The member said that the brain is not fully formed. Magazines talk about how there is something different about the teenage brain. I think our law mirrors that, or should mirror that.
The Government of Quebec passionately spoke to our committee about its 40 years of experience with the Youth Criminal Justice Act and the approach to rehabilitation. I must say I admire the minister who came to our committee and the way he talked with obvious passion and knowledge about the kind of people who come into the youth criminal justice system. He looked around the room and said he was talking about young people who do not have the advantages of the people sitting around this room, who did not grow up in homes with everything they needed and many of the things they wanted. In some cases they grew up in very difficult circumstances.
He saw the youth criminal justice system as a way to save those children, those young people and to use the principle of rehabilitation, not put them in jail for four or five years where they would meet and interact with other people who have committed crimes, learn from each other and come out in a criminal mode as opposed to being rehabilitated.
He said that their approach has worked. They were angry that their approach was being undermined by legislation that was being proposed, and has now passed this House and in the Senate.
We have amendments here from the Senate on one aspect of the bill. The people of sober second thought should have used some of that thought to send this back to the House with a whole bunch of amendments saying, “Hold it, you are going too far. This is not going to work.” What Quebec's public safety minister said to the committee of the House is true. What the experts said to the committee of the House is true. I am sure they could have heard that from them, and probably did. Why do we not see amendments on that?
That is what is wrong with what is before us today. It does not do the job. It does not respond to the problems the bill creates. I have talked about mandatory minimums. I have talked about the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
One of the other things the Youth Criminal Justice Act decided is our policy on rehabilitation of young people. This says it is wrong. Now the notions of denunciation and deterrence in sentencing have been introduced. We are told that deterrence does not work. We are told that denunciation is not appropriate. People who come into contact with the criminal justice system are there because society does not accept what they have done. They are going to be subject to the criminal justice system. The object of the youth criminal justice system for those under 18 is rehabilitation.
What else does this bill do? The minister talked about making pardons more difficult to get. The government is going further than that. Nobody can get a pardon anymore, unless the person goes to cabinet. The cabinet can give a pardon, just as the king can give a pardon. The royal prerogative is still there.
However, in this process people who might have been found guilty or pleaded guilty to a shoplifting offence at age 18 or 19 cannot get a pardon. They can apply under the Criminal Records Act to the Parole Board. It costs $600 now whereas it used to cost $25. People can pay $600 and go through the process, but at the end of the day, they will not get a pardon. If they are successful they will get what is called a record suspension. I do not know exactly what that means. I have an idea that their record would be suspended, but it is still there and presumably can appear again. The so-called man or woman in the street does not know what a record suspension is. Most people who have heard of record suspensions think of suspended sentences or something like that.
The whole notion of a pardon has a certain redemptive quality. It is something that says yes, the person did something when he or she was age 18, 19 or 20 and he or she received a pardon for it. The person may have done something, but he or she has been rehabilitated and can demonstrate to the Parole Board that his or her behaviour since the commission of the offence is such that the person does not have to have it hanging over his or her head for the rest of his or her life.
If people do not think this matters, they should talk to the woman in her forties who came into my office recently. She said that she cannot get a job with the hospital corporation. It will not hire her. She is a single parent with responsibilities for her children. She had taken a course and was ready to go into the workforce. She had been accepted for a job, but she cannot have the job because when she was age 18 or 19, she pleaded guilty to shoplifting a few chocolate bars. Her parents paid a fine. This criminal record has been following her around for over 20 years and is preventing her from getting work.
There is still a provision for her to get a record suspension at great cost and it could take as long as two years now because the procedures have changed. We enquired to the Parole Board on behalf of another individual.
There used to be a provision that if an individual was eligible for a pardon and had a job offer that depended on it, the instructions to the Parole Board officials were to fast-track that. Guess what happened? Last fall, instructions were given that that was to be no more. The first person who applies is the first person who gets consideration and other people go to the bottom of the list. There is no consideration for someone who has rehabilitated himself or herself, like the woman I mentioned who has a job offer, who can be a contributing member of society, working and supporting her family, doing a job for the health care corporation. No, she cannot have that. She has to go to the end of the line and we understand the waiting lists are getting longer and longer.
This is consistent with the attitude we hear from the government. There is this punitive attitude for people who have run afoul of the law, who have done something wrong at some time in their lives, and granted, some are more serious than others. We have to recognize that serious crimes deserve serious punishment. No one is objecting to that. Our Criminal Code provides for maximum sentences that are quite high for serious crimes. There is provision for sentencing guidelines that can be put in place. However, when a punitive approach to criminal law is applied down the line, this is the kind of result we get. A single parent is denied an opportunity to work because the system cannot respond to her desire to have a pardon in order to get a job. That is wrong.
It is wrong to say people cannot have a pardon, that they can have a record suspension. Why are the Conservatives doing that? I did not hear any rationale. I did not hear anything that said there is something wrong with the word “pardon”. I did not hear it from one end of this debate to the other from anyone opposite. We know what pardon means.
As I said earlier, there is a redemptive aspect to it, whether we go back to the Bible or various aspects of religion, if people apologize for something that expiates their guilt somehow or other. If people serve their time, pay their debt to society and all those notions, the state can tell the Parole Board to pardon them for their offences and they can now hold their heads high. A young fellow who did something stupid when he was 18 or 19 and is now 24 or 25 can say that he wants a fresh start and wants to be a citizen with a clean record . A pardon does that but the government wants to take that away.
A lot of things in this bill are reprehensible but that one is more than reprehensible. It is, in fact, punitive. I cannot think of enough words to express how wrong it is to tell someone that he or she can only be pardoned if the cabinet agrees, which is basically what is being said. The word “pardon” is still there but it is not available anymore unless the cabinet agrees to it. I do not know when the last time that happened, if ever. It is actually the royal prerogative of pardon.
We have the issue of drugs and the heavy use of mandatory minimums. However, I want to comment briefly on the things we did support in this bill. We are over here in opposition and the Conservatives like to say that anybody on this side who does not agree with everything they say is standing with child pornographers. I think in this case we were supposed to be—