Madam Speaker, I express my gratitude to my colleague from Langley—Abbotsford mainly for his seriousness about his work.
In the last parliament by 1996 he was able to introduce in the House a victims bill of rights which was strongly supported.
I know the reason the member worked so hard on that bill. I was there on a number of occasions with him when we had spent hours visiting with people who were victims of crime, listening to their stories, listening to how things were developing in their lives, and listening to some of the tragedies that were taking place. It just was not answering the call.
I watched the member put together this package and present it with great pride, as he should. He had full support of victims across the land from CAVEAT, CRY and FACT. A number of organizations commended him. When it left the House and was sent to the committee that was the last we heard of it.
To me that presents a serious problem. In 1996 a valuable document was presented in the House. Why is it now, three years later, that we will finally talk about this extremely important issue? My friend and colleague from Edmonton mentioned drugs and what we needed to do because the situation was so serious.
It is extremely serious. I am now visiting reserves with the department of Indian affairs. I am saddened to find that in many of our reserves in the last little while there have been a number of suicide victims. Those family members are telling me that it is mainly because of drugs. It is becoming so common that they do not even make the newspaper any more. In my own province of Alberta I know of at least six suicides in the last few weeks which have not even made the newspapers because they are so commonplace.
We are talking in the House briefly today about what we will do to prevent having future victims. That is one issue. We cannot have a three year delay. Three years can be terribly disastrous to a number of individuals.
I sat in a home on one reserve with a mother who had lost three children to suicide because of drugs. Her plea was for help because she did not want to lose any more of her kids. I talked to a fellow, Mike Calder, who works on the streets of Winnipeg with young aboriginal people who come from the reserves and are being roped into gangs that are promoting drugs, prostitution and all the evil things we could think about. Kids under 12 years of age are being scooped up and used by those who are profiting from these kinds of things.
My whole point in raising this point is that we cannot continually sit in the House and wait for three years to do something about a problem that is progressing so horribly. We have many people dying on the streets in Vancouver, as the member just said. How bad does it have to get before we would consider it to be an emergency and maybe decide to do something about it?
I am thinking about a person who was convicted in 1998 of a drunken driving charge. He had killed four people as a result of a stupid decision to drive while drinking. His victims lived in Saskatchewan and were killed on an Alberta highway. At the scene the individual was very upset that it had happened. He admitted his guilt. It was proven that he was terribly intoxicated. Yet it took 18 court cases to deal with what seemed so obvious. He immediately pleaded guilty. He was immediately remorseful. All the things were in the right place to deal with it.
The families of the people who were killed on the highway drove back and forth to Calgary 18 times in over two years to finally hear the verdict for the individual who had taken the lives of these people. It took 18 court cases on a cut and dry drunk driving case. He was obviously guilty and had pleaded guilty.
I cannot begin to describe the trauma and the major effect it had on the lives of the victims. I have become well aware of them over a period of time. There was the trauma of not knowing what the justice system would do for them. Eighteen courts cases is very profitable for the legal system but it does nothing for a justice system.
The military used to have a code, and I hope it still has, that some things need to be in place to have good justice. It has to be fast. It needs to be firm. It needs to be fair. It needs to be final. It used to be called the four f s. It would not take long to make decisions on cases like that one. If it had to be investigated it would take a lot of time and energy. Four families were involved. They lost their children in a car wreck caused by a drunk driver. For over two years they drove back and forth from Saskatchewan waiting for this cut and dry case to be dealt with.
Finally the House has a victims bill before it three years later. The victims have been calling for it for ages. It was introduced and passed in 1996 but something happened. It died somewhere. Is it because we have become so political that an idea from my Reform colleague is not acceptable by a Liberal government? Does it have to die at the committee level and then be reproduced later by a Liberal minister so it looks better? If that is the motive we need to examine how we operate in this place.
