:
That sounds great, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much.
First of all, thanks for the opportunity to do this. I'm here today in the hope that I can share with you maybe two unique perspectives in one presentation on Bill , as well as share a little bit about the New Brunswick experience.
I come with two perspectives that might be helpful to the committee. One, I believe I'm the only provincial attorney general who also has responsibility for youth at risk with a social ministry. Some of what we are doing with success in fighting poverty, reducing youth crime, and reducing youth recidivism may be helpful to the committee in understanding how we actually can be tough on crime by preventing crime and making sure that young people at risk don't stay at risk.
Second, let me also say clearly that from the perspective of New Brunswick, the current YCJA is working for us. We are seeing youth crime go down. We are seeing reductions in the number of young people who are repeating offences. I'm hoping that we can share with you a bit about why that's happening in New Brunswick and also talk about some of the ways in which Bill doesn't just layer on an additional level of ways to deal with young offenders, but instead may prevent us in New Brunswick from doing some of the things that are working. As a province that's had some success, we're hopeful that our success will be respected through this process.
I would start by saying this: it seems absolutely essential that we have a youth justice system that is aimed at the unique needs of young offenders. Justice that is served in a one-size-fits-all approach does not work. We know that with young people, for example, there's more time to reform their behaviour. We know that if they are growing up in poverty or have mental health issues or have issues of abuse or neglect at home, those experiences may be more formative and therefore may affect their behaviour more than they would affect an adult who has had more time and perspective.
Young people are also less aware of, and think less of, long-term consequences. Deterrence doesn't work as well with young people. I think any parent who's ever had the experience of saying to their kid, “But if you don't study for your test, you won't get into university and you won't have a good job”, knows that they say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that, but that's off in the future. I'm immortal and I'm young.”
The fact is that we in New Brunswick have been tough on crime, but we've done it by taking the approach that being tough on crime doesn't mean what you do after the crime's already been committed; it's what you do to make sure the crime doesn't happen in the first place. For us that means being tough on crime, and we are. For instance, we've adopted statutes that allow for forfeiture if you are an absentee landlord and you're allowing your property to be used for anything from selling drugs to profiteering from child pornography. We now have the power to seize that property and crack down on absentee landlords. We have a tenant protection act that allows the state to evict those who are dragging neighbourhoods down with anti-social behaviour. That's being tough on crime.
We're also tough on the causes of crime with aggressive reform of our social assistance system. We have aggressive interventions, including more mental health resources early on, making sure the courts are trained, and now integrated service delivery that makes sure we have school-based intervention teams that spot kids who are abused or neglected at home to allow them to get services in an integrated way, whether it's mental health, help for their parents at home, or help in the educational system.
If I may, I will quickly raise five concerns with proposed Bill that may stand in the way of our doing what the evidence shows is working in New Brunswick.
First I would say this: if you look at clause 8 of the bill, this is one of the first times the Parliament of Canada has proposed a bill that criminalizes intervention. I say that because this bill allows judges, when sentencing, to look at past participation in programs for substance abuse or mental health, or even at things as simple as police warnings.
Here's our concern about that: when we have a young person who has committed a non-violent offence and who was not deliberately inflicting harm on another, we want to get that person into our intervention programs as quickly as possible. We don't want them lawyering up. We don't want a long trial process. We want to get them into that intervention. By now saying that those interventions can count against them, you'll take away our ability to do what works.
As long as they accept responsibility and participate in these programs, we can begin to start the process of turning their lives around. By saying that participating--whether in sentencing circles, whether in community service, whether in counselling--now counts against kids later on in sentencing, we're going to have more kids lawyering up, we're going to go to more trials, and we're going to have kids getting help far less quickly. From our perspective, it would be a mistake to criminalize participation in the very programs that the evidence suggests are working in New Brunswick to keep people safer and to make sure that they don't do it again.
The second concern, I would say, is that this bill may actually defeat its own purpose by blurring the distinction between intentionally violent crimes and those that may be simply reckless or risky behaviour. If the definition of participating in risky behaviour were applied to all young people, I'm not so sure it wouldn't take care of most of us in this room at age 16—I'll certainly say that myself.
The fact of the matter is this: there is nothing wrong, when you have a young person who is intentionally, wilfully, and coldly inflicting harm on others, in making sure they're tried as an adult. That's the right thing to do. I'm a dad, I have kids, and I want them protected too. But to mix the criteria where the wilful infliction of harm is now treated the same as simply engaging in behaviour that's reckless or risky, where the line hasn't been crossed into deciding to hurt somebody, not only runs against everything we know, but it may actually undo some of the tough on crime agenda that's actually behind this bill, because instead of being very specific and directive to judges as to when as attorneys general we can have our prosecutors get that young person into the adult system, it now has actually muddied the waters. Now the definition isn't clear for judges. The judges have more discretion to keep dangerous offenders in the youth system, yet the youth system itself has been effectively destroyed.
