Mr. Speaker, the whole issue of young offenders is extremely important, because everyone knows that young people will eventually be part of society. This is why the Bloc Quebecois has paid keen attention to everything surrounding the debates on the Young Offenders Act. It has repeatedly called on the minister not to touch the bill, which works successfully in Quebec. I will explain that in detail in the time allotted me.
I am going to try to prove that it is a good law, that it must not be touched and that it must simply be implemented as Quebec has done since its passage. The results in Quebec have been very good. I think everyone in this House agrees with that. Even the former Minister of Justice acknowledged this at a first ministers conference. He even expressed the hope that all the provinces would implement this legislation like Quebec. Unfortunately, we have before us a bill that is changing some things. I will speak of that in a few minutes.
I listened with much interest to the speech by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice—I find it all odd that the minister did not come to the House to defend the bill herself at second reading, instead of her parliamentary secretary—but I think he has failed to grasp the problem.
The government seems to have understood nothing of Quebec's approach. Worse yet, the parliamentary secretary is quoting people from the Institut Pinel, who have said repeatedly they do not want Bill C-3, or Bill C-68, as it was called during the previous session. The parliamentary secretary quotes people from the Institut Pinel. One has to be in a really difficult situation to have to quote people opposed to this bill in order to sell it in this House.
I also listened with interest to the comments made by the Reform Party. True to their vision of justice and to everything they have done since 1993, Reformers unfortunately gave a twisted picture of the situation. The Reform Party member called upon God and prayed. He does not want his children to get attacked by young people, and so on. This is a very negative and demagogic speech, one that should not be made here on legislation on young offenders.
To make such remarks is to mislead the public. These comments do not reflect the actual figures, which are not those of the Bloc Quebecois nor of the Government of Quebec, but those of the federal government and they show that the crime rate is declining among young people. That rate is dropping even for violent crimes, not by much, but it has been steadily falling in recent years, to the tune of about 1% to 2% per year. Quebec is the only province where this legislation is fully applied, and Quebec has played a major factor in that decline, since it has been getting very good results.
In English Canada, the further west we go, the higher the rate of recidivism and the percentage of young offenders. This is interesting, because application existing Young Offenders Act is less consistent as we move from east to west in English Canada, and least of all in the west.
Strange as it may seem, under the Liberals' current system, the less a province applies the Young Offenders Act, the more money it gets. I will get back to this later on. There is a bill that has been outstanding for years for which the government opposite has not reimbursed the Government of Quebec.
The Government of Quebec has decided to invest in people, and particularly in young people so that they can regain their anonymity as quickly as possible on leaving custody and become full-fledged members of society, while westerners are investing in concrete. The way the program is set up, the folks investing in concrete and prisons in which to hold young offenders as long as possible get money from the federal government, while those who enforce the legislation passed by the federal government, the government opposite, are penalized.
I can see why the former Minister of Justice did not keep his post for long: he supported the Government of Quebec's claim. I will come back to this a bit later.
To conclude my remarks about what the previous speaker said, I would like him to take a closer look at the statistics. I would like him to take a closer look at what is going on in his immediate surroundings and try to depersonalize the debate, look at objective figures.
Let him come to Quebec and see what is going on. Let him talk to people like those at the Institut Pinel. Let him read what eminent criminologists and university professors have written. Let him observe the approach taken by crown lawyers in cases. Let him examine the results in Quebec. I am certain that he will see that the approach he is recommending is not the right one.
That having been said, I will develop my argument further. I will begin with an extremely important quotation, just to make the point that it is not only recently that Quebec has been addressing the issue of young offenders.
After several years of application of the Young Offenders Act, a judge was mandated by the Government of Quebec to investigate how the legislation was being implemented, whether there was room for improvement in its day to day application. This made it possible to see whether the government could provide more support, more backing, to the agencies applying that act daily, and whether the legislation could be improved in order to help them more.
I refer to the report by Justice Jasmin addressing the young offender issue. His report was released in 1995. The debate has been going on for some time. Today we are discussing Bill C-3, which was numbered C-68 during the last session. Nothing was done over the summer, but I will get back to that later. I have a great deal to say and I doubt 40 minutes would be enough. I will try to give hon. members the main thrust.
