Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to speak to Bill C-37, which concerns young offenders, because this is a very important and very revealing bill. If we look at all the aspects of this bill, basically, it contains all the elements of a debate on social values.
As you know, Quebec is involved in a process that is leading up to sovereignty, and often people wonder why we in Quebec are doing this. People wonder what kind of society we want in Quebec. Well, this is a good example of the kind of legislation Quebec wants to avoid, the kind of legislation that does not reflect tendencies in Quebec at all. As long as Quebec remains in Canada, however, we will never be able to introduce legislation that, in my opinion, would be fairer and more equitable than Bill C-37.
When I say this could develop into a debate on social values, I mean that, when we talk about young offenders, we talk about young people, we talk about young people in our society and we also talk about violence. These are two subjects that go to the very heart of a society and reflect what is wrong with society. When young people commit violent crimes or commit suicide or are extreme in the way they act, it is because there is something very wrong with society.
It is symptomatic and also reflects all the problems besetting society. We cannot consider the issue of young offenders in isolation. We cannot isolate young people's problems as we would do in the case of transportation or more technical problems. We are talking strictly about the human, fundamental values in society. We cannot isolate this from the fact that we have poverty and unemployment, for instance, some of the factors by which society is defined. We cannot consider the problem in isolation. We cannot find the cause because there is no single cause.
An issue like that of young offenders must be approached with an open mind. We must consider what society is to us as well as our attitude to society and our attitude to justice within that society. We cannot take a short term view of this issue.
If we are to deal with the question of young offenders, we must have a comprehensive vision of society, a long term vision. Young offenders are a very serious problem that goes to the very heart of our society.
Once Quebec is sovereign, it will be a small and, I think, well integrated society. I think it will be able to come up with a real solution. In fact, the current legislation in Quebec that deals with young offenders is more advanced than what is being proposed by the federal government. I have the impression that a sovereign Quebec will be able to pursue this approach, to deal with the problem as we will deal with other problems, and that it will have a more enlightened sense of justice than what we see in Bill C-37.
I would say that, as long as Quebec is a part of Canada, we will never find a constructive way to deal with the problem of young
offenders, because Bill C-37 is an attempt to respond to the demands of people from the West, people who have a different perspective and take a different approach to the problem.
Bill C-37 is an attempt to respond to their concerns and their way of dealing with the problem. And consequently, this creates a problem for Quebec. It prevents us from going ahead with our own strategy.
As long as Quebec stays in Canada, there will be a jurisdictional tug of war, on this issue as on many others, because of the difference in vision. In this case, there is a very obvious difference between Western Canada and Quebec. Our two approaches are diametrically opposed.
This bill, which is an attempt to strike a balance, to respond to the demands of the West, will prevent the Quebec system from going ahead. It will be a waste of time and effort, it will not solve the problem, as I have been trying to explain, and will provide no remedy at all for the problem of young offenders. It is an exercise in futility and a waste of money, time and effort. I do not see anything constructive in Bill C-37.
In fact, the bill itself focuses particularly on young people 16 and 17 years of age, who are charged with serious crimes involving violence, such as murder. It would mean that these young people could be brought before adult courts. They can be sent to youth courts, but with this bill, they could be tried in adult courts.
If young people are tried in youth courts, the sentences will be harsher. The maximum sentence for murder will increase from five to ten years. The qualifying periods for parole will increase, parole will be harder to obtain, and the records of young offenders will be retained longer.
In short, this bill imposes stiffer sentences on young persons, particularly those who are 16 and 17 years of age. This is the spirit of this bill: impose harsher sentences on young offenders. But violence among young people is the work of a few. They do not represent a particular trend in society. They represent a very small proportion of young people-a few dozen.
This bill deals with a few exceptional cases, which do not represent any sort of trend in society. There is no distressing increase in violence by 16 and 17 year olds. The figures over some 15 years in this area reveal no sort of increase.
Until 1992, there was a five per cent increase in crimes involving young persons, but since then, the figure has been more like 2 per cent. This is the general crime rate among young people. This increase compared with the increase in population reveals no startling change.