So I think, frankly, because of some very loose drafting around what constitutes getting somebody into the adult system, as an attorney general I'd be very concerned that it will actually be harder for us to get truly dangerous youth into the adult system if this bill passes.
The third concern is that this probably undoes a large part of the reason to have a youth system. If we take a look, for instance, at clause 7, adding deterrence to the act as a consideration, what we try to do as attorneys general is, very early on, have as many tools as possible that actually meet our needs. We should have an adult system that is tough on crime, that emphasizes responsibility, that cracks down on violent offenders and actually makes sure they stay behind bars where they can't hurt somebody—no question. We also need a youth system that is based on the unique needs of young offenders, and that means, in fact, we put more of an emphasis on rehabilitation, because frankly, we know that the 16-year-old who steals a car is not going to be locked up for life but is going to be back on the streets.
As an attorney general and, frankly, as a dad, my interest is this: when we turn that person loose at 18, 19, or 22 years of age, what kind of citizen is he? What have we done to change that outcome? Being tough on crime doesn't mean waiting until he's 22 and hurts somebody again and locking him up. Being tough on crime means making sure he doesn't do it in the first place.
By adding deterrence and denunciation and making the youth system more like an adult system, we've destroyed the whole point of having a system that works to prevent young people from reoffending, and at the same time makes it harder for us to get adult offenders into the adult system.
The youth system is there for a reason, and the more you try to make it like the adult system, the more you then blur the distinction; if we can't get people into the right tools for rehabilitation, then you've effectively hurt our ability as attorneys general to deliver justice that works and protects people.
I might make two more general comments that aren't tied to the legislation.
[Translation]
I would like to share with you some of the concerns that we have at the provincial level.
The Government of New Brunswick believes that adopting this proposed legislation would only make matters worse for young persons and other residents of the province. Just recently, the federal government did away with the Youth Option Program in New Brunswick. This program offered youths who were at risk in a regular school setting and at home alternative methods of learning so that they did not turn to criminal behaviour.
[English]
Requiring provinces that are not rich, such as New Brunswick, to spend money on locking kids up will take away from things we've seen, just like the federal cuts to programs like Youth Options and to intensive programs like Portage, which allow us to intervene with those who have substance abuse problems. If we have to spend money putting people in prison, frankly, in a province like New Brunswick we don't have an extra dollar to spend on things that aren't backed up by evidence. You're going to require us to take away from some of the programs that are working in New Brunswick, programs that intervene on mental health issues and substance abuse.
I would be remiss if I didn't share with you the report of Bernard Richard, our provincial child and youth advocate, around Ashley Smith. Sometimes it's easy to lose this in philosophical arguments, but there are risks with the wrong approach in youth justice.
Ashley was a young teenager who originally was arrested for mischief. She was throwing crab apples at people out of a tree. Because she did not comply very often with the directions given in jail, she wound up in higher and higher levels of custody. What we now know about her case is that by putting her into a system that did not have the staff, training, or resources to recognize mental health issues early, ultimately we didn't rehabilitate that young person and we didn't keep her safe. What happened is that Ashley sadly and tragically committed suicide. That happened because we were too quick to steer her out of a system with the right kinds of supports and into a system that measured only whether or not she complied with the orders given to her, which we now know, with the benefit of hindsight, mental health issues had made almost certain wouldn't happen.
People die if we get it wrong. People die if we get it wrong by being too slow to incarcerate. People also die if we get it wrong by being too quick to incarcerate. From our perspective, perhaps I can offer some alternatives in which the Government of New Brunswick would be interested. Let us have two distinct systems--one focused on rehabilitation, and one in which detention and punishment start to become more important. Give us more discretion, not less, to steer young people into that system and to steer violent offenders into the adult system. And work with us. Help give us the tools. Don't cut the programs that help us intervene in these kids' lives, but help us to have the resources to appropriately detect and intervene, and to train staff on issues as wide-ranging as mental health, abuse at home, and substance abuse that can lead to failure.
I will close with this thought, Mr. Chair. Sometimes when we study these sorts of bills, we tend to look at a bad example of a young person gone wrong and ask what went wrong; if we look at the cases of young people who were rehabilitated and ask what went right, we are probably more likely to do it right in the future. In New Brunswick we are funding some programs that are doing it right, and we don't want to lose the ability to do that.
