JUST Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON JUSTICE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA JUSTICE ET DES DROITS DE LA PERSONNE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, May 3, 2000

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. Andy Scott (Fredericton, Lib.)): I would like to call this meeting of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to order. We are considering Bill C-3, an act in respect of criminal justice for young persons and to amend and repeal other acts.

I have a sneaking suspicion Monsieur Bellehumeur wants the floor.

Voices: Oh, oh!

[Translation]

Mr. Michel Bellehumeur (Berthier—Montcalm, BQ): You're right, Mr. Chairman. You're very observant this afternoon.

Before I begin, I'd like to thank those members who are in attendance this afternoon because I will be discussing an extremely important motion that I've tabled. I see we have a new member. That will give me an opportunity, without starting over at the beginning, to enlighten him as to the problem of young offenders. It's impossible to arrive at a committee armed with all of the knowledge required to give proper consideration to a motion such as mine.

I'm happy that you have joined us, Mr. Wilfert. I would also like to welcome the representative of the Privy Council Office. It's an honour for me to have this notable member of the PCO come here to listen to my views this afternoon. Mr. Chairman, these officials from the whip's office, from the government leader's office, from the PCO and from the department are wise to follow this issue closely because this is a very important matter. I hope that people gain a greater awareness and understanding of the situation and come to realize that we cannot continue on this course, which represents a step backward. I hope they come to understand that this is not the direction we should be taking.

My motion, which we will be considering and debating today, reads as follows:

That the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights postpone clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-3, An Act in respect of criminal justice for young persons and to amend and repeal other Acts, in order to allow the federal Minister of Justice and Attorney General to appear before the Committee, explain her many amendments, and answer our questions.

I hope that the Liberal members opposite have conveyed this message to the minister and informed her that I want her to graciously appear before the committee and be willing to spend between 20 and 30 hours in total answering questions and explaining the gist of her amendments.

Do we have a quorum, Mr. Chairman?

[English]

The Chair: Yes.

[Translation]

Mr. Michel Bellehumeur: We don't have a quorum, Mr. Chairman.

[English]

The Chair: That's my greffier's count. No, I'm kidding.

The Clerk of the Committee: When we counted, Mr. Chair, John McKay was in the room.

[Translation]

Mr. Michel Bellehumeur: Then we need to adjourn our proceedings.

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The Chair: Mr. Bellehumeur.

Mr. Michel Bellehumeur: Now do we have a quorum?

The Chair: Yes.

Mr. Michel Bellehumeur: Then I will continue, Mr. Chairman, trusting that we can keep our quorum until 5:30 p.m.

As I was saying, this is an important motion and I appreciate that certain people have chosen to be here because this indicates that the government is increasingly interested in the affairs of the Justice Committee and mindful of the significance of this issue.

I'm going to try and convince my colleagues to support this motion and to speak to the Justice Minister in an effort to get her to appear before the committee to explain the numerous amendments that have been suggested to us and to answer our questions. I don't want her appearing hastily, as she did last time. We need to set aside a large chunk of time, maybe 25 or even 30 hours, so that we can thoroughly review this complex issue with the minister.

If there's one thing we agree on, it's this: the young offender problem is very complex. However, we won't resolve anything by adopting a bill like C-3. My concern is that implementing this legislation, if ever it is enacted, will only add to the overall problem.

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to talk about certain concepts and about what Quebec has been doing in this area for a number of years now, in an attempt to convince the Liberal members opposite to ask the Justice Minister to make a return visit to the Justice Committee to answer our questions.

Mr. Chairman, without repeating everything I said yesterday, I would like to focus on several points that I raised. I don't wish to go on too long, but since we have a new member with us today, I want him to have the same background information as the others so that he can fairly assess my motion. Rather than go into the details, I will give you an overview of the major themes I broached yesterday and focus on some of the initiatives Quebec has pursued in dealing with young offenders.

Quebec has long been interested in the Young Offenders Act and the problem of young persons in conflict with the law. Without revisiting history, it's obvious that as far back as the turn of the century, Ontario and Quebec were already keenly aware of this problem. Back then, Ontario was much more forward-looking and lobbied the federal government intensely to intervene and pass young offender legislation.

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Various laws have been enacted and all kinds of debates have been held in Ottawa. In the meantime, in Quebec, major social changes have been occurring. Various laws have been passed there as well, including the federal Young Offenders Act, along with a series of provincial laws and programs brought in to strengthen the declaration of principle in section 3 of the act. For example in Quebec we have the Youth Protection Act which provides for the establishment of social services centres in Quebec, as well as a range of health and social services programs. A comprehensive system has been put in place over the years. These changes didn't happen overnight. The problem of youth crime and delinquency were examined in depth and this review resulted in the initiatives that we have in place today.