The quote I am about to read from the Jasmin report fits in very well with today's debate. He writes:
It is often easier to amend legislation than to change our approach to a problem. It may be tempting to think that tougher legislation is the answer to the problems of delinquency. Simplistic responses blind us to the full extent of complex problems and create the false impression that we are doing what is necessary to resolve them. One such simplistic response is substituting get-tough measures for educational approaches. This loses sight of the fact that adolescents are still in the process of evolving and laying the entire blame for their delinquency at their door is implying that society and their environment were of no importance.
It was no weak conclusion that Mr. Justice Jasmin reached following his consultations. I support his conclusions 150%. If a young person 14 or 15 years of age commits a violent crime or kills someone—at the start of his life—I think society's approach is at fault. I think society is responsible for that somehow.
I am not saying that society must assume all the blame. When we look at the case a little, when we see a 14 year old or 15 year old committing such a crime—repugnant, I agree—when we look at this young person's situation, level of education, community and friends, we realize quite often that the parents are totally absent,. We realize that the young person has committed a very serious crime but is not the only one responsible.
Is “being locked up”, as they say in the lingo, going to resolve the problem? In the short term perhaps.
A 14 year old going to prison will be released one day, but the problem will not be resolved when that young person comes out.
Unfortunately, this is the approach advocated by the Reform members and, very disappointingly, no doubt in order to garner a few votes in the upcoming elections in Alberta, represented by the Minister of Justice, the minister gave in to the very right wing demands of the Reform Party.
As far as justice is concerned and especially as far as young offenders are concerned, Reformers and Liberals are tarred with the same brush. It makes no sense.
Earlier, I said that this was not the first time we have debated this bill, because it was first introduced by the Minister of Justice on March 11, 1999 as Bill C-68. Immediately after the bill was introduced, just reading the preamble and the first few clauses I felt that a major amendment was called for and that the government was tearing down huge portions of the Young Offenders Act, when there was nothing wrong with it.
Little by little, support grew. In Quebec, there was a significant public outcry at the time—we are talking about the months of March, April and May, 1999. The Government of Quebec defended its stand and then kept the heat on the Department of Justice. It brought out quotes from the former Minister of Justice in the same Liberal government to show that there had been a change in approach and that what one minister had said was plainly contradicted by his successor.
I would have thought the Minister of Justice would have given this issue some thought over the summer, because it is without a doubt one of the most important bills she will introduce in this parliament. What is passed today will affect generations to come. We cannot amend the Young Offenders Act every six months, or whenever the government appoints a new justice minister. This is probably the most important bill that the hon. member will introduce in her capacity as Minister of Justice.
I thought, wrongly, that the summer vacation would help the minister come to her senses. But no. Today, she is coming back with her old Bill C-68, which, through some administrative sleight of hand in the House, has now become Bill C-3. Nothing is changed in this legislation, even though many people clearly showed that it should be amended and even withdrawn, so that the current Young Offenders Act would remain in effect.
I told members that, as early as in March, April and May 1999, people in Quebec were unanimous in their opposition. In fact, I challenge the government to quote or to name a single Quebec organization applying the Young Offenders Act on a daily basis that supports the amendments proposed by the minister. Criminologists, social workers, police forces, legal experts, everyone is saying that the minister is headed in the wrong direction.
In Quebec, opposition is significant. It is very significant within the provincial government and I believe it will grow even more in the next few days. It may be that we have to send an even stronger message to the federal government. The Liberals may not have got it the first time.
I am told that, while opposition voiced in Quebec and the message sent by the coalition against the reform of the Young Offenders Act was ignored by the Minister of Justice and the Quebec Liberal caucus, it was well received by certain groups outside Quebec.
Opposition to this bill is increasing, not for the reasons advanced by the Reform Party but for the ones advanced by the Quebec coalition, which is against the amendments the minister proposes to make in this important area.
When a minister decides to intervene in something, no doubt this is because he feels justified in doing so. I indicated earlier that there had been a drop in the crime rate. It has dropped by 23% since 1991. In Quebec, where the young offenders legislation is enforced, the results are even more conclusive .
The intention of the bill before us is not to amend the Young Offenders Act. I say this because there are still members on the government side who maintain it is so. They say “The bill before you, members of the Opposition, is a bill to amend the Young Offenders Act”.
This is not true. Bill C-3 repeals the existing young offenders legislation. It starts completely from scratch. The government ought perhaps to acknowledge this. Regarding the Young Offenders Act as it is applied today—and I cannot get into it clause by clause because it is a highly complex piece of legislation—but I think that the hon. members will understand clearly why we are opposed, just from its main thrust, its main principles and orientations.
