Madam Speaker, there will be no violence in the Progressive Conservative caucus. The New Democratic Party, in distancing itself from its previous policies of pacifism today in the House of Commons has surprised and shocked all of us. It is a sad day for democracy in Canada.
I am pleased to speak to Bill C-3, the youth criminal justice act. Canadians have been waiting for this very important piece of legislation for a long time. I hear regularly from people in my riding who are affected by and concerned about the current or previous act.
It is important for us when developing public policy to focus on reality and not simply perception. It is sometimes said that perception is reality, but sometimes reality is reality. Far too often in the House and in politics we focus public policy on the perceptions of a situation as opposed to the reality of the situation.
There is an increasing trend for governments and political parties to focus action, public policy and legislation on what the pollsters are telling them to do. Of course polls are based completely on public perception as opposed to reality. I am concerned that in doing so, sometimes we overlook the more significant and root causes of some of the problems we try to fix with very simple solutions.
American humorist H.L. Mencken once said that for every complex problem there is a simple, clean, precise solution that is wrong. Sometimes we in this House come up with some solutions that simply do not address the holistic and root causes of the problems we are trying to deal with.
I was pleased to hear the member from Kamloops speak of some of the root causes of youth crime. He linked youth crime to issues such as poverty. Crime is often very much linked to opportunity or lack thereof, and particularly lack thereof is linked very closely to poverty.
If we are going to deal with the issue of youth crime in a significant and long term way, we need to deal with some very important economic issues in Canada. In Canada there has been an 8% drop in personal disposable income since 1990. On the other hand, in the U.S. there has been a 10% increase in personal disposable income.
In Canada homes, the pressures being faced by both parents where there are two parents are significant. The pressures are even more significant in single parent situations. That parent is faced with trying to provide for the household, trying to provide an adequate level of income for the household, and at the same time is trying to be an effective parent by devoting not just quality time but the quantity of time necessary in raising children.
The difficulty I have with some of the band-aid approaches taken by this government is that far too often we are ignoring some of the real solutions. There are examples both in the U.S. and Canada of very successful headstart programs which have achieved a great deal.
The Fraser Mustard studies have demonstrated that $1 invested in a child in a high risk situation before the age of three can provide a return to society of $7 by the time the child is 30. That return is based on the savings to society on the police system, the judiciary, and in the worst case incarceration, social welfare expense, the expense of dealing with somebody who has fallen between the cracks.
The first three years are the most important years in a child's cognitive development. Ninety per cent of a child's cognitive adaptive skills actually close off after the age of three. It is ironic in dealing with perceptions as opposed to reality that those who develop public policy on the education front, particularly on the provincial side, tend to focus on higher education and on secondary and primary education and they tend to ignore an important area, the preschool area.
Quite possibly it is a step in the right direction for the government to indicate in the throne speech that there will be more generous EI benefits for new parents. That is a step in the right direction but again, it only addresses part of the problem.
Certain types of youth activities are important in providing a way for young people to meaningfully spend their time. Recreational activities such as hockey, softball, 4-H or scouts are all wonderful activities that come with a price. Any parent who has outfitted children in hockey in recent years will attest to this. For Canadians who have outfitted their children in sports gear, it is a very expensive pursuit. Whether it is registration in the leagues or buying equipment, there are barriers. Parents in many cases lack opportunity and adequate income levels and therefore children lack opportunities to pursue the types of self-actualization and important activities that can prevent them from pursuing crime.
I represent primarily a rural riding. Many of the studies on early intervention and headstart are focused on urban centres. The fact is that for rural poverty and urban poverty the demographics are strikingly similar. In many cases substance abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse, all these issues are linked very closely to poverty. I am not saying that is always the case, but living in a household with inadequate income certainly increases the pressures on parents and makes things awfully difficult.
If the government wanted to move in the right direction, it would increase the basic personal exemption for taxation to at least $10,000. Ideally it should be higher than that. It is ludicrous that we are taxing individuals making $7,500 per year which makes it even more difficult.
My colleague, the member of parliament for Shefford, has co-chaired the PC task force on poverty and has travelled throughout the country. I have travelled with her on some of those trips to speak with and learn from those most directly affected by poverty. The growth and pervasiveness of poverty in Canada has never been greater.
The member from Kamloops quite rightly identified the motion from 1989 to eradicate child poverty by the year 2000. Parliament's lackluster performance in meeting that motion indicates a focus on perception and not on reality.
We should be delivering on some of these things. The best way is to create more economic opportunities to provide Canadians with opportunities to succeed and prosper and thus provide Canadian children with an opportunity to actually break out of the poverty cycle.
The poverty cycle is important. There is a fine line between programs that benefit families and children and programs that create a cycle of dependency. It is important that we become more innovative in the types of social policy solutions we are seeking in preventing that cycle of dependency which can be so pervasive and deleterious in the long term.
