Mr. Speaker, let me answer this way. It was interesting listening to the minister earlier today saying not to confuse him with the facts. We have always had youth who commit multiple crimes. I practised quite extensively in our juvenile delinquency court, as it was called back in the early seventies, and I can think of a number of my youth clients who had committed multiple crimes. This is not a new phenomenon.
What happened, and it was part of the purpose of the Nunn commission and the McMurtry report, was starting around 2005-06, we had a serious spike in violent crime among youth, mostly from 16 to 18 years of age. What the minister has refused to acknowledge twice today is that there was a spike, but up until that point, youth crime had been dropping, like all other crime. That includes violent crime and repeat offenders.
We hit a spike in 2005, 2006, 2007 and a bit of 2008, but starting in 2007, it began to decline again. That is the case now and I think we will see the same when we see the figures for 2009 and 2010. That has nothing to do with any legislation we passed. It has everything to do with our police officers and prosecutors using different methodologies both to prevent crimes and to apprehend the criminals.
This kind of legislation needs tweaking. Justice Nunn was very correct on that. However, to use isolated cases, whether it is the Sébastien case or the one my friend from B.C. just mentioned, is not the basis on which we do public policy and certainly not the basis on which we amend the Criminal Code or, as in this case, the Youth Criminal Justice Act.