Mr. Speaker, I will be quite brief and restrict my comments to the Group No. 1 amendments.
I have no problem with Motion No. 1 of my colleague from Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough. It simplifies the intent of the section. I appreciate his foresight in addressing this issue. To those of us with no legal training it seems rather inconsequential, but I understand that the hon. member, with his experience in the courts, knows how things can fall apart and why one would want to propose this amendment. I certainly have no problem with it.
As for Motion No. 2, we are adding the Young Offenders Act to the list of statutes for which the victim surcharge will apply. The reason for that is that the amendment follows Recommendation No. 13 of the justice committee in its report “Victims' Rights: A Voice, Not A Veto”. The committee actually reported and recommended that victim fine surcharges should apply to young offenders.
The federal-provincial-territorial working group also recommended permitting the surcharge against young offenders. Alberta, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and Ontario are on record as supporting victim surcharges applying to young offenders.
Young offenders create victims in similar ways as adult criminals do. A victim is a victim is a victim, regardless of who is the perpetrator of the offence. As such, young offenders should be held responsible to provide assistance to the victims of crime in a similar fashion as adults do.
During the 1994-95 fiscal year there was a total of 4,472 cases across Canada whereby a fine was the most significant disposition by the youth court. The vast majority of these fines were between $50 and $500. If these young offenders can pay those fines, a minimum surcharge scheme as laid out in Bill C-79 should not prove to be any great problem for them.
Motion No. 5 merely applies the same line of reasoning to the proposed youth criminal justice act, if it ever in fact sees the light of day.
I will finish my comments there. I will have more to say at third reading on the main body of my thoughts on this bill.