Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague who has just spoken. He has a seat on the justice committee, as I have, and I appreciate his input into justice matters, as I appreciate his comments today on this supply day motion.
I listened to most of the debate on this issue today and I was dismayed when I heard the parliamentary secretary to the justice minister use such strident vocabulary, couching her terms when she dealt with the Reform Party's approach to youth crime.
It is also more disturbing when I realize that she has access to the minority report I submitted and made public in response to the 10 year review of the Young Offenders Act.
We worked with the committee. We travelled across the country and listened to 300 witnesses from not only the various sectors of the youth justice system but also to parents whose children had gone off track in spite of all they could do.
The parliamentary secretary and the chairman of our justice committee knows full well our approach to youth crime. It is within our report and it is contained within the private member's bill I submitted to the House on September 26.
Our approach is early detection and prevention. We had experts appear before our committee who told us very clearly that aberrant and overaggressive behaviour can be spotted as early as grades 1, 2 and 3.
We compliment the Government of Quebec which has spent money on programs where a teacher, for instance, who sees a child who needs help and care can refer that child to a program of government where the child as well as the parents may receive assistance to keep that child on track. We support that very much and that is part of our approach to youth crime.
We very much favour the diversion of young people who come into contact with the law for the first or second time in a minor way out of the court system, away from the court system.
We saw some excellent programs not only as we travelled about the country but since then. Programs such as the Sparwood program and the Maple Ridge program have a very encouraging success rate in terms of directing these young children away from the court system.
A few weeks ago my colleagues and I met with Lola Chapman, a co-ordinator of the Maple Ridge program. They began three years ago as a court watch group. They saw the young offenders system was not working. It was not helping young people. They simply began by sitting in court, watching what was going on and reporting it to the newspapers by way of letters to the editor.
It caused some concern among the court officials because they did not like to see what was happening in that system as far as their dealing with young people and the lack of success being published in the media.
It eventually resulted in Lola Chapman and her 17 volunteers having young people referred to them by the police and now by the crown prosecutor, and their success rate is phenomenal.
Three years ago we were advised that there were 45 to 60 young people passing through the weekly young offenders court. When we spoke with her a few weeks ago, it was down to eight. That is a phenomenal success rate. We support that very much.
In addition to that statistic there are very encouraging statistics not only in her program but in the Sparwood program and other community programs emerging from the grassroots in spite of the young offenders system.
It is almost as an act of rejection to the young offenders system and these people are saying they want to do something to help.
The Maple Ridge program has a 94% success rate. What does that mean? We asked Ms. Chapman what she considered a success. She said any youth they accept into their program who does not reoffend within one year they consider to be a success. I agree.
In addition, in 100% of the cases where restitution was required full restitution was paid. We support that. As the parliamentary secretary knows, in our executive summary we have pointed to the need for the federal government to work closely with the provinces to initiate these kinds of programs to encourage them.
The attorney general from B.C. has now asked Lola Chapman to co-ordinate with other communities to see if she can help to move forward these kinds of programs so that we can keep our young people who fall off the track for the first or second time and who need the second chance to get that second chance from people who are volunteers and who are committed to them.
It was interesting to learn that when a young offender is assigned to one of those volunteers they stick with them. They are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They have the love and care for those young people that perhaps some of them need. That is one of the key elements to their success.
Those are the two first levels we very strongly advocate. Quebec has programs which I think are far ahead of some of the other provinces. We encourage some of the other provinces and the federal government to do what they can to provide the funding necessary.
Another interesting point is that the witness from these organizations such as the Sparwood program who appeared before the standing committee said they did not want funding. They said they would use the community resources because when federal and provincial funding is involved strings are attached and they wanted the flexibility to develop those programs to suit the community requirements, and every community is different.
We very much encourage that. It is also encouraging to hear that those programs are spreading. We talked to the RCMP in Trail, B.C. which has introduced a program with the community. It is having the same very high success rate. Over 90% of young people are being rehabilitated. We find that by and large rehabilitation in closed custody facilities simply has not worked.
The issue is very clear. To quickly get the young offender before he or she develops a hardened attitude toward the abeyance of laws and rules in the home, in the school and on the street is very important. We can deal with them in a way that they confess what they have done, they have to face the victim and the emotional expression, the groundwork is laid for the healing to begin. Those young people are often never a challenge or a problem to any member of society again in a criminal way.
In the area of federal responsibility we must not shrink from the use of incarceration in order to protect the lives and safety of members of society who are threatened by that very small percentage of very violent young offenders who do threaten the lives and safety of members of our society.
What would we do in that area? I want to briefly touch on the package the justice minister presented a week and a half ago. What she is recommending is of course only a recommendation. She has used unspecified terms without definition. We really do not know what the bill will look like. She promised one in the fall. It has taken her so long to bring even this proposal forward that we wonder why. We were able, without the battery of lawyers and bureaucrats the justice minister has access to, to bring in a private member's bill that does reflect the recommendations and the testimony of many of the witnesses who appeared before the standing committee.
When we look at her proposal there are two things I have a great deal of concern over. First she has completely ignored the recommendation of her own standing committee to lower the age from 12 to 10. She has rejected the research done by Professor Nicholas Bala who was commissioned by the justice department to do an in-depth academic examination of that very question. He did the most thorough research we understand that has ever been done in the country on the question as to whether or not the age should be lowered.
