Mr. Speaker, I notice my comments are generating a bit of heckling. I am glad. The purpose of this bill, first, is to make sure that 16 and 17-year olds who have committed a violent crime can be shifted to adult court in a more expeditious manner. It has to do with information sharing and it has to do with stiffer sentencing, when required. But let us not portray all young people or even most people as being members of that group.
I am the father of two adolescents. I too hear from them the concerns that they have about people in their age groups who do things that are improper. However, at the same time let us not pretend that we live in the most crime ridden society on earth or that locking everybody up would necessarily make us safer. After all the United States would be nirvana for everyone if locking people up made society such a better place.
We have just lived through a terrible economic recession. We know it. But we know that right now there are 424,000 more jobs than there was at this time last year. These are statistics this morning from Statistics Canada. We know that those are the kinds of measures that will help to reduce crime; helping Canadians to have jobs and hope.
Simply locking people up the way the Reform Party members pretend is the solution, is not so. Deep in their hearts they know the truth. It is about time they said it instead of the nonsense we are hearing from them.