Debates of Nov. 22nd, 2007

Youth Criminal Justice Act

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member had bothered to listen to my entire speech he would have understood when I said that, fortunately, some parts of society are able to provide services to their children when they slip up.

However, people who are poor do not have the capacity to provide these services. How many rich children go to rehabilitation or detoxification centres that cost thousands of dollars? How many poor children go? None, and they will die injecting heroine in their arms because they were unable to get help.

That is the difference. It is not that rich children do not commit crime, it is that they have lawyers to defend them other than crown attorneys. Rich children might have parents who do their part. Even still, not all rich children have that.

All children must be treated equally, with respect, justice and fairness. We will not achieve that by incarcerating them.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I tried to follow the remarks of the honourable member. I think I understood that she would like reasonable and fair training for every individual, whether they are young people or adults. The role of training and educating individuals in our society falls under provincial jurisdiction.

Second, she would like to see a sharing of social and community values with all citizens, particularly with young people. In the past, training in those values was in the hands of the church. Today, we no longer accept the role of the church in the training of the community.

Finally, the member says that we must eradicate or eliminate poverty. The causes are economic and I know that there are political programs with economic aspects that are aimed at eliminating poverty.

However, I would like to ask her what alternatives the Bloc is offering to the bill introduced by the government that she and her Bloc colleagues supported against the Liberals.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

There are only 30 seconds remaining for the hon. member for Laval.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will not dignify that with an answer.

My remarks were very direct in calling for the things we need. When I talk about being able to eliminate poverty, my colleague knows very well that I never wanted a centralizing government and that I still want the money to be given to the provinces so that we can deliver our programs, as we are doing in Quebec.

What we have proposed is making a difference. What we have always done, are still doing and will continue to do is to offer simple alternative solutions that have been tried elsewhere and have been successful, such as what we are doing in Quebec; for example, our day care program, our health care system and our system of—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-25, which I think responds to a very significant need in the country and certainly responds to a demand for action from many people in my own constituency of Dartmouth--Cole Harbour.

I can indicate certainly my support in principle for the bill. I think there are some significant things in the bill that need to be changed or added to, specifically in terms of how Justice Merlin Nunn's recommendations were used or not used. I think there is enough good in the bill that we need to send it to committee for further discussion.

Crime is a huge issue for Canadians. Probably there are not that many places in the country where it is more of an issue than it is in my own community of Halifax, more specifically Dartmouth--Cole Harbour. I have had the opportunity to meet with very many constituents of mine who have come to see me specifically about the incidence of crime. Quite often it is youth crime, but not always, and perhaps it is even exaggerated a little. Nonetheless, it is a big issue with a lot of people who live in my area, just as it is for people across Canada.

I met not too long ago with the Smythe family, whose son was bullied and then beaten up very badly. They do not feel they have the protection they need as a family to deal with the circumstances that their son, through no fault of his own, found himself in. He was beaten up and is now back in school walking the same halls as the perpetrators of that crime.

I think there is a moral responsibility upon governments at all levels, federal, provincial and municipal, to make sure that people feel safe in their communities. Right now many people do not feel safe, whether the crime rate is up or down. Over the years it has come down. Nonetheless, we have a responsibility to make sure that all citizens feel safe in their communities, on their streets and particularly in their schools.

Jason McCullough is a person whose name has become well known in my community. He was murdered some years ago in the north end of Dartmouth. His murder has never been solved. The case is still open. Every year in October, there is a candlelight vigil and community members get together to remember Jason and to walk through the streets that he used to walk through as a student. They do it to remember Jason and to put on the pressure so that he is not forgotten and his case continues to get attention.

My own brother is the vice-principal of Dartmouth High School. He loves the kids. He is a great teacher and now he is a great administrator. I have talked to him and other administrators and teachers who tell me that we need to do something to make sure that repeat and violent young offenders in particular are dealt with. Nobody in these schools wants to abandon these kids for life, and they are kids, but they also think it is an absolutely unacceptable circumstance that people who continually violate are put back into a circumstance with the people whom they have already violated and may violate in the future.

The week before Parliament resumed in October, I had the occasion to call an open meeting. I have a series of community round tables in Dartmouth--Cole Harbour, usually on a specific topic. I ask people to come in. We have held them on health, education, development and a number of other things. This latter one was entitled, “What are your priorities for this Parliament?” I just asked the people in my community to come to this open forum and tell their member of Parliament what they wanted to see done in Parliament and what were their priorities. This was before the Speech from the Throne.

We talked about a number of things. Poverty came up continually. Poverty was a big issue. So was the issue of Afghanistan: what is the right thing to be doing in Afghanistan? Child care came up.

The issue that resonated most at that meeting was the issue of crime, because again, we had families come to that meeting and stand up and say that their family life has changed because they do not feel safe in the streets. Their son or daughter or someone close to them has been the victim of a crime and they feel helpless. They feel powerless.

In a lot of cases, people said that they do not exactly know the details of all the legislation in Canada, but they just have a sense that it is not working for them and they feel we have to do something about it. Specifically, people talked about the Youth Criminal Justice Act and what we can do to tighten it up.

