Mr. Speaker, I have some relatives who are lawyers and a lot of friends who are lawyers. I have a lot of respect for lawyers.
The speaker from the Conservative Party talks about the complexity of the bill, the onerous wording, twice the wording of the present Young Offenders Act. He talks about how that is totally unacceptable and says that it is an extremely difficult bill to grasp. I think he is saying that even judges would have problems with it.
I find this amazing. When we start drafting bills and laws, we have lawyers writing the bills, lawyers prosecuting the law, lawyers defending the law, lawyers sitting on the bench deciding what to do with the law, and lawyers interpreting the law. In this particular bill we are going to have lawyers who are going to have to intervene for young offenders under 14 to prove reverse onus. We are going to have lawyer involvement to an unbelievable degree.
I have a feeling that there is something wrong with this picture. We have built a real legal industry under this kind of legislation, which does not make a lot of sense to normal people. Any normal person could not do this. I suggest to the House that it probably took 17 lawyers from Ottawa to write this bill and it is going to take 15 Philadelphia lawyers to interpret the darn thing.
Does the member not see something wrong with that picture? Lawyers, lawyers and lawyers, and we are trying to deal with youth crime and with what to do with our young people. What the government has done with the bill is to build an excellent avenue by which lawyers will fill their pockets once again. I do not see how it is going to make any difference to what is happening with youth crime.