Madam Speaker, when the opposition benches empty the moment after the bells stop there will be difficulty in keeping quorum. I suppose the attempt is to throw off anyone speaking on this side of the House. However, it will not work because, fundamentally, we believe in the principles that are in the bill. If members want to talk about the difference between punishment, revenge, deterrence, rehabilitation and long term prevention, then that is what the bill would achieve.
I will tell members about something I saw this morning on Canada AM that interested me. A man by the name of Jim Gollert, who is the CEO of the Centre for Education and Training in Mississauga, has been appointed by the provincial government. I am hopeful that what I saw is a positive sign from the province of Ontario that it wants to deal with long term prevention. Where do criminals come from? Jim has been asked to deal with young people expelled from our educational system.
We all know, at least in the province of Ontario, that if young people are expelled from classes it is a very serious matter. If they are expelled for violent activities it means they are not only expelled from their board or school but from the entire education system in the province. I cannot think of a better breeding ground for young criminals than having young people kicked out of school and sent home or out onto the streets with no opportunity to continue their education.
I want to give credit where I hope credit will be due. The provincial government has announced not a boot camp, which some members opposite might prefer, but rather an opportunity for kids who are in trouble at school or who have been expelled on a permanent basis from the education system and sent home or out onto the streets.
The province of Ontario has asked Jim Gollert to head up a project that would look into ways these young people can continue their education and be rehabilitated before they wind up before a judge or in jail. I am hopeful this is a sign from our provincial government that it will do something about these kids who are the precursors of the young people who wind up being charged under whatever act is put in place.
There has never been so much misconception foisted upon people both in this place and across the land about the purpose of the Young Offenders Act and its replacement, this new act. The intention here is to take a young person who has been charged and who, under the Young Offenders Act, can be put into adult court prior to any conviction. Does that make any sense? We do not know. One would think that all of us in this place would live by the premise that one is innocent until proven guilty.
If a 14 or 15 year old is charged under the current act there are mechanisms in place that would allow the young person to be tried in adult court. At that time the offender's name would be published and it would be open to the discretion of the judge to impose an adult sentence. Under the new act that would only occur if a conviction is registered in a youth court system. That seems makes a lot of sense to me. If young persons are acquitted or they turn out to be not guilty, why would we want to put them into the stressful situation of having their lives tarnished perhaps forever because of a charge that was not proven to be true? We would not want that.
Under the new bill there would be the ability for the court system to deal with it in a youth system. It then would have the ability to impose an adult sentence upon conviction. That seems very reasonable. I do not hear anyone on the other side telling people about that or speaking about it in committee or in this place.
One of the goals must be to rehabilitate. I hear members from the Bloc chirping and heckling and I would say that is the other extreme. The other extreme is people who are only concerned, frankly, about provincial jurisdiction. They do not want any kind of federal jurisdictional interference in the justice system.
I do not understand why the Bloc would object to this bill. If Quebec accepts the new five year youth justice funding agreement that has been offered, the federal government will contribute more than $191 million over the period 2000-01 to 2004-05 to support youth justice services in the province. The increase in the base funding component of that agreement alone would represent an increase of 39% when compared to the level of federal support available to Quebec in the 1998-99 agreement. Quebec has the opportunity to receive stable funding from the federal government to support the youth justice system in the province of Quebec.
What is driving the Bloc members? Is it the overriding dogma they have about not buying into anything with any kind of federal direction, federal mandate or, what it would call, federal interference?
Members might find this hard to believe coming from me, but I think we should look at the benefit of the youth as opposed to the partisan interests being espoused opposite. It will not help young people if the bill is opposed because of partisan purposes on behalf of people from Quebec or western Canada.
I will tell a story about something that happened in Nova Scotia. I had an opportunity to work as the advocate for youth entrepreneurship. We had hearings. In those hearings young people appeared before us. One of them was a young woman. When we asked her how she had found out about the opportunity for youth entrepreneurism, she said that her parole officer had told her about it. It almost knocked us over.
The province of Nova Scotia has implemented a program called second chance. Is that not exactly what we should be trying to do: to provide a second chance when we see young people who have the opportunity to grow? It helped that young lady start her own business. She has a young child and she has turned her life around.
That is what the bill is about. That is what the government believes in. We will be tough where we need to be, but we must be fair; we must be balanced; we must focus on rehabilitating young people to build a better country.