Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the bill today regarding youth criminal justice. The bill will replace the Young Offenders Act. It is a key part of the Government of Canada's youth justice renewal initiative, an initiative that is very important.
I had occasion recently to speak with a person involved in the issue of restorative justice. We talked about the importance and the challenge of ensuring that justice is swift while at the same time guaranteeing the rights of an accused person. That is a difficult balance. We want to see matters brought to justice very quickly.
It is important for any person, but particularly young people, to understand there are consequences to a criminal act and to know what the consequences are. It is important that such acts be dealt with swiftly. Their consequences must be swift and the person responsible be held to account. They must face the victim if that is appropriate. They must face the community and confront the fact that their act has had a negative and terrible impact on the community. That is important.
If young offenders are to overcome and get beyond what they have done, recognize they have done something wrong and grow and learn and change, they must be confronted fairly quickly with what has happened. That is why restorative justice is a step in the right direction, and I am glad the Department of Justice is working on it.
However the other side of the challenge is that while justice must be swift we must ensure the rights of an accused person are protected. As a judge said many years ago, it is better that ten guilty people go free than one innocent person be convicted. That is one of the golden threads of our legal justice system in Canada.
The new act will incorporate some very important new considerations. It will incorporate the initiative's new approach to youth justice and it will form the backbone of a major restructuring of the youth justice system. This restructuring has been going on since 1988. Let us look at the key elements of the new bill and the principles it applies.
The preamble of the bill underlines the values, rights and responsibilities both of society and of young people in relation to youth crime. Clearly we do have rights and responsibilities on both sides and our values are important. What we are trying to do, obviously, is to teach or to inject those values, so to speak, into young people. We are not always talking about people who are absolutely devoid of values. Often we are talking about people who have strayed from those values, who have learned the basics but perhaps have made an important and fundamental error, in some cases a very serious error, and have strayed dramatically from those values. However, in some cases, yes, they are people who do not appear to show any of the values that we think are important as a society.
The bill sets out the most important objectives of the youth criminal justice system. The objectives are to prevent crime, to rehabilitate and reintegrate offenders into society, and to ensure meaningful consequences for offences committed by young people so that they have the consequence of being confronted with their actions, of being brought to account to face the victim and recognize what they have done to someone, and also to face their community and recognize the impact on the community of what they have done.
Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise you, by the way, that I will be splitting my time with the minister of state for youth.
The principles of the bill recognize that these elements, pursued together, are the best way to protect the public and promote safer communities over the long term.
Let me talk for a moment about the provisions of the bill regarding sentencing. I mentioned a few minutes earlier, and I want to repeat, what subclause 38(1) of the bill says. I think it is a very important provision of this bill. It is important to understand what the bill is all about and what the idea of sentencing is all about within the new youth criminal justice bill.
Subclause 38(1) asserts that the purpose of imposing a youth sentence is:
—to contribute to the protection of society by holding a young person accountable for an offence through the imposition of just sanctions that have meaningful consequences for the young person and that promote his or her rehabilitation and reintegration into society.
That is very important. We have to consider that. Those who feel, for example, that all people under the age of 18 who are convicted of a criminal act should be in adult institutions, in adult prisons, ought to consider the impact of that. Surely if we put a 15 year old or a 14 year old or a 13 year old into an adult prison facility, what we are doing, in effect, is helping him or her to be trained to become a more proficient criminal. Surely that is not an objective we ought to be endorsing or embracing for our youth criminal justice system.
As this legislation states, the key purpose of youth sentences is to hold young people accountable for their crimes. That is vital. It is vital that they be held accountable and have to confront what they have done. If there is any chance for reform or rehabilitation, they must first confront and be confronted with what they have done.
The other key purpose, of course, is to contribute to the protection of society. How can this be achieved? There are a number of goals that the bill sets out. For instance, it sets out that we can achieve these goals through interventions that are just; there must be justice in these interventions. This can be accomplished through community intervention, with incarceration for the most serious crimes. Community intervention may work well in some cases. I think it is important that we give it a try.
We have already seen the idea of restorative justice, whereby young people are confronted by the community and particularly by the victims they have injured and are required to make restoration, not only to the victim but also to the community at large. A crime is an attack not only on one person, on one family or on one resident, but is in effect an attack on our society and on the community in which the attack takes place.
Another important goal is that we ensure meaningful consequences. Clearly the youth must recognize the severity of the crime, and the punishment should suit the crime. These are very important objectives.
Finally, it must promote rehabilitation and reintegration.
It seems to me that the bill goes a long way toward achieving those objectives. Provisions in the bill will encourage community based sentences where appropriate, such as, for example, compensation for victims, community service and supervision in the community.
It will allow the courts to impose adult sentences upon conviction when certain criteria are met. It creates the presumption that adult sentences will be given to young people 14 and older who are found guilty of murder, attempted murder, manslaughter or aggravated sexual assault or who are repeat serious violent offenders. That is a very important provision, this presumption of an adult sentence, because it means that for serious crimes they will do serious time. It means that young offenders can expect this if they are involved in serious violent crime.
At the same time, because we recognize that there are different situations in different parts of the country and we recognize that different provinces have had success with different models in relation to these issues, the provinces will have increased flexibility in regard to the age at which this presumption will apply within their jurisdictions.
Lastly, it will create a new, intensive, rehabilitative custody and supervision sentence for the most violent high risk youth so that they get the treatment they need. That is so important. Not only is it important that they be confronted with their actions but, particularly with the most violent youth, there is a real need for serious treatment. These are people who obviously have severe problems and we have a great challenge in order to have a hope that people like this may at some point go back into society. It is important that we find a way to give them good treatment.