All of the experts agree that the rate of serious crimes among young people, such as murder, manslaughter, aggravated assault, has remained stable or has decreased in the past decade. This is what the statistics tell us about the number of violent crimes among young people.
We cannot even say that violent crime has increased among young people, but we can say that there have been a few cases, the exception. For example, the two boys in England who killed a child of five or six, or other cases we can cite as examples of sensationalism, which were given considerable attention on television and in the newspapers.
Bill C-37 is in response to this sort of sensationalism or this perception. We are not dealing with a critical problem for society. There is no crisis; violence is not really on the rise among young people. This bill is trying to deal with very exceptional cases.
That is the nature of the problem with this bill. I would like now to address the consequences for young persons of calling for harsher sentences at this time. The consequences are, to be sure, the same as for older criminals, that is people in adult penitentiaries. The consequences are the same and every study by every expert confirms unequivocally that the sentence offenders receive has no influence whatsoever on the crime rate.
Imposing sentences of 10, 15 or 20 years will not reduce crime. Studies show this clearly. Moreover, in looking at the situation, it seems that the more sentences are increased, the greater the number of offenders. Go visit Canadian penitentiaries. I have had the opportunity to visit every penitentiary in Canada, from Dorchester to the B.C. maximum security prison, including the Saskatchewan maximum security institution. I worked for the Canadian Penitentiary Service and visited all Canadian penitentiaries and, looking at what goes on inside them. Considering the studies and statistics, one realizes that, once a person is sent to a Canadian federal penitentiary, there is a four in five chance that he will return a second time and the odds increase.
Canadian penitentiaries are training grounds for criminals, quite simply, and this is very easy to understand. If you go to Dorchester or any other prison, you will see how the law of violence rules these places. When they get out, people are already trained for violence, especially in Canadian penitentiaries as they were in my day, where there was no training of any kind, no rehabilitation or, if there was any, they were silly things such as programs to make mail bags.
Yes, there were a few little programs here and there, for training, education, but generally speaking there was no training, no rehabilitation program whatsoever. Prisoners were left to their own devices and when released from prison, the situation was clearly disastrous. There are organizations which try to help prisoners after their release, such as the Elizabeth Fry Society for women, and there is also an organization which tries to help released prisoners, I forget the name, but there is very, very little help.
In those days, the system was such that you could predict the number of criminals society would produce. In the penitentiary system, prison construction plans were drawn up for five or ten years down the road. In fact, when I was there, my job was to try to find cities where prisons could be built. The penitentiary system was a real industry within the government.
We therefore could predict when we could fill them. Obviously, that could serve some political purpose. In fact, some politicians thought that it was desirable to have a penitentiary in their riding because it created jobs.
We can agree that imposing longer and heavier prison sentences is not the solution. Nobody thinks that this is the way to help people who have committed serious crimes, especially young offenders. There is hope in setting up rehabilitation and training programs for young people. At least they can be rehabilitated. It is not by imposing heavier sentences that we can hope to rehabilitate offenders.
From the way this bill is taking shape, it seems that we will be able to send 16 and 17 year olds to penitentiaries. The 27-year olds leaving jail after 10-year prison terms will be hardened criminals. This resolves nothing.
In fact, Bill C-37 has sprung from a thirst for revenge. It was also created to please politicians from the right who think that heavier sentences will thin out the criminal element. It resolves nothing. It does not improve the lot of young people.
The bill itself is incoherent. It will create administrative problems and delays for Quebec, which has already taken the rehabilitation route. Quebec is already well on its way to helping young offenders, and Bill C-37 will slow us down in this endeavour.
It seems to me that anyone with a heart will realize that young people do not need to be put away, they need to be closely supervised. In my opinion, this is the best solution. Quebec already is on the right track, and a sovereign Quebec will be able to continue in that direction, not only when it comes to assistance for young offenders, but also when it comes to the issues of justice and violence. As a country, we will be able to propose real solutions, rather than measures like Bill C-37, which in no way resolve a very, very serious problem.