A five year old girl in Calgary went missing. By evening they found her in a dumpster. She had been murdered. It was very sad. They found the person responsible for her death. It was a next door neighbour who lived across the alley behind them. He had taken the little girl out of her yard.
His cry to the police was that the little girl had been coming on to him. He was 47 years old. They spent time and energy on him. The 47 year old individual received psychological guidance. He even went to the hospital to be checked over. I cannot imagine it but he received legal aid. All kinds of assistance were overflowing from our system to him.
The mother was a single parent and had two other children. She suffered a great loss when this little five year old girl was taken. The only counselling they got was from friends. The only professional medical help they could get was through psychology, psychiatry or whatever for which she paid herself. There was no program offered to help them overcome the grief they were going through.
However, the 47 year old man who claimed to have been led astray by this little girl was to go to a place where thousands of dollars would be spent to provide some kind of rehabilitation program for him.
For months and months it went on. Organized victim groups went to the home of this mother to hold her hand and give her a shoulder to lean on. There was absolutely no help from the system whatsoever.
We recognize the serious problems faced by victims in the land. In 1996 it was passed in the House, sent to committee and lost. 1999 rolls along and we finally get to doing something about it. What kind of a procedure is that?
In 1994 the 10 year review of the Young Offenders Act failed dismally. The government announced that something had to be done with that act. Now it is 1999 and, lo and behold, we are to have a new act. Nothing has changed in the meantime. There are still all kinds of problems. We concentrate so heavily on the rights of the criminals that we have completely forgotten the victims involved and how protecting them is so essential.
On behalf of my friend from Edmonton, we cannot delay fighting drugs any longer. We have to get at it. We have to consider it to be extremely serious and deal with it. It is time to put partisan politics completely aside when young people all across the country are dying on our streets from drugs.
I do not believe there is anyone in this place who would not co-operate with another person to help alleviate that problem. I do not believe that for a moment. Let us not do anything that would cause the kinds of differences that would make that happen. Let us just agree that there is a problem and, for heaven's sake, let us work jointly together to solve it.
A lot of it has to do with poverty. In 1993 when I came here there were one million children living in poverty. Now I hear talk about 1.5 million. That is not solving the problem. It seems to me like it is going in the wrong direction.
Let us start thinking about where we are spending our money and where it can have the best effect. I agree that it was extremely nice of our heritage minister to spend $25 million to see to it that everybody got a flag, but there are children's aid societies all across the land that could really have used that money.
Why can we not make victims of crime our priority? Young people are a big part of the problem of being victims. They are victims of poverty. They are victims of all the things that could be fixed if we decided to do it.
When something good comes forward like my hon. colleague's bill of rights, something that was acceptable to every hon. member of the House as far as I know, it is time to get rolling and get it done. I know a few members may not have liked it but they were a very few. It went to committee and it died. Why? I do not know. We could only speculate from that point on.
Partisan politics interfere far too much in this place when we need to deal with serious problems. We need to visit more individuals out there who are paying our wages to be here. We need to learn of the problems they are facing and learn of the situations that can be overcome if we get our priorities straight in this place.
Hon. members can object to the spending of money as I just mentioned I did. I can see the headlines tomorrow: the hon. member for Wild Rose is anti-Canada; he did not want the heritage minister to give away flags. That is not the point at all. That is a very good thing to do. It is too bad we do not have an extra $25 million lying around to do that with. However, how can we justify spending money in some areas, like committees for seniors for sexuality, when we have people committing suicide. In Vancouver alone over 300 young people have died this year because of drugs. Victims are growing by the numbers.
I plead with the government to start putting some fast tracks on some of this legislation so it can be debated and we can begin to solve the problems facing the nation. Forget all the rhetoric and baloney that goes on with some of these items. Let us get down to brass tacks and start looking at what the problems are and begin solving them.
I thank the justice minister for getting this at least to the floor of the House. I wish it had happened years ago. It should have. I encourage all members to get behind the bill and support it. Let us continue to look for ways to assist the victims in our land who number in the thousands.