Mr. Speaker, despite the interest and concerns that Canadians have expressed over the failure of the Young Offenders Act to deal effectively with youth crime, the Liberal government seems to be at a loss for finding a solution to this problem. Today the only solution the Liberals are willing to impose is closure. I am very disappointed in the response as there are serious issues that remain to be debated.
The Minister of Justice introduced the legislation into the House, but unfortunately the new legislation contains very little, if anything, that will address the ineffectiveness of the Young Offenders Act. The lack of substantive change is not surprising, given the lack of consultation and the failure to listen to the many Canadians who have reasonable solutions to offer.
In a substantive way, the closure being imposed today by the Liberals is symbolic of the seven years of not listening to the people of Canada and to the concerns that they have over the Young Offenders Act.
I appreciate some of the comments raised by members of the Bloc. There certainly are issues that need to be discussed. However I would suggest that the Bloc need not worry about this bill sending anyone to jail. The bill is so convoluted that I would be surprised if the youth will ever get out of court and out of the clutches of judges and lawyers. They will certainly never see the inside of any type of rehabilitative program that could assist them. In that sense I certainly agree that the law is not a good law.
I also would express some sympathy in the Bloc's desire to ensure that the programs that it already has in the province that are working should be allowed to continue under the act. There should be a measure of flexibility to account for different programs and different issues that we face in different parts of the country. We can do this without taking the drastic and radical step of suggesting separation. I think the confederation is flexible enough to take into account some of these differences. However, given that the Liberals are imposing closure in the matter, there are a few things that need to be discussed.
The first is the specific issue of notification to school and child welfare authorities in respect of young offenders. The Canadian School Boards Association, the Canadian Association of School Administrators and the Canadian Teachers Federation have called on the federal government to make the disclosure of this information mandatory. I also received letters from a number of local school boards in my riding and across Canada which called for parliament to support the amendment to Bill C-7.
I heard the concerns expressed regarding a possible failure to keep the information confidential. These organizations and the people who are in these organizations, our school administrators, are well acquainted with the requirements of confidential information and how to utilize that information in a legally appropriate way so as to assist other students and, indeed, the young offender himself or herself in the context of the school.
I met with representatives from the school boards. They impressed upon me the need for school authorities to be informed if there were, for example, dangerous offenders among the students. They are not asking for a broad publication, but simply that the school authorities know so that that information can be taken and used for appropriate purposes.
The amendment would not only provide for safer learning environments, it would also enable schools to direct necessary assistance to those young people who were in the process of rehabilitating themselves back into society.
These school boards want to be real and effective partners with the government in the process of keeping our young people safe and secure. However, the federal justice minister refuses to take the step to help school officials provide such a safe learning environment. She has said repeatedly that the provision already exists in the proposed youth criminal justice act and permits provincial officials to provide this information.
However, it should be pointed out that the present Young Offenders Act already provides for this discretionary sharing of information in these cases, but as we all know that process has failed. The new bill simply reintroduces past failures. The minister ought to listen to reasonable people across Canada who want to provide every possible support. The executive director of the CSBA has said “Without an amendment requiring information sharing we simply can't do our job”. She says “Our surveys indicate that information sharing has been inconsistent—sporadic at best”.
One of the other significant shortcomings of Bill C-7 is its failure to make provisions to assist youth under the age of 12. I have raised this issue in the past but the government has done nothing to remedy these shortcomings, to put in place a system that will prevent under 12 year olds from becoming repeat offenders and indeed hardened criminals.
While the minister attempts to justify this failure on the basis that the provincial child welfare system would deal with children under 12 who are involved in criminal activity, it is clear that the child welfare system on its own, without the assistance of our youth courts, is not equipped to deal with children whose criminal conduct brings them to the attention of the authorities.
It is evident from recent statements by the Minister of Justice that the real reason for Liberal reluctance to improve the proposed youth crime legislation is the financial commitment that would be required in order to assist children under the age of 12.
The Canadian Alliance has proposed that we provide the courts with the power to allow them to provide to these children the same rehabilitative measures offered by the act to those over 12 years old. Working together with provincial child welfare authorities in a co-operative and co-ordinated fashion, the youth courts could supervise these children and ensure that we save them from a life of crime.
The most significant issue aside from legislation and the lack of substantive reform in this new bill is that the minister has refused to financially partner with the provinces on a 50:50 basis. When asked why, she has said that the federal government does not have the money. This is a federal program, a federal initiative, and yet she expects the provinces to pick up, in effect, 75% of the cost of her program. The minister is asking us as local taxpayers to pick up the cost that the federal government will not pick up.
Although there is some initial funding over the first number of years, the funding, as is well known with other federal programs, becomes discretionary. As we know all too well, the funding will eventually diminish if not disappear.
Last, the bill is a complex bill. Mr. Rob Finlayson, a committee witness from the province of Manitoba and assistant deputy minister, said on April 25 of this year:
On the complexity in proceedings and drafting, the complexity of the YCJA is perhaps the first thing that strikes a person who attempts to read it. This complexity has two undesirable consequences. It makes the act extremely difficult to understand, and it will create delay and cause court backlogs.
Mr. Finlayson, the assistant deputy minister, has a long history of working in the courts and indeed at one time was in charge of youth prosecutions in the province of Manitoba. He understands the issue. Canadians understand the issue. Why does the Minister of Justice not understand this problem?