The history of what is now the Youth Criminal Justice Act goes back to the Juvenile Delinquents Act of 1908 or something like that. The Young Offenders Act was a dramatic improvement. There is still a lot of confusion. I heard the Minister of Justice last night on CBC refer to changes he was making to the Young Offenders Act, so he misspoke, but a lot of people still think the Young Offenders Act is in force. The Youth Criminal Justice Act is the source of an awful lot of confusion.

In Justice Merlin Nunn's report, on which much of this legislation relies in the form of his recommendations, on pages 166 and 167, actually says the Youth Criminal Justice Act is a very sound piece of legislation.

In fact, it is one of the best pieces of youth justice in the world, but there are holes in it. There are gaps and those gaps relate to the issue of repeat and violent offenders. We do not need to blow up the Youth Criminal Justice Act, but it is appropriate to look at it and make sure we approach it in a reasoned way.

We also need to make sure, when we deal with the issues of youth justice, that we are getting out in front of the problem as well as just dealing with it when it happens. We also need to believe, as I do, in rehabilitation.

I met with a member of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, FCM, from Saskatchewan this afternoon who was telling me about a politician, who I had not heard of but other members will have in Saskatchewan, who had a criminal past and was reformed, rehabilitated and elected in the Saskatchewan Party and is part of the government today.

People can be rehabilitated. We should never suggest that people cannot be rehabilitated. That would be an absolute failure and an admission of our inability to deal with circumstance. It is not that way.

While we look at these changes, some of which I support quite strongly, we have to get out in front of the problem. We need to look at things like child care for Canadians. I have made no secret of that.

I have spoken in the House about how strongly I felt about the plan that the former government had for child care. We may disagree on the best way to deliver it, whether it is through the universal child care benefit that the government has come forward with or the plan that I believe in, but we have to accept that not all children are born with an equal opportunity for success or even an equal opportunity for a good life.

Quite often, it is those kids who fall through the holes in society and end up dealing with the criminal justice system on a repeat basis. That has to be changed.

We could invest not only in child care but in things like the Boys & Girls Club. We could build jails, but the best thing we could do for kids is to build the infrastructure they need.

My community has the Dartmouth North Boys & Girls Club, the Cole Harbour Boys & Girls Club and near where I live there is the East Dartmouth Community Centre. Here the federal, provincial and municipal governments got together and decided to put money toward it because there were a lot of kids who did not have an equal opportunity for success and a good life.

The Boys & Girls Club of East Dartmouth is led by people like John Burton and Dave who run the programs and are friends to the kids. They are both mentors to the children and provide the kind of support that gives a lot of kids, who otherwise might not have it, a chance to succeed and access to opportunity.

With regard to the infrastructure that the FCM was talking about today, again to go to my community, there are less hockey rinks in Dartmouth now than when I was growing up. A couple have closed over the last 10 years. We do not have the infrastructure we need.

Anybody here would agree that if kids have a chance to play hockey, which is prohibitively expensive, basketball or soccer and feel like they are part of a group through recreation, they have a better chance to succeed, to feel valued, to live a dignified life, and to avoid coming in contact with the criminal justice system.

I suggest investing in schools, both public schools, pre-kindergarten to grade 12, and universities. We need to invest in schools. Nova Scotia has a woeful record of investing in public schools over the past number of years. It is very low in the per capita rankings. Municipally, provincially, and federally we need to get together and decide that there is nothing more important than the children of the next generation of Canadians. We must invest in schools and give all kids an opportunity to succeed.

There are other things. I had a chance to meet, as I often do, with RCMP officers and police officers who are assigned to high schools in my community. I met with an RCMP officer recently who works in the Cole Harbour high school. He told me that one of the things that works the best with kids, and people may think he is crazy, was restorative justice.

We have a champion of restorative justice in Nova Scotia in Danny Graham who was the former leader of the Liberal Party in Nova Scotia.

When kids have the opportunity to understand what they have done and a chance to make compensation, it has a big impact on them. Quite often it has a big impact on the families of victims as well, who are very integral to the process of restorative justice.

We have this legislation today. It was alleged to have been inspired by the Nunn commission, the hon. Merlin Nunn, retired justice of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. His report came about as a result of the tragic incident of Theresa McEvoy, who was killed by a young offender in a car crash on October 14, 2004. Two days before his criminal act caused her death, he was released from custody, although he was facing numerous charges. That is on the front page of the Nunn commission report.

Justice Nunn talks about specific problems within the Youth Criminal Justice Act. He talks about the gaps that exist. He also talks about, as I mentioned before, some of the very good parts of the legislation that today form the Youth Criminal Justice Act. He does not want to throw it all out. He wants to refine it to adjust to those circumstances.

I think we should look at the Nunn report. I have most of it here. It is quite a significant document. I suspect that most members of the House have had a chance to look at it. He says on page 169 in his summary of approach to recommendations:

It would be foolhardy to suggest that we can prevent all youth crime. However, we can prevent a great deal by reducing the causes, and we can control others by instituting programs and systems to cut down on further criminal activity by those already in the system.

I think that paragraph summarizes what Justice Nunn was about. When this report came back I think last December, it was highly acclaimed. It was significantly thought out. It brought in a whole variety of viewpoints. It talked about some very specific Nova Scotia problems in criminal justice, even down to fax machines that were not working, that things such as that can actually have an impact on criminal justice. The report talks about some of the improvements that can be made.

