Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. Bloc colleague for his question. I would like to reply in English, since it is a very complex question.
I want to say for the member and everyone in the House, as I tried to in my speech, that what we find most reprehensible about this legislation is what is not in it and the lost opportunity to deal with what is required when it comes to youth crime. We have always said that there must be proper emphasis on prevention, protection and punishment.
The NDP is prepared to send the bill to committee because it needs to be enhanced. What is in it is very insignificant and problematic. There needs to be more reflection on what is there and changes made.
I want to specifically reference the two parts of the bill that my colleague from Windsor has already addressed. The first is the question about youth being released pretrial. My colleague has already said that in most cases, particularly heinous crimes, that kind of pretrial release does not often happen. Some judges are still involved in pretrial releases. The proposed bill will help clarify that situation and ensure there are clear provisions when a youth crime is heinous and serious enough that it requires more stringent action than is normally the case.
The other part of the bill deals with the issue of denunciation and deterrence. As my colleague from Windsor has also said, we need to try to understand whether that section of the bill would help in any way the young people who would be involved in the most serious and egregious of crimes when it comes to destruction of property and dismemberment or the deaths of individuals.
We know deterrence may not be that useful for some young people because they do not recognize the punishment or they never stop to think about the implications of their crimes. However, when we look at the most heinous of crimes, we also have to think about how we get youth to deal with what they have done and understand that there are significant punishments for those very serious crimes. We cannot ignore that end of the equation. Maybe the Bloc sees that we can but I do not think so.
The bill is not perfect. What we suggest is get it to committee, hear from witnesses to find out what the couple of limited provisions do and would mean and find ways to enhance the bill to make it more effective legislation that truly gives our legislators the kinds of tools they need to make a difference.
I mentioned some of them already. I mentioned the Manitoba government's presentation to members of Parliament, who are trying to deal particularly with the use of cars by youth as weapons. I mentioned three horrible deaths, a young mother, a young man and a working age man. They were killed in the prime of their lives because of that kind of incident. We know we have to stop it. We have to be strong on this. At least with the bill going to committee we can get somewhere—