He recommended it be lowered and he had a very sound rationale for doing so. He pointed out that if a 10 or 11-year old commits a serious violent crime such as murder, rape or manslaughter, a child welfare response is an inadequate societal response to that type of very serious offence.
It also became evident as we gathered testimony from across the country that the older kids are using younger children to commit crimes, knowing full well they are immune to the criminal justice system. In addition, my own view is that the justice system forms part of our educational system. When our children learn that they are immune to the police and to the justice system for any criminal act they might commit until age 12, we are sending the wrong message to them. That is wrong.
It is an error for the Parliament of Canada to decriminalize by way of age what would otherwise be criminal acts. We are not inventing anything new. Under the old juvenile delinquents act the police and the justice system were charged with the duty and the responsibility of investigating and dealing with any criminal act committed by anyone over seven or eight years of age.
The recommendation that was rejected by the justice minister was simply to reduce it from 12 to 10 years of age, not back down to age seven, eight or nine. It was to move it down where the police have the authority to deal with a young offender, whom we cannot call a young offender because there is no offence for stealing a car by a 10 or an 11-year old.
There was a young person in that situation in Edmonton. He stole over 30 cars and the police could do nothing except bring the individual home and turn him over to the parents. The social welfare workers could not touch him because there was no evidence of neglect. They cannot act on a criminal matter because they do not have the authority. It is only the federal government that can issue laws dealing with criminal matters and then it is the responsibility of the provinces to administer them.
I would like to quickly touch on the whole area of the cost of the administration of the young offender system. The federal government passes the laws and the provincial governments have to administer the laws which costs money. They enter into federal-provincial financial agreements to do so.
The province of Manitoba is now entering into litigation to get out from under the administration of the Young Offenders Act. Why? Because the federal government is reneging on its financial responsibility in terms of the administration of the Young Offenders Act in that province.
When we asked the justice minister and the officials when they appeared before the standing committee during the estimates whether or not they had anything to offer Manitoba at that time to bring it back on side so it would not simply abandon the administration of the Young Offenders Act, there was nothing on the table. The government is not offering Manitoba anything. The minister is talking about $32 million in crime prevention yet one of the provinces is taking the whole issue to court to determine whether or not it can shed itself of a financial obligation of which the federal government has reneged on its part.
When we talk about funding for crime prevention the government is not even living up to the financial agreements that ought to be in place now. We find through our research that the federal government can renege and back away from any federal-provincial financial agreement it makes with complete immunity and has been supported by the Supreme Court of Canada. The Government of Manitoba knows that because it took it to the Supreme Court of Canada when Brian Mulroney was the prime minister of this country.
I want to touch on one other serious flaw I see in the package presented by the justice minister which she has promised to bring legislation in to support later this fall. She wants to have young offenders from ages 14 to 17 convicted in youth court for a series of violent offences. She has four areas of violent offences. Then the crown prosecutor will have to argue with the judge that an adult sentence should apply. This leaves the discretion to the judge as to whether or not an adult sentence or a sentence under the Young Offenders Act will be imposed.
We say that is wrong. We say that because the courts are unaccountable to the people, that discretion should be left with the agent of the attorney general who will be indirectly accountable to the people in a democratic fashion. The crown prosecutor should have the full discretion based upon the circumstances whether or not a violent young offender is moved into adult court and then if convicted, our courts have no alternative but to impose an adult sentence.
Why would we not want the judges to have this discretion? There are a lot of good judges in our judicial system at the provincial and federal levels. However we have seen what some of them have been doing with conditional sentencing. They have thwarted the intent of conditional sentencing, the intent of this parliament in conditional sentencing.
We are saying in this party and in this caucus that we would sooner give the discretion to the crown prosecutor who is indirectly accountable to the people through the attorney general of every province, rather than give that discretion to the judges. I say this not without a lot of dismay and concern and perhaps sadness. We have judges sitting on the bench who through their power and discretion of interpretation of the law and their use of the law, are using it in a manner not meant by the Parliament of Canada.
The former justice minister admitted in this House that he does not believe a conditional sentence is an adequate sentence for a conviction of rape. Yet we are seeing this happen all the way from B.C. right across the country to Quebec. Cases have been raised in this House.
Contrary to what our colleagues from the NDP say, I think the people of this country want those issues of crime and violation of the law and the destruction of people's lives raised in this House. What are we here for if we are not to do that, if we are not to show there are weaknesses in our criminal justice system? To suggest otherwise is utter nonsense.
Mr. Speaker, a degree of irresponsibility has created disdain for this House in the minds of too many people across the country and a disrespect for members such as yourself and myself. I should correct that. Not yourself, Mr. Speaker, but to myself and my colleagues. We are looked upon as do nothing people who just follow the whims of the leader, in this case the Prime Minister who does not really care about the victims of crime, who does not really care about the fact that since 1984 when the Young Offenders Act came in, the overall crime rate has risen 300% and the violent crime rate has risen 100%.
In closing, I thank the mover of this motion for giving me the opportunity to place the Reform Party's approach to youth crime squarely before the people. We want early detection and prevention. We want the diversion programs that are springing up across this country. We want them to expand. We want them to have the support of this government and the provincial governments.
We want the resources brought from the back end of an $11 billion justice industry to the front end. Not only will we spend a lot less money, but we will be investing money in the lives of these young people which will keep them out of the prisons and out of serious crimes.