I recall the Minister of Justice being in Halifax I think before Parliament came back. He credited Justice Nunn with having put forward a good report and indicated he was going to move on that. The Minister of Justice is a person I take at his word and I think his intentions are entirely appropriate.

I do think that we are missing out a little bit on the front end. I also think we are missing out on the rehabilitation side. The summary of the bill, as members will know, is that it makes two specific amendments to the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

It adds deterrents and denunciation to the sentencing principles that a court must consider when determining a sentence for someone convicted under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. It facilitates the use of pre-trial detention in cases where a youth has committed a violent crime, has breached their current conditions of release, or has been charged with an indictable offence for which an adult would be liable to imprisonment for a term of more than two years, and has a history that indicates a pattern of findings of guilt.

We believe that using the Nunn report as an inspiration for federal legislation makes perfect sense. We also think that the report of Justice Nunn brought in a good balance. We think some of that balance is missing. We think perhaps we can do some work on it at committee. I certainly want to support in principle the legislation. I would also want to point out some of the recommendations in this rather lengthy Nunn commission report that were not followed.

Recommendation 11:

--that the federal government amend section 42(2)(m) of the federal Youth Criminal Justice Act to remove the time limits on the sentencing option for a court to require a young person to attend a non-residential community program--

Recommendation 20:

--that the federal government amend the “Declaration of Principle” in section 3 of the Youth Criminal Justice Act to add a clause indicating that protection of the public is one of the primary goals of the act.

Recommendation 21:

--that the federal government amend the definition of “violent offence”...of the Youth Criminal Justice Act to include conduct that endangers or is likely to endanger the life or safety of another person.

Recommendation 23:

--that the federal government amend and simplify the statutory provisions relating to the pre-trial detention of young persons so that section 29 will stand on its own without interaction with other statutes or other provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Recommendation 24:

--that the federal government amend section 31(5)(a) of the Youth Criminal Justice Act so that if the designated “responsible person” is relieved of his or her obligations under a “responsible person undertaking” the young person’s undertaking made under section 31(3)(b)--

Recommendation 25:

--that the federal government amend section 31(6) of the Youth Criminal Justice Act to remove the requirement of a new bail hearing for the young person before being placed in pre-trial custody--

There have been varying opinions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act changes as in Bill C-25. There are some people who do not like it and I understand some of their concerns.

From Nova Scotia, Cecil Clarke, the minister of justice, who today is dealing with another circumstance which is the very sad death by taser in Nova Scotia yesterday, he has endorsed the legislation. Most provincial and territorial ministers of justice express support, certainly in principle, in some cases absolutely for the legislation.

We think that there is a lot of merit in Bill C-25. My concern is that this is a lengthy report and there is a lot of very important stuff in this that could be caught. I am not suggesting that the legislation needs to look quite like this, but the principle of the bill is not something that I think can be picked or chosen over. It has to be looked at, if we support this bill then I think we support it entirely. We do not have to have every single provision but there are very significant provisions that are not reflected in the legislation.

In closing, we need to act, as members of Parliament, on the concerns of our constituents. I fully and completely believe that there are aspects of the Youth Criminal Justice Act that are not currently providing security to families and individuals who live in Dartmouth—Cole Harbour.

I feel, as a member of Parliament, that it is my duty to do what I can to make sure that the Youth Criminal Justice Act is tightened up, so that it does not lose the very good intention of the act which is obviously that children need to be dealt with separately. But the children in our schools and in our streets who are doing everything that they can under the law of the land and with the best intention, it is simply not right to allow them to continue to be offended against by young offenders who have a history of offending.

I will support the bill going to committee. I hope that at committee strong members of the justice committee, certainly our strong members from the Liberal side, will be able to effect some change which will make the bill better when it comes back to the House for final consideration. But I will support this and I will vote for this to go to committee.

[Myron Thompson, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member's speech and on a big majority of it, I would agree with him totally.

The Nunn report, for example, was one of the best reports we have received in this place for a long time. The only comment he made that I might question was his last comment about the capable members in the justice committee, but I will not go there.

I also spent 18 years in a junior high school as an administrator and I can relate to his brother who did the same thing. What his relative would say would agree with a lot that I have seen in changes over the years in how we deal with youth.

I also know that if I held a number of town hall meetings in communities or with people from my riding, I would hear very much the same things about which he has talked. Crime is a very important matter in the minds of many people.

I also agree, when we are talking about young offenders, we are probably talking about 5% or maybe less of the entire youth. The majority of our youth in this nation are great kids, and I experienced that over the many years that I was in the school.

At the same time, one thing disappeared out of the schools over a period of time and it disappeared shortly after the Young Offenders Act and the Charter of Rights came into being. Discipline became less and less of an important factor in our schools. I think lack of discipline in the homes and in the schools is something that could lead to further problems with young people. They must know the meaning of discipline. When I was young, I sure as the devil needed discipline and I am glad I got it, and sometimes in a pretty strong way.

Would the hon. member agree that discipline is not allowed any more under the rights? We cannot do certain things in schools that once upon a time we could do. I am not going back to the draconian age. I am talking about recent years, probably the years the member was growing up, where discipline was a pretty important factor. Does he not agree that the failure of those of us in positions of authority to discipline when necessary has led to some of our problems?

