Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to speak on Bill C-37 to amend the Young Offenders Act and the Criminal Code, and the amendment put forward by the Bloc. This bill has been introduced at this time only in response to the pressure exerted by certain radicals and a certain press thirsty for sensationalism which revels in fuelling the common perception that crime is on the increase among young people.
Passed in 1984, the legislation has been amended twice, in 1986 and 1992. Really, can the situation have already deteriorated to such a point that it now warrants introducing this bill?
In his final report called "Beyond the Red Book", a workshop on recommendations for amendments to the Young Offenders Act, Mr. Doob of the University of Toronto said: "We do not have a youth just crisis that requires immediate fundamental change in the Young Offenders Act. Members of the public, especially those in the media who purport to represent public opinion about crime, have for centuries expressed the view that youth crime is out of control. Youths commit a disproportionate amount of crime in society. They always have and always will. But changes in the Young Offenders act are not likely to have any measurable impact on crime".
In Quebec, a compromise has been struck between the principles of youth protection and societal protection.
I would like to remind hon. members that a motion on this subject was adopted on May 5 last by the Quebec National Assembly. It read as follows: "That this Assembly demand that any amendment to the federal Young Offenders Act respect Quebec's laws and policies with regard to youth protection". The motion was unanimously endorsed by Quebec's two main political parties.
In Quebec, youth protection workers help the young offender and his family discover the best options for reintegrating into society and the community. Of course, the system in place is by no means perfect, but at least it places equal emphasis on prevention programs and on rehabilitation and reintegration programs.
The bill now before us does not provide this kind of balanced approach. On the contrary, the emphasis here is on repression in that the preferred option appears all too often to be referral to the courts, while no provision seems to be made for rehabilitation. With the passage of this bill, 16 and 17 year olds would have their cases proceed in adult court. For the purposes of the Young Offenders Act and the Criminal Code, the term "young person" now includes 10 to 16 year olds. Furthermore, depending on their age group, young persons will be treated differently by the courts.
Although the legislation does not distinguish between 12 to 15 year olds and 16 to 17 year olds, it is clear that as a result of these amendments, these two groups will be treated differently in the case of offences involving serious bodily harm. Some lawyers will argue that this flies in the face of section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which guarantees equal treatment to all under the law.
While public safety demands that young offenders be sometimes kept in secure custody, rehabilitation should always be our overriding concern. Young persons who are in contact with other offenders are exposed to influences which fuel their delinquent behaviour.
In an article published in La Presse on June 8, Mr. Trépanier, a criminologist and researcher at the Université de Montréal, reminded readers that: ``Quebec compares favourably with the rest of Canada. Quebec is the province where the number of
young people in drop-in and rehabilitation centres is the lowest, about half the Canadian average".
According to research done on crime rates in American states relying on punishment as a deterrent against crime, there is no significant difference as opposed to states having a different approach based on the fight against crime. In this regard, the Ame
Getting back to the report "Beyond the Red Book": "Few saw any serious problems with the act that could not have been remedied by proper and creative administration of the act. Repeatedly the view was expressed that the most serious problem in the Young Offenders Act was the way in which it was administrated in some provinces. Most cases involving violence that come under the control of the Young Offenders Act can be dealt with under the present legislation".
So much for the necessity of new legislation. What about increasing the severity of sentences?
In the same report Mr. Doob noted:
With adolescents, increasing the severity of dispositions has no real impact on offending behaviour; either for the youth before the court or other youths. That is, despite its apparent logic and appeal, increasing the severity of dispositions has neither specific nor general deterrent value-The data supports the conclusion that rehabilitation is more likely to be accomplished in non-custodial settings-It was suggested that if the federal and the provincial governments were serious about protecting the public, then the governments should invest money in prevention and in educating the public about youth crime. It is cheaper and more effective to prevent crime than to put kids in custody when they commit offences.
Therefore, this bill is premature. We do not have a long enough experience, here in Canada, to assess the effects of the amendments introduced in 1992. I should remind members that, in 1992, the sentence for murder what extended to five years. However, such a sentence should also be imposed. At the present time, considering the lag time in the availability of statistics, we cannot determine the impact of this amendment. How can we justify what we are doing now? Why not wait for the results of the previous amendments before taking more repressive measures?