When the minister does appear before the committee, I will be telling her about the actions Quebec is taking in an effort to sway her. I will bring to her attention a very important document, the Jasmin Report, which describes many of the programs in place in Quebec. The report was drawn up by a task force presided over by the Assistant Chief Justice of Quebec's Youth Court, Mr. Justice Michel Jasmin, who is still a Youth Court judge in Montreal. If anything, he is a even stauncher advocate of the approach he defended in his February 1995 report.

Yesterday, I touched on a number of areas to explain Quebec's approach to dealing with young offenders. I talked about delinquency, Mr. Chairman. There are different kinds of delinquency and different ways of dealing with the problem. Yesterday, I discussed some of them.

Another element of this debate is the question of protecting society. It's one of the reasons given by the minister for introducing changes to the Young Offenders Act, or rather, for repealing it, as stated in section 198. Yet, we've been told that when the provisions of the YOA are properly enforced, the act helps to protect society and that there's no need to amend this legislation which has worked well in Quebec for at least the past thirty years.

I also talked about offences as such. One approach will be selected rather than another, based on the severity of the offence that has been committed. We are also mindful of this fact.

Equally, we are mindful that young persons must develop some sense of accountability. If we enforce the provisions of the YOA properly, we will succeed in teaching young persons to accept responsibility for their actions. We will succeed in this endeavour, Mr. Chairman, with the help of youth workers, parents and judges who are familiar with the act and with its objectives. We don't need a new piece of legislation to make young persons more responsible.

However, when we talk about making young persons assume responsibility for their actions, we can't forget the rights and needs of these same young persons.

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I find it laughable to hear the minister claim, in an open letter, that Bill C-3 will afford young persons better protection, when in fact such protection is already provided by the existing Young Offenders Act. The important tools are already in place to invest in our youth to help them become ordinary, tax-paying and productive members of society.

The minister doesn't seem to understand this. She doesn't appear to understand Quebec's approach, a fact that has prompted some Quebec lawyers who work every day with the YOA to claim that the minister treats Quebeckers who are knowledgeable of and who enforce the provisions of the act with contempt.

I'm not saying that the minister is talking through her hat, but clearly, she doesn't know what's happening in Quebec. She cannot claim, on the one hand, to respect Quebec's approach while taking steps, on the other hand, to repeal the YOA which has been the cornerstone of Quebec's efforts in this area for the past 15 or 20 years. One cannot claim to support Quebec's approach while moving at the same time to repeal the instrument of its actions. Yet, that's precisely what the minister is doing with Bill C-3. The minister doesn't seem, or doesn't seem to want, to understand the situation, and we're trying every way we can to help her see the light, be it open letters, briefs, the efforts of the coalition and the work that's I'm doing here today in committee, in an attempt to postpone consideration of this bill for as long as possible.

I've made no secret of what I am trying to do. I'm trying to delay the passage of this bill for as long as I can, to give the minister time to see the light. The members opposite, notably Quebec Liberal members, need to wake up and tell the minister that she has embarked on the wrong course. At least Quebec's Conservative Members have understood this, Mr. Chairman.

Even the NDP members understand the situation. They've asked me many questions about Quebec's approach to young offender issues and about why I am spending so much time and energy defending my position.

I want to know what the problem is. I want to know why Quebec won't be able to set its own course for dealing with young offenders.

In the days to come, I will have a chance to explain matters further. However, consider for a moment what the minister is saying. From my vantage point, I find it all very amusing. The minister has changed her tune in so far as the enforcement of the YOA's provisions and the amendments are concerned. When she first announced changes to the act, she claimed that this was a good bill, one that was sufficiently flexible to allow Quebec to do what it wanted. It's funny how today, there no longer is any mention of the bill being flexible. It's because the minister was misleading us, Mr. Chairman. The bill does not provide for any kind of flexibility whatsoever.

When the minister testified before the committee, I asked so many questions about the bill's flexibility that she finally realized that the legislation wasn't flexible at all and that she couldn't continue to pretend that it was. In order to retain any shred of credibility in terms of dealing with young offenders, she couldn't continue to defend this pseudo flexibility.

She may have managed to fool one or two people in Quebec, probably by promising them an appointment to the bench, but the rest are no fools. They couldn't help but see through the ruse, Mr. Chairman. They came to their senses in time. The minister therefore started singing a different tune. We no longer hear any mention, or only very little mention, of flexibility. And when the subject does come up, we see that the minister's tone has changed. Now, she asks us to give her examples of things we would no longer be able to do, if Quebec policies and practices no longer applied. The briefs we have are full of such examples.

