Ed Fast Believes
I was skimming through OpenParliament.ca, when I ran across a discussion of bill C-4, (aka “An Act to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts” or “Sébastien’s Law”). For the uninitiated: it’s the Conservative push to reform the young offender act.
The thing that got me about it was Bloc MP Serge Ménard‘s comments. That dude has something to say. He starts by pointing out that Quebec has had a youth crime rate half that of the rest of Canada, and then he goes on to describe how QC applies “the right measure at the right time.” As far as I can tell, it involves parents, psychologists, and specially trained judges. After saying his bit, he goes on to outline exactly the parts of bill C-4 that suck. With quotes. The only way this guy could be more excellent is if he spoke with footnotes and had X-ray vision.
The exchange between Ménard and Conservative Ed Fast is interesting. Ménard makes an argument based on experience, describing what has worked well in Quebec for the last 25 years. Ed Fast makes an argument based on aspirations – saying how their changes are intended to behave, but without any apparent evidence. Even the Liberals and NDPers (between verbally high-fiving each other) make arguments based on what has been shown to work.
I could draw conclusions about the relative merit of the arguments, but I’ll leave that up to you, dear reader.
