Mr. Speaker, we are considering Bill which C-3 is an important piece of legislation. It has lots to do with crime among youth. As all of us in the House know, there has been mounting public pressure on the government to give Canada effective laws to deal with youth crime.
I emphasize that the vast majority of Canadian youth offer a bright hope to our society for the future. The vast majority of youth in the country are people of whom we can be proud, people on whom we can base some good hopes for the future. They are fine young people who are working hard to be an effective and contributing part of society while learning skills that will eventually allow them to lead society.
It is important for us to emphasize that we are dealing with laws directed to a very small minority, but a minority that places the majority of youth at substantial risk and in fact risk to the public at large.
Just on the news yesterday there was a report of a severe beating of a 14 year old or 15 year old youth in Edmonton who was set upon by other youths. A gang connection is suspected. What the police had to say really struck me as so bizarre. The police said he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I am sure that was no comfort to the pain and suffering the young person had to endure at the hands of lawless youths.
It is very important that we protect our children, families and youth from crimes and violence by their peers and others in society.
When she took the justice portfolio after the last election, the minister said that bringing in changes to the Young Offenders Act was her highest priority. That was in 1997. Well here we are on the eve of an election, and an election may be called in less than a week from today, and legislation is being rushed through parliament against huge opposition. Legislation to do with youth justice is being rushed through parliament against grave concerns expressed by numerous experts. Legislation is being rushed through parliament with 150 amendments put forward by the government that have not even been considered by the proper committee of the House. This is no way to deal with the highest priority of the justice minister. I say shame on her for being so ineffectual and derelict in her duty in bringing forward what she says is her highest priority.
Before the last election the justice committee conducted months of extensive cross-country hearings to get Canadians' wishes on what changes they wanted to see to the Young Offenders Act.
Yet we are told by those on the justice committee that most of their work, these months of work, was simply ignored by the justice minister in the bill. In fact the bill has been widely criticized for its ineffectiveness.
On the surface many of the provisions Canadians have been asking for were included but closer examination has disclosed not just to members of the opposition but to members of interests groups, to experts, to the witnesses before the committee that many loopholes in the legislation will result in undesirable and unanticipated exceptions.
I would like to spend a few minutes talking about the worse faults in the bill. Although alternative measures for first time non-violent offenders recommended by the official opposition are in the bill, those measures are open to repeat and violent offenders. In other words, repeat and violent youth offenders may not have any meaningful consequences for their actions. Alternative measures are writing an essay, making a poster or doing a little community service, very minor responses to what can be serious and even violent crimes. This whole area of alternative measures has already proven to lead to incredible injustice within the adult system, for example no jail time at all for rape.
We are facing the same unfairness, the same anomalies now available in the youth justice system. We wonder whether the justice minister watches what is going on when she simply repeats and expands on the mistakes she has made in previous legislation.
The second fault is that adult sentences, while they may be warranted, will rarely apply to the actions of violent and serious young offenders. Adult sentences will apply only to four categories of offences: murder, attempted murder, manslaughter and aggravated sexual assault.
There will be no adult sentences for sexual assault with a weapon, hostage taking, aggravated assault, kidnapping and a host of other violent offences. Whereas the justice minister is saying hard core youth criminals can be severely dealt with as adults, the truth of the matter is that in almost every case that will not happen. That is a serious flaw in the bill.
The third flaw in the bill is there is no way to deal with serious offenders under age 12. The minister rose in the House today and asked with horror and contempt in her voice why we would want to make criminals out of 10 year olds. The simple answer is no one wants to do that, but the sad fact is that there are sometimes extremely serious crimes committed, even murder, by 10 and 11 year olds. There needs to be a way for society to deal with that in a meaningful fashion.
In addition, having every person under 12 exempt from any responsibility or accountability in our criminal justice system simply invites them to be exploited by adult criminals. We are actually putting young people, children under 12 at risk by refusing to have them brought into the system.
I agree with my colleague from Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough who said this morning that if circumstances sometimes warrant youths being transferred to adult court, they also sometimes warrant children being transferred to youth court. That just makes perfect common sense and will benefit everyone in society including the children in question.
The fourth flaw is that the bill will result in a patchwork, uneven, unequal youth justice system because every province will administer it differently. Someone who may be right across the border from another young offender or may travel from one part of the country to another will have completely different measures and processes to deal with their offences.
That simply does not make sense, especially when the government reacts with total horror at the thought that there may be different standards of health care across the country. However it brings in measures that will bring completely different standards of youth justice across the country. I wonder where the consistency is with the government. There is not very much.
My time does not allow me to continue with the flaws in the system. I have already mentioned four serious flaws with the legislation. I appeal to the government to stop the insanity of pushing through badly thought out, widely criticized legislation and to get it right because our children and our society deserve much better than what we have in the bill.