecy. The police didn't even know who he was and where he went, yet he committed an act that took another child's life.
When somebody goes out and commits an act of extreme violence--including rape--in our communities, they come back to our schools. The teachers and the parents don't know who they are, but the kids do. They come back with a bigger batch of courage than they had before they left and they're heroes among their communities.
Publication of names also deals with the embarrassment, the embarrassment of the community and the family for individuals who perpetrate acts of such violence against humanity, and I think it's absolutely vital and very important.