Serge Ménard

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, November 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, if it involves one of the circumstances proposed in paragraph 29(2)(c), generally, the judges I know would keep that young offender in custody. Once again, this does not change things much.

An important point that I wanted to emphasize and I will continue to emphasize is that young offenders must be sentenced and dealt with on a case-by-case basis. I understand that, in this instance, it is before he or she is convicted, that it is a question of bail, but all decisions must be on a case-by-case basis. It also depends on the young offender's family situation and the family support involved, the circumstances in which the crime was committed, and so on. The major flaw in Ms. McLellan's reform was that the legislation is too objective.

I had prepared an argument, but I did not have the time to discuss it. I remember one judge I know well, a classmate of mine, telling me about a young offender who appeared before her for trafficking in a small amount of drugs. He already had a previous conviction for something else and he had complied with his conditions. He wore designer clothes; he had an apartment, a car, a cell phone, and she knew very well that, in all likelihood, if he was trafficking in small quantities, he was distributing it for others or he was in contact with other dealers. He was seventeen and a half and she therefore had only six months to do something with this young man. Under the McLellan legislation, since he had complied with the conditions that had been imposed and since it was a small quantity of drugs, she was forced to release him, although she would have liked to send him elsewhere.

It must be understood that, when referring to a good system, it is not a question of whether the system is slack or tough, severe or lenient. The system must be appropriate, with the right measure at the right time.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, November 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, this is not a case where the young person would be affected by the bill. In the cases presented here, the individual must be accused of a violent crime. In your example, if I am not mistaken, it is the youth's first offence. Thus, he is not a repeat offender and is not subject to any conditions. It appears very likely that he will observe the conditions. I think that the law, as it is currently applied, would be no different in his case.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, November 22nd, 2007]

Excuse me, I was distracted.

I have to speak to you, I prefer to speak to you. I need human contact, especially to talk about these things. Right? You can see that there is no need to intervene with this youth or to take him before a court.

Let us take another example. A youth steals some jewellery, tools or something else that he will probably sell. Even if it is the first time, we must know how to intervene. If you have a tiered system, where you speak of a first offence and then a second offence, that is not the right system.

A youth commits a crime: you have to know how to interpret this sign. In the first case, you would let him go. In the second case, even if it was a first offence, I believe that you would have to intervene.

Let us go to the other extreme and look at murder, which is much more serious. A youth, together with two or three others, steals from some seniors and beats them to death.

We will definitely take a very tough stand with these youths.

In another case, a young person has an alcoholic father who beats his wife, does not look after the children and even beats them. The youth ends up killing his father. This is serious and it will be taken seriously, but the approach will be completely different. It is the same crime, but each requires a different solution because the youth's circumstances will be taken into consideration as well as the fact that one day this youth will be an adult and he will have to function in society.

I remember that, at the time, of the 35 young people who had committed murders in Quebec, none had become repeat offenders. Only one committed other crimes later. Good results were obtained thanks to the competence of the judges, the training and the system in place.

However, what I am hearing from the minister worries me a great deal, and it will be even worse for the future. The word “prevention” is missing from his remarks. He makes no reference at all to the principles of psychology or of criminology, and I know why. It is because he believes that the principle of criminology is to put them all away, right? It is not that at all. It is a matter of knowing how to take the right measure at the right time. To that end, it is necessary to allow a great deal of discretion to the judges who try these cases and who must be able to direct these young people to various institutions.

I also hear a great many remarks that demonstrate to me that the purpose of this legislation is not to ensure that young people, when they become adults, will no longer be a danger to our society. Rather, it is legislation that responds to perceptions, because people perceive that there is an increase in criminal activity.

As politicians, what should we do if we know that those perceptions are wrong? I know that other people in my riding also think that criminal activity is on the increase. Yet it has been decreasing on a regular basis for the past 25 years. Criminal activity decreased until last year, especially among young offenders.