With that, I thank the committee and stand open to your questions.
Thank you, Mr. Attorney General, for a very good presentation.
I would like to clear up a couple of things. You have a federal counterpart, Rob Nicholson, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice. You would expect him to be an advocate for his bill, Bill , and appear before us suggesting that people were asking for this kind of legislation and that in fact attorneys general were asking for this kind of legislation, so I have three little questions for you.
My understanding is that attorneys general across the country wanted something done with some of the very sensible recommendations in the Nunn Commission of Inquiry report, and that some of those items have been dealt with in this act. However, much of this act is outside the Nunn commission recommendations. It is essentially a program of the government with respect to inculcating adult criminal sanctions into the YCJA, as you mentioned.
My first question is this: do you feel that this law responds adequately to both the Nunn recommendations and to the concerns of attorneys general across the country, and specifically the concerns of New Brunswick?
Second, what level of consultation did you have with the federal Attorney General on this matter?
Third, you mentioned a direct federal cut to a Fredericton program that is very near and dear to you, a very preventive early intervention program. At the same time, we know through Kevin Page's work that the cost of some of the legislation the government is bringing forward in terms of prison costs is extraordinary. Some of these sentences rely on provincial resources, but what we haven't received yet is any indication from any province.
Where does the rubber hit the road for provinces like New Brunswick? What is your estimation of the costs of the Conservative tough-on-crime agenda to the Province of New Brunswick? I left there this morning, and unless you found offshore oil or gas in the meantime, how are you or we going to afford it?
Good afternoon everyone.
My name is Line Lacasse, and I am accompanied by my husband, Luc Lacasse. We are the parents of Sébastien Lacasse, who was murdered on August 8, 2004, by a group of young offenders in Laval. He was only 19 years old.
Our son was taken from us in a very violent way by a dozen youths without scruples and without respect for life. He was severely beaten, hounded, covered with Cayenne pepper, trampled, without even being given a chance—despite begging his assailants to stop—and finally, stabbed to death.
None of the 10 young people even thought about calling for help. All of them, without exception, left the premises without any empathy for the young man lying in a pool of his own blood and dying.
Life will never be the same for us. Not only we, his immediate family, are affected by his death. His grand-parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends and neighbours are affected, as well. Their lives have also been turned upside down. Sébastien was a live wire, always ready to help, likeable, and loved by everyone.
When the doctor told me on August 7 that there was nothing more she could do for Sébastien, it felt like one of my limbs had been severed. I curled up into a fetal position and ended up in another world.
His father, Luc, his sister, Julie, and I came out to the parking lot to wait for our youngest son, Maxime. I will never forget the look on his face when he saw us from afar, after understanding and screaming “no” with painful intensity. As we hugged each other without talking, we knew that the long road ahead of us would be filled with pain, sadness, anger and a lack of understanding, and that there was no avoiding this journey before we could find inner peace.
Feelings we had never felt before surfaced: anger, rage, injustice, grief, vengefulness and fear.
Carrying Sébastien's ashes to their final resting place was unbearably painful. “My little monkey,” as I liked to call him, my first born, was no longer among the living. Reality caught up with us soon enough. Now, we had to learn to live with his absence and his death on a daily basis. The loss of a child cannot be accepted, especially if it comes about so violently. Parents should go before their children and not the other way around.
Adding to our drama, a few days later, certain inconceivable events took place. My two children, Maxime and Julie, received threats of all kinds. In addition, coloured paint balls were fired at our house from a shotgun. The windows of our car were broken, and we received intimidating threats during the trial. In addition, a discriminatory song against our family was composed by friends of the accused. The lyrics scoffed at and disrespected Sébastien's death. The song was made available on the Internet.
What is the value of a life today? All of us around this table can ask ourselves that question.
In addition, my son Maxime lived through two violent and dangerous incidents that put his life in jeopardy. One of them took place in 2007, in a parking lot close to our home. Rubens Alexandre, one of Sébastien's murderers, threatened to beat Maxime. Max's friend, who was a Canadian boxing champion, got involved and told the assailant to leave, since he was not allowed to approach Maxime. The attacker left and came back to the parking lot 10 minutes later in his car. He fired a couple of shots from a shotgun in Maxime's direction. Fortunately, he missed his target.
This same Rubens Alexandre was involved in an incident similar to the one with Sébastien when he stabbed a young man from Brossard while exiting a bar. Fortunately, this victim survived. Rubens Alexandre was accompanied by Maxime Renaud, who was also accused of Sébastien's murder.
Since Sébastien's death, Rubens Alexandre has been arrested several times. Maxime Renaud was arrested for counterfeiting bank cards. Three weeks ago, Rubens Alexandre escaped from the Saint-Jérôme detention centre.