Therefore, Mr. Chairman, in the coming days and weeks, we plan to go over each and every brief. We'll find examples to show the minister. We'll show her the briefs and the comments, one by one. We'll try and convince her that she is moving in the wrong direction. When she appears before the committee, we'll look her straight in the eye and ask her to tell us the truth, the real reasons why she wants to repeal the YOA and give us a bill that is useless, illegible and complex, one that clearly, will not achieve its stated objectives.

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This bill is tailor made for the provinces that do not enforce the provisions of the YOA. What guarantee does the government have that the provinces will correctly apply the legislation if they can't even read it and do not have the political will to follow through? A mere amendment or bill will not, Mr. Chairman, get a province to change its political perspective on the issue. Everyone knows that. The minister knows it too.

I've often joked that it's the minister who writes the cheques and that perhaps she should issue more instructions as to how the YOA should be properly enforced. Before writing that cheque, she should tour the provinces and ask the right questions of the right people. She should ask them how they apply the YOA in their province and ask them for details about their youth policy.

We followed this course of action in 1993, 1994 and 1995. We contacted agencies and asked them how they enforced the provisions of the YOA. This approach helped us to make a number of observations. When Justice Jasmin tabled his report in 1995, we didn't say that everything was perfect and that there was nothing more to be done. On the contrary, we told him that there was room for improvement. We're barely beginning to understand fully and to properly apply the existing legislation.

Considering that it takes the Supreme Court of Canada a total of 10 years to establish sound jurisprudence with respect to a certain legislative provision, now we're introducing 199 new ones. How long will it take before the new system in place works properly? And will the government wait until the Supreme Court has ruled before once again moving to amend the young offender legislation?

The government has been doing the same thing since the 1990s. Every two or three years, it says it wants to toughen up the YOA and introduce even more repressive measures. Where will it ever end? The objective appears to be to stream as many people as possible into the adult court system, rather than into the youth court system or into specific youth treatment programs. That's what the government is attempting to do, Mr. Chairman. We're funneling our youth into the adult court system.

Increasingly, we are coming across terminology that is found in the adult legislation. Mention is made of parole and of serving on third of the sentence. Provision is made for evaluation stages. The whole matter is made more complex, when there's one very important provision in the YOA that could have been amended, a provision which has garnered widespread support in Quebec. Had the government moved to amend this provision, we would have applauded its action and the 22 or so member agencies of the coalition would have praised the government in turn for bringing in the needed changes. In terms of a time frame for action, many clauses come into play. Speed of action is important at every stage. I could give you some examples of this, Mr. Chairman.

It's important to proceed quickly at every stage, from the moment the young person commits an offence until the time a sentence is handed down. If the police have a person's file and do nothing, that's not a good thing. If the Crown Attorney is snowed under with work and it takes years for the case to go to trial, then that's not a good thing either.

Each group must establish an important relationship. Things may not be going well in Western Canada, but maybe it's not because of the YOA, but rather because of the way the legislation is enforced. Perhaps we need to invest more in our law enforcement capability. It may be that we need to invest further in social programs, or in primary, secondary or tertiary care. Maybe amending the YOA isn't the solution. Clearly, the truth of the matter is being denied.

I think we're one member short of a quorum. And I was off to such a good start. Now I'll have to start over again.

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If too many Liberal MPs are absent today, I can always start over again tomorrow morning. That's not a problem for me.

I'll be honest with you, Mr. Chairman. It's rather tiresome having to check if we have a quorum or not. The rules of procedure as far as our committee is concerned are clear. We must be nine members in total and that's not the case at the moment. There are never nine of us. Today is an exception. Most likely several other committees are also sitting today, hence the problem.

If you would prefer to have the committee adjourn and pick up again tomorrow morning, I don't have a problem with that. We have a meeting scheduled for tomorrow morning, although I'm not sure of the time, that is whether it's 9:30 a.m. or 8:30 a.m. I prefer to address members in person. I don't appreciate having to do a quorum check regularly. No one does.

[English]

The Chair: I just want to get a report from my clerk in terms of his explorations outside. We'll just check to see what the bell is for.

A voice: It's a quorum call.

The Chair: Oh, it's a quorum call in the House. That's probably because everyone is heading here to hear you, Michel.

Voices: Oh, oh!

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The Chair: With the indulgence of the committee, under the circumstances, given that we're going to be voting in less than 27 minutes now, at approximately 5 o'clock, and given that we're supposed to adjourn at 5:30 anyway, I would suggest we adjourn the meeting until tomorrow at 9:30.

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Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chair: I don't think they'll be particularly upset.

The meeting is adjourned.