Some elements of the legislation are very positive, such as those which deal with parental accountability. The notion of bringing parents into the courtrooms to deal directly with the questions of where they were at a particular time or why they had not taken a greater level of responsibility over the action of the child is very important. There has to be parental responsibility and that has been sadly lacking the past. It can help significantly if parents and family members play a role within a judicial framework in this regard. The bill addresses that to a certain extent. I think that is very positive.
I am concerned relative to the cost of implementation of the bill. It will be largely borne by the provinces. There has been a decline in the federal government's commitment to assist provinces to meet an increased burden on the judicial system. I am concerned about that. Since the 1993 election the burden on the provinces has been increasing for instance by reducing the CHST. The provinces have been offloading on municipalities. Ultimately there is one taxpayer. Ultimately provinces that are enjoying less economic growth at this time will be put in a very difficult situation to try to pay for some of the costs of compliance with some of the provisions of the legislation.
It is important that parents become more accountable. We are not suggesting that jailing parents would improve the situation, but we should recognize the importance of parents playing a role not just within the realm of a courtroom but on an ongoing basis.
I enjoyed the member from Kamloop's comments. One thing he mentioned was that in his study of the issue in his riding, many of the young people who were incarcerated or who were in various stages of rehabilitation had mentioned that the only thing that differentiated them from someone else or one of their peers was that they happened to get caught. I think there is a fair bit of truth to that.
I think there are a lot of young people who do end up running afoul of the law but are not of a criminal bent. These young people will do what young people sometimes do because of the intrinsic sense of mischief that exists. It is very important that we find ways to identify those people and find ways to deal with them relative to the crimes they have committed as opposed to those who actually demonstrate sociopathic tendencies and are capable of far greater crimes.
The opportunity to rehabilitate someone who has committed a crime of mischief or an aberrational offence will be far greater than it will be for someone who has more of a psychological profile of a criminal.
It is also important that we work with parents in a preventative sense and in a more holistic sense. We need to identify and assist parents in developing the types of parenting skills that are necessary.
I happen to believe that provinces are, in many cases, better at some of the preventative remedies than the federal government. Part of that involves constitutional and jurisdictional boundaries, but the provinces would be far closer to the actual situations, particularly in terms of strategic social investment, than the federal government would be.
One example of a program that I think has great potential is one that the provincial government in Ontario has been working on. Dr. Fraser Mustard co-chaired a study on early childhood intervention and headstart. I believe we will see the province of Ontario pursue a policy of headstart and early intervention. I hope that as part of that policy we will seek to identify some of the situational commonalities between those that ultimately end up falling afoul of the law. I think we will find significant overlap.
That links very closely to economic factors and opportunities. It is difficult enough for parents who have a relatively good income to raise children. It is an increasingly complicated, difficult and challenging world. For parents who do not have adequate income and do not have economic opportunities, it is evermore difficult.
We must be extremely careful to balance social policy and economic policy. We must recognize that while all of us probably agree on the end, some of us differ on the means to get there. We use the justice system to deal with our young people as a way to deal with those people who have fallen through the cracks, but ultimately, this place and all the provincial legislatures in the country should actually be preventing and reducing the number of young people who do end up falling through the cracks. We would all be better served by that. It would involve dealing with the realities of the situation and the root of the problem.
One of the best headstart programs in a Canadian context operates out of Moncton, New Brunswick. The Minister of Labour spent a great deal of her life working on building that headstart program and deserves credit for her contribution to Moncton and to Canada. I am certain that program has resulted in significant change to the lives of those children who have gone through that headstart program. Goodness knows how many young people have had their lives and directions changed based on participation in that program. How many parents are now proud of their children and the young people they have raised partially because of the assistance of that program?
It is very important that we take a look at not just examples of headstart and early intervention programs in Canada but also examples that exist around the world, particularly in inner city communities in the U.S. that have pursued some of these things.
It is also important to create a culture of responsibility through the education systems in Canada. This can be difficult because the justice system is largely federal and youth criminal justice is a piece of federal legislation. However, we are dealing with a problem that emanates, to a certain extent, from education and could potentially be ameliorated, diverted or improved by a better educational focus on areas of responsibility. There is a requirement for better provincial and federal co-operation in some of these areas to ensure that, across the country, provinces are pursuing education systems that teach a little bit about responsibility.
How about citizenship? I continually hear from constituents that there is very little today to teach young people about citizenship. They talk about the importance of not just responsibility to one's family and one's friends but of responsibility to the country and of trying to devote some of our young people's incredible amount of energy to build a better community and a better country?
These are all things that can be achieved if there is a co-operative effort to deal with the realities and the root causes of the problem and not always with the big stick approach at the end.
While we are pleased that the government has gone a ways toward improving the youth criminal justice with this legislation, we are not satisfied that it has gone far enough in certain areas. On the real root causes of the problem, we do not think that the government has really done an adequate job of approaching those issues. There are members opposite who will point to specific programs designed to benefit children, but Canadians need the types of programs that provide for a culture of opportunity that would benefit all Canadian families, including children.