Mr. Speaker, first I will address the question of whether there are young offenders actually incarcerated with adults. I am not aware of any in British Columbia. That is the only province I have practised in. There are youth detention centres and provincial and federal institutions but they do not mix young offenders with adults; of course being over or under 18 determines where they are detained.
As for whether this legislation will ensure that there are more or less people behind bars, I have to argue that this will increase incarceration or keep it the same. It will not reduce it. The reason I say this is that it really is the status quo but with a higher level of bureaucracy. It probably will take longer in some cases because the bureaucracy will be bogged down more with a lot of these provisions.
It is not going to the root problem. The member for Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca put a motion before the House to bring in a head start program. I was fortunate enough to be able to second his motion. I applaud him for this. A head start program would ensure that children from birth until eight or nine years of age are given all the necessities of life. As someone who has practised in the youth courts, I will say there is no question that a high percentage of the people before the courts have had very troubled pasts and did not have these basic necessities.
States such as Michigan and Hawaii where this has been brought in have seen something like a 50% reduction in their youth courts. They went to the root problem. It was an investment in their communities. We are not doing that here. What we are doing is making a highly bureaucratic and complex system more bureaucratic.
Young people should be brought before the courts when they are in trouble, but the goal is to give them assistance and to ensure that these young people do not end up in a revolving door of crime, that they are not back in court as adults. I do not see any of these issues being addressed in the new youth criminal justice act.
I would argue that parliamentarians who stand in the House ten years from now will be talking about the same thing, just as I can go back ten years in Hansard and pull up debates that were virtually the same. I have looked at speeches from five and ten years ago and the same applies. Why? Because the government has not gone to the root problem. It has not addressed anything.
It is absolutely mind-boggling that after eight years of talk by the government, it has failed. I believe that government has failed and time will be the test. The amendment being brought back by the Senate is another prime example of the government just wanting to stick a band-aid on something, walk out the back door and hope that everything will go away, but it absolutely will not.