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is not that often, quite honestly, that the member for Wild Rose and I probably agree on a lot of things in the House. When I say I agree with the legislation, I agree to send it to committee because I think there are significant holes in it.

I am not sure what he meant by discipline. I remember being educated by the nuns. The nuns used to have a strap and I got to know it in grade 2. I do not want to see anything like that back in the schools, not that the member was necessarily recommending it. If that is the discipline, then no, I do not think we need that.

I have talked to teachers and principals who are frustrated and who feel they do not have a lot of control over the classroom. I do not honestly know how to control that, but I definitely do not want to go back to the days when fear ran schools. I want to go forward to the days when curiosity, innovation and creative thinking is encouraged.

I go into a lot of classroom of all levels all the time in my community. The kids get to know me after a while. The kids are good. As the hon. member said, most of the kids are very good. I do not believe that kids learn out of fear. I think they learn out of curiosity and intent.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to my hon. colleague's remarks. I also listened to the member for Laval who spoke earlier.

In my previous job as a vice-president of my union, one of the things I had the privilege of doing was going to visit the different work sites of our members. Some of those work sites are provincial prisons. One of the prisons I went to was the youth centre in Willingdon, in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.

Some of the things I saw still haunt me to this day. I saw young people who were incarcerated there for crimes they had committed at a very young age, as young as 14 years old. I wondered why the kids were there. How did they get to this point? What was missing in their lives and how could we have avoided having them in that place?

My children were about the same age, and I thought, “There but for the grace of God go my kids”. They may have one little fight in a schoolyard and they could been in there.

Regarding his comments about the restorative justice system, could we envision, in the House, what it would look like for these kids to have some support and a system that respected who they were and—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. I am having difficulty hearing the question. The hon. member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague raises a very good point, which I raised in my speech.

I believe one of the roles of government is to equalize opportunity and access, whether it is post-secondary education, or child care or access to the many services that kids need. That is why I think the Boys and Girls Clubs and community infrastructures are as important to reducing youth crime as are the punitive measures. However, I believe the punitive measures need to be realistic, balanced and in line with the crime that has been committed, particularly if it is repetitive.

My children are eight and eleven and they go to a French immersion school where I live. Because of that, they do not go to the community school. They are bused, and there are kids from all over the city. It is a great thing because they get to meet kids from all different backgrounds. However, some of the kids who go to school with my kids cannot go to hockey because it costs $350 to join, $500 to get the gear and it costs money to travel.

Is hockey that important? No, but the principle is to have an opportunity to be involved in things that keep them active, inquisitive, curious, healthy, physically fit, all those things.

Regarding access to breakfast, we can go into most of the elementary schools in my riding and they have breakfast programs. A lot of kids go to school with a bag of chips and bottle of pop because it is cheaper than an apple and milk. The federal government, and I proposed this in the last Parliament, should be involved in a healthy eating program, particularly for kids from low income backgrounds.

In short, kids do not all have the same opportunities. Particularly for kids who grow up in families that do not have a lot of access to that opportunity, they are much more likely to have interactions with the criminal justice system.

We have to recognize this and we have to accept that governments at all levels have a responsibility to equalize out that opportunity.

[Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, the majority of inmates in our Canadian institutions are populated by aboriginal people. I think part of the reason is because of some of the situations in which they live, about which my colleague talked.

One of the initiatives we did under our Liberal government was crime prevention. We truly felt that a lot of those people, whether they were in young offenders' facilities who later probably went to a penitentiary, did not come from homes where they had the proper support.

I truly believe that instead of punishing people for having a bad start in life, we need to look at better ways of circumventing that route. Could our colleague expand on some of the preventative things that we should do in our country so our prison populations are not overly populated by aboriginal people?

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague who has done a lot of work in this area.

When we talk about crime prevention, we cannot prevent a crime that has already occurred. However, we can prevent a crime that has not occurred. This could be done by dealing with somebody who has committed a crime once and who may be likely to commit it again. In most cases, if we give people an opportunity, if we give them an equal start, if we invest in programs like the Kelowna accord or in PSSSP for universities, this would help.

As we all know, aboriginal Canadians are the victim of a lack of funding and opportunity. We have to do everything we can to ensure they have at least some kind of a chance to be what they want to be. We cannot afford to waste the opportunity as a nation either.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River, Canada Elections Act; the hon. member for Laval, Status of Women.

The first portion of debate on the bill is now over. We now move to the period where speeches are ten minutes and the period for questions or comments is five minutes.

[Rick Casson, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to address this issue today.

We have listened to the debate go on and on. I want to point out that as late as yesterday, the justice critic for the official opposition had agreed, in discussing with the government side of the House, that the bill would be allowed to pass through the House today. Now it seems, for some reason, the official opposition has decided to start filibustering. Therefore, I move:

That this question be now put.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to have the opportunity to continue this discussion on Bill C-25, An Act to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

This bill, rather surprisingly, only amends two parts of the legislation. In particular, it adds deterrence and denunciation to the principles that a court must consider when determining a youth sentence, but it also clarifies the presumption against the pretrial detention of a young person and specifies the circumstances in which the presumption does not apply.

