Mr. Speaker, I must thank my colleague from the Canadian Alliance for all his respect toward his colleagues who are speaking today.
I want to assure the hon. member of the Canadian Alliance that when I am here and his party members are speaking, I shall make an effort to intervene as often as possible in order to disturb them.
We can see just how seriously the Canadian Alliance members take this matter. It is all very well to laugh, but the young offender issue is an extremely important one. The Canadian Alliance is treating it lightly, and I find that totally disgusting.
I was giving a historical overview and saying that, in the history of the application of the Young Offenders Act, we in Quebec have examined the legislation on a number of occasions in order to see whether it could be better enforced.
In the early 1990s we had the Jasmin report, which indicated that the fault was not with the law but with its application. That is the conclusion we in Quebec reached with respect to the system, Quebec's approach, although we were enforcing the law properly. This conclusion applies to 100% of the western provinces. If the Canadian Alliance can grasp this, it is not the law that is faulty, but its application.
The provinces calling for changes are those not properly applying the Young Offenders Act. Throughout the whole history of the Young Offenders Act, in Quebec, we were not inactive; if we reached these conclusions, it is because we were aware of what was going on elsewhere. We concluded that we had to be careful, because the young offenders system was not fail-safe since it was a statute, not to upset the balance we had struck in Quebec in the application of the Young Offenders Act.
At the start of my mandate in 1993-94 with the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, we toured the main provinces to look at the issue of young offenders. It was very distressing to see how some provinces treated young offenders, especially those who had committed serious crimes. They were simply sent to a separate wing in an adult prison untreated. The young person lying in bed spent the day reading. When asked what he was doing, he told us he was doing time.
In Quebec young persons do not do time, they work on who they are. They do not spend the entire day reading. Young people incarcerated for a long time, even for a short time, are under the care of psychoeducators, specialists, academics and criminologists in an effort to discover why they do certain things. The aim is to find the right treatment for the individual young person.
Quebec's objective, which should be everyone's objective in properly applying the Young Offenders Act, is to try to find the appropriate measure to ensure that the young person becomes an ordinary citizen as quickly as possible.
I do not want pity for the young people who have committed a murder or done something else that is repulsive. In a civilized society like ours there should be no such crime. We should not even have 14 and 15 year olds thinking about killing someone.
Children aged 10 and 11 have committed suicide. Society is changing. We have become a consumer society. All sorts of actions result in some people needing help. The way the Young Offenders Act has been applied since the beginning shows that we can intervene adequately and that we can find the right measure at the right time. I sincerely believe the provinces, or rather the Minister of Justice, did not understand this approach.
From the outset, we can deal with the young person, whether he is guilty or not of the offence or crime with which he has been charged. Under the existing Young Offenders Act, we can take action, deal with that young person and follow him at every stage of the process, including his trial. This is something that be difficult to do under the proposed bill. I will get back to this when I talk about the major differences between the two pieces of legislation.
During those years, Quebec developed what is now known as the Quebec approach. I realize we cannot ask western Canada to adopt an approach similar to that of Quebec overnight. If these provinces do not have the infrastructures to look after these young people, if they do not have the experts and the financial means to suddenly apply Quebec's approach, which is based on 20 years of experience, I can understand that.
However what I do not understand is why they are asking for an act to prevent Quebec from continuing to use an approach that gives good results. I find it hard to understand that way of thinking, both on the part of western Canada and of this government.
Earlier, I listened carefully to the Canadian Alliance member, who has followed the bill's progress closely, and I would not wish what he has been through on anyone. However, should we build an entire system on one case? Should we rebuild an unproven system, whose results are cause for concern in the opinion of all the specialists, on the strength of the worst case scenario?
I listened to western Canadians, crown attorneys and provincial representatives, who told us that the end results were far from guaranteed, that the bill was much too complex and that implementing it would cost far too much.
We may therefore well wonder whether these provinces, which are calling for amendments, will implement the new legislation they have obtained back home in a manner consistent with what the Minister of Justice has in mind.
Quebec's entire system is being jeopardized for people who will not deal adequately with young people in conflict with the law anyway, because it is not part of their tradition or their longstanding treatment of young people in conflict with the law. That is a big concern.
From the outset, I noticed that Quebecers agreed with Quebec's approach and that there was consensus. Since 1996-97, the federal government has tried on more than one occasion to amend the Young Offenders Act. I am sure that Bloc Quebecois members who were here in 1993 remember the government's first attempt to amend the act with Bill C-68. Because of the Bloc Quebecois' opposition, the issues raised by this bill and the work we did, we pushed the government to the limit and, finally—