Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to say a few words about Motion No. 139 posed by the hon. member for Surrey North.
I would like to pay tribute to my colleague from Surrey North who will not be a candidate in the next general election. She first came to this place in 1993 with many of us and I served with her on the health committee. I know she is a nurse by profession. I know that she has many fond memories of the many friends she has made here. I want her to know, on behalf of many colleagues in the House, that we will miss her. We wish her well in her next career.
I have found this member to be a very calm and rational and reasonable member in her representations in the House and in committee. She has come up with a motion in which she has asked the House to consider an aspect of the justice system, the National Parole Board. The concept she is raising, which I think is important, says that when there is a benefit of the doubt she is interested in making sure that the victim's interests are balanced and taken care of in situations dealing with people who have been convicted of criminal offences.
I know from the member's speech that it is not just a wild grab to incarcerate everybody for life and throw away the key. Her statements and her rationale have been well thought out. She has articulated some of the ways in which she knows from her research that there are people, the families of victims and the victims of crime, who do not know what goes on in this process. This is not something in which we are trained. When families unfortunately are in a situation where a loved one, a friend, a family member or acquaintance has been the victim of crime and their families are thrust into that situation, it is terribly tragic. It happens so often and it is very regrettable but it is a reality in our society that there are people who have done some bad things.
The important thing is that the member has been reasoned and constructive in her suggestions. Even the parliamentary secretary who spoke earlier has acknowledged that. It is to the member's credit that she raises them and has not tried to somehow take that position in a way which would be off the wall in its presentation.
The member has acknowledged that people who are incarcerated for various crimes are not all the same. There are different circumstances and conditions. Imagine how many people there are in the criminal justice system who have committed crimes against family members, who have murdered family members, who have assaulted or otherwise committed some criminal offence against someone they know and love. Things happen, like spousal homicide, for instance.
I was astounded to find out what a high percentage of homicides in Canada are cases of people who have killed people they knew. It is shameful. Those crimes do not occur because the perpetrators are devious people like Clifford Olson. Something has happened. There is more to it. There is something underlying the reason for that crime. Something has happened that has influenced the actions of people. They are not the kind of people who are going to kill anybody else. It is not a criminal mind but a mind which has-in the vernacular-snapped or reacted in the extreme at a point in time when something bad has happened.
The member has basically said that maybe there are things we can do. Maybe we can identify that in the vast majority of these cases we are not dealing with the bizarre cases that are often raised in this House. It is important that Canadians are educated on the kinds of things that happen. There is a lot of misunderstanding or lack of information about what happens in the process.
I am not a sociologist or a psychologist and I do not know very much about the theory and the philosophy of our penal and justice systems. However, I know that after they have served their time, people who have done bad things will eventually have to come back into society. They will have to reintegrate into society. They will potentially be my neighbours or my co-workers. They will have every right.
That says a lot about the need to have an effective parole system which takes into account the need for rehabilitation and education of everyone about the things that should be done to make sure people have the incentive while they are incarcerated to understand what happened, why it happened and how to cope and deal with that so they can eventually reintegrate. For the vast majority of people that is the case.
There is now legislation for habitual dangerous offenders and we know they may never get out which is probably the right thing as well.
In the few minutes I have left I want to raise another issue. Young offenders make up quite a large number of the people who are incarcerated or who have committed crimes and may not have received a penalty.
I know a lot of Canadians have an opinion on young offenders. Many would say that we have to lower the age because young offenders are committing crimes at a lower age than they used to. Many would say that young offenders should be treated like adults, that if they commit adult crimes they should be treated like adults. To some extent in some cases that is true. From the research I have done on family and divorce issues I know that about 70 per cent of young offenders come from lone parent families. That is significant. It relates to the member's motion. There are other factors to be considered.
I am not sure whether all of the 70 per cent of young offenders should be herded into the same kind of mould which says here is what is going to happen because you are just a bad kid. I want to know where the parents were. I want to know what the conditions were, whether it was a situation of poverty or whether abuse was prevalent in early childhood or whether there were other situations about which we have no way of knowing.
I raise that as another example of why we should not paint all criminals in the justice system with the same brush and say that they are all Clifford Olsons and here is what we have to do with them. In fact they are not all Clifford Olsons. Some of them are neighbours, friends and young people who have had bad things happen to them during their lives. We have a responsibility not only to deal with the very bad criminals, we have a responsibility to deal in the preventive vein to make sure that some of these things do not happen in the first place.
I thank the hon. member for bringing this motion to the House and I thank her for being a friend and a colleague.