In a sense, it is very surprising that after all the bluster and the controversy that we have heard for years from the government and the government party, the Conservative Party, about youth crime and the Youth Criminal Justice Act, this is the kind of legislation that it brings forward. It is such an incredibly limited piece of legislation. It is very surprising, given all the chest thumping and the controversy that has been created over the years, to see this proposal when it finally comes forward being so very limited in scope.

Generally, the principle that young people should be treated differently in our criminal justice system is one that has a very long history in our legal system. It is something that has been established for at least 150 years. It has gone on for that length of time without any serious challenge. I think it is something that we have to maintain in this day and age as well. I do not see any reason that we should turn our backs on that important principle. Certainly it has been part of the legislation in Canada that deals with young offenders over the years. It was a feature of the Juvenile Delinquents Act, it was a feature of the Young Offenders Act and it is certainly a feature now of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

We have adopted wholeheartedly in this country that youth should be treated differently in our criminal justice system. I believe that has served us well. We have had success in changing the lives of young people who have been in trouble with the law. That is something we should continue to work at and not abandon. The whole question of rehabilitation of young people is one that merits emphasis in our criminal justice system and through the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

There are people who would suggest, and often they sit on the Conservative benches, young people should be treated like adults in our criminal justice system, even with some specific crimes.

If we are going to move in that direction, it would seem to me that we have to give those young people similar responsibilities in other areas of their lives, not just the onerous responsibility of facing the full adult penalties of the criminal justice system, but the responsibilities of full citizenship in other areas like, for instance, lowering the voting age. We should make sure that voting and criminal responsibility are at the same level. I do not know that there are many people in the Conservative corner who would consider that kind of proposal. So, I think it is very important that we maintain the principle that youth should be treated differently in our criminal justice system.

That being said, there are issues related to youth crime that we need to address. Overall, in the last 20 years youth crime has declined and continues to decline. We have seen it decline at least 12% to 15% over the last 20 years. I think that is the result of good legislation in this area. The Youth Criminal Justice Act is a good piece of legislation.

There is concern at the moment about serious violent crime involving the use of guns and other weapons. That is something we are all concerned about. However, the reality is that overall, youth crime is going down, and it shows the effectiveness of the current legislation.

We do not know why there has been a spike in violent crime at this moment in time. Often there are those kinds of fluctuations in crime rates in specific crime areas, so it does merit our attention, but to overthrow the whole youth criminal justice system I do not think would be appropriate in that case. The Youth Criminal Justice Act has had the effect of lowering the crime rate among our youth since it came into effect.

There are other things we could be doing to address the whole issue of crime in our society. Certainly, policing and enforcement is one of the aspects that we should always look at when we are considering trying to reduce crime in our society. Unfortunately that is one area where the government has not kept its promise. More police officers have been promised and yet there has been no follow through on that promise yet.

We know that the opportunity for police to build relationships with young people is a very effective way of reducing youth crime and reducing crime generally in our communities. Certainly the work of police officers that are attached to schools in community policing demonstrates that very clearly.

There are other things that we should be pursuing. Certainly a restorative justice system would also go some way to ending recidivism in our criminal justice system. We know that whenever we incarcerate young people we are basically sending them to a school where they get more training in how to be offenders. We see that all through our criminal justice system but I think it is particularly true of young people. Anything we could do that helps young people understand their responsibility for the crimes that they have committed but keeps them in the community and builds relationships and restores relationships in the community is an important step to take.

Restorative justice programs have been shown to reduce recidivism by almost half. That is a very important example of how we should be moving and the kind of programs that we should be putting in place.

I have had the opportunity to participate in a restorative justice program after an act of vandalism at my house, albeit a very minor criminal infraction. I was very impressed with the way that worked to restore the relationships that had been altered by that and how elders from the aboriginal community, my partner, our neighbours and I all worked to see those relationships restored and responsibility taken for the actions of the young person involved. It was a very moving process, I have to say.

When we went in, we hoped that at the end of the process we would be able to see the young person as another one of our neighbours and greet that person on the street because a relationship had been restored despite his actions on my property. I think that we actually accomplished that.

I think there is something very positive to be said. Certainly the evidence from Quebec, which has spent a lot of time on restorative justice programs, has been very dramatic in terms of the positive outcomes of those programs. They are ones that we could a emulate across the country.

Sadly, in my riding of Burnaby—Douglas, there are people who would like to establish a youth restorative justice program, but there just is not money available to do that, either from the provincial government or from the federal government. This is certainly one place where we could stand to have a significant increase in funding, given the success of these programs for our communities in reducing crime and re-establishing relationships.

We know that incarceration does not do young people many favours. Canada does have a very high youth incarceration rate, one of the highest in the western world.

Just to wrap up, I want to say that I do not see the bill as changing very much. It does not change judicial discretion around pretrial release and in fact it only enshrines in law the current practices of the criminal justice system. We also know that deterrence and denunciation are not particularly effective when it comes to reducing crime overall and certainly that should be the goal of our criminal justice system.

I am not sure what the big deal is about this bill. Perhaps it merits more discussion at committee, but I would not want to see us fiddle in a very significant way with our youth criminal justice system because I think it is serving us well. That is not to mean that there could not be improvements made, but I think we are being well served.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great fascination to my colleague's dissertation. He talked about the whole notion of treating young people separately, the historic jurisprudence behind it and how the Conservatives are saying no, they will treat the 12 year olds the same as they treat the 25 year olds.

