Mr. Speaker, I am speaking to the report stage amendment to illustrate as an example the larger difficulty with Bill C-7.
The amendment to change the word may to the word shall at page 129, clause 125, line 4, is a case sample of fundamental philosophical confusion. The Liberals cannot manage and they really do not hear the public either for they perpetuate the outdated system agenda rather than an accountable people community agenda.
The minister said that the enactment would repeal and replace the Young Offenders Act and provide principles, procedures and protections for the prosecution of young persons under criminal and other federal laws.
It sets out a range of extra judicial measures. It is to establish judicial procedure and protection for young persons alleged to have committed an offence. It is to encourage participation of parents, victims, communities, youth justice committees and others in the youth justice system. It sets out a range of sentences available to the youth justice court. It is to establish custody and supervision provisions. It sets out the rules for the keeping of records and protection of privacy. It provides transitional provisions and makes consequential amendments to other acts. Those are the claims of the government.
It is obvious that the government has failed, particularly at the operational community level, and at the levels of broad themes and societal objectives. The Minister of Justice tabled legislation three times and three times she struck out. For example, the minister once again fails to restrict conditional sentencing. It is open to repeat offenders and it is open to violent offenders.
The list of presumptive offences for which an adult sentence may be imposed is severely restrictive. The list includes murder, attempted murder, manslaughter and aggravated sexual assault. However it does not include sexual assault with a weapon, hostage taking, aggravated assault, kidnapping and a host of other serious violent offences.
The minister will further weaken the legislation by limiting presumptive offence procedures even more. For example, in clause 61 any province may decide that only 15 or 16 year old offenders who commit offences such as murder could be transferred to adult court. Ten and eleven year olds are still not to be held criminally accountable for their crimes.
The legislation would create a patchwork or chequerboard system of youth justice as many of its provisions would permit the provinces undue discretion whether to seek adult sentencing, publication of names and access to records, just to name a few. The legislation would provide some movement toward victim rights but even those are not ensured and would still be inadequate.
British Columbia has had a legislative basis for diversion since 1968, some 33 years ago. Parliament has been struggling with a criminal set of rules since 1908 to address the specialness of young offenders. Now we have a bill that is so complex it caves in upon itself to accomplish the original broad objective.
We need to clarify the basics. We are striving for a set of rules that outlines how criminal law would apply to a child or a young person. It is assumed that there is a diminished capacity for a young person to appreciate criminal acts and therefore should not be subject to the full weight of the law. As the bill shows the Liberals have fallen all over themselves. They have tied themselves in knots because they do not have a guiding vision.
In each province we have social welfare legislation with large systems of care, including social workers who have the legal capacity to take into care with the full authority of a legal parent any child who is deemed to be in need of care and protection. If we had a wise but simple and more circumscribed youth criminal justice act, it could complement and support the social welfare mandates of the provinces. However the latest managerial disaster of the government is off target in this respect because philosophically the Liberals do not stand for anything.
A dichotomy is revealed in the bill. Through many convoluted provisions it tries to deal with the principle of diminished capacity for young people but in a most complex way tries to accommodate violent offenders and criminal code precepts such as protection of society and denunciation.
Clearly the community expectations of a government providing peace, order and good government are not met in the bill. The anger in the land over public observance of how young offenders are dealt with generally in the courts will not be diminished with this prime example of Liberal ideological confusion.
This is why the symbolic yet substantive amendment is very important. It is about knowledge to care. If a social welfare agency, a social worker or school authority is to be part of the community response for children in conflict with the law, they must be knowledgeable and fully informed. That must not be discretionary.
The previous minister of justice had no satisfactory answer when I asked him in question period about the principle of disclosure, all the secrecy around the operations of the law, and to deal with the theory of preventing community shame for young people to give them a fresh start. How can pursuing that theory be justified when its very operation has caused unnecessary deaths as a consequence? The government persists in pursuing its unsubstantiated theory even though people have died because of it. Secrecy has no place in young offender court proceedings and its final judgments.
In summary, the bill is so misguided that it will be back to the House in the future. It is not based in its substance on a reasonable canopy of values. The preamble of the bill is nice sounding fuzzy mush. Then comes the substance of 171 pages that does not put to rest what communities want: predictability, reliability, clarity, being operationally pragmatic and having political legitimacy.
The report stage amendment before us today reveals the utter confusion upon which the bill is based. My community does not support that kind of a bill and I cannot justify it either. Consequently I will be voting against the bill at third reading.