At the present time, it is section 3 of the Young Offenders Act in its present form—all judges up to and including the justices of the Supreme Court agree on this—that shows the true policy thrust the legislator wished to give to the legislation and what he intends to do with young people in conflict with the law.
Section 3 is very long and I will not read it in full, but I will read some of the principles by which a judge must be guided when he hands down a decision involving a young offender.
This section says:
Crime prevention is essential to the long-term protection of society and requires addressing the underlying causes of crime by young persons.
It goes on to say:
a) While young persons should not in all instances be held accountable in the same manner or suffer the same consequences for their behaviour as adults, young persons who commit offences should nonetheless bear responsibility for their contraventions.
b) Society must, although it has the responsibility to take reasonable measures to prevent criminal conduct by young persons, be afforded the necessary protection from illegal behaviour;
It is not true to say that the purpose of the present act is not to protect society. In the first three paragraphs of section 3, that is most certainly put forward as its purpose.
This section also says:
c) young persons who commit offences require supervision, discipline and control, but, because of their state of dependency and level of development and maturity, they also have special needs.
“Special needs” is an extremely important phrase in section 3(c) on which many judges, including those in the supreme court, have commented, pointing out that Quebec approached things differently by taking into account the special needs required in a given situation.
It also says, and I quote:
The protection of society, which is a primary objective of the criminal law applicable to youth, is best served by rehabilitation.
I hope that members opposite, including the parliamentary secretary who is paying close attention to my comments, realize that the existing act, passed by this government, provides that the social rehabilitation of young offenders is preferable to any other measure. This is what the current act says. In some cases, extrajudicial measures known as alternative measures should be considered for young offenders.
It is also said that while the Young Offenders Act provides for jail sentences, taking measures other than judicial proceedings should be considered.
The act also says that “Young persons have rights and freedoms in their own right, including those stated in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or in the Canadian Bill of Rights”. And so on. These are extremely important provisions.
Does Bill C-3 include anything similar? As members know, a bill is made up of a title, sections, parts and schedules. The content of the act itself is more important than what is found in the explanatory notes or in the preamble.
The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled on this issue and stated that while the preamble provides guidelines, one must look at the wording of the act itself.
None of what I read, which comes from the declaration of principle found in section 3 of the existing Young Offenders Act, is to be found in Bill C-3, which is before us today.
Instead, the government has included, probably to keep people quiet, a vague reference to these principles in the preamble of its proposed legislation. It is as if it were saying “Come on, you folks in the Bloc Quebecois, the principles are there in the preamble”. It is a meaningless sham. There have been court decisions that say so. When the whole bill is read, it becomes evident that the preamble is not reflected in the application of the legislation. The judges will have to interpret it, that is certain, but they will do so according to what is in the legislation.
It can be seen, then, that there is a considerable difference between the two texts, the current Young Offenders Act and the bill we have before us.
Another argument that is often raised by those on the other side of the House is flexibility. The Minister of Justice, or her department, has managed to cast a spell over a number of the Quebec Liberal MPs, or maybe the Prime Minister himself, since he must have had a hand in it all. They, because there is more than one, have told me “What are you complaining about? Quebec will be able to do as it pleases, there is flexibility; there is the possibility of opting out”.
Yet, upon examination, we find there is no flexibility. The flexibility the Minister of Justice talks about, to the effect that Quebec can do what it wants, the flexibility the minister claims there is in this bill and would make it possible to continue to apply the Young Offenders Act, is nowhere to be found.
Let someone show me where it is stated. I have gone through the bill more than once. I could not say how many jurists have looked at it in Quebec, how many institutions have studied it. No one, whether criminologist or lawyer, no one has found any clause that offered this flexibility to Quebec.
However, there is an indication that, under some circumstances, it could be done on a case by case basis. That is not funny. The minister can do what she wants with the bill, may I say, because she is introducing it, but she will not be applying it. That will be left to the provinces.
She is putting undue pressure on the crown attorneys who are going to evaluate, in each case, whether they will treat the young person as an adult or as a young person, who is therefore not fully responsible for his actions and deserves special attention. The Minister of Justice is not going to be the one to carry this burden. The Minister of Justice of this “beautiful, great, finest country in the world” known as Canada is not going to feel the pressure, but Quebecers will, because they will be implementing this law in Quebec.