Since these events, the state of our mental and physical health has deteriorated. General symptoms include high blood pressure, anxiety, fatigue, and an impression that we are waging a losing battle. We wonder when it will all end.
You cannot imagine what it feels like to think that another child could have died. Our family is grieving, we are afraid for Maxime, who does not tell us what is going on so as not to worry us, but is experiencing extreme inner anxiety. I became very listless and, for a while, I was unable to support and help my family members.
To add insult to injury, the court proceedings are a real circus. We have spent three years of our lives following this trial, which seems to be never-ending and is very emotionally draining. We have to keep reliving this horrifying night, at each stage of the proceedings, for the various accused in the case of our son's murder. It was very important for us to follow all the stages of the trial in order to try to understand the incomprehensible. We were the body and the voice of Sébastien, who was no longer there to recount the horrors he lived through. Not even animals are able to inflict the kind of violence our son was subjected to. It was important to ensure that the murderers would get a sentence in line with their crime and the seriousness of the inhumane acts they committed on the evening of August 7, 2007. That is to say, they should serve a sentence that is proportional to the seriousness of their crime.
It goes without saying that our mental and physical health has suffered greatly in the process. Maxime left school because he couldn't concentrate and felt too much sorrow. Julie dropped a few courses temporarily for the same reasons.
The assistance afforded to the murderers is unbelievable. They are provided with medical and psychological assistance and are allowed to continue their studies under supervision. All that is paid by our governments. However, the assistance provided to the families of victims is nothing short of pitiful. There is little, if any, support from these same governments. A $600 payment from the government is not going to help us face the financial problems caused by a situation like ours. We rather feel that there is a lack of respect toward us and that we are not important to our elected representatives. Finally, the amount is ridiculous and is an insult to a family in distress. We are left to our own devices in dealing with our grief and all the resulting problems and worries.
As for financial issues, we now have less income. I was unable to work owing to health problems. Luc worked less in order to be able to follow the legal proceedings. The lack of money ended up creating additional worries that we really could have done without at the time. Fortunately for us, there is the Association of Families of Persons Assassinated or Disappeared, AFPAD. They helped us out and were there for us during the court proceedings. We are also lucky to have a friend who is a lawyer, and who supported us throughout the proceedings. Of course, we also have our family.
Sébastien's Law, in memory of our son and in honour of our determination, makes our hearts sing a little. It is gratifying and reassuring to see that a government body is looking into this problem. For us, the most important thing is that people have taken the time to listen to our whole story for hours on end, the story that I have summarized here today. I assure you that this is not even a quarter of what we have really lived through.
I know that other governments are focusing a lot on the statistics, but tell yourselves that one life lost is already one too many. I do not wish it upon anyone here to go through such a tragedy. I challenge any mom or dad who has lived through such an ordeal to oppose this bill. I assure you that if it were your son or daughter who was beaten to death and murdered in such a violent way, you would not hesitate to vote in favour of this bill, which, among other things, will make it possible to punish the murderers, and to do so in proportion to the violent nature of the acts they committed.
I received a wonderful education. My parents always told me that in life, we always suffer the consequences of our actions. The system currently in place sends young people the message that there are no serious consequences for murdering or badly injuring someone. Violence is being trivialized, somewhat like it is in video games.
In my view, it is critically important to strengthen the provisions of the , so that it would, among other things, make it possible to remand youths in custody while they await their court proceedings. If this Act had been in effect, we wouldn't have had to go through the horrors of waiting in a hallway with the accused.
Take a moment to imagine yourselves outside the courtroom, waiting in the same line as the people accused of murdering your son. In addition, the accused can enter the room without being searched, while the victim's family and those accompanying them have to undergo a thorough search. To me, that is truly unbelievable. It should be noted that this Act pertains to very serious crimes.
I would like to go back to my son Sébastien, who died following an extremely violent attack. His murderer, Maxime Labonté, who was 17 years and eight months old at that time and who stabbed my son several times, received a life sentence for unpremeditated murder and will be eligible for parole in August 2011. It goes without saying that we will have to challenge the parole application, which is highly probable in his case. So, we will have to face him again and we will have to convince the decision-makers to not release this criminal.
In conclusion, I hope you realize that a family is condemned for life when they lose a loved one in such a cruel and horrible way. Therefore, if we have an opportunity to improve our justice system, let us respect life and protect everyone's safety by voting for this bill to come into force as soon as possible. Clearly, this will not bring my son back, but at least his death and his tragedy will serve some purpose in our society.
Thank you for listening to me.