Those perceptions are rather normal, given that the statistics are not emphasized. Regardless, in general, since 1990 criminal activity among young offenders has decreased in Canada. It would be hard to persuade the majority of that, they will not believe it. Why? Because the statistics are published in the newspapers, once a year, beside the obituary notices. In contrast, whenever a serious crime is committed by a young person, unfailingly, it makes the headlines.

Public perception in relation to crime is based on the headlines that we read every day. Thus, it is consistent. People always believe that crime is increasing, even when it is decreasing.

However, I want to respond to the challenge issued by the member for Kitchener—Conestoga, who thinks he can challenge anyone in this House. I would ask him to confirm for me whether he is not almost harassed by his constituents who tell him that young offenders should be more severely punished.

For my part, I am not harassed by my voters. It must be said that the worst of the United States also rubs off on Quebec. Sometimes, people say to me that a certain punishment is terrible, and so forth. I answer them calmly and explain to them a little of what I explained earlier. I tell them that we still get good results and, above all, that we must not follow the American example.

This shows me something. I am a sovereignist. But I was not born a sovereignist, I did not grow up in a sovereignist environment and there were not many sovereignists around when I was a teen.

I supported the Rassemblement pour l'indépendance nationale, but really, my ideas fit in with the Mouvement souveraineté-association. Because of our history, the country I love the most, besides Quebec, is still by far Canada, because we have things in common. Yet I still remember my ideal as a teenager, which was to live in a great country in which there were two important nations, with the contribution of the aboriginals and others. I thought that since we came from two great European countries that had made so many contributions to science, the arts and so forth, this would be a good combination and we could enrich each other.

However, once again, I can see that most people are unable to see something good when it is right in front of them. One thing we should at least do with Quebec is to go back to the old way of dealing with young offenders, which was very successful. This just proves to me that we would truly be better off to live separately—we would remain neighbours—and to enjoy sovereignty.

That is why the Mouvement souveraineté-association appealed to me the most. Even so, back when I joined the movement, I thought that there were some things we should definitely have in common, such as criminal law. We do agree on that. People in Quebec are not very keen on the French criminal law system. We prefer the basic principles of the adversarial system and so on.

Nevertheless, what I have been hearing from the other side is giving me more and more reason to doubt. I am becoming, astonishingly, more of a separatist than a sovereignist. This is a good example of why. Why is it that westerners are always trying to copy the United States? Why not look for a solution right here at home?

In a way, I understand. I was looking at the crime statistics, which are a little scary. Take crime rates, for example. In Quebec, that rate is 5,909 per 100,000 people, but out west, in Manitoba, it is 11,678; in Saskatchewan, it is 13,711; in Alberta, it is 9,000; and in British Columbia, it is 11,000. I can see that members on the other side of the House have the perception of problems. Still, perhaps they should look eastward for better solutions. After all, Quebec's homicide rate is a lot lower than Canada's.

The last thing that I do not understand is this: some members of the government are from Quebec. Are they aware that our way of dealing with young offenders is a good model? I am not saying it is a success, because success would imply that there is no juvenile delinquency, which will never be the case. However, if we compare Quebec's success rate to those of Canada and the United States, it is a model. Why can those members not persuade their government to consider the Quebec model?

Once again, this shows how limited Quebeckers are in federal government. Our party's founder himself discovered those limits. Just like me and many others, he proposed full sovereignty for Quebec with close ties and strong friendship between our two nations.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, November 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I come from Quebec, and I took a special interest in youth justice when I was a minister and also in my law practice. I am not an expert in this area, and I do not claim to be.

Nevertheless, I would like to explain what has been done in Quebec and why we take such a different attitude from the rest of Canada. I would also like to explain why the architects of our youth justice system do not understand why the rest of Canada has never taken note of the success we have achieved and used Quebec as a model when drafting new legislation on young offenders, instead of looking to American models. Ours are based more on European models, but also on models suggested in the United States by people who study criminology and psychology.

In 1998, I attended a meeting of ministers of justice in the midst of an election campaign. I went to talk to the ministers of justice in the middle of an election campaign because I had something to tell them before they changed the legislation. At the time they were discussing a bill introduced by Ms. McLellan.

