Russell MacLellan

[Justice, June 16th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice has put before the House a record which in my opinion is enviable. He has brought forward legislation on young offenders and sentencing and amendments to the Criminal Code.

If justice is to be done laws must be framed properly. Not all the amendments we would like to see can be done at the same time, but reflection and due care must be given to the presentation and the formulation of these laws. That is exactly what is going to be done.

[Justice, June 16th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the hon. member that the Minister of Justice is in no way reluctant to define the term sexual orientation. He has expressed the seriousness of this question in the relevant situations.

It is going to require a good deal of study to deal with it. The Minister of Justice is now in the middle of doing this study with the department. We will not only have a definition of sexual orientation, but we will be able to bring forward to the House a program and a policy of which I think the House will approve.

[High-Speed Train, May 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, in terms of actual money transferred, Quebec and Atlantic Canada will still be better off than the rest of Canada. Taking into account the changes introduced on February 21, the Atlantic provinces as a whole will receive $970 in unemployment insurance per capita and Quebec $730 per capita compared with $575 per capita for all of Canada.

Historically Quebec and Atlantic Canada have each received more in benefits than they paid in premiums. On average each receives about $1 billion annually in transfers from Ontario and the western provinces.

The changes that we proposed to the unemployment insurance plan aim at putting people back to work. Small businesses asked us to give them a break and reduce unemployment insurance premiums so as to be able to create jobs for Canadians. This is what we did.

The unemployment insurance changes cannot be seen in isolation. They represent a first but interim step in giving Canadians a sense of new direction.

If in the redesigning of the social security system we find that different changes are needed, we will make them. There is no doubt that the proposed measures will impact on some unemployment insurance claimants. That is unavoidable. We have tried to make the changes in a manner that is fair and protects those with the greatest needs.

Unlike the previous government, we made sure that the changes took into account the needs of the poorest of the poor.

As we begin the shift from our current set of programs to something more comprehensive, we have decided to reintroduce a principle into unemployment insurance that was part of it for 30 years. That is we have decided to look at the needs of individuals with low incomes and with dependants and to provide more adequate coverage for these Canadians. These individuals will receive a 60 per cent benefit rate. Others will receive 55 per cent.

With the provinces and the territories we will initiate new programs targeted at the most chronically unemployed Canadians. We have dedicated $800 million over the next two years for these strategic initiatives to test out new approaches to social security.

[High-Speed Train, May 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice recently indicated in this House that the government is committed to enacting more effective gun control legislation.

He has said that the government is looking at all of its options and that it will be introducing measures in this House in due course.

I speak for many members of this House when I say that I am concerned about the levels of violent crime in this country. Canadians are afraid of violence and they want their government to take strong measures not only to stem the growth of violence but also to reduce it. They are afraid that values in other countries where citizens are allowed easy access to firearms will take root in Canada.

The minister has indicated that the government is considering its options, one of those being more controls on handguns. There may be some legitimate use for handguns but in my view these should be the exception and not the rule. They should be carefully screened and under close control. Handguns are the most useful type of firearm for many common offences.

In the United States where they are not under the type of restrictions found in Canada, they are the most commonly used firearms in crimes such as armed robbery and homicide. In Canada, they are already under strict controls and criminal misuse is less common but it is increasing.

In previous years handgun homicides represented about one-third of all homicides from firearms. In the last year or two this has risen to about one-half of all firearms homicides. Under the circumstances, complete prohibition of handguns must be an option. If this does not prove feasible, then the government should act to make sure that only those who actually require handguns are allowed to possess them and that strict and effective controls are in place for those who do possess them.

The minister said that he is looking at these options. I am confident that these options include measures to respond to concerns about handguns. As the hon. member well understands, the subject of gun control has a long and contentious history in this House. When the government brings forward its proposals I am sure that they will receive close scrutiny. I am sure that this House will respond to the calls of Canadians for strict and effective gun control and that the response will also be a response to the concerns raised by the hon. member.

[Supply, May 12th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to make a couple of comments on the hon. member's speech.

I know about the concerns she has with respect to the children in school. I believe we have all encountered them and we have all heard about them, sometimes from our own children.

The problem is that what she is saying is not going to, even if we agreed with her, make any difference as far as the Young Offenders Act is concerned because we cannot incarcerate those children for threatening and intimidating other children. What we have to do is work in the community.

