They told me that when young people commit an offence, we should be able to make them immediately realize the seriousness of their acts”. When they arrest young people who scribble graffiti, they should make the offenders buy products to clean up their scribblings immediately.
These alternative measures, these extrajudicial measures, as they are called in the bill, are important. It is important to have some flexibility and this is what this bill provides.
Victims want to be involved. The new legislation includes a whole chapter that ensures that victims can participate, meet the young offenders, know what is happening and try to help them. The goal is always the same. Young people are our future. They are the ones who will see to it that tomorrow's society is a good society. We must help them and protect them. We must get adults involved. We must get the victims involved. We must not strip society of its responsibilities.
The Bloc Quebecois has been trying to tell us—and I have actual quotes from some members of that opposition party—that this is terrible, that from now on under Bill C-7 a young offender will not be arrested for a minor offence. For the Bloc Quebecois, putting a young person in a youth centre is a form of therapy.
What we are saying is that depriving a young person of his freedom must be a necessary measure. A young person is subject of the law just like an adult. What happens in a youth centre? I read the report of Quebec's Commission des droits de la personne et de la jeunesse. It mentions cases of young people who are forgotten in youth centres, young people who are there under the youth protection act with other young offenders and delinquents.
The system is not perfect. Despite the goodwill of those working with young people in Quebec, there is a danger of oversights and young people being forgotten.
I visited the Laval youth centre. It has locked cells where young people are forced to live in situations which deprive them of their freedom.
If we can find solutions, get community organizations to participate involve the greatest possible number of members of our community, let us do it. Are we helping our society by saying that this bill is repressive? It is not repressive. It takes into account a situation that already exists in Quebec and which is relatively successful. We must do something to ensure that young people are treated the same everywhere in Canada. We must be able to take what Quebec has done well and apply it elsewhere. The other provinces must be able to benefit from Quebec's success in implementing so-called extrajudicial or diversionary measures.
The existing Young Offenders Act is outmoded. It has no declaration of principle.