There is one area where the Conservatives are very clear about treating one group of people very differently and that is the first nations people. I invite any of the get tough on crime people from the Conservatives to come to the James Bay coast or to the Nishnawbe Aski Nation territory where the police are woefully understaffed, where they are in situations that are just plain dangerous. Not a single officer in any of the non-native forces would ever put himself or herself in the situation the NAPS officers are in on a daily basis.

For example, in the community of Attawapiskat there are 2,000 people with only two police officers on duty. If one officer has to take someone out, that leaves one officer in a community of 2,000. In other communities like Moose Factory, the police station has to shut down at a certain point during the night because the officers are not getting paid for overtime.

The Conservatives believe that these people can be treated differently, that their crimes can be treated differently, that their police officers can be left with no support, no help and that for the victims of real crime, who are mostly our impoverished first nations, it is too bad, so sad. Meanwhile, the Conservatives are running around telling us that we are going to get tough on every little punk who is walking the streets in Ottawa or Toronto.

I would like to ask the member why he thinks that the government shows such casual disregard for the first people of our country and refuses to support the police in those communities with the adequate resources not only to ensure the health and safety of police officers but to ensure that the first nations communities are being kept with the same measure of safety that other Canadians take for granted.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish I could answer that question. We would have much more success around this place if we could understand what is in the mind of the government when it comes to these sorts of things. One would think it is a no-brainer when it comes to the Conservatives' concerns about our criminal justice system, but sadly, it is one of the places where they are failing us.

There is no doubt that we need more police on the beat. That kind of policing serves all of our communities well, whether they are on the James Bay coast or in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. We know that when police officers have the ability to build those kinds of relationships with the people they serve, including young people, aboriginal people, minorities and middle class neighbours in many of our communities, we are all the better for having that kind of relationship. However, if the resources are not being dedicated toward it and we do not have the people on the street doing that kind of work, then we do not have the benefits of those kinds of programs. Those programs are very crucial to what we should be about.

Policing is only one aspect of what we need to be doing in our criminal justice system, but we cannot ignore that piece. We also need to be talking about punishment in our criminal justice system and what works and does not work in terms of having people take responsibility for the crimes that they have committed. We also need to look at prevention. We have heard many suggestions this afternoon.

We have been speaking with people from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, who have said there is a declining recreational infrastructure in our country. When they talk about a $123 billion infrastructure deficit, fully $40 billion of that is in recreation. If we had the best possible recreation centres and addressed that infrastructure deficit, we know it would have positive effects across the country, including positive effects in dealing with the youth crime rate.

I do not understand why we do not move in those areas and ensure that those kinds of possibilities exist for young people across Canada.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I also listened to the remarks of my colleague with a great deal of attention. He made reference to many very important matters.

I wonder if my colleague can indicate to us how concerned he is to see the direction that the Conservative government is taking, when we see this justice bill, when we see the bill another member introduced yesterday concerning abortion, when we see other bills that members are introducing, concerning very right-wing ideas, when we see the refusal of the government to ask that a death sentence against a Canadian be commuted to life in prison.

What does this make him think of? Is he afraid that we would have a totally different country if this government had a majority?

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is right when she says that the government is pursuing the wrong direction in so many places.

I think that going down the route of establishing stronger criminal penalties without addressing the other key issues for dealing with crime in our society, without dealing with prevention and without dealing with policing is absolutely the wrong way to go.

I think limiting a woman's choice in reproductive technologies or in abortion is absolutely the wrong way to go. I think limiting young people's choice in the expression of their sexuality is also absolutely the wrong way to go.

There are many places in dealing with the kinds of criminal justice legislation that we have had where I am very troubled by the direction of the government, where I think it is going in absolutely the wrong direction and directions that I think would have serious consequences for our society.

[Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to add to the debate on this very serious piece of legislation.

As always, I tend to speak about what I am familiar with, and those are the communities in my riding of Nunavut.

I have serious concerns about some of the elements of the legislation, in that I do not believe some of the harsh handling of young people fits the crime in most cases.

I am not against justice. I am not against the real sentence for very violent crimes, but putting everyone in the same category and assuming that they are all dangerous criminals is very scary to me, especially when I know that many of these young people in my riding of Nunavut commit these acts of crime because they are hungry or because they have difficulties at home. They see violence in their homes that I feel can be prevented through other measures.

Unfortunately, they may have FAE or FAS and do not realize the consequences of their actions. We put them into a system with which they are totally not familiar. We sometimes do not have enough preventive programs. I, for one, am a very strong advocate for prevention.

It is truly a sad moment when some of our kids end up in the criminal system and stay there when we have the opportunity to take them to that fork in the road and turn them one way or the other. We hope that in most cases they choose the road to good living. They have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and apologize for their actions and then go on to lead a meaningful life in our society.

What I want for all of the kids in this country is to have a meaningful, healthy, happy life. It is not any different for us in our aboriginal communities and, in my case, Inuit communities in Nunavut. We have many opportunities for our young people but, due to many different circumstances, sometimes they do not always take advantage of that opportunity.

Some of my colleagues already talked about many of the preventive measures we could take, whether it be sports, arts or programs as simple as breakfast at the school. As I said, many of our kids who enter the young offenders system do it because they are hungry. They break in and steal food from homes or steal things that they can sell for money.

