Mr. Speaker, the member's question relating to sentencing and in particular to youth is a thoughtful one.
With regard to the philosophy of the Conservative government, the problems I suggested are even exacerbated for youth. What happens when young offenders are put in prison for the first time? It is called the university of prison. What access are they going to have to all sorts of other criminal activities and ways of doing things so they can be learn to be more successful criminals from the people they meet in prison? What types of role models are they going to have? What type of acceptable behaviour in society are they going to learn if their role models are other prisoners and hardened criminals?
That is why I believe that restorative justice, alternative justice and family group conferencing have had twice the success rate, statistically, of the prison system. In our aboriginal justice strategy, it was remarkable. From what I remember, in a lot of cases there was no recidivism at all. It had a remarkable success rate in dealing with youth.
Some people think that family group conferencing is an easy way out, that people just sit down and chew the fat and do not have to do hard time in prison. Let me tell members that they can talk to anyone who has been through this, the victims who went through it, and they will hear that those people would much rather have gone to prison. It was a lot harder to face up to their peers and families, to make the apologies, to make retribution and pay back--