Mr. Speaker, it is of course my pleasure to take my turn to speak on Bill C-37. As my colleagues already mentioned several times, the Bloc Quebecois finds this bill totally unacceptable for many reasons. The short time I have been allotted only allows me to gloss over the four main reasons.
As I said, there are four major reasons why we do not accept this bill. Firstly, the bill's methodology is incoherent; secondly, in many respects, it is poorly designed and is very ambiguous;
thirdly, it imposes on Quebec nation wide legislation, although we already have the best system in this area in Canada; fourthly, it is doubtful the bill will be effective.
This bill is incoherent. I hope that my hon. colleague will listen, and he will see what I mean. The minister is proposing important changes to the act that the committee will be carefully studying later on. Obviously, the time to do a study is before and not after the changes are made. This is a classic case of putting the cart before the horse. Furthermore, the Quebec Bar Association's paper, from which I will read a few passages, fully agrees with this analysis.
The bar association stated that, regarding this issue, it could only deplore the decision to start by amending the law, and then to backtrack and carefully study the legislation and juvenile delinquency. In addition to acknowledging Quebec's success in the area, starting at the other end would have made it easier to identify the specific mechanisms needed for the system to work well and the preliminary study of juvenile delinquency would have allowed to take stock of the outcome of the 1992 changes. This bill has already been amended. No one has evaluated the consequences, yet, we are getting ready to once again amend it and to do studies after the fact.
And the bar association ended by saying that it had reached the inevitable conclusion that Bill C-37, currently under consideration, should be withdrawn. It acknowledged that this was politically out of the question and that the minister had doubtless already made a public commitment. It proposed that the minister at least suspend consideration and first study the situation of crime among young people and look at the overall structure of the Young Offenders Act and then only return to the legislative amendments.
There is a another reason we find this awkward and highly ambiguous bill unacceptable. We have cited many ambiguities here in the House in the past few days, since we started discussing the bill. I would like to draw attention to some of them, in passing, before going on to other points.
Clause 1 of Bill C-37 introduces statements of principles into the act to the effect that crime prevention is essential to the protection of society and that a multidisciplinary approach is required to put an end to the problem.
Clause 15 of the bill provides that custody is not a substitute for appropriate child protection or health measures. It also provides that the courts should consider other alternatives before contemplating custody. Such statements are entirely in keeping with the Bloc's statements, of course. However, the bill does not speak about the actual alternatives. The bill talks of alternative solutions, but no effective measures are provided to carry them out.
Another argument is as follows. One of the major points of this bill is the amendment to arrangements for transfer to an adult court. Under the current system, youth court is supposed to bear society's interests in mind, notably public protection and social reintegration of the young person; at the same time, it must ascertain whether these two objectives can be reconciled while retaining jurisdiction over young persons. Otherwise, the young person must be transferred to adult court.
Clauses 3 and 8 of Bill C-37 introduce amendments providing for 16 or 17 year olds charged with criminal offences involving serious bodily harm to be automatically transferred to adult court. These criminal offences are first or second degree murder, attempt to commit murder, manslaughter, aggravated sexual assault and assault. Bill C-37 stipulates that a young person sent directly to adult court could nevertheless ask a youth court judge to hear his case.
In cases of 16 or 17 year olds charged with serious bodily harm, the burden of proof is thus reversed in regard to transfer to adult court. This young person would in fact have to convince the youth court that it is suited to judge his case. Under present provisions, the crown must convince the judge to transfer the young person to adult court.
Thus this serves to a create of a hierarchy of age groups in respect of the courts. However, while the legislation does not distinguish between 12 to 15 year olds and 16 and 17 year olds, these amendments will change the way they are dealt with for offences involving serious bodily harm. Certain lawyers might argue that this represents a violation of the right to equality before the law granted under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
On the other hand, subclause 13(3) of the same bill provides that maximum sentences imposed for first and second degree murder be increased from five years to ten and seven years respectively. In cases of first degree murder, the maximum period of custody is six years to be served continuously and seven years for second degree murder, with four years served continuously.
These harsher sentences are not justified given that homicide rates have dropped since the 1970s. Furthermore, it seems that 16 and 17 year olds are responsible for the vast majority, or about 60 per cent, of murders committed by teenagers. The bill provides that they will be transferred to adult court and tried according to adult rules. The impact of these increased sentences will not be as significant as one would think at first. Everything seems to indicate that the burden will fall mostly on the shoulders of 12 to 15 year olds, something which is not justified by crime statistics.
Finally, the act was amended before in 1992, as was pointed out earlier, to increase sentences to five years in murder cases. Since statistics are not up to date, there is no way to check the effect of the 1992 amendment at the present time. How can another amendment be justified at this stage? Why not wait to find out the impact of the 1992 amendment before taking more repressive measures? That is what the bar association is wondering.
Finally, this is a Canada-wide piece of legislation, which would force Quebec to adopt procedures when Quebec already has its own rather remarkable ways of doing things. I would like to, once again, quote some of the comments made by the bar association: "It is important to note that Quebec did not address the problems in the same way as the rest of Canada. As a result, the problems are rarely experienced in Quebec and it would therefore be more appropriate to preserve the overall status quo than to modify a proven system. On the other hand, we must conclude that the same results could be achieved in the rest of Canada with adequate material resources".
The bar association recognizes that one of the major flaws in this bill is the lack of resources that we are willing to allocate to our young people's social reintegration. I would also like to mention what a colleague from the Liberal Party, the hon. member for London West, said recently. I think she is absolutely right. She said: "If I were a youth in trouble with the law today, I would much rather be in Quebec than anywhere else in Canada. Quebec takes a much more progressive interpretation of the Young Offenders Act. More diversions tactics are used to prevent young people from being tried. I think that we can and must follow its lead".
But it is not the case here. The federal government is not following the lead of Quebec, but rather trying to impose upon Quebec an unduly punitive legislation under the circumstances, since, as we know and as my hon. colleague from Quebec just mentioned, Quebec is the province who achieves the best results while using the least repression.
Finally, one can very seriously doubt the effectiveness of this legislation because nothing, at present, indicates that crime is reduced in inverse proportion to the length of sentences. I will conclude on this. At the same time, and many of our colleagues raised this point, the public is being hugely sensitized to crime nowadays.
Just take the United States, the best example of a place where you find both maximum repression and maximum crime. We do not think that the present circumstances justify a stiffening of legislation to solve what is more than anything else a profound social problem that requires a multidisciplinary approach. And in this respect, Quebec's lead should be followed.