In a country as prosperous as Canada, it is truly a sad state of affairs when we have young people committing petty crime in order to feed themselves or for warmer things to wear in my part of the country. The more that we do in prevention, the more I think we can keep some of these kids out of the system.

The other problem for these kids is that some of them are being taken away from their homes. They end up in foster homes. We could do all kinds of things on the social side. We could have programs to keep more kids at home and to have better home situations so they do not need to turn to petty crime in order to survive.

I truly believe that with programs for crime prevention, we would be able to help communities come up with their own programs that could help kids at home before they ever enter into a life of crime.

Some detention centres are trained to run on the land programs. However, a lot of these kids, unfortunately, come from single mother homes with no fatherly influence and, therefore, are not able to participate in some of the livelihood that we still have in our communities. We still have many people in our Nunavut communities who participate on the land, whether it be for subsistence hunting or for other activities. Even though we are now very much in the workforce like everyone else, we still maintain a very close connection to the land.

What we have seen in some of the successful communities are programs to try and work with the young people either through the school or, for kids who are not always in school, through other programs. This is proving to be very beneficial, not just to the students and young people involved, but to the whole family and to the community as a whole.

We are still in some way trying to come to grips with the new way of doing things in our communities. We have people who are caught in between our traditional way of life and the new way that is among us today. However, we have been very successful as a people to blend the two worlds together and to give an opportunity to young people to learn to appreciate the land and what is around us again.

As I mentioned before, many of these young people are in a one parent home and that is becoming the reality with a lot of families in this country. We need to do more to support that because some of them live on a very low income and the parent, usually a mother, cannot provide other activities for her children as much as she would like.

The community and the social fabric of this country needs to take up that void where kids do not have the same opportunity as other kids in being able to have different activities that can take up idle time, which, in a lot of cases, ends up with bored kids looking for something to do.

I really want to see programs where the community has an opportunity to help with the upbringing of children because not every young family is able to do that on their own anymore, not with the high cost of living that we have in our part of the country. Even programs that help people to feed a healthy diet to their family is another angle that we can look at.

We do have food mail for many parts of the north, but even being able to provide a healthy diet for a young family is getting to be very difficult. As I said earlier, some of these kids are just looking for something to eat. When we take it down to that type of basic cause of why some of these kids commit crime, then having very serious consequences for these young people does not meet the crime.

We need more programs that help some of these young mothers, and some single dads too, or even young couples who need parenting skills, not having had the opportunity because they started a family very young. Those are the types of programs that we would definitely support in our communities.

Again, in speaking about the people in my riding, the real key for our communities is to be able to give everyone a proper start in life, and that includes having the support of community programs.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague. I very much appreciate what she said, because she knows what she is talking about. She lives with the people of the far north, she comes from there and she knows all about the situation of the people she represents.

Yesterday, I was reading in a report that a woman in the far north, where women's economic security is extremely fragile, chose to call a women's shelter and say that she had been beaten, because she had no place to live. This happens frequently, because there is no affordable housing in the far north, where she comes from.

I wonder whether what is happening in the far north right now could be called a crime. The federal government has responsibility for the Innu, but it is not doing its part. It is not meeting the needs of the people in the community and is not addressing the extreme poverty that exists there.

Should we put all the Conservative members in prison because they are committing a crime of omission?

[Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if I would go that far, but certainly we need to bring attention to the real causes of crime. In many cases, yes, it is because there are so many people living in one home. We cannot afford to have homeless people. I was just up in my riding, where it was -30° on the weekend. We cannot have people living on the streets in that kind of temperature.

One of the initiatives we could do as a government and as a country is make sure that basic needs are met. In my riding of Nunavut, one of the biggest needs right now relates to the shortage of housing and the fact that there are so many social consequences of people not having a basic home. People are ending up in shelters, yes, and some people are going from community to community, home to home and house to house, which I think creates a lot of situations where crime can happen.

One of the things we need to address is the lack of social housing and affordable housing for people in my riding and other parts of the country, because that seems to be the problem that is at the root of a lot of our difficulties.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak today, because I have a personal interest in this bill. You have been in this House for a long time, longer than I have, and you will remember the pitched battle we fought against the Young Offenders Act. Once again, the government is treating us like children by introducing a bill that will require judges to enforce this legislation.

I would like to talk a little about young people. I have two children, and one of them went through a more difficult adolescence than the other, because I was raising them alone. My son had many more problems during adolescence than my daughter. We have to remember that during adolescence, young people change dramatically. A young person is no longer a child, but is not yet an adult, even though he or she is becoming an adult. Often, because of the extreme hormonal changes adolescents are going through, they want to be loved by everyone, they seek attention and they want to have a lot of friends. As a result, they may fall in with the wrong crowd and find themselves in situations they would not have chosen.

That does not make them dangerous offenders. We should not be deprived, therefore, of our parental role. Even if we are deprived of our role as responsible parents, and even if it is a single-parent family, that does not prevent us from being very close to our children.

In Quebec in particular, we have a lot of resources for our young people. That is what I wanted to tell the House about. In my view, we should make use of all these resources before deeming a young person incorrigible. I have rarely seen young people who are really incorrigible.

