Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to an amendment to the young offenders bill, which was brought forward by my colleague, the member for Berthier—Montcalm.
This amendment strongly suggests that Quebec be excluded from the application of the new legislation recently introduced by the Liberal government.
It must be acknowledged that, during the course of this debate on amendments to the Young Offenders Act, the Minister of Justice showed good judgement on one particular occasion. Do you know when it was? It was when she recognized that Quebec was incredibly successful in the way it enforced the Young Offenders Act.
In all her documents and even when she appeared before the Standing Committee on Justice, the minister recognized that Quebec had done so well with the Young Offenders Act that its success rate exceeded that of the Canadian provinces as a whole, with the lowest recidivism rate in North America.
So why change things? Why ignore Quebec's success just because the YOA was a total failure elsewhere and because the right—that has become more powerful over the last seven or eight years—wants children to be treated like adults, wants them to be thrown in jail just like adults?
Why a blanket policy? Why impose a new Young Offenders Act that makes no sense, thus ignoring the greatest consensus in recent years—a consensus supported by all stakeholders, who are against the fact that the Minister of Justice wants Quebec to be like any other province despite its successes?
When we talk about a consensus, we are not referring to a small one. The National Assembly has adopted a unanimous motion to postpone the review of this new Young Offenders Act, so that Quebec can keep on enforcing the law as it has always done with all the success it is known for.
In the last two and a half or three years since the beginning of the debate on the reform of the Young Offenders Act, we have heard from people who work with young people on a day to day basis. These people try to ensure that these young people benefit from a first or a second chance, that they are given a chance. This is what young people want. We have demonstrated it in Quebec.
When we react with an open mind and give them a second chance, most young offenders do not commit other offences. However, when we put them in jail with adults, it is well known that prisons become criminal factories for them. They have an opportunity to meet hard-core criminals, real criminals, and living with them, they soon become like them. We deny them the chance to rehabilitate.
In passing, I would like to congratulate my colleague from Berthier—Montcalm for his excellent work on raising awareness of the most important issues in this bill. He was telling me that he had met this afternoon with a University of Ottawa professor who had worked as a criminal lawyer in Alberta as well as in the Maritimes. He is well aware of the mess these provinces made in enforcing the Young offenders Act. He supports us. A University of Ottawa professor is supporting us in our opposition to changes to the Young Offenders Act.
Once again, this shows that, in Quebec, when this act was properly enforced, there were some success stories. We have an incredible rate of success in the rehabilitation of young offenders.
In recent years, there have been many testimonies. Among other things, speaking about a consensus, a coalition was created in favour of justice for minors. Here is what this coalition said in September 1999, when we were dealing with the bill that preceded this one, which contained almost the same provisions, and which died on the order paper because the election was called.
The Coalition pour la justice des mineurs said in September 1999:
Before throwing away sixteen years of practices, adjustments and case law to engage in a program that breaks with traditions almost a century old, parliamentarians must ask themselves if it is worth doing.
Will they have the courage to defend an act that is unanimously agreed on by those who know and use it, or will they give in to lobbies that are relying on misinformation to promote a program that is both mean-spirited and simplistic?
This tells a lot about the state of mind of those who oppose this reform. This reform makes no sense. It throws away all the efforts of people who work with young offenders to try to give them a chance.
There have been other testimonies by people known for their great competence on the issue of rehabilitation of young offenders.
Here is what André Normandeau, a criminologist from the University of Montreal, was saying in 1999:
People in western Canada still react as they did 20 years ago, at a time when the crime rate increased each year. They have kept more of a punitive approach. Changing the law is the easy way out, but, more importantly, it does not work. Violent criminals, who represent 10% of offenders, do not respond to coercion.
It is an easy way out to resort to the stick, or the whip, as my father would have said. It is an easy way out to play petty politics in referring to a supposedly increasing youth crime rate, which is wrong and refuted by every statistics.
It is an easy way out to engage in petty politics at the expense of our children's future. It is cheap. There is no other word to describe what the minister is proposing and to describe also the support she can get from her Liberal colleagues or from Alliance members. It is cheap to play politics with that.
It is cheap to use misinformation about an alleged increase in youth crime rate to show support for a right wing approach, for beating, or for the death penalty while at it. That is cheap.
First and foremost, we should think of our children. That is what we are doing in Quebec. Why not accept to exclude Quebec from the application of the new legislation? It would be so simple for some people to stop playing dumb and to open their minds to the fact that Quebec has made it work.
Why prevent us from continuing just because people from western Canada want to be tougher and Liberals are willing to go along? All they do is play petty politics.
Why not think of the children's future first? No wonder young people are no longer interested in what goes on in parliament. We are not listening to their concerns. We are ignoring their concerns. On top of that, we want to throw them in jail instead of giving them a second chance.
In what kind of country do we live? Sometimes I wonder. The Minister of Justice is thick as a brick and she is narrow-minded. I have never met anybody as narrow-minded as she is.
Today again, on another bill, the one aimed at strengthening the criminal code, we mentioned the fact that the solicitor general said that the bill would not apply strictly to criminal groups, that it could go beyond that. The solicitor general could authorize a police officer to commit crimes to enforce the new provisions of the criminal code.
That is the only thing wrong with this bill, but the minister could very well kill any support for her bill. The Bloc Quebecois has been calling for a strengthening of the criminal code for years to be able to fight crime more effectively. Why does the minister not go after real criminals instead of children? She should stop including in her legislation provisions that are too broad, thus killing any support we could have given her. She should open her mind.
I invite all my colleagues to vote in favour of the amendment proposed by the member for Berthier—Montcalm to exclude Quebec from the application of the new legislation.