Mr. Speaker, I would like to recall the facts about Bill C-7 now under consideration.
In the last parliament, the government introduced a bill to amend the Young Offenders Act.
We already had a Young Offenders Act which was enforced differently in different regions of our country. Each province would enforce it in its own way and Quebec is a model in that regard. Quebec has its own culture and thus its own way of approaching problems.
The Bloc Quebecois was very much opposed to the first bill tabled at that time. It had even received the unanimous support of the Quebec national assembly, which had passed a motion in November 1999 asking the federal Minister of Justice to suspend passage of Bill C-3 and to allow Quebec to continue implementing an intervention strategy based on prevention and rehabilitation.
The Bloc Quebecois had moved almost 3,000 amendments. In fact, it had moved 2,977. That was a lot of amendments for one bill, to delay what we call at home—in political language or at least in parliamentary language—filibusters. We came back and we moved amendments; we moved them to play for time and to prevent passage of the bill.
In February 2001, the Government of Canada introduced in the House of Commons Bill C-7, the youth criminal justice Act. There was also a reason for this. Most of us, Liberal members here in Ottawa had met with some members of the Quebec national assembly to know about the inherent objections to passage of Bill C-3.
Of course, after some discussion, five points stood out and we made representations to the federal Minister of Justice. A specific answer was given to the five points raised by the members of the national assembly in their letter. Of course, not all the members of the national assembly signed the letter. We did not have consultations with the sovereignist members of the national assembly. We had consultations with the federalist members of the national assembly because this is also a federal bill. We really wanted to know their position.
We answered the five concerns raised about Bill C-3. We have amended the bill to completely resolve these issues.
We now learn Quebec's national assembly has unanimously agreed to another motion expressing its opposition.