There is a lot of hypocrisy by the provinces on this. They want changes to the Young Offenders Act but what they do not mention is that they are responsible for children under the age of 12. They would like to have people believe that there is nothing they can do to help those children through the Children's Aid and other means such as education through the school system. They would like to blame the fact that these children are at risk and not being helped because the federal government will not lower the age. It is the provinces who refuse to do what they should be doing for these children under 12.

I want to ask the hon. member one question. I ask her in good faith because I really want to know and it would be helpful. When we talk about 16 and 17-year olds the examples used are always with regard to murder and violent offences. Does the hon. member feel that is where the changes should be made while keeping 16 and 17-year olds who commit offences that are non-violent within the Young Offenders Act? Is that a possibility? Is she saying that is something that could be done?

[Supply, May 12th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think we are saying that at all. I said that when we take 16 and 17 year olds out of the young offenders system we are taking them not only for violent crimes. We are taking them out of the system for theft and vandalism. We are taking them out of the system for everything.

For purposes of murder and other serious crimes that is something we have to deal with in the legislation the minister brings forward. Hopefully there will be changes. If not, there will be the ability of the committee to determine any changes.

Sending 16 and 17 year olds to prison and having them sexually and physically abused will not help society when those young people get back on the streets. Punishment has to happen. When we talk about parents who have lost their children because of murder by a young offender, there is no one in the House who has a lock on sympathy and downright remorse for what happened. Anybody in the House, particularly myself, would love to do something that would be helpful to those parents.

This is why I say crime prevention to stop it from happening to somebody else has to be something that we have first and foremost in our minds. Eighteen is an internationally recognized age. Sixteen, eighteen or whatever will be before the justice committee. Every member on the committee will have a chance to examine that aspect of the legislation.

[Supply, May 12th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for that question because I think it is very helpful.

The examination by the justice committee will be without any kind of bounds or governors, whatsoever. The committee is free to make whatever recommendations and proposals it wants. There will not be any attempt to try to restrict the thinking or the activity.

I would go so far as to say that the legislation the Minister of Justice will be bringing forward in June and will be passed prior to the report of the justice committee is open for review, even though it would be passed before the actual study by the committee.

[Supply, May 12th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of the hon. member. I must say I agree with a lot of what he has said.

It is a concern. In the province of Quebec a year or so ago they advertised publicly for women who were being abused to come to the shelters or to the available facilities to receive treatment and help. Within a matter of a few weeks the facilities were so overloaded they had to stop the advertising. That gives us an idea of the problem there.

With respect to assistance, assistance has to be maintained. The Minister of Human Resources Development understands that. I have spoken with him on this matter. I made another suggestion which the provinces could maybe deal with. We have a pilot project in New Brunswick where a thousand or so older members of society who are 55 to 65 years of age but not retired are guaranteed so many weeks work in the community. There is no reason the work in the community could not be with young people, dealing with children at risk. We have people with knowledge of computers and various sports organizations who could perhaps work with some young people in society.

There are ways to do it. If all members of the House come forward with suggestions and we work together we can do it. With the co-operation of the provinces we can make a meaningful contribution.

[Supply, May 12th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, prostitution and juvenile prostitution in society are escalating. We could say there are more pimps under and over the age of 18 years than there were ever before. That is a fact in our society; that is happening.

To say that this is a reason for toughening the Young Offenders Act does not make sense to me. There are laws to deal with pimps and those who profit from youth prostitution. We have to look at those laws. We have to examine them to see if they are strong enough. There is no question. That is why I raised it.

The fact of the matter is that we have to look at why we have 16-year old pimps. How does this happen in society? Will punishing them stop it? It has never stopped it before. The only way we can stop it is to try to get to the root of the problem in society. We have to do that.

To say it is simplistic and we are glossing over the problem is the furthest thing from the truth. Crime prevention and citizen participation in crime prevention are everybody's business.

[Supply, May 12th, 1994]

-but also from the concern of the young people themselves. We must look at the young people as being part of the people of Canada.

There is tremendous concern in the public but it is a concern for the safety of Canadians. It is concern with the youth and it is concern about where we are going as a country. We need to look at this question completely.

