Mr. Speaker, like everybody else, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-3, which is the final response by the government to what we said during the 1993 election when we said that the Young Offenders Act had to be toughened up. We talked about it and hammered on it. We ranted and raved in this place to bring about changes to the Young Offenders Act.
Then we got the new Minister of Justice, the hon. member for Edmonton West. In 1997 when she was appointed the Minister of Justice, she said “Right on. We are going to bring in changes to the Young Offenders Act”. Here it is the fall of 2000, seven years after the Reform Party and now the Canadian Alliance began talking about the fact that we need changes to the Young Offenders Act and finally we have a document in front of us.
If one has been reading the papers and listening to the rumours, there could be an election before this bill is passed and we would be right back to square one. That would not be quite so bad because then we would be on that side of the House. We would make sure that a young offenders act was introduced in short order. It would be a clear instruction to the young people in our country that we do not like to mess around with kids. We are going to instruct young kids who think they can mess around with the laws of the country and that they can abuse people and commit property crimes and so on that young people should not be doing these things.
A short sharp lesson to young kids at that impressionable age sometimes can speak wonders and can get them right back on the straight and narrow. That sums up the position of the Canadian Alliance: something short, sharp and productive that lets young people in Canada know we want them to be good, productive, dare I say taxpaying citizens, rather than a drain and a drag on our society as we have to incarcerate them and haul them through the court process month after month. It drags on. Sometimes by then they have even forgotten why they are up in front of the judge. They scratch their heads and say “Oh, yeah, I remember. Gee, that was a long time ago, wasn't it?”
That is unfortunately how our justice system works. It takes months and months and sometimes years and years before the young kids get before a judge. And what do they get? A little smack on their fingers and a reprimand from the judge saying “Excuse me, but we really do not like you doing that. Can you please refrain from that kind of behaviour from here on in. Off you go and be a nice little kid from here on in”. And they laugh as they go out the door.
There is lots wrong with the Young Offenders Act. While the Minister of Justice says that she has made some changes and recommendations in the bill, from our perspective it is woefully inadequate.
We heard the minister say today that there is no way that she would touch 10 and 11 year olds, but we know that 10 and 11 year olds need to be brought under some kind of supervision when they get totally off track. They need to be advised even at 10 and 11 years that there is good behaviour and bad behaviour.
Talking about bad behaviour, there are the amendments tabled by our colleagues on this side of the House, notably the separatist party, the Bloc Quebecois. The number of amendments tabled by the Bloc Quebecois looks to be about 50% more than the total bill itself judging by the thickness of the document. I think they are playing games.
We are serious about changes to the Young Offenders Act. We think this is a serious issue. The country thinks it is a serious issue. The Bloc members obviously do not think it is a serious issue because they have tabled irrelevant amendments. They filibustered the bill in committee for 10 hours so that there was no intelligent legitimate debate. Unfortunately that is the type of debate we get from the Bloc Quebecois, without intelligence and without relevancy.
I am looking at one page of their amendments. It seems that in their some 3,000 amendments they suggest that each and every clause be deferred for three years, five years, ten years before coming into force and that the minister report on each and every clause every year, second year, five years, or whatever it is. If that was their intelligent intention, they could have called for the Minister of Justice to table a report in the House on the operation of the Young Offenders Act, but obviously the way that they are doing it is not for the benefit of society. It is not for the benefit of the people who are victimized by young kids. It is not for the benefit of young kids who need to be brought under the Young Offenders Act. They have done this strictly for their own political gain. That is why I would hope that after the next election there are a lot fewer Bloc members in the House than there are today.
I am looking at Bloc Motions Nos. 2231, 2232 and 2233. Motion No. 2231 calls for the deletion of lines 1 to 13. It gets rid of the whole clause. Motion No. 2232 calls for the deletion of lines 5 to 8. The next motion calls for the deletion of lines 9 to 13. There are three motions dealing with the same issue. That shows the petty political games our Bloc friends are playing with a serious issue.
The Canadian Alliance is concerned about safe streets. We are concerned about safe communities. We are concerned about ensuring that Canadian society continues to be respected as one of the best in the world.
We hear in the crime capitals in the United States, for example New York City, that crime is down 10% to 20%, that murders are down 10% to 20%. In the United States serious inroads into crime are being made. They are tough on crime. Perhaps there is a correlation there that the Liberal Party and the government have missed. If we are tough on crime, if we punish crime, then people get the message. They should not do it and it should not happen again. That is not with disregard to rehabilitation.
There are myriad reasons for crime. We cannot point to one single issue: broken families, alcohol, drugs, lack of education, cultural problems. There are myriad reasons that people resort to crime. One of them is a lack of education and the capacity for people to live, work and prosper in this complex technological world we live in. The other one is the lack of moral instruction to differentiate between what is right and wrong.
We have heard in other debates in the House about the fact that we cannot talk about morality. Then we find that young children cannot differentiate between what is right and what is wrong, and what society considers to be respectable behaviour and what society considers to be behaviour that is reprehensible.
Somewhere along the way, through our soft and fuzzy and pat them on the head and ask them not to do it again concept, we have lost the notion that we have to teach our kids the difference between right and wrong. We have to teach them how to survive and prosper and take advantage of the complex technological world we live in. Other issues enter into it but these are the types of things we need to work at.
The rehabilitation of young criminals pays dividends for the rest of the young child's life. We can take someone who is falling off the rails and keep them on the rails, keep them productive and a contributing taxpaying member of society. Compared to someone who is a continuous drain, the rewards and benefits are immense.
Unfortunately the minister has fallen far short in this bill. We wish we had more time to debate it. I would love to have more time to debate it but let us get this bill in place before the election.