Bill C-293 (Historical)

Thierry St-Cyr Jeanne-Le Ber, QC

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in today's debate on Bill C-343. This bill seeks to amend the Criminal Code to increase minimum penalties for motor vehicle theft.

A similar bill, Bill C-293, was defeated at second reading during the last Parliament. At the time, the Bloc Québécois voted against it, and today, we will vote against it again. The only difference between the two bills is that Bill C-343 establishes a two-year minimum sentence for a third car theft offence instead of a one-year sentence.

Currently, the Criminal Code treats car theft like any other theft, that is, as a crime against property punishable by different penalties according to the value of the stolen goods. When an individual steals a motor vehicle whose value exceeds $5,000, the offence is punishable by a maximum prison term of 10 years. If the value of the vehicle is less than $5,000, the offence is punishable by up to two years in prison. As we are all aware, most of the time, shorter sentences are given. I would note that a vehicle worth less than $5,000 is becoming a rare thing these days. At any rate, thieves generally steal vehicles that they think have a certain cash value.

The bill before us seeks to amend the Criminal Code to impose minimum prison sentences for motor vehicle theft. It sets out different sentences for first offences and repeat offences. As I said, we are against this bill. We believe its purpose is not really to solve this problem but to create the illusion of doing so. I mentioned earlier that we voted against a nearly identical bill on September 28, 2005.

Minimum penalties are at the heart of this bill. We know that, in the vast majority of cases, the concept of minimum penalties is an ineffective deterrent to crime. In our society, most people readily obey the law. Any reasonable person obeys the law and they do so not because they worry about the repercussions, but because they are reasonable and they simply respect society. Those who do not obey the law do not have that good sense. In the majority of cases, in almost all cases, these people think they will not be caught. So the severity of the punishment is not much of a deterrent to criminals. When the legislator determines the length of a maximum term of imprisonment, they are far more concerned with establishing the relative seriousness of a crime in relation to others than with the deterrent it would provide.

So, to think that because a thief is familiar with the Criminal Code and knows that there is a minimum penalty, he will be deterred from stealing a car is wrong in most cases.

I would like to provide some international statistics that prove that imprisonment is not an effective measure for crime prevention. Canada imprisons 101 persons out of every 100,000 inhabitants. In the European Community, it is 87 out of every 100,000. In France, the number is 77. I do not think anyone believes that countries in the European Community or that France are less safe than our country. In Japan, one of the countries which has the lowest number of cars stolen, 50 out of every 100,000 inhabitants are imprisoned. In fact, the places in the western world where crime rates are the highest include the United States, where 689 out of every 100,000 inhabitants are imprisoned. The United States even surpasses Russia, where that number is 673.

Contrary to the Conservatives' worn-out rhetoric about law and order and getting tough on crime, the numbers show that this does not work. Putting people in jail does not prevent crime. We put people in jail to punish them once they have already committed crimes. We have to get to the root of the problem and work on preventing crime.

The members of the Bloc Québécois do not like the idea of minimum penalties because we do not want judges' hands to be tied unnecessarily. In some cases, this can produce undesirable results because judges may be inclined to acquit a person rather than impose a penalty they consider unreasonable. If the application of this legislation results in people who would otherwise have been given less severe penalties being acquitted because judges cannot bring themselves to apply such draconian penalties, we will be no further ahead. How paradoxical that this bill should have come from the Conservative Party, because in the past, the Conservatives criticized political activism on the part of judges and accused them of making or amending legislation. They said this was the prerogative of elected representatives, that it was up to the House to vote on legislation, and that the judges had no business getting involved.

It is rather ironic to see the Conservatives denounce a so-called intrusion by judges in our work while, at the same time, they are proposing a bill that interferes in the work of judges. Personally, I believe it would be best to maintain the traditional division of power. We are here, as legislators, to enact legislation and determine the relative seriousness of offences. We must leave it up to the judges to impose the most appropriate penalties after taking into account any aggravating or mitigating factors that may come up in a given case. As legislators, we will never be able to incorporate that into a bill.

It is even more ironic that this bill would lower the maximum penalty for a first offence. As I was saying earlier, the current sentence is 10 years, but that would be decreased to five years in the case of a first offence. If, as legislators, we pass this legislation, it could be construed as belittling the seriousness of the offence, which seems rather illogical. That was probably not the intention of the sponsor of the bill, but there is a clear incongruity here.

Another problem arises from the fact that the $10,000 fine provided for in the bill would not have the same impact on everyone, depending on the offender's financial situation. Motor vehicle theft is often the work of organized groups. These groups are often very wealthy, and a $10,000 fine would not be a much of a problem, given the profits earned from the sale of stolen cars. However, for certain isolated young people who spontaneously commit a one-time indiscretion, this would be a very serious penalty. For these reasons, it seems to me that this bill completely misses the mark. The Conservative government and the Conservatives would be much wiser to leave the firearms registry alone, which would help prevent crime.

As we all know, throughout Quebec and Canada, crime prevention programs and subsidies are being cut by the government. That is where we must act, to prevent crime before it happens.

Roy Cullen Etobicoke North, ON

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-293 introduced by my hon. colleague from Langley provided for the use of mandatory minimum sentences.

It is inconsistent. That is the problem with the bill. It is inconsistent to provide for a mandatory minimum penalty, presumably justified by the seriousness of the offence, while at the same time lowering the maximum available term of imprisonment for its commission. That is the fundamental flaw with respect to the position that the member has taken with this bill.

