Mr. Speaker, my colleague from the Reform Party is citing such individual cases that we might perhaps accept, but then they flood us with stories of this person or that in their questions, they seem to want to go for guilty and the death penalty. I find that despicable.
I think that a bill whose goal is to protect society is very worthwhile. However, I would like to add something. I have worked in secondary schools almost all my life, and when a young person was a delinquent when he came to us, we had to wonder. When a young girl had already been involved in serious misdemeanours before coming to us, we had to wonder. Was it the fault of this 13, 14 or 17 year old, or was it something in their background?
As for myself, I would like to see this bill include something about helping to protect seven, eight, nine and ten year olds in primary school. We must give young people a great deal of help, and if we put out the money needed to protect them, they would not turn up in prison at 18, 20 or 30 years of age, and we would not be having the sort of discussions we are having today about how to keep them in prison, essentially rehabilitate them. It is no easy thing to spend 20 or 25 years in prison. We have to think about that too.
Society must, of course, be protected, and when someone has committed a crime, he must be punished. I would like to put the following question to my colleague. Instead of spending hours talking about how to punish people, should we not be looking harder at prevention?