Mr. Speaker, in my presentation I spoke briefly about statistics, their value and what they say or what they do not say. The statistics we received at the justice briefing had to do with the number of charges and convictions but it had nothing to do with the number of offences and break-ins. If the
number of break-ins and the number of offences are combined, those statistics are up dramatically.
What I am responding to and the statistics that I quoted came from surveys in my constituency of people who are specifically concerned about the effect of crime.
It is absolutely essential, as we proceed with this debate, we do not make the blanket statement that all young people are bad. They are not. The vast majority of them are great. The vast majority of them are inspirations. We see them coming through here on tours and we are involved with them. It is something that we need to be very cautious about as we get into this debate and as we proceed down the road that we do not suggest for a moment that all kids are bad.
However there is a time when we have to recognize things as they are, not as we wish them to be. There comes a time when young people, regardless of age, show by what they have done that they need special treatment, that they need the care that society has to give them or that society needs to be protected from them.
In my view we need to draw a distinction between people who make a mistake and people who make the same mistake over and over again and do not learn from it. If you make a mistake once and learn from it that is experience. If you make the same mistake over and over and over again that is character. We have to make the distinction between those who need a nudge to get themselves on the right track and those who are a danger to society. We have to be very careful that we do not paint everyone with the same brush.