Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of his remarks I thought my good friend from Wild Rose was more or less agreeing with me. However at the end of his remarks I knew that he was not.
He asked a question and it is a serious question: What do we do with an a young person who commits a serious crime of violence after all has been done to prevent crime and all has been done to direct our attention to the causes of crime? Of course the individual has to be sent to secure custody. In some cases we would probably send him to adult court and to adult prison if the case is serious enough. The law provides for that and I support that.
However let us remember that justice in my view means protecting the public. It does not mean revenge. It does not mean an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
In our system the overwhelming majority of youth as well as adults who are convicted will be sent back to society. If we are really concerned with protecting the public, which I believe is the purpose of the justice system, we must do everything possible with an individual in our control to rehabilitate the person and to make sure that when the person returns to society he or she will be a safer risk for society. We are not going to keep that person in prison until he or she dies. We do not have
capital punishment. We are going to release the individual sooner or later, whether it is five years, seven years or ten years.
The hon. member asked what we should do. Yes, we should keep the person in custody if the person is a young violent offender. However we should work on the individual to give him or her a sense of worth, to give him or her a trade or an education, to make sure the person knows how to deal with the problems of life when released from prison, to make sure the person has contacts with family if there is family, and so on. We should build up a situation so that the person returns to society a better risk than when he or she entered the prison system.
That is what I believe. I believe in protecting society. We must dedicate our resources when the person is in secure custody or open custody to doing everything possible to rehabilitate the young person so that he or she will be better off upon return to society.