Mr. Speaker, I come from Quebec, and I took a special interest in youth justice when I was a minister and also in my law practice. I am not an expert in this area, and I do not claim to be.
Nevertheless, I would like to explain what has been done in Quebec and why we take such a different attitude from the rest of Canada. I would also like to explain why the architects of our youth justice system do not understand why the rest of Canada has never taken note of the success we have achieved and used Quebec as a model when drafting new legislation on young offenders, instead of looking to American models. Ours are based more on European models, but also on models suggested in the United States by people who study criminology and psychology.
In 1998, I attended a meeting of ministers of justice in the midst of an election campaign. I went to talk to the ministers of justice in the middle of an election campaign because I had something to tell them before they changed the legislation. At the time they were discussing a bill introduced by Ms. McLellan.
Canada had a juvenile crime rate at the time that was 50% greater than the rate in Quebec. That was not purely by chance. The political parties of all stripes in power in Quebec over the previous 30 years had always taken very seriously this primary concern with the rehabilitation of young offenders. An entire profession was created to deal with it called psychoeducation.
Rather than spending our money to build institutions, we put most of it into the training and treatment given to young offenders and the training provided to judges. I can recall the chief justice of the youth court in Quebec summarizing in a few choice words the attitude of the Quebec courts: the right measure at the right time.
This is a very subjective process, of course, but it is objectively justified. When dealing with adolescents, we are dealing with people who will soon be adults. They have to be induced to act not out of a fear of punishment—because this fear cannot be maintained very long—but out of a genuine acceptance of society’s rules, an understanding of them, and a responsible attitude.
I am sure we can all recall our own adolescence and some of the friends we had. We know very well that adolescence is quite a difficult time when we emerge from the body of a child to become an adult. It is also a time when we like to test limits, and not everyone does this in the same way. I remember some of the young people I knew, when I was young myself, who did some really foolish things. Now they are very respectable people who are very respectful of the law and extremely responsible. I am sure that nearly everyone here knew some young people like that—or maybe not. In any case, I think it is a generally accepted fact that some very responsible adults today went through some pretty turbulent times in their youth.
If we are concerned about a safe society, it is important when dealing with adolescents to do all we can to ensure that they eventually become responsible adults who do not always have to be frightened into controlling themselves, especially as I do not think that fear is a very effective way to deter them from committing crimes.
Something rather significant has happened in Quebec in the past few years: we have placed so much importance on prevention and rehabilitation that we are achieving good results.
Earlier I was talking about the results I saw in 1998, but I will read some more statistics from Juristat: “With the exception of Quebec, which saw a 4% decrease, all the provinces reported increases in the youth crime rate”.
Quebec has created something else that will achieve long-term results and will probably start to have an impact. I am talking about early childhood centres. We no longer talk about daycares in Quebec—except for maybe when we are out of breath. From an institutional point of view, there are no daycares in Quebec, but we have the best system of early childhood centres, where working parents can leave their children at a very early age.
These early childhood centres employ professionals. They are not babysitters; they are professionals trained in early childhood education. There are no hard and fast rules, but often early childhood professionals can recognize the signs of a young offender when the child is very young.
We have professionals who know. They know how to recognize it and intervene early on. Let me say, they do not put these children in prison; the children might be given a time out from time to time and given individual attention so as not to have problems in the future.
That was how Quebec saw things. That is what Quebec has done and people should know about the results we have achieved.
We did not much like Mrs. McLellan's bill. Nonetheless, I am sure that many people who adopted Mrs. McLellan's bill at the time are surprised at its results, namely a lower youth incarceration rate.
There is a reason we criticized it at the time. I know it was drafted by people familiar with Quebec's experience. They drafted it the way they did because they felt there was too much reliance on incarceration. They developed an extremely objective system, but when it comes to handling young offenders, many things should be left open to interpretation.
I will give some examples that I have often used. I will look at two extreme cases. A youth has just shoplifted a popular singer's CD and is arrested. He arrives at the police station and does not want his parents to be called because he is embarrassed. His parents come to get him anyway. He is ashamed, and so forth.