Since we've agreed to a 10-minute discussion per clause, I'd prefer to talk about more than one of these together, sir.
I agree with what my colleague, Mr. Casey, has proposed as LIB-37, and we also have amendment NDP-55.
We also have NDP-55.1, which is an amendment to clause 185, which I will read with your concurrence, to add the following as an additional section after line 22 on page 94, as subsection (5):
(5) The Lieutenant Governor in Council of a province may, by order, exempt the province from the application of this section or fix an age greater than 14 years for the purpose of its application.
In dealing with the whole question of publication, we agree with Mr. Casey, and we agree that lifting the ban of publication is an extremely negative proposition. I would encourage members to consider the letter the Quebec Justice Minister, Jean-Marc Fournier, sent to this committee on November 15 that says, and I'm reading the English translation of the letter:
Bill C-10 substantially amends the rule lifting the ban on publication of information that would identify a young person.
Currently, publication is limited to specific cases, for example young person liable to an adult sentence or young person having committed a presumptive offence and the Attorney general had given notice to seek adult sentence. By henceforward targeting all violent crimes, the amendments proposed by Bill C-10 could cause the identity of too many young persons to be disclosed.
“The publication ban”, as he points out, and we agree totally, “is intended to promote the reintegration of young persons at the end of the rehabilitative process. Lifting this ban would adversely affect their rehabilitation and undermine their potential for reintegration into society.” I think this is also consistent with what we've heard from other experts, criminologists, people such as Professor Bala, and others who have underscored the importance of treating young offenders in a different category.
Justice Minister Fournier goes on to say that there's a difficult situation for public prosecutors, being in an awkward situation where they have “the burden of proving the relevance of the measure in which they did not see the benefit for society”. In other words, they're required to prove why they didn't seek such a publication exposure in a particular circumstance, even though—particularly as the public prosecutors themselves would believe and that would be particularly true in Quebec, I'm assuming—this was a bad thing.
Also, the justice minister points out that the “publication of a young person's identity results in stigmatization and, as pointed out by the Supreme Court of Canada, disrupts the abilities of the family and others to provide support” that a young person would need in terms of his or her rehabilitation.
I think these are very important considerations, and we have a rational proposal from the Quebec government as to how to do that. My colleagues, Madame Boivin and Monsieur Jacob, have talked about it earlier in their interventions on an earlier provision. But this is the section where we are proposing to actually insert the Quebec suggestion into this law as an add-on to clause 185, allowing the Lieutenant Governor in Council of a particular province to make an order exempting that province from the application of the section or to fix an age greater than 14 years for the purpose of its application.
We think this is a reasonable proposal and we would ask that it be adopted.