Madam Speaker, two months ago, almost 10 years to the day after the passage of the Young Offenders Act, Nicholas Battersby was shot down in cold blood on an Ottawa sidewalk. Because the person who shot him was a young offender, we know very little about him. All we know is that he shot a man for a lark, for fun.
There was a big public outcry, lots of calls for tougher law enforcement, and the media and the usual brown shirted brigades of gun control lobbyists were braying that we should stop crime by getting tough on honest citizens.
This is something like a man who has two dogs, one vicious and one gentle. The vicious dog bites the postman and so to appease the postman the man shoots the gentle dog and then takes the vicious dog and tries to sweeten his temperament by overfeeding him.
What will happen to this young man? Because of the date of the crime I presume he will be tried under the old Young Offenders Act; but for the sake of this discussion let us say that he would be tried under the new one. It is less likely under the new act than under the old that he will be tried in an adult court for the simple reason that the new law will lead to interminable court delays with the new process of reverse onus that has been written into it. If he is convicted he will face a maximum of 10 years in custody, no minimum, of which perhaps 6 years could be in closed custody. Judging on the way the laws have been enforced to date that is all rather hypothetical and somewhat unlikel
What should be done with a person like that? I respectfully suggest that murder by a 16-year-old is no less harmful to the victim than murder by an 18-year-old. Therefore the penalty should be essentially the same. I am not suggesting immediate incarceration with older prisoners where the young fellow would be the plaything of sexual predators. That constitutes cruel and usual punishment by any standards and is unworthy of a civilized society.
We should have institutions designed to serve specific age groups. We used to have them. They were called reform schools. Some hon. members may say that is too expensive and we cannot afford it. If we could rehabilitate some of these young hoodlums perhaps it would be money well spent. It should not be expensive anyway; it need not be expensive. Young people incarcerated in a reform school could do useful work, including growing their own food which adult prisoners in the penitentiaries used to do and which we have done away with in most cases. Why do we not go back to that? When the young offender is not working to earn his keep he could be educated. Go easy on the pool tables and TV.
A 14-year old young offender in open custody was recently quoted as saying: "It is easy time; it is kind of like a playground: Disneyland or something". What is that young fellow learning about the justice system?
The proposed amendments to the Young Offenders Act are in our opinion purely cosmetic, a transparent attempt to pacify a public clamouring for meaningful change. The government's response to almost everyone's principal demand that the maximum of age of application be lowered from 17 years to 15 years is to be sloughed off with a silly and meaningless compromise requiring 16 and 17-year olds to establish, through a tedious and expensive court process, that they should not be tried in adult court for the most serious crimes: murder, attempted murder, aggravated sexual assault and so on. The cost and confusion will be enormous: a bonanza for lawyers.
Since both reverse onus and judicial selectivity are involved some lawyers will probably be able to seek the spotlight and beef up their incomes by mounting a charter challenge. This is
an act written by lawyers for lawyers. I think of the constituent who asked rather plaintively: "Can't you pass a law down there forbidding lawyers to run for Parliament?"
In the House on June 6 the hon. member for Saint Hubert said: "These motions will be similar to extradition proceedings. It is going to be a waste of energy and public funds and through it all young persons will learn how to foil the system and scoff at the law". I rarely agree with anything the hon. member says but I certainly agree with that. She was spot on.
Of course her proposed solution differs from mine. She would continue to treat these louts like poor little misguided children, subject to the same rules as 13 and 14-year olds. People of16 and 17 are not children, for heaven's sake. They hold down jobs. They drive cars. They have babies with or without the benefit of matrimony. If they are unhappy in the parental home generous social welfare will in most provinces provide reasonably comfortable independence.
Bill C-37, rather than ensuring that these older young offenders will end up in adult court, makes it less likely than ever because of the reasons I have cited. I do not want to sound like a nagging parent saying "when I was your age-", but at the age of 17 I was working in a bush camp swinging an axe to raise money so I could enter university. If anyone had dared to suggest to me that I was a child I would have been outraged. We do young people no favours by relieving them of responsibility.
One of the hon. members opposite probably will not believe this, but I can actually remember when I was 10 to 13-years old. My companions and I fought regularly but never dreamed of using the knives which as farm boys we all carried. We did not try to maim each other. We had an archaic code of conduct which might seem terribly quaint to the lawyers and social workers who have been trying to redesign our society.
You did not kick somebody who was down. You did not pick on little kids or gang up on anyone and you never, never hit girls. In other words, we knew the difference between right and wrong; so did my kids as recently as 20 years ago.
I venture to say to the young savages who terrorize their weaker classmates, vandalize property and give the finger to their powerless teachers, to exempt 10 and 11-year olds from the rules of civilized conduct is socially destructive madness. A child who gets away with it at 10 or 11 and whose parents are not held legally accountable for his or her actions learns a lesson which all the prattling counsellors and dreamy eyed social workers in the world cannot erase.
Now the minister tells us that section 43 of the Criminal Code which protects parents who do care about their kids and use reasonable force to discipline them is up for review. What strange world does the Liberal Party inhabit?
The road from uncorrected naughtiness to mean destructiveness to full blown delinquency is short and straight. The government owes it to the children of Canada and to the future of our society to re-enter the world of every day Canadians. Bill C-37 is a start, but only a start. Let us get on with it.
Madam Speaker, I neglected to inform you that I am splitting my time with the hon. member for Red Deer. I hope I can put that in now.