Canada had a juvenile crime rate at the time that was 50% greater than the rate in Quebec. That was not purely by chance. The political parties of all stripes in power in Quebec over the previous 30 years had always taken very seriously this primary concern with the rehabilitation of young offenders. An entire profession was created to deal with it called psychoeducation.

Rather than spending our money to build institutions, we put most of it into the training and treatment given to young offenders and the training provided to judges. I can recall the chief justice of the youth court in Quebec summarizing in a few choice words the attitude of the Quebec courts: the right measure at the right time.

This is a very subjective process, of course, but it is objectively justified. When dealing with adolescents, we are dealing with people who will soon be adults. They have to be induced to act not out of a fear of punishment—because this fear cannot be maintained very long—but out of a genuine acceptance of society’s rules, an understanding of them, and a responsible attitude.

I am sure we can all recall our own adolescence and some of the friends we had. We know very well that adolescence is quite a difficult time when we emerge from the body of a child to become an adult. It is also a time when we like to test limits, and not everyone does this in the same way. I remember some of the young people I knew, when I was young myself, who did some really foolish things. Now they are very respectable people who are very respectful of the law and extremely responsible. I am sure that nearly everyone here knew some young people like that—or maybe not. In any case, I think it is a generally accepted fact that some very responsible adults today went through some pretty turbulent times in their youth.

If we are concerned about a safe society, it is important when dealing with adolescents to do all we can to ensure that they eventually become responsible adults who do not always have to be frightened into controlling themselves, especially as I do not think that fear is a very effective way to deter them from committing crimes.

Something rather significant has happened in Quebec in the past few years: we have placed so much importance on prevention and rehabilitation that we are achieving good results.

Earlier I was talking about the results I saw in 1998, but I will read some more statistics from Juristat: “With the exception of Quebec, which saw a 4% decrease, all the provinces reported increases in the youth crime rate”.

Quebec has created something else that will achieve long-term results and will probably start to have an impact. I am talking about early childhood centres. We no longer talk about daycares in Quebec—except for maybe when we are out of breath. From an institutional point of view, there are no daycares in Quebec, but we have the best system of early childhood centres, where working parents can leave their children at a very early age.

These early childhood centres employ professionals. They are not babysitters; they are professionals trained in early childhood education. There are no hard and fast rules, but often early childhood professionals can recognize the signs of a young offender when the child is very young.

We have professionals who know. They know how to recognize it and intervene early on. Let me say, they do not put these children in prison; the children might be given a time out from time to time and given individual attention so as not to have problems in the future.

That was how Quebec saw things. That is what Quebec has done and people should know about the results we have achieved.

We did not much like Mrs. McLellan's bill. Nonetheless, I am sure that many people who adopted Mrs. McLellan's bill at the time are surprised at its results, namely a lower youth incarceration rate.

There is a reason we criticized it at the time. I know it was drafted by people familiar with Quebec's experience. They drafted it the way they did because they felt there was too much reliance on incarceration. They developed an extremely objective system, but when it comes to handling young offenders, many things should be left open to interpretation.

I will give some examples that I have often used. I will look at two extreme cases. A youth has just shoplifted a popular singer's CD and is arrested. He arrives at the police station and does not want his parents to be called because he is embarrassed. His parents come to get him anyway. He is ashamed, and so forth.

[Canada Evidence Act, November 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, since I do not have much time left, I will cut to the chase. First, I would like the members to realize that a great deal of work has been put into this bill. In my view, a well written law is clear and concise and, at the same time, has more to it than meets the eye.

I was struck by the comments of one speaker who seemed to think that journalistic sources are the same as police informants. That is not at all the case. When a confidential source speaks to a journalist, I do not believe they commit an offence. No matter, the journalist investigates on the basis of the information provided by the source. When the story is published, he and his newspaper take responsibility for it on the basis of the evidence collected, independent of the source that pointed them to it. It is not the same issue.

