My friend asks what would have happened if he had stolen two VCRs. I have no idea but anyway this was an interesting sentencing. I think there were a couple of other things added on to that but I have forgotten.
The long and the short of it is that the judge said young Johnny would never be back in his courtroom ever again. Why? It was because he realized the impact of his misbehaviour on his family, community and friends and that it was not the way to behave in a decent society.
I suspect that when he did it he was not thinking. Let us face it. We have all been there. We have all done things in our life for which we feel kind of stupid because we did not think about them. When one thinks about it, one does not do it. The judge guaranteed that young Johnny would never return to the courtroom again because he learned a lesson.
We cannot apply that for everybody, but as part of the native justice system in terms of dealing with young offenders it is that kind of sentencing, that kind of approach to the judicial system and so on that has proven to be very effective in certain circumstances.
When I read the legislation this is what the bill is all about. It looks to the various types of sentencing. Rather than just saying the guilty party goes to jail for 40 days or 40 years or whatever it give the judges some discretion. Let us face it. Every case is different. Every kid who is out committing some kind of a crime, gets caught and goes to court is different. Every victimized person is different. The circumstances are different.
That is why I oppose what my friends in the Reform Party are suggesting, that we should not give the judges that kind of discretion. That is why we have judges. They are hopefully very intelligent people. They know the law. They understand the legal system and society. They can mete out the appropriate form of justice in their judgment. That is why they are there. That is why we have them. Otherwise we would not need judges if we just had straight laws and so on.
My friends in the New Democratic and I have a concern. If we are to have all these creative systems to rehabilitate young people who have gone off the edge or try to get people redirected back into the mainstream of society, those who the judge deems can be, we need financial resources to have those systems in place to follow through with that. We have to have the money for the parole system, the community action groups and the community organizations to ensure those young people can be rehabilitated by carrying out the judges sentencing.
There is a major flaw in the legislation. I may be wrong, but from what I can gather there are only $260 million over three years. That is a drop in the bucket. It will not solve the problem. We can have all the great rhetoric, all the great ideas and all the great plans in this legislation possible, but unless we have the financial resources to give to support that system it will fail. For that reason I am loath to say that we have to oppose the bill at this stage.
We agree with the theory. We agree with the thrust. It is a major step forward, but we cannot handcuff our judges, handcuff our parole boards and handcuff community groups that want to help young people. Are they to say they are sorry and do not have any money for them?
It is like what we heard the other day with the RCMP in British Columbia. The spokesperson for the RCMP said “I know those people have broken the law and I know they committed fraud, but we do not have any money to investigate them”. In other words the laws of the land cannot be enforced.
Obviously there are a number of other items that we should identify as problems. My colleague who spoke earlier certainly did that with some eloquence.
We oppose the bill reluctantly, but hopefully in committee we will get some changes, particularly a commitment from the Minister of Justice to adequately fund the system.