Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, my colleague from Brome—Missisquoi brings an absolutely extraordinary background to this subject. He has done a lot of work with young people to try to lower the crime rate. He has made a start on listing many of the solutions.
Just to come back to his introduction, I will say that we do support victims; we support the ombudsman’s recommendations. We would have liked to retain that discretion, if it had been properly used by the courts, which in this case, as a rare exception, perhaps did not use it advisedly. If that is the case—since I do not want to be accused of criticizing the courts—we do not know why. There was a section in the Criminal Code, however, that said that judges had to state why they were not imposing a victim surcharge.
On the question of lowering the crime rate, there is so much to be said. As we know, it is often said that poverty can sometimes lead some people to commit certain crimes, such as some kinds of theft. In the case of certain kinds of abuse, whether it be sexual violence or discrimination, a lot of education still needs to be done.
Last week, we had some trouble and the committee went right off the rails concerning Bill C-279. This was a direct result of a failure to understand the charter and human rights. We saw supposedly educated adults dealing with this problem. We can imagine what happens when some people in society do not have the benefit of all the resources that are available to us. I will say no more, because there are other people who would like to speak.