I have often been asked to go to schools and meet with young people. In Quebec we have centres for young people 13 to 17 years of age. They go to these centres in groups and are supervised there by adults who show them the right path. These adults arrange presentations and tell the young people about the various services available to them. They also arrange group activities, discussions and exchanges. This is very important for young people. They make friends here. There are a lot of youth centres in Quebec. We do what we can to help these youth centres survive.

My children went to youth centres as adolescents and it was very good for them. It is best, though, to start very early. We must not necessarily think that it starts in adolescence.

Poverty exists, and we need to deal with it. It is often the reason why young people do not eat breakfast, why there is no food in the home, why they are poorly housed and do not have clothing. They are laughed at in school because they are not stylishly dressed like the other students. These are all reasons why young people may get involved in criminal behaviour.

In Quebec we have the breakfast club for children in primary school. All the children in the class are given breakfast without exception so as not to discriminate. This enables children who did not get breakfast at home to have one like everybody else but not be identified as unusual. It is very important to include them rather than exclude them. It is when children are excluded that problems start.

Sending young people who are 14 to 17 years of age to prison means sending them to a school for crime. Studies have shown it. These young people try to make friends in prison, but they do not have the maturity and knowledge to handle an environment with which they are not familiar. So they are dropped right into a criminal milieu. It is totally unacceptable. These young people are deprived of their lives. They are deprived of a chance to become functioning adults some day. Rather than trying to rehabilitate them, we are putting them in prison where they have to get by on their own. They get no help or support.

As well, young people are often the ones who are abused in prison. Because they are young and have little knowledge, they are treated horrifically. When they get out of prison, then we can say they are real criminals, because that is what they have become. No one has looked after them and no one has tried to rehabilitate them instead of sending them to prison.

There are a lot of services in Quebec and that may be why we are so different from the rest of Canada. One of the things I want to talk about is the services in my riding. There is a centre called La Parenthèse. It is a youth centre. Young people go there voluntarily. When a problem arises at home, if a young person is using drugs or alcohol and wants to stop, a discussion is held between the parents and the young person, who can leave and live elsewhere, at this place, which is called La Parenthèse.

There are specialists at the centre who work with the young person to get him or her back on the right path and rehabilitate him or her. These young people also have chores to do in the house. They each have their own responsibilities. So they are required to take responsibility and an effort is made to help them break their abusive patterns. This is on a voluntary basis. It is excellent and it has a high success rate. Young people can rehabilitate themselves.

In my riding there is a huge secondary school. In the police services, we have trained police specialists to work with adolescents, with the problems of adolescents. They are not treated like criminals from day one for a first offence or a stupid mistake. We try to guide the young person. The parents are informed. The police sit down with the family and try to find solutions to rehabilitate the young person. This is extremely important.

There is also the entire question of where our parental authority comes into it. As I said earlier, this is extremely important. Personally, no one can take away my right to act as a parent with my child. No two children are identical. There are some children who are more difficult than others. There are children who are not necessarily living in poverty but who will have other kinds of problems.

I had problems with my own son, who is now 20 years old and on the right track. When he was a teenager, however, everything fell apart. Why? I could not say. He lost his father at a very young age and it was only in adolescence that it all came out. He began to stray off track, but we managed to get him back on the right path. I worked very hard with him. Our parental rights must be maintained. We must use the tools available to us in Quebec society to help us rehabilitate them. It can be done. Help can be found at CLSCs and other organizations.

There is an arts centre in my riding that brings young people in off the streets and helps them get by through art. The name of the organization is ICI par les Arts. This may seem quite simple to us, but I can assure this House that these young people do some extraordinary things. They create things with all sorts of materials. They produce art, which directs them away from their negative thoughts and misconduct.

In Quebec, there are also street outreach workers. They are not there for nothing. There are young homeless people and we must be able to help them. These street outreach workers work directly with young people to guide them, talk to them and help them find a place to sleep, if they are found on the street at night. It gets very cold in the winter and we do not want to leave our young people on the street. All these services exist. There are other services, but I cannot name them all.

I am being signalled that my time is running out. It is extremely important to think about rehabilitation and not criminalization. I care deeply about this. All Bloc Québécois members, including myself, oppose this bill, because it will simply increase crime rates among young people, not reduce them.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Rivière-du-Nord for her very sincere and genuine speech. On the one hand, it gets us thinking about this terribly inappropriate bill. She has every reason to remind us of the fight our parliamentary team led in 1999, when we submitted 2,700 amendments in parliamentary committee. This led the Chair to make a ruling—a debatable one, I might add—limiting the possibility of amending a bill in committee at report stage.

On the other hand, the member for Rivière-du-Nord reminded us about finding the balance between work and family. I applaud her for remaining a committed and active mother. I have known her since 1993. Although we would be hard-pressed to find any signs of aging, since the member for Rivière-du-Nord has remained dazzlingly beautiful, it is true that I have known her since 1993. I know that she has always been very involved in the life of the Bloc Québécois as a party. Despite everything, she has managed to balance her political activities with her obligations as a mother. She has also experienced personal hardships, such as the loss of her husband. She should be thanked for continuing on in public life.

Perhaps my colleague could remind us how important it is to trust in the family. Perhaps she could remind us that when it comes to preventive detention, the subject of this bill, it would be a mistake to at times remove young people from a meaningful community or family setting. Her words must make the Conservatives think twice.