Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-79 at report stage.
I commend the member for Surrey North for the leadership he has taken to ensure that victims have a right and a say within our justice system. They have been ignored for too long. As the member is often prone to say, victims need a voice, not a veto which is unfortunately what has happened.
I want to focus on Motion No. 2. It deals with the issue of victim surcharges. This is innovative. Not only will it help victims, but it will also help those who have committed offences.
Essentially it asks that a young offender who has been convicted of a crime provide restitution to the victims. Why is this important? For one thing from a victim's perspective, too often victims have been ignored in our criminal justice system. They have been shunted to the side. I could give countless examples of victims who have received less help than the criminals who have committed the offences.
There are countless cases of children who have been abused, women and men who have been raped, people who have been assaulted. They have sustained long term ongoing devastating psychological trauma from what they have endured, yet after all is said and done within the justice system, the criminals have received more help than the victims. That simply is not fair.
My colleague from Surrey North is trying to add some balance and fairness so that victims get the help they require through our system. It also places the onus upon the criminal. If a person commits an offence, they will pay a price not only to society, but also to the victim. There are some innovative ways of doing this.
In my province of British Columbia there are some innovative ways in which the convicted person can, if the victim is in agreement, pay restitution directly to the victim. The convicted person can also say that he or she is sorry and pay some visible and vocal emotional restitution to the victim.
The benefit is it enables the victim to understand that the person who has been convicted is genuinely sorry. It also has been found to diminish the number of times the convicted person commits future offences. In other words, it breaks the cycle of crime and punishment we have found in our society. So often it goes around and around in a circle.
Motion No. 2 is very important from a restitution perspective. It is important to give victims rights. It is important from the convicted person's perspective to show that if a person commits an offence, there will be a penalty to pay. In the long term it has been shown to decrease the amount of times the person reoffends. It decreases the reoffence rate. It also decreases the costs to the taxpayer in that it diverts the convicted person from the expensive incarceration in juvenile institutions. It costs $95,000 a year for a juvenile to be incarcerated in an institution.
If we could divert those convicted to do other things such as making restitution to the victim and society and working for society as part of the penalty, then the criminal would actually learn some very useful skills. It would be beneficial to the criminal from a societal perspective, from a professional perspective and would decrease the number of times the criminal would reoffend in the future.
It is a win-win situation. We applaud this motion and support it. We look forward to speaking again at the third reading stage of Bill C-79.