Mr. Speaker, I will mention at the outset that I will be splitting my time.
This debate by and large generates more heat than light and has, over the past seven years of these last three parliaments, generated a great deal of heat. I do not know how much light we actually came to over the course of those three parliaments, but this occupied the 35th parliament. The justice committee reported in May 1997 on this issue and that formed the basis for the 36th parliament's Bill C-68.
In the course of dealing with Bill C-68, parliament was prorogued and that bill became Bill C-3. In the course of dealing with Bill C-3, we in the justice committee had extensive hearings, as did the previous justice committee, hearings that were nationwide. In the course of those hearings, we heard from pretty well every corner of the country and from every interested jurisdiction. Bill C-3 has now become Bill C-7 and we are now in the 37th parliament and back to debating this issue.
While I have some discomfort at times about time allocation, there comes a time when time should be allocated. I believe this is one of those occasions where we finally have to deal with the evidence we have heard, the testimony we have heard and the manner in which the government has put it forward in a bill after extensive hearings.
May I say that at the point where we were just about to get down to clause by clause in the justice committee, the Bloc Quebecois decided that would be a good time to filibuster. The Bloc took up something in the order of 27 hours of the committee's time on a filibuster which ultimately had to be returned to the House, with the net result that the bill was not heard and not dealt with prior to the election in November 2000.
I submit that we are not going to make everybody happy. There are times at which government just has to be government. Parliament does its thing and expresses its view because, after all, this is a talking shop. We do talk and we do advise, but ultimately it is the government that makes decisions.
I want to commend the Minister of Justice on her willingness to listen to evidence and to change significant portions of the bill based upon the evidence she heard at committee.
The first change is in the area of the preamble and principles of the bill. Members will notice that clause 3 has been changed. Again, this is as a direct result of what she heard at committee.
The first statement of principle will now read as follows:
(a) the youth criminal justice system is intended to
(i) prevent crime by addressing the circumstances underlying a young person's offending behaviour,
(ii) rehabilitate young persons who commit offences and reintegrate them into society, and
(iii) ensure that a young person is subject to meaningful consequences for his or her offence—
As I say, a number of people before the committee said that we had the principles in the preamble as a declaration of principle and that was not correct. The Minister of Justice listened and the Minister of Justice has put that into the bill.
Second, the importance of timely intervention is recognized in the principles. In some respects that may be stating the obvious, but in testimony after testimony we heard that a youth would commit an offence in May of one year and not be dealt with until a year or 18 months later. At the best of times one has difficulty bringing together the consequences of one's activity with the punishment, and the result is that the youth loses all appreciation for the justice system, so the importance of timely intervention is right in the declaration of principle. Again, the minister changed this.
There is another change. A reference to the needs and level of development of the youth has been added to the principles. Subparagraph 3(1)(c)(iii) reads:
(iii) be meaningful for the individual young person given his or her needs and level of development and, where appropriate, involve the parents, the extended family—
and so on.
Those are significant additions and, again, are based upon evidence we heard. Again I have to commend the Minister of Justice. She listened to the testimony. The changes were made in the bill.
When she attempts to come before the committee members opposite filibuster. I cannot quite see how that is being a responsible parliamentarian. Members are forever saying that they have no impact on legislation. Frankly, the justice committee did have an impact on this legislation. Frankly, the justice committee spent a lot of time listening to the evidence. Frankly, the minister reacted with significant amendments. Yet members opposite say that we have to debate this some more and that members opposite are irrelevant and do not have any impact on legislation.
With reference to the interests of victims, that was probably a flaw in the previous bill and has been referred to in the preamble of the bill where it has been incorporated by reference. It states:
Canadian society should have a youth criminal justice system that commands respect, takes into account the interests of victims, fosters responsibility and ensures accountability—
I do not know what else can be said in terms of how to incorporate those kinds of principles into a bill.
We heard a great deal of testimony about how Canada treats its youth when they come in contact with the law. What became clear in the course of listening to our evidence was that we overrely on incarceration, particularly on incarceration for aboriginal youth. I can recall the testimony of one youth justice of the Northwest Territories who gave a rather sad commentary on our youth justice system. He said that one of the reasons he puts aboriginal youth in jail is that he knows they have no real alternatives, that they either go back on the street to dysfunctional families or go back on the street to no families at all. As a consequence, he saw it as his only option to put kids in jail. That is a pretty sad commentary on our situation.
Canadians would be interested to know that we incarcerate youth at twice the American rate. That is a pretty shocking statistic and is frankly something I had not heard prior to becoming a parliamentarian. That contrasts quite distinctly with the fact that Americans incarcerate adults at four times the rate Canadians do.
The other point of interest that came up in testimony had to do with learning disabilities. It became clear that a disproportionate number of youth offenders have learning disabilities. The low estimate was something in the order of 35%. The higher estimate was something in the order of 80%. More than one out of every two young offenders cannot read. In this society, people who cannot read will likely be marginalized. If they are marginalized, they are likely going to be hanging out with people they should not be hanging out with and doing things they should not be doing. The consequence is that they will be involved in conflicts with the law.
We also heard that young offenders drop out of school at twice the rate of their peers. At some level this is not really news and at another level it is a profound recognition of societal failure, which brings us into conflict between the needs of criminal justice and the needs of social justice. That is a kind of philosophical divide that we all straddle in some manner or another.
One of the pieces of testimony that really caught my attention was that of professor Allan Leishfield of the University of Western Ontario.
I know he is not from Queen's, Mr. Speaker, but he still probably has something to say in this area.
He states:
There is simply not enough evidence to support the notion that incapacitation through incarceration of relatively large numbers of youth is an effective way to promote community safety. The second is partly drawn from the first and that is that the cost of providing custody for large numbers of youth is considerable and not justified given the poor outcomes recorded in the vast majority of the programs that rely on incapacitation.
Members opposite should know that it costs about $106,000 a year to keep a youth in jail, whereas referrals to other non-custodial situations cost somewhere in the order of about $9,500.
When something is costly and is not working, there is something wrong. When we are faced with that situation we have to look at other alternatives.
I respectfully submit that this bill has looked at other alternatives, that this has been completely and thoroughly debated by members opposite, and that it is time to deal with the issues that criminal justice presents to all of us.