Mr. Speaker, I just want to make a comment. When I heard the member for Laval East compare the youth centres to prisons, I thought to myself that she must not have set foot in a youth centre in a long time, because these centers really focus on rehabilitation in the community.
I have met several of the 319 young persons she mentioned when I toured Quebec, and especially on the North Shore. I spent a whole morning talking to the parents of these young persons and to the people who implement the Quebec legislation on a daily basis. The youth centres are not prisons. That is the kind of misinformation we can expect from the member for Laval East. She should go over the bill more carefully.
I would like the member to comment on what the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine said this morning about the Quebec coalition for youth justice making its position about Bill C-3 and Bill C-68 known, but not about Bill C-7.
No later than today, Pierre Lamarche sent out a press release where he said:
We have to realize that the federal government is going ahead with a backward bill that is totally inconsistent with what is going on in youth crime in Quebec as in the rest of Canada.
My question concerns the comments made by Mr. Lamarche, who is the president of the coalition of the various organizations that were mentioned earlier, saying that, according to the coalition:
—Instead of wasting public money to implement a new system that is not needed, the government should spend wisely and use the money to strengthen the current Young Offenders Act, instead of drafting a new legislation.
What has the member to say to Mr. Lamarche on this issue?