Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to speak to Bill C-25, An Act to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
The House leader was complaining that the bill was being held up, so I hope he can get his message to his troops. Just before question period, the Conservatives were using the time up and stalling his bill.
A report prepared by Justice Nunn dealt with youth criminal justice, and it was very timely. The Conservatives wanted to improve the act, so we had this very detailed, well thought out study. The minister subsequently announced, with the justice minister of Nova Scotia, that he would improve the act. In his speech, the minister said, “Nova Scotia's request for change is in large part based on the recommendations of the Nunn Commission report”.
This is the good news, but from that point on Conservatives should become very upset. Very few recommendations from the Nunn report actually ended up in the bill. The minister has a prescription to fix the act. A number of Conservatives members have said that they want to fix the act and make improvements. They have the outline to do it and then it is not followed.
The Nunn Commission had 34 recommendations on how to improve youth criminal justice, in particular six specifically are referenced to this act. At the most, the minister only deals with three of those, as a member said earlier today, tangently. One of the three only moves the words from a couple of clauses into one clause, clause 29. Therefore, it is only a wording change. It does not change anything substantive. That leaves two changes in the bill.
One of those two changes is about 20 words, which makes some increased opportunity for the crown to increase detention in pre-trial. The exact wording of that very minor change is outlined very carefully in opposition justice critic's speech, if anyone wants to see the details of that change.
That leaves one other change and it did not come from the Nunn report. It is the use of denunciation and deterrence as reasons during the sentencing.
Therefore, we have a bill that is not even a full page long, if we were to put it all on one page. It has one major concept from the Nunn report and it avoids all these things for which Conservatives have asked, and that is increased safety. They received the recommendations in the Nunn report and everyone applauded it. I think the people who wanted those changes would be very astonished.
I forgot to say, Mr. Speaker, that I am splitting my time with the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, my esteemed colleague, who I know has some very important thoughts in this area as well.
What is more astonishing is what is missing. The Nunn Commission recommended to amend section 3, the declaration of principle, to add a clause indicating the protection of the public as one of the primary goals of the act. I cannot believe why the minister would be against the protection of the public. The Nunn report suggested that we put it into the principles of the act, and it is not there. What could the government possibly have against that?
In fact, I do not think the minister is against it. He said in his speech, when he introduced the bill, that the proposals before the House “provide new measures to protect communities from young offenders who pose a significant risk to public safety”. The government wants to protect communities from risks to public safety and then it does not put the recommendation into bill. Why not simply follow that most obvious suggestion from the Nunn Commission?
Some of the comments on the bill show the difference between the government and the other parties in finding solutions to lower crime in the country.
The first response from a member of the government, in questions on this bill, was the suggestion that safe integration was not the primary objective of the Conservatives. On punishment, is it longer sentences? I do not know, but I am sure that for all other members of the House, safe integration is a primary objective. What the people of Canada want first and foremost is to be safe again. I do not know why the Conservatives are speaking against that.
The second Conservative member who spoke suggested that we should not deal with poverty. I do not think there is a member of the knowledgeable community in our modern country who does not know that poverty can lead to circumstances that make crime more prevalent. Not all crimes are done for this reason. Wealthy people create crimes as well, but I think the vast majority of people know it is a determinant. It is astonishing that it would not be part of the solution.
The next thing a Conservative member said on the bill, before we broke for question period, was that sentencing was an important deterrent for the Conservatives. Yet, the changes in sentencing have been proved over and over again, by witnesses to committee, that it is not a deterrent. It has no significant statistical effect on the incidence of crime. What does have an effect, and my colleague from British Columbia spoke at length on this earlier, is the fact that a criminals will be caught with an increase, for instance, of police, et cetera. That does act as a deterrent, but not what has been added to the bill.
The fourth comment from the Conservatives was about the people who had lost faith in the justice system. This is a pattern and if I had my 20 minute slot, I would have gone through the whole pattern. It is a pattern of adding the wrong solution in bill after bill, a solution that does not work. They add something that is not a deterrent or they add more of the same.
People are upset. The system does not work and, in fact, it has not worked for 1,000 years. We put people in jail, they get out and reoffend. Most crimes are reoffending crimes. Why this has been so problematic is the agenda has had so many amendments with many rejected because it is not the answer. It is not what witnesses, people who work with victims, or people who work with criminals have found to be the answer.
Finally, we have some new answers that are working in the restorative justice. I have to compliment the people of Ottawa because this is Restorative Justice Week in the city of Ottawa. I went to a wonderful session on Tuesday night this week. The Ottawa Chief of Police said, “We would challenge anyone to show me a system that fails as much as our mainstream justice system”, which these bills are trying to promote.
The crown prosecutor, who was also there, said, “never seen a victim or offender happy with the existing system”. We are concerned about victims and we want to have systems like the restorative justice system and the collaborative alternate diversion family group conferencing where we finally come up with solutions that on occasion, certainly not all the time, work.
In fact, a Conservative stood and said that even the people who worked in that field said that they did not work all the time. I have to agree. The Conservatives were right with that comment. It does not work all the time, but the statistics in Ottawa show that 38% to 45% of the time it fails. The regular justice system fails 73% of the time. If there is any member of the House who would want to make Canada safer, they would obviously choose the 38% to 45% with these alternative methods for rehabilitating criminals so they do not go out and create more victims. This would make Canada safer.
This has been successful around the world with aboriginal people for centuries. Therefore, let us not continue to put in solutions that do not work. Now that there has been all this attention on justice, at least the good thing is we have heard from witnesses about things that will work. Let us start promoting those and really changing the system. Although the crime rate is going down, let us make it go down even more.