Mr. Speaker, once again, a reactionary roar full of sound and fury has risen up from the Reform Party benches. This motion tabled by the hon. member for New Westminster-Burnaby is one more skirmish in a hysterical and perverse crusade by the Social Panic Party.
Who are these Prairie crusaders ganging up on now? Young people who are not eligible to vote and who are represented in this Parliament by adults, adults who are running scared and who want young offenders to be punished like adults-who are their role models-for the same crimes. It is clear from all the statistics that juvenile delinquency is marginal in proportion to the general crime rate. However, it takes only a few isolated and unfortunate cases for a pack mentality to develop and demands to rise for exemplary punishments for young offenders. The focus is on punishment.
Reactionaries are swept up in an irrational thirst for retribution. Why? To appease their own adult consciences because they realize these crimes are committed by young people who imitate them. They tell us: These young people have committed adult crimes, so they are adults and should be punished as adults. They tell us: Forget 30 years of research on the treatment of juvenile delinquency. They say: The statistics on the genuine and positive rehabilitation of the vast majority of young people supervised by youth protection agencies are so much garbage. Forget social clemency for children whose criminal tendencies are usually the result of disintegration for which adults are largely responsible.
Echoing this hysteria, the Panic Party is now calling for exemplary punishment under the Criminal Code for young people over 16, for penitentiary terms and even life sentences.
I am shocked and appalled by this motion, a motion that was communicated to us on very short notice, although its tone and substance is what we have come to expect.
I spoke previously on a motion by the Reform Party which stated that criminals enjoyed privileged treatment before the courts and that victims were ignored by the judicial system. At the time, I said that this statement was not supported by any verifiable statistics and reflected a complete ignorance of the facts.
On the same occasion, I reproached the mover of the motion for lending her voice to reactionary groups and for playing along with the media. I also remember how the Reform Party responded to my statements in this House on gun control and the provisions in the Unemployment Insurance Act that discriminate against married women. I must conclude that the Reform Party is entirely consistent in its ideology.
The motion before the House this morning is part of a disturbing trend. I hope that all Canadians will see what Reform Party members perhaps do not see in their political positions. I see all the signs of a nostalgic fascism still unaware of its implications. I see a desire for reverting to a society that our democracy rejects. I hear a call for "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". But if it were ideological-