Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Waterloo—Wellington.
I want to begin by offering congratulations to the Bloc and to the member for Berthier—Montcalm for putting forward a motion which finally, on an opposition day, the government can support. What a treat. This has been done in a responsible way, which uses the parliamentary system to its best effect.
The motion asks that the House instruct the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to conduct an investigation. There might be some concern about committee members being instructed, but I am quite sure they will look at this as the will of parliament to conduct a study and report by the end of October 2000. That is a reasonable timeframe, which will give the better part of a year to hear witnesses, to perhaps travel on the issue, to conduct the investigation and to report.
I wonder what this motion would look like if it was put by the Reform Party. I strongly suspect it would be framed in such a way that it would make it impossible for any of us to support it. They would use terms like the government has abdicated its responsibility and so on and, therefore, we should do this study.
I want to give credit where credit is due because I have stood in the House and been somewhat critical of members of the Bloc in the past. I think what they are putting forward is a responsible position. I know that they come to this issue with some serious deep seated concern in the province of Quebec.
We have all heard stories of the biker gang wars in Quebec. There have been murders. There is drug trafficking. They take over homes and destroy neighbourhoods. They threaten people going to the corner store, for goodness sake, to get a jug of milk. Women and children do not feel safe in communities when that type of local terrorism, which is really what that amounts to, is allowed.
I think the Bloc comes to this issue with a point of view of perhaps some negative experience in this area and the problems around organized crime.
I want to come at this a little differently, though. I believe that the long term, big picture way for us to attack organized crime, frankly, is to deal with our kids, our education system and our families. We have to work harder at eradicating poverty. I know there will be some who will say that we have not done enough. However, as we on this side of the House know, the government is committed to coming in with some programs that will deal with child poverty in the upcoming February budget. I am confident that there will be programs.
The reason I think one fights something as insidious as organized crime by dealing with our young people is because the very nature of an organized criminal group is they look for people who are vulnerable. They look for people who are impressionable. They look for people, whether it is in illegal gambling, whether it is in drugs, whether they get young girls who are impressionable and lead them astray and get them involved in prostitution with promises of great money and beautiful clothes and things of that nature, or they get young people out of schools involved in selling drugs in the community, they encourage them through establishing a mindset that says it is cool to be part of an organized group.
One thinks about the gangs and the problems that we see. We had a terrible tragedy in the greater Toronto area a couple of weeks ago when a young boy was kicked to death by a gang of young people. It is incomprehensible. What could possibly make these young people react like that? Tragically, we have seen it in the past. A young girl was kicked, bludgeoned and beaten to death by other young girls. Violence in the female education system for young girls, in my opinion, is becoming a crisis.
We can put in place all the RCMP and all the police assistance that we want in communities, but we must address the basic fundamental attitudes of young people and tell them that they have to respect one another.
Yesterday, I was at Ploughman's school in Mississauga speaking to four grade five classrooms. They got together in the library. I was amazed to hear the questions coming from these young kids in grades 4 and 5, asking me about the problems of violence in the schools and what the government can do to combat it. They do not feel safe in their own community; a community full of families, young people raising their families. Kids at that tender age worry about this. I am sure they hear their moms and dads talking about it around the kitchen table. They do not understand how somebody who is perhaps 10 years older than them can actually go to the extreme of kicking someone to death.
We can put something in place. In fact this government has done a number of things which I would share with the House from a crime fighting standpoint.
I want to stress that I do not think that this debate is about the government standing up and strutting its stuff, saying “We're really tough on this issue”. Nor is it about the opposition standing up and saying “You're not tough enough”. What this debate should be about, in my respectful submission, is how we build and create a safer community. How do we get the drug lords? How do we get the smugglers, whether they are smuggling cigarettes or guns? I know it is a controversial issue with some members on the other side, but it is about issues such as gun control.
What is the basic, fundamental principle in the values of Canada and Canadians? Do we simply want to be like the Americans? Do we simply want to pander to the gun lobby group, or do we want to put in place laws? Yes, they will be difficult to enforce. Do we want to put in place a registry? Yes, and it will be difficult. The criminals obviously are not going to register their guns. We understand that, but we have seen so many tragedies in this country.
I believe that the insidiousness of organized crime just sits there and stirs the pot. The way for us to combat that, in addition to the many programs that have already been announced, is to get to the hearts of our young people. I hope that members opposite will see this as I do, and as many Canadians do, as an issue that we all need to work on together.
This is not just about giving the Mounties more money. In fact, in my own community at Pearson International Airport the GTAA has entered into an agreement with Peel Regional Police to provide policing services to Pearson airport so that the RCMP can free up more of its contingent to deal with the serious problems that occur at such a major international entry point to this country. That is a good, responsible, community partnership. That makes a lot of sense.
Peel Region is where the airport is located. The Peel Regional Police wind up with many of the problems once they leave the airport grounds. They wind up with the problems. Whether it is organized crime or crime of any kind, Peel Regional Police will have to deal with it. Why not have them at the point of entry dealing with it immediately and put in place the systems and understanding of the flow that occurs when criminals come in?
On the other side of that coin, at a time when all governments are facing great financial pressures, it frees up an opportunity for the RCMP to concentrate on crimes that are perhaps more of an international nature, such as smuggling.
Mr. Speaker, you are indicating that I have one minute remaining. I wanted to talk about the people smuggling that we have seen recently, but I am not going to have time to do that.
Let me just say that it is important that we focus our energies in the area where in a long term, big picture way we can actually eradicate organized crime. We can convince our young people in our schools and communities that it is not an acceptable way and that they must respect their colleagues, their friends and their schoolmates. They must not turn to violence as a way of solving a problem. It is easy to say those things, but it is places like this, with responsible motions such as this one being put forward by the opposition with an opportunity to debate it, where this kind of issue can begin to be solved.