I urge those who criticize the definition of the term “journalist” to read it and then read it again. I could provide thirty definitions taken from all over: they would all provide the same meaning. Journalists do not wish to be members of a professional corporation because they believe they exercise a right that should belong to every individual. Everyone acknowledges that true journalists are defined by their activity, which is to seek out and collect information in order to disseminate it to the public. Thus, it is the best definition we can provide.

I wanted to add the phrase “or anyone who assists such a person”—that is, the journalist—to the legislation because of the experiences in other countries. I would like to point out again that such laws exist in almost every democratic country to which we generally compare ourselves. In some of these countries, the police have hired cleaning ladies or other individuals to obtain information from these journalists about their sources. That is why protection given to the source must be complete and extended to anyone who assists journalists.

There is something odd I would like to mention. I sometimes wonder if the rest of Canada is really listening to us. In Quebec, the profession has almost unanimous support. Both the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec and the Quebec bar have stated they support this bill. I consulted Quebec experts who told me, among other things, that the bill is great. First of all, rather than the 500 pages of jurisprudence that a judge must consult, we finally have something that provides a good summary—

[Canada Evidence Act, November 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to get the unanimous consent of the House to allow the member for Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier to use two of the five minutes that I have.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, November 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, before he tables his bill, I would like the minister to tell us whether he knew that, for years now, the youth crime rate has been 50% higher in Canada than in Quebec? Again last year, while the youth crime rate was going up in Canada, it went down by 4% in Quebec.

Did he ever ask himself whether Quebec's approach was different from those of the other provinces? If so, is he starting to see why we have always achieved better results than Canada and, indeed, the rest of North America? Has the minister asked himself this question? Does he have any answers? Does he know why this reality exists and whether the rest of Canada could benefit from Quebec's approach?

[Public Safety, November 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, tasers should only be used as a next-to-last resort. They should only be used when the use of a firearm would be justified if the police did not have this paralyzing weapon available. By all accounts, this was not the case during the tragic events that occurred at the Vancouver airport. This means there are serious shortcomings in police training.

Under the circumstances, should the Minister of Public Safety not declare a moratorium on the use of this weapon by RCMP officers until the public inquiry is complete?

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, November 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have three quick questions for the member.

It seems that we agree in many respects, but that we have come to two significantly different conclusions about second reading. I believe the member understands that the fundamental difference between our position and hers is the issue of sleeper cells.

Does she believe that there are terrorist organizations in the world today that are training people and sending them to democratic countries with orders to lie low and lead an exemplary life until the day they are told to commit a terrorist act with other people? They have not yet done anything illegal, but one day, they will.

Does she believe that intelligence services can identify such individuals—by planting agents in training camps, for example? The agents' names cannot be revealed, of course, because to do so would put them in grave danger. We have to hear their side of the story.

That is one of the things that convinced me. Such situations have convinced me that security certificates are necessary. I was trained as a lawyer, and I spent most of my career as a defence attorney, so even though I do not like the process, I believe there is a need for it. It must be used sparingly, however.

Even though the member is against it, is she willing to work together to improve the security certificate process and make it as fair as possible, just as Messrs. Waldman and Forcese, whom she quoted, are doing?

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, November 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I was listening to the explanation the hon. member was giving to justify his question. Essentially, he is asking whether we have indeed enhanced security with the measures we have taken. Personally, I do not think so. I know that those who do think so could never prove it because we have continued to live in security.

But just look at the mistakes that were made in the Arar case. I am trying to follow from a distance the case in Toronto of the only conspiracy for which the perpetrators have been tried under the Anti-terrorist Act. It seems that the accused are being released one after the other. I do not know when we will see the end of this case. Accordingly, I do not think the measures we have taken are enhancing security.

In any event, I think the fight against terrorism is accomplished through the work of security agencies, by the systematic gathering and interpretation of bits of information that make up a whole. That is why I quite like the expression “intelligence agency” because the idea is to understand the relationship between the components through intelligence. It is through this work, and not through legislation, that we are enhancing our security. Terrorism has always been illegal. I do not know of an act of terrorism that can be considered legal and I do not think anti-terrorism legislation has contributed much. The same is true for the few times security certificates have been used.