Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today and speak to Bill C-25, An Act to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act. The bill has two potential consequences to the Youth Criminal Justice Act. In particular, I want to focus on the possibility of a pre-trial detention for a young person. The bill also adds denunciation and deterrence of unlawful conduct to the act's principles in sentencing.
The New Democratic Party has concerns about these two elements and also the vacancy of other public policies to prevent crime and in particular issues facing youth.
Our party is supporting the bill. We are indicating though that we do want to see amendments prior to the bill being passed. These two issues are very significant and have several consequences that relate to youth and justice in our society. We believe that the bill in its current state does not address those issues.
I want to touch now on a couple of those issues. The first one is with regard to the first part of the bill which is a little bit different in the sense of treating young people and making sure that they are detained longer. At the present time the judicial system has that capability. What this legislation will do is codify existing practices.
The concern that the NDP has around this is that it could to some degree also take away the opportunity or impose a structure for judges that we believe would be a step backward. We think that this is one of the things that should be looked at.
As well, one of the things that is going to be happening with regard to this issue is really a deterrence as a principle of sentencing. This issue is very debatable in terms of the justice file right now and also in terms of how to prevent crimes and provide an opportunity for restorative justice.
I have spent four years and was involved in five programs with helping youth who were at risk. These youths either had some type of issue with regard to the law, committed crimes and were punished, or alternatively they were viewed at risk because they were out of school and unemployed. These youths were seen as persons who would eventually end up in those circumstances if they did not either decide to go back to school or find a job.
What I have found is that to this day those programs are not supported enough, not only in terms of the federal programs but also provincially. We heard some discussion about Quebec and that province deserves some kudos in terms of the way it has led the way in many respects in this country on making sure that youth and youth issues are looked at in a preventive style.
In my community it can be said that those programs, whether it is St. Leonard's House or New Beginnings, have been very successful because they were designed so that street level youth would have an opportunity to be able to turn their lives around.
Some of those programs I ran and still being run today. This was done with a philosophy of a small investment of the correct prevention strategy. The programs made sure that people had choices in front of them, as opposed to feeling that they had closed doors. This led to greater decision making and resulted in either finding employment or going back to school and obtaining the skills and training that would provide employment. What we see with Bill C-25 is a deterrence to sentencing.
The Supreme Court looked at this in Regina v. B.W.P. I want to read a small excerpt in terms of the discussion that came out of that decision, so people will understand what this mode is going to do. It said:
When general deterrence is factored in the determination of the sentence, the offender is punished more severely, not because he or she deserves it, but because the court decides to send a message to others who may be inclined to engage in similar criminal activity.
It is not necessarily what a person has done that is going to increase the sentence for a particular crime, but it is to send a message to others. This has generally been a philosophy adopted in the United States. Quite frankly, I am not sure that it has worked successfully there. Perhaps in some jurisdictions there may have been some modest improvements, but overall in terms of North America we actually have higher rates of incarceration of youth. One of the things that is interesting about this debate is that we do have some issues related to that in our own country.
One has to wonder whether that is going to be the way to ensure that youth are not going to make subsequent decisions or other poor choices that are going to lead to criminal activity and that will have consequences for them and society.
One can lay out programs and services like the ones I provided at the multicultural council or New Beginnings in my riding of Windsor West where individuals can be successfully unplugged from the wrong people they are hanging around or even from gangs. They can also be provided with a host of opportunities that undermine the person's attraction or so-called easy decisions at the moment that lead to poor choices and get them in subsequent trouble. They have the opportunity to turn things around.
These programs will not get to everybody. There is no doubt about that. There are some individuals who will have to face the justice system straight on. The fact of the matter is that this country has not done enough for the programs to make sure youth will make the right decisions.
I can think of a few individuals who went through the program in my riding. They had been involved with the wrong people and had been in and out of custody numerous times but, at the same time, when they were provided the stability of counselling, an opportunity to feel that they would be constructive in their place in society, as well as the economy, they became successful.
This is what I cannot understand. The government is not acting on those opportunities. It has talked about announced funding and so forth, but it has very rarely delivered.
This bill is not as comprehensive as it probably could be because there are some outstanding legal court challenges coming forth that will affect the way the government can go forward, but it is important to note that prevention still is not at the top of the order by the government.
The fact of the matter is there are supposed to be police officers in different municipalities and the government has yet to deliver on that. I recently spoke to the chief of police in my riding about this issue and there is still no support that was promised by this administration. It said it was going to put more police officers on the streets of this country and has yet to deliver on it.
That is interesting. The government makes these announcements, but they never come to fruition and it never delivers on them. The government does it in all kinds of fashions, whether it be this issue or other simple issues like infrastructure projects, where it does not sign agreements with its partners, be it the provinces or other municipalities, to get the money flowing.
These are problems because the government is not providing a vision on how we should move forward. We also lack the opportunity to uproot some of the most important issues that centre around youth criminal justice and that is to make youth feel that they are going to have a good future, engage in good choices and, most importantly, feel like productive members of society.
There are individuals who are going through troubled times in their lives and I have not even touched on the issue of mental illness and the lack of supports. In my province of Ontario there are individuals who are not getting the proper medical and psychological support which would enable them to maintain productivity in terms of being citizens and not engaging in activities that harm other individuals or making bad decisions that have significant consequences. This is really important. With every dollar that we put toward prevention, we can save double or triple that when it comes to incarceration later on.
This is an important bill. The act has been amended several times. It has been debated hotly politically, but at the end of the day we have to do something that is going to be an improvement for youth, so that those who have to go through our justice system, and create victims who are affected by these poor decisions, are going to receive the penalties through the justice system in a full and accountable way.
At the same time, the government and society have to do a lot more to provide opportunities to help youth make the right decisions or, if they have made wrong decisions and are willing to turn things around, have the opportunity to do so. That comes with support and a community that is inclusive.