Mr. Speaker, I watched with interest during the spring of 1999 as Bill C-68 began to unfold in the House and speaker after speaker dealt with it at great length. I can tell the House that much of the debate at that time made me angry. I spent a lot of time listening to this debate and I was very upset about what I was hearing from many of the different parties. Frankly, I did not like either the tone or the content of much of the debate.
I can now say that anger has been replaced with an overwhelming sense of sadness. I do not know which is better. I feel in a very profound way that we would not be having the kind of debate we are having today if we had a better grasp and a better comprehension of what we really need to do in the area of the criminal justice system as it relates to young people.
I am not a lawyer and I will be making my remarks in a less technical way than some speakers. I am speaking more as a parent and as an inner city resident of a large Canadian city where this is an issue of great interest because we have problems with youth gangs, street gangs, issues of vandalism and violence. I get many calls to my office regarding safe streets and the problems of the youth justice system.
I would like to remind members of the House that ultimately this is a bill about children. We have to somehow keep that as our primary focus in all of the remarks we make. That should really set the tone for much of this debate. We have to keep in our minds that we are dealing with kids.
When I see provisions in Bill C-3 which contemplate 25 year sentences for children as young as 14, I am very concerned. It makes me think that the members of this House who are advocating this have given up on the idea of rehabilitation and that incarceration of young offenders is dealing more with retribution than with any hope of rehabilitation. I remind people that the concept of an eye for an eye keeps going until the whole community is blinded.
I would also like to remind the House that it is only within this century that we have even recognized the sanctity of childhood in civil society. I am making reference to the fact that it was only in this century that we even banned child labour.
Up until the early years of this century children went into the mines with a fuse between their teeth because they were small enough to crawl between the crevices and the cracks. We saw no problem with exploiting children in that way. They were simply little people. Thankfully, we have gone past that. We won those debates and those arguments, at least in this country. Although, I would point out that it does not seem to bother Canadians much in other countries. The Canadian government has yet to sign ILO convention 138, which deals with banning child labour, and it has yet to sign ILO convention 87, which deals with the worst forms of exploitative child labour. We would like to see some movement in that regard, if we are serious about the sanctity of childhood, not just for our own privileged kids, but for kids all around the world.
It remains for Bill C-3 to try to do something to answer the question of how we treat children who run afoul of the Canadian justice system. I have heard many ideas in the House. We all know the bizarre spectre of one well known member who wanted to go to Singapore to study how to beat children more effectively, or what size rod we should use to whack kids with.
This debate has gone from the ridiculous to the sublime. It has gone through the whole range, the whole spectrum, in an attempt to criminalize children and deal with kids who run afoul of the criminal justice system as criminals. That will have predictable consequences. We will be the architects of our own issues when we treat children in that way.
New Democrats are tough on crime, contrary to popular opinion. We are also tough on the causes of crime. That is where we prefer to spend our energies. That is where we believe we get the best value for our invested dollar, dealing with the root causes of crime. We all know that the jury is in on the issue that chronic long term poverty is one of the key factors in the rising level of crime in our communities.
Why we continue to tolerate chronic long term poverty in the richest and most powerful civilization in the world is beyond me. Child poverty is a national embarrassment. Even the government is starting to get the message. It has had 10 years in this House of Commons. I am very proud that in 1989 it was the leader of the New Democratic Party, Mr. Ed Broadbent, who moved the motion to eradicate child poverty by the year 2000 and it was adopted unanimously. It is very rare to see unanimous endorsation for a private member's motion in the House of Commons but in 1989 people felt compelled and they felt strongly enough about the issue that it was a unanimous vote.
In 1989, 14% of Canadian children were living in poverty. By the same measurement in 1999, 10 years later, and within months of the year 2000 which was to be the deadline, the national rate of child poverty is 27%. Instead of eradicating child poverty and all its predictable consequences, we have seen it virtually double. In my riding of Winnipeg Centre, an inner city riding in the city of Winnipeg, the neighbourhood of Point Douglas is a provincial boundary and the rate of child poverty there is 57.7%, almost 60%.
Until we address the fundamental root causes of crime which I argue is poor kids living in poor families, poverty, we are not going to be able to design any legislation that is going to truly meet our needs.
I recognize that Bill C-3 has many qualities to it. Many of these points were reached by consultation with the community and activists in the field.
I have already drawn attention to one clause which I have serious reservations about. A child as young as 14 years old could receive a 25 year sentence for first degree murder instead of the current maximum of 10 years for young offenders sentenced in youth court. I find that offensive and I have a great deal of difficulty with it.
There is an interesting clause which I noticed. Parents or guardians could face a jail sentence in serious cases of up to two years if they fail to supervise their children who are released from custody. This is an increase from the current maximum penalty of six months in jail or a $2,000 fine. Normally when a child is charged with a crime under the current Young Offenders Act a parent or guardian signs an agreement with the court to supervise the child and to enforce certain conditions until the charges are heard.
There are other changes recommended under Bill C-3. The justice system will begin tracking young offenders for years after they have been released from jail and force them to take part in a probation type initiative that will consist of a period of tight supervision and extensive halfway programs. The current practice allows young offenders to walk away with no strings attached or probationary restrictions. Clearly Canadians have spoken that they want that tightened up. That provision is in Bill C-3 and it may give some satisfaction in that regard.
The proposed legislation needs to be a balancing act focusing on getting tough with violent repeat offenders and shifting more emphasis toward community based programs for youth and families. The bill is really a reworking of the Young Offenders Act without significantly changing it in a meaningful manner and will likely fail to substantially change the current system of youth justice or alleviate the public's legitimate concerns about youth crime. The NDP has some serious reservations and concerns and I will outline some of them.
We have concerns that new provisions for the publication of the names of offenders will be more readily available. They can release names of young offenders. Those provisions already exist and we do not believe that needs to be expanded in any way.
The life sentence of 25 years I have already dealt with. It really abandons the concept of rehabilitation if we are sentencing a 14 year old child to 25 years in prison. This is retribution. This is revenge. This is not rehabilitation.
On increasing penalties for parents and guardians, again I think this is something which most Canadians have strong feelings about. It puts an undue burden on the very low income families where much of the youth crime and violence actually occurs. Because of the connection which I have already pointed out of poverty being the main cause of crime and poor kids living in poor families, it is going to probably be a low income family that is being given this increased penalty. That kind of punitive measure on a single parent family for instance victimizes the family that much further and drives them deeper into poverty.
The bill will place a substantially increased financial and administrative burden on the provinces. We believe a great deal of what is in Bill C-3 increases the workload of the provinces to a very large degree without any compensation or corresponding funding.
Mr. Speaker, I see that I am out of time. How time does fly.