Madam Speaker, I would like to pick up where my friend from the Progressive Conservative Party left off. He made some very valid points and I will focus on a few of them.
What we have to focus on is that every single young offender, every single youth who comes before our courts, the ones who commit the most serious offences, who are incarcerated, are going to be released into society. I agree with him absolutely that we need funding for this.
The Young Offenders Act will be re-packaged. There will be a new bow put on the package, with a few new dressings on the outside and it will now be called the youth criminal justice act, but we will basically have the same thing.
I held a one-day seminar at a high school in my riding and I invited the head youth provincial court judge, Judge Chaperon, to participate in the seminar. She brought up a very disturbing fact that happens within our youth justice system, which boils down to what my friend was focusing on, and that is the lack of resources. Her biggest frustration is not being able to give the youth in our justice system the help they need. The resources from the federal government are not there, although, again, it mentions the $206 million.
She told me that over 50% of the people who are in the youth detention centre in Victoria have one form of psychological problem or another. However, they do not have the resources to give them the counselling and the programs they need to turn them around and to make sure they do not come back.
The government has the responsibility to make sure that it puts the resources out there so that the provinces will have the tools they need to provide the rehabilitation that is so necessary. Warehousing these youth, locking them up and not doing anything with them while they are in the warehouse, not ensuring that they are getting anger management, drug counselling and psychological counselling from experts before they are released into society, is a waste of time. We have to focus on that. That is one area in which the government has really been slack.
Another area, and my hon. friend also brought this up, is the involvement of parents in the youth justice system. I do not think the government has really done anything there.
Under section 7.2 of the old Young Offenders Act if a youth was incarcerated and the judge was going to release them the judge had a tool whereby the parent could be forced to sign an undertaking that they would report any breaches of the conditions. It could be a curfew, going to school or attending a certain program. It could be anything. If that young offender breached one of those conditions, it was absolutely imperative that the adult or whoever signed the undertaking report it to the authorities. It is not forcing parents to make sure they have control over their children, but when they lose control they must report it to the authorities.
There is a positive step. The old penalty was up to six months and the new penalty is up to two years. I agree with my hon. colleague from Surrey North. As he put it, maybe that will be the incentive required to make parents fulfill their obligation, because in many respects they are not. In the personal situation of my good friend from Surrey North that did not happen.
I think we need to go one step further. We need to make sure that we press charges, especially in the most violent cases where there is absolutely no excuse for them not to report it or where we can absolutely show that it was a blatant abuse of the system and they did not report it when they knew about. I would submit that is not happening now. That is something we should be doing.
My hon. colleague from West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast spoke about the importance of prevention. I really want to emphasize that. That is where we need to be going in our youth justice system. We have to look at prevention at the front end. We do not want our youth put into warehouses and locked up. We want to make sure they are productive members of society. There are programs, such as the head start program put forward by the hon. member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca in Motion No. 261, which would go a long way to achieving some of these goals.
At the end of the day we are now getting this new youth justice bill and I do not think it is going to change a whole lot, as my colleagues have stated. I do not think the government is putting the resources into it that are required. I do not think it is compelling the parents enough to participate in the process.
There should be a section in the bill which makes it mandatory for parents or guardians of all young offenders, at all levels, to be present in the courtroom. That is not happening now and it will not happen under the new youth justice bill. For any young offender who is before the courts, it should be absolutely mandatory that a parent be there to participate in the process. We know that young offenders are going to be released into society. If they are going to succeed, then they are going to need that parental support and we should be making it mandatory.
Again, I want to focus on the resources. I have practised criminal law within the youth justice system and my own experiences show that if we are going to make the changes necessary, then we have to make sure that we provide the resources necessary so that when our youth go askew, when they fall under the cracks, there is accountability and that our number one goal is not to warehouse them but to put them back into society in a productive manner. To do that the people in our justice system will need resources and tools. Under this bill they will not have them. The $206 million does not even come close to cutting it.