Crime, lest we forget, is an extremely complex issue. Generally speaking, criminologists recognize that the causes of crime are many. Violence and crime are interconnected and it is therefore important to address the root cause of crime by impressing on young offenders at the earliest opportunity that they are responsible for their actions. Sanctions or penalties directly tied to the offence must be enforced. Automatic incarceration or isolation in secure custody have no rehabilitative value. The deterrent effect of these measures can even be called into question.
Getting back to the question of public perception, last February, Jean Trépanier of the University of Montreal spoke at a symposium on crime and shared some statistics on the subject. According to Mr. Trépanier, only one in every six persons who commit an offence is a minor whereas the public's perception is vastly different. It is commonly believed that nearly 50 per cent of crimes are committed by young persons.
The February 3, 1994 issue of La Presse reported that youth crime had even declined by 7.6 per cent in Quebec over the past 15 years. The same is true for Montreal. The number of juvenile delinquents was reported at 10,145 in 1979, compared to 6,679 in 1992. This represents a decrease of 34 per cent in 13 years.
More recently in the June 8 edition of La Presse , Mr. Trépanier stated the following: ``According to Statistics Canada, the delinquency rate in Quebec per 100,000 residents is the second lowest in Canada after peace loving Prince Edward Island''.
Over the past decade, the number of serious crimes such as murder, manslaughter and aggravated assault has either remained stable or declined.
"The increase noted in the number of violent crimes is due to a large extent to a 127 per cent increase in minor assaults from 1986 to 1991. According to national statistics on crime, a minority of young offenders are involved in crimes of a violent nature. In fact, only 13 percent of charges laid in 1991 were in connection with crimes of violence. However, nearly half of the charges laid against young offenders in 1991 involved first level assaults, which means that the offense was committed without the use of a weapon and that no bodily injury was inflicted upon the victim".
Tim Weiner from the Ottawa Citizen reported in March 1991 that ``one Canadian out of three is under the false impression that violence is as widespread in Canada, if not more, than in the United States.'' The fact of the matter is that a far greater number of violent crimes are committed in the United States than in Canada.
The Americans have doubled their police forces and the size of private police forces has increased fourfold over the past 30 years. Their inmate population has doubled over the past 10 years to a record high of four per 1,000 residents, which is at least four times higher than anywhere else in the Western world. Yet, violent crime rates in the U.S. are three times higher than in other industrialized countries.
As for the transfer to adult court, the amendments to the 1992 act clarified the applicable criteria to determine if a young offender must be transferred to adult court. Youth court must now take into account society's interest, in particular the public's protection and the teenager's reintegration into society, and determine if it is possible to reconcile these two objectives by keeping the teenager under its jurisdiction. If the court thinks
that it is impossible, society's protection prevails. The required mechanisms seem to be in place but the stakeholders refuse to use them.
I now come back to the June 8 article in La Presse , which quotes Normand Bastien from the youth division of Montreal's community legal centre. He said: ``The real problems come from the fact that the average waiting periods before sentencing are too long-266 days on average in Valleyfield, 180 days in Montreal, 163 days in Joliette-and that only 29 per cent of problems are resolved''. So why this bill, since the current act already has adequate provisions to deal with young offenders?
I repeat, a repressive law without rehabilitation measures and left to the discretion of various stakeholders will not bring the violence phenomenon under control. Current documentation does not support the argument that longer sentences act as a deterrent. As I said before, the American experience demonstrates the ineffectiveness of these coercive measures.
To conclude on the transfer to adult court issue, it seems that the burden of proof will now rest with the young people themselves. Too bad for the presumption of innocence. All this is intended to silence some people who will never be satisfied. It makes light of the balance between deterrence and rehabilitation which has proven itself in Quebec. Above all, it encourages laxity in certain provinces.
In the reading I have done on this bill, how does one explain some particularly troubling statistics concerning cases in youth court that resulted in a guilty verdict? In Quebec and the Maritime provinces, guilty verdicts were rendered in over 80 per cent of cases; in the Western provinces, barely 70 per cent; and in Ontario and Manitoba, 55 and 59 per cent. How come in Alberta, 34,372 people are accused and convicted out of a population of 1.2 million, compared to 16,000 in British Columbia? One province convicts half as many people as its neighbour. Are we not justified in thinking that we should pay more attention to the administration of justice instead of drafting new laws?