Mr. Speaker, we are back again debating the Young Offenders Act or, as it is now called, the youth criminal justice act.
I want to say a couple of things about our youth. The first thing is that we can very clearly distinguish the two kinds of youth. The vast majority of youth are law-abiding young people much like their parents or adult friends, and indeed most people in Canada, who are struggling to try to make their way in life. They want to look forward to the future with some hope but they do worry about their personal safety when they go out at night, when they wait at a bus stop or when they interact with other young people.
We also have a very small minority of young people who choose a life of crime, to break the laws, whether it is a lesser crime, such as property offences, or more serious offences.
The thing that most concerns me and Canadians is what I would call a lack of respect. I have heard over the past number of months my new leader, the leader of the Canadian Alliance, talk about respect and the need to instil respect not only in this institution in the way we do politics and government but the need to instil respect at every level.
What concerns me the most is the lack of respect young criminals have for the law, private property, other people's rights and, sadly and tragically in some cases, even the lack of respect for other human life.
However, I will focus for a moment on the young people themselves. If we are going to address the need for young offenders' legislation, what is now called Bill C-3, the youth criminal justice act, we have to talk about the young people in the sense that they are the most vulnerable because they are the most at risk from their peers. Who interacts with young people more than young people themselves?
I can speak from experience in that regard in that I have three young children. I am very fortunate to have three beautiful young children: a son who is 17, a daughter who is 19, and my oldest daughter will be 22 within a month. I am extremely fortunate that they have never been victims of crime. I thank God every day of my life that they have not been victims of crime, because I cannot imagine a greater pain for any parent or grandparent than to have a young person they are related to become a victim of crime.
The great failing of this bill is that it does not address the fundamental issue of the protection of the vast majority of our young people, who as I said are law-abiding citizens, our youngest citizens, the future leaders of our nation. The bill in its present form will not address that fundamental issue in any meaningful way. It will not hold young criminals accountable and responsible for their actions, and it will not protect the vast majority of our youngest citizens who are law abiding.
If I were to sum up the bill, right at the outset I would have to say it is a colossal waste of time, energy, and effort and a betrayal of the trust and faith the Canadian people put in their elected parliamentarians.
We have to take a look at the history of youth justice, or what the government chooses to call youth justice. For my entire lifetime as a politician, which admittedly is not all that long I have been speaking and writing on this issue. I was only elected in 1993 so it has been about seven years now. I am fortunate that, with the co-operation of the newspaper in my riding of Prince George—Peace River, I have been writing a weekly column for over seven years. I have probably written a dozen times on this single issue of youth justice and the need to reform the Young Offenders Act to accomplish those two important goals: to hold young criminals accountable and responsible for their actions while at the same time respecting the rights of and the need to protect the vast majority of young people who are law abiding.
To me it is a bit of a sad testament that all of us, regardless of what party we are from, have had to talk and talk and talk about this issue for so long with so very little happening. In the last parliament a lot of work was done by the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights as it travelled across the country holding hearings. Dozens, hundreds, of Canadians participated in those hearings. They came as witnesses willingly. They gave up their own time to come and relate their feelings about this important issue to parliamentarians, in the hope that something would change. That was back in 1996 and 1997.
The present justice minister was appointed following the election of 1997, so she has been in this position now for over three years. She said her number one priority was to bring about these changes. Finally in March 1999, almost two years after she took the office, she introduced Bill C-68, not to be confused with the infamous Liberal gun registration bill. Of course that bill died on the order paper when parliament was prorogued in the fall of 1999, and it was reintroduced as Bill C-3.
Clearly what Bill C-3 means to people and what it proves to people is that the government simply is not listening. It is not listening, and what clearer way to demonstrate that. Bill C-3 is the Liberal effort at youth justice. There are the 3,133 amendments to Bill C-3. What is important is not that there were so many amendments, because obviously political opposition parties will use the process of amendments as a delaying tactic, or that the Canadian Alliance put forward roughly 50 amendments to Bill C-3 which were well thought out and well intended. What is really notable is that the government put forward 150 amendments to its own bill. This must indicate how badly flawed its legislation is when it had to bring forward 150 amendments.
What frightens me is that Bill C-3 and its amendments, undoubtedly because of the sheer enormity of the task ahead of us as parliamentarians to try and sort through over 3,000 amendments, will be passed by the government because it has a majority. I suspect it will bring in time allocation, as it has countless other times, and will ram a bill through the House that it very well knows is deeply flawed. It will then be up to the courts to try and deal with the mess later. What an absolutely ridiculous way to pass legislation.
What do Canadians want? I believe it is not a long list. Canadians want sentences to fit the crime. They want violent criminals removed from society. They want effective crime prevention programs in schools to save younger children brought into the system so they can get the help they need. They want older teens and violent criminals to face adult court. They want the names of violent and sexual assault criminals to be published so that everyone knows about them. They want the rights of victims to be paramount to that of the criminal irrespective of age.
The reality is that Bill C-3 does not contain any of the priorities that Canadians want to see addressed with the reform of the Young Offenders Act.