Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very relevant question. I would add that this type of bill also presents a conservative view. A bill is usually tabled in order to correct a situation. As I was saying earlier, the Bloc Québécois would have agreed in order to correct certain shortcomings in the existing legislation. Then again, why fix something that is not broken? As I said, we could cite many examples in which judgments were not terribly relevant or were ineffectual, which of course, can happen in society. However, we must look at the situation as a whole.
As my hon. colleague just said, in Quebec we have developed tremendous expertise in the area of rehabilitating young offenders. Why should we send them to a school for crime? What is the idea behind Bill C-9? It is no more than a populist notion to please certain people who say that if young offenders commit crimes, they have to pay their debt to society.
We agree that offenders must pay their debt to society. However, we have found a way that works for us, one that focuses on rehabilitation. This method has been successful. If it had not been so successful, I would agree that new legislation should be brought in to fix the situation and we would support it. However, the exact opposite is true. Judges have ample latitude to impose a conditional sentence, depending on the circumstances, if that proves to be the best solution.
Under this bill, their hands would be tied and that would be it: from now on, everyone would automatically go to prison, in other words, to the school for criminals. This is a bad idea.