With all the demagoguery I am hearing today, it will be easy to get a crowd together and put huge pressure on the crown attorney who will have a given case, who will have to draw conclusions, who will have to make recommendations. I think the minister lacks courage. If she wants to act this way, let her take on the burden and insist that young people in specific situations be treated as adults. She should not put that burden on the shoulders of one or more others. She should say so clearly, which she has not done in her bill.
There is also the whole principle of our not living in a closed society in Quebec. Even if we wanted—something I wish with all my heart—Quebec to be able to do as it wished in all areas, including justice, because we would be sovereign, we must for the time being live with the tools we are given. Quebecers must live with legislation passed by the Parliament of Canada.
They cannot completely shut it out of and say “We will have nothing to do with what is going on in English Canada concerning the implementation of the new act”. Incidentally, the title of the bill is rather telling. It reads “An Act in respect of criminal justice for young persons and to amend and repeal other Acts”.
It refers to “criminal justice”. Whatever happened to the guiding principle of the Young Offenders Act? We will not be able to remain silent. We will not be able to say that we will completely ignore what is going on. The lower and upper courts in the other provinces will interpret this legislation. Some day, their rulings will have a bearing on what goes in Quebec. Comparisons will be made and it will be difficult to reconcile flexibility with the imposition of similar sentences.
Indeed, the imposition of similar sentences is also a principle included in the new legislation. What does it mean? Does it mean that Quebec will have to impose a jail sentence on a young offender because Ontario does it? What does it mean in concrete terms?
Frankly, this is a useless and dangerous bill. It provides for harsher sentences. The government obviously decided to crack down on young offenders, but this bill does not reflect today's reality.
Let us take something else that is completely ridiculous, the publication of names. In what way will publishing the names of young offenders in newspapers help their victims? How will it advance the justice system to brand these young people for life?
There are no studies indicating that it would do any good to make their names public. There are no experts who think that publishing names will in any way reduce crime. I have never heard anyone say “I think that victims would feel better if they saw the name of the 14-year old who attacked them, raped them or killed someone's child in big letters in the newspaper. I think it would do me good. I think it would help me to get through all this”.
The ones pushing for this are the ones looking for sensationalism, the ones looking for easy votes on the backs of those dealing with these situations. What I fail to understand is that the so-called Liberal government across the way has decided to go along with them and allow the publication of names for certain crimes, specific ones I admit. This is completely unnecessary.
Let us look at the cost of a radical change in approach where young offenders are concerned. Even the minister admits that the reform she is proposing in Bill C-3 will involve additional costs. Even the Department of Justice is prepared to pay, since the government is getting tough and it looks good. How it is perceived by the public is more important than whether the public's real interests are being served. It is so easy to use a bill like this one for political gain.
I do not support that. I believe there is a better way of doing things.
Before introducing a new system, before introducing new principles, seeking new interpretations, trying to get the young people locked up, printing names, trying to solve the problem by getting it out of sight behind prison doors—when everyone agrees that prisons are the universities of crime—why not instead, keeping that in mind, say “We will free up $343 million more over three years for crime prevention and application”. I see the parliamentary secretary nodding in agreement, those are his department's figures. But before the government thinks of putting new funding into that, it ought perhaps to think of paying its bills.
The federal government owes the Government of Quebec the tidy sum of $87 million, because the Young Offenders Act is being enforced in Quebec and prisons are not being built as they are in western Canada.
The former Minister of Justice acknowledged at a federal-provincial conference of ministers of justice that the federal government owed Quebec money. The government ought to give some thought to paying us. It ought to think about writing us a cheque before it starts investing new money in a piece of legislation no one in Quebec wants.
In western Canada, the harmful effects of this legislation are becoming more and more evident, and people are beginning to understand the non-repressive approach used in Quebec. Ours is an approach of social rehabilitation. We believe that we are helping young people by investing in them when they are having problems with the law. When they are given help, I believe that 90% or 95% of them go back to being regular members of society, after their release.
There are very few repeat offences when the young people have properly followed the mandatory plan mapped out for them, when they have had the proper follow-up by specialists.
Since my time is getting very short, I will address my remarks particularly to all the Quebec members of this House sitting on the government benches. Where are the hon. members for Beauce, for Laval-Ouest, for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, for Verdun—Saint-Henri, for Outremont? Where is the former president of the Quebec bar association and now the member for Brome—Missisquoi? Why are they not opposing this?