The hon. member who presented the motion states that we should reduce the maximum age of the young offender from 18 to 16 and the minimum age from 12 to 10. This is a dramatic change and one that will come up in our study of the Young Offenders Act in the fall.

Let me take the first part, the reduction of the maximum age from 18 to 16. We are saying that there has to be punishment for young offenders but we are not saying that young offenders are going to be put away for the rest of their natural lives. Even if we have transfers and these young people serve the full 25 years, someone who is 17 will be out before even middle age.

We have to acknowledge that these young offenders will be back on the street. What kind of people are we going to put back on the street? We send some young offenders, 16 to 18, to a maximum security penitentiary. Some might have to. Some might be considered as incorrigible.

As a rule of thumb, if we take away the Young Offenders Act for that two year period we will be sending young people 16 and 17 years old to penitentiary, not necessarily for murder and not necessarily for violent crimes. That is not going to be in the act. There is no way of saying we have to restrict these young people going to maximum security because they committed a murder or a violent crime. We are taking them off the Young Offenders Act. They will have to forage for themselves if they are in the system in the same way as somebody 35 or 40 years old. They will be in a penitentiary and open to sexual and physical abuse.

If that is what the hon. member and the Reform Party wants, then they should come forward and say it. However, that is not going to give us the type of person we want in our society upon release after they have paid their debt to society. What we want to do is try to put somebody back in society who is not going to reoffend, not somebody who is so mad and bitter at society and what it has done that they will want to reoffend to get back at society.

Sure, there has to be protection. Certainly we have to protect the victims. There is no question that legislation first and foremost has to be concerned with that, but we also have to have rehabilitation. There are people who say that rehabilitation is just soft peddling the treatment we are going to give to the offender but that is not the case.

Rehabilitation is going to be a vital part of our society whether we like it or not. If we do not have rehabilitation for children at risk in one form or another we are going to have chaos in our society. Our young people are going to be the source of criticism for all of the adults in Canada.

Why should this be? Why should we in Canada be at war and at loggerheads with our own youth? Why should we say we are making young people the objects of concern and fear in our country? Young people are committing crimes and we say they have to be punished. They have to be punished with the victim and the Canadian public primarily in mind, but remember also the fact that the youth will be back in our society.

That is just one aspect and it is not the one which is going to have the utmost importance in the long term. We have to punish the offenders now. More important and for a more sweeping benefit to society, we have to do everything we possibly can to stop crime from happening in the future.

That is why the main thrust of this government in justice and public safety has to be crime prevention. That is not just crime prevention of those who have already committed crimes; it is to prevent crime from happening.

As we learned in the justice committee in the last Parliament, the older a young person is, the less likely rehabilitation is to have an effect. It is vitally important that rehabilitation start at the very moment children are determined to be at risk. A psychiatrist who appeared before the justice committee told us

that the most important age for preventing children at risk and dealing with this concern is from the day the child is born to his or her third birthday. That is a very young age.

We have to look at this. We have to look at custody. We have to look at foster homes. So many young people are moved from one foster home to another. There is no bonding with any one family. That is a concern we will have to deal with.

We are concerned that there are single parents who have to work but do not have anybody to look after their children after school because they cannot afford daycare. That is something we will have to consider. We may not like it and we may not think we should be bothered with it but we have to consider it and deal with it.

There is divorce in this country and there are single parents. We have to recognize that these things are in our society and we have to work together. This is one community. We have to bring the provinces onside about rehabilitating young offenders, about diversification programs and community work instead of putting them in detention.

We also have to do something in the schools. The federal government cannot tell the provinces what must be done in the schools; it is a provincial jurisdiction. Sure we have the Canada food guide and we tell young people what they should and should not be eating, but we have to respect the Constitution. However we have to work with the provinces on spotting these children at risk while they are in the schools to try to deal with them. We have to support our teachers and one another provincially and federally in this very important area. If we do not, we will surely lose many of our young people.

Young people do commit crimes and it is a tragedy for the victims. The victims are going to lose their children who in many cases have been murdered by young offenders. The parents will never get over this ultimate tragedy. Surely there is no greater tragedy for a parent. I do not think anyone in this House would minimize that. Every time I think about this it sends chills through me. That is something we are going to have to deal with regarding young offenders and a punishment will be needed.

