Madam Speaker, it is rather significant that on the one hand, we have the Reform Party telling us that the justice minister's proposal is nothing more than a cosmetic measure, while on the other hand, we have the Bloc telling us that the bill is far too repressive. Perhaps it is the happy medium.
I have listened closely to my colleague, the Minister of Justice, answer countless questions in the House about his views on young offenders and crime. He has said that his philosophy consists of cleaning up some of the outdated provisions in legislation, and at the same time focussing on the issue of crime prevention.
In our red book, we promised to take a look at provisions in the legislation as they pertain to certain violent youth crimes and to strengthen the act which is now ten years old. At the same time, however, we made it very clear that we would try to find ways to curb crime, and this is where prevention comes into play.
Just the other day after the Stanley Cup riots, all of us expected the riots to take place in New York City which is a city where crime has become a way of life. Yet New York City was quiet. It was lawful. The riots happened in Vancouver, a quiet peaceful city in normal times.
Last year it happened in Montreal, my own city, which is again extremely quiet and peaceful. We have to ask ourselves what the reasons are for lawlessness, violence and crime. We have to go back to the hopelessness in which youth sees itself.
I heard my colleague from Reform say that 17 years ago when he was 17 he went to bush camp and 20 years ago he knew what right and wrong were, as if today we do not have youth going to bush camps and other ways of work, as if today the youth does not know what is right and wrong. The great majority of youth in Canada are outstanding citizens, highly qualified, desirous of working. There is crime because there is hopelessness. We do not give them a chance.
A few years ago I had the sad privilege to serve on a committee with some other people about an ethnic group in Montreal who did not have the French language skills. They had very few educational skills and no work training skills. They could not find work.
The elders were saying because of that those people would resort to crime. They would rely on drugs and crime because there was no other open way for them. This is why in our electoral commitment we call it creating opportunity. Unless we create opportunity we are going to have to resort to more and more laws which will solve nothing. The more hopelessness there will be, the more crime there is going to be and then the more repressive laws we are going to be looking for.
What we need to do is to look at an integrated approach to society that looks at crime in its very sources. They say that an adult is born when a child is born. This is why we have addressed the question of day care for all the poor, single mothers that have to go to work leaving their children at home without adequate day care. So we have tackled day care. There is a correlation between day care and eventual crime.
Today we have a rate of drop out rate in our schools of something like 40 per cent. Sixty per cent of young Canadians have no vocational skills or no post-secondary skills. How can they approach the workplace in a competitive economy where work has to be more skilled than ever?
We graduate 24,000 apprentices a year compared to 600,000 in Germany. In proportion to our population we should graduate 275,000. How can we hope for these young people to find work, to find a dignity of life if we do not give them the chance?
This is why our program addresses itself to all the various causes of hopelessness.
Literacy, youth programs, the Youth Service Corps, apprenticeship programs and the reform proposals which my colleague the human resources development minister is now working on: this is the integrated reform which will affect all sectors of society and foster a climate in which job training will be a much more positive experience.
We have to restructure our industries toward the new industries of tomorrow; environmental technologies, broadcast technologies, information technologies, health technologies in which we can shine so that added to our thrusts to train young people into apprenticeships, into post-secondary education that is geared to these new areas of excellence, we can find them work, we can find them an opportunity, a chance.
We have wonderful young people in Canada, some of them highly qualified. Most of our youth are wonderful people. Those that resort to crime and hopelessness are those that do not find a chance.
We talk about prevention and we say that we have not addressed prevention. Yet our Minister of Justice pointed out that we are going to create very soon a national council for prevention of crime. I know some will say another council.
We intend to consult with Canadians, provincial and municipal governments, police forces and communities with a view to developing, not a short-term, hastily conceived strategy, but a comprehensive, long-term strategy, one that addresses all aspects of crime prevention, including long-term rehabilitation.
There is a saying that if we cherish the child and give him or her hope then we do not have to punish the man or the woman in later life. I believe in this fundamentally. What we need in our society is to give our young people, whether they be 12-year olds, 15-year olds, 17-year olds or 20-year olds a chance. To believe that the world has not changed since the 1960s or the 1950s is to delude ourselves. It is a new world today with instant communications. The world is very different.
Sure, there is more crime. There is more crime in Canada as there is more crime in France or England, in places which heretofore were very peaceful. That is the way of today's world. In all of these countries there is one common link, lack of opportunity for young people and for adults. When despair and hopelessness set in, people resort to any way to earn a living, to acquire dignity of life. That is what we must attack.
To say that 20 years ago all was sweetness and light when we all went to bush camps and everybody was nice is illusory. Today I find we have more frank young people than in my generation. We have young people who are far more committed to society, to truth, to integrity, to the environmental cause than we ever were in my time. We believed that you had to cane children and use law and order in our families. Today it is a more enlightened world where we rule by consensus and work together to try to form partnerships within our families, within our communities. It is a far more challenging world.
We have to resolve to effectively create opportunities so that our young people get back to work, find hope and dignity and then they will not have to resort to crime and violence.