Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to hear the member from the New Democratic Party support the amendment because I likewise support it.
I will go back in history to 1980 when I was appointed principal of a school in Alberta. From 1980 to 1984, whenever a transfer student came in from anywhere, accompanying the student would be all kinds of records. These would include not only school and academic records but behavioural records and even criminal records if that were the case.
Needless to say, when someone arrived at our school who had a past history of criminal activity, it made it a whole lot easier for the school to accept him and to enter into specific programs or interventions that would make it easier for the populace to accept him. It also made it a whole lot safer for people around the individual depending on what the circumstances were.
In 1984 the Young Offenders Act became law, and suddenly there were numerous people transferred into our school without any indications other than academic records. When phone calls were made to other school boards or schools they had attended, no information was released regarding their behaviour or any activities outside school they may have been engaged in that could be a danger or threat to other students in the school body.
As a result I saw a very significant change begin to happen. It only took a few months for the first one to come about. I thought a normal schoolyard scrap was developing between two individuals. When we managed to get to the scene and break up the so-called fight, I quickly realized that it had gone beyond a schoolyard squabble between two young people. One of then was trying to put an end to the life of the other individual. It was that serious. He had attacked him with a weapon and his intentions were to really hurt the young fellow.
At that time an investigation was done by the police because we brought charges. The investigation involved parental input. We learned that the young individual had taken part in cult activities where he had come from, and believed in these kinds of activities as a way to resolve difficulties with other people. In other words, the individual believed the violence and severe assaults he had committed in previous years were legitimate and that he should continue that way of life.
Had we known this was the kind of individual who was coming into our school, we could have taken steps that would have possibly prevented any threat to other students or other individuals in our community who were accessible to the young fellow.
From 1984 until 1992 when I finally retired and went into a new profession much like the previous one but where the kids are older, it was impossible to determine the kind of individuals we were getting with transfers to the school. I would get reports from the city, for example, that the reason certain individuals were coming to my school out in the country was because they were no longer accepted in any school in the city. They had been expelled from every school in the city.
It would have been nice to have been able to determine that before they arrived. It would have been nice to know that they had gone through a great pile of difficulties in the city, that no school or school board in the city would accept them and that they had to move in with relatives in my community and start school there. However I was not allowed to know anything about it.
This happened so many times that I could almost write a book about it. Why would I want more information on students who were being transferred to my school? Why should the government support the amendment that my colleague from the Conservative Party has brought forward?
Since 1993, when I came here, I have heard that prevention is the real key to stopping youth crime. I agree. However I would like someone from the Liberal government to stand and tell me that making sure school authorities do not know the facts about a new student is a good measure of prevention. Prevention of what? It makes the community at large unaware of the kind of individual living in it. It makes the teachers and other students unaware. They go on as if the individual is a normal human being and that they should not be alerted.
Even if one has the brains of a freshwater trout, common sense ought to dictate that it is safer to know what kind of situation one is dealing with than not to know.
However, the people on that side of the House over the past seven years have constantly refused to change the Young Offenders Act to give it real teeth. Along comes an amendment from my colleague in the Conservative Party that would add teeth and makes perfectly good common sense. I do not think a school in the whole country would not agree to the full disclosure of the records of violent young people being transferred into schools. The information should be available for the safety and the prevention of harm to others. If the Liberals cannot buy into that then they are as bad as I think they are.