However we also have to try to spot these young people who may commit murder or other crimes in the future, and rehabilitate them before they actually commit a crime. That is a vital aspect of the society in which we live.

The most important area is one we keep covering up and that is child abuse. It is now being determined that as high as 80 per cent of adults who commit child sexual abuse were themselves sexually abused. The studies show no differentiation indicating that a child who is sexually abused one time as opposed to 20 times that the child is going to be more of an abuser or less of an abuser.

The fact remains if a child is sexually abused we can say without any hesitation that child stands a greater than 50 per cent chance of abusing a child. That is a frightening statistic. However, if we do not start dealing with crime prevention, it is going to escalate. Child sexual abuse will be with us in at least the proportions it is now.

We have to address this concern. We have to because it is ruining children's lives. We have to look at the question of child prostitution. There are pimps who use children of any age now, 12 years or younger, but certainly under the age of 18 and they profit financially from their prostitution.

What is that doing to those young people? What kind of punishment are we giving these pimps? Some would say it is absolutely devastating the lives of those young people. It is psychologically hurting and damaging them beyond repair. Their adult lives will not have anywhere near the meaning they would have had if this had not happened to them.

These are questions society has to deal with. How are we going to deal with them? Sure, we are going to deal with crimes by punishing the offenders, but we as Canadians have to examine this whole question of children at risk in our society.

This has to be done by bringing forward a national council on crime prevention, as the Minister of Justice is proposing. It will have representatives from various federal and provincial departments and other organizations. It will look at this whole question and at legislation to see if it deals with every aspect that could lessen and prevent crime in our society.

As communities we have to get people working together: the police, Children's Aid, Elizabeth Fry, John Howard, drug dependency, and Alcoholics Anonymous. As individuals in our community we have to look at this question from the point of view of children in our neighbourhoods and stop crime before it happens. We have to help young people, not as parents, uncles, aunts or other relatives, but as members of the community. We have to realize that unless we do that we are going to have escalating offences by youth.

We have to look at it from that point of view, but the fact is we are not. In some of our cities there are young people of colour who have come to Canada from other countries with minimal education. They may be 16 or 17 years old. They are not going to sit in a classroom with children 10 years younger than they are. They do not have jobs. There is still a lot of prejudice out there. There is also the fact that we are not employing our young people the way we should. There are things against these young people.

What are they going to do? They want those things young people feel they can aspire to, so a lot of them turn to drugs and crime. We have to examine that. We cannot ignore that in our inner cities. It has been ignored in the United States and look what has happened. There are certain parts of cities in the United States the police will not even go into. Is that what we want? No.

We have to salvage these lives not only for the benefit of the individuals themselves, but for all Canadians so that they will be contributing to our country's future. This country is going to be in the hands of these young people in a few years.

I want members of the House to talk to young people. I do not want them to forgive their crimes. I do not want them to say the crimes they are committing are right or that they are misunderstood. That does not help them. It does not help to put them in detention and have them play pool and watch television. They have to realize this is a harsh world. They know this, but it is from a different perspective.

Young people are really scared. They do not see a future for themselves. They do not see the jobs. A lot of them have problems in school and at home. A lot of them feel society is mixed up. We are not concerned with one another and that bothers young people. Young people do not become cynical and uncaring until they become adults. Young people are concerned that we are not looking out for one another and that we are not listening to their concerns. We must listen.

We have to start with identifying children at risk. We have to look at our society and ask how as Canadians we can help these young people. If we do that we will reduce crime. If we can stop sexual child abuse we will help future generations. We will be working with Canadians of the future. We have to bring forward changes to the Young Offenders Act because society is ahead of us; we have not kept pace with the situation out there right now.

It gives me no pleasure to say that we have to create harsher penalties for young offenders; but we have to because of the situation that exists right now. We have allowed the situation to get out of hand. We as parliamentarians cannot allow it to become worse. We cannot allow the situation to escalate.

We have to deal with crime. We have to deal with the causes of crime. We have to say to our young people: "We want to work with you for the benefit of Canada. You obey the laws and we will do our best to understand what you are going through and what your problems are".

Eighteen is the age used throughout the world. It is the age recognized by the United Nations. Rolling the age back from 18 to 16 will not help youth in our society. The government will address changes to the Young Offenders Act beginning in June. We also have to address the causes of crime and understanding our youth.