Mark Warawa Langley, BC

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to ask the government what it is going to do about auto crime.

Approximately 450 vehicles per day are stolen in Canada. Over the last decade this has grown dramatically. We are now one of the highest countries in the world for auto theft. We actually have more vehicles stolen per capita than the United States. It is a huge problem that is often linked with organized crime. The proceeds of auto theft directly fund crime and terrorism.

As I have been involved with different panels, town hall meetings and knocked on numerous doors, this is a common occurrence and people want something done.

My previous vocation was as a loss prevention officer for the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. I dealt with auto crime. The common denominator of the problem is that auto thieves, high risk individuals who are addicted to illegal drugs like crystal meth, are released back into the community. They are high risk and the courts know they are high risk, but they are not being dealt with in a way that is appropriate. Typical sentencing is probation. If they reoffend, they get probation for breaching their probation.

Because of that, I am honoured to be here to represent my community of Langley. I came up with a private member's bill, Bill C-293. Through consultation with other members, I thought it was a very good bill. It gave direction to the courts that there had to be minimum sentencing involved with this.

I am expecting the parliamentary secretary to answer in a moment and I am going to ask him not to read from a prepared speech, but actually share with us what the government is planning to do in tangible ways to come up with an attack against auto crime. It is a problem. My private member's bill dealt with it, I believe, but the government voted against it. It does not support minimum sentences.

What is the government going to do about it? Chuck Cadman had a bill. He had a similar background to myself, being in insurance. He had an important private member's bill. The government voted down Chuck's bills and reintroduced a watered down portion of Chuck's bill, Bill C-64. Bill C-64 is not what Chuck wanted.

I pushed and got Transport Canada to invoke the immobilizers starting in 2007. Actually, for the last five years I have been working on that. It is one of the things I am very happy about.

In tangible ways, how could we direct the courts to come up with sentences that are practical and proportionate? Releasing high risk people back into the community is not the answer. What is the government's answer to come up with practical solutions to auto crime?

Jeff Watson Essex, ON

Mr. Speaker, if the government wanted to do something truly good about protecting citizens, then Chuck Cadman would have been leading debate in the House on his own private member's bill and it would have sought unanimous consent to pass it at all stages so Canadians would have been protected. That would have been a fitting tribute while he was living. That is what it should have done in the House. Instead it brings forward a watered down bill.That is the worst argument I have ever heard over there, that it is somehow doing some on behalf of Canadians to protect them.

I rise on behalf of the people of Essex to speak to Bill C-64. I am here also with thoughts of my former seat mate, Chuck Cadman. I have to be honest, I miss him terribly.

Chuck's brought forward his private member's Bill C-287, on the alteration and obliteration of vehicle identification numbers, because there was no provision for the direct prosecution of a person engaged in the physical act of tampering with a vehicle identification number, a loophole that has been masterfully exploited by organized crime. Instead what we have is Bill C-64, a partial attempt by the Liberal government to address that loophole, which is insufficient.

Also, I am here to talk about what the Liberals have been falsely claiming as a fitting tribute and honour to the late Chuck Cadman, member of Parliament. The only fitting tribute to the memory of Chuck Cadman would be to take his private member's bill, ironically unaltered, and pass it in the House. Instead what we have is the Liberals trying to fulfill a promise they made to Chuck after he gave the government life in that crucial May 19 budget vote.

I was sitting in my seat next to Chuck after that vote. It was interesting to watch the long lineup of Liberal members of Parliament eager to shake Chuck's hand. I thought the most interesting moment of that whole night was when the justice minister was face to face with Chuck. If we can believe it, he looked him in the eyes and said that he did not know why Chuck came to this Parliament, but that he would do something about the issues that were important to him.

It is very interesting that our justice minister did not know that the reason Chuck Cadman came to the House for eight years was because of the death of his son and the fact that the criminal justice system did nothing about it. Shame on the government.

What has the government brought forward instead of bringing Chuck's bill forward and passing? We have a nice little add-on to the bill, and will read it. First I will read the words in Chuck Cadman's bill. It states that every one commits offence who, wholly or partially alters, removes or obliterates a vehicle identification number on a motor vehicle without lawful excuse.

The government decided it wanted to make an ad-on to that. It states, “and under circumstances that give rise to a reasonable inference that the person did so to conceal the identity of the motor vehicle”.

That is a substantial change from what Chuck wanted to achieve. Chuck's intention was that we would have a justice system that would get tough on criminals. He was a tireless crusader of rights for victims over the rights of criminals. Chuck's previous private member's bill on the issue put the onus of proof for lawful excuse on the person indicted, on the accused criminal. That tilts the balance in favour of the Crown on behalf of the victims of crime.

What the Liberals have done with Chuck Cadman's idea is change the onus now to put a double onus on the Crown.

It was Chuck Cadman's intention that someone caught with an altered vehicle identification number would have to explain themselves. It is not a great demand to put on somebody who is caught with a vehicle that has an altered VIN. If I were working at a wrecking yard and, as part of the normal process of business, removed a vehicle identification number, I would have a lawful excuse why that vehicle identification number was altered and removed. That would have sufficed under Chuck Cadman's bill. Now, the Crown, on behalf of the victims of crime, has to prove an additional burden that the vehicle identification number was altered or removed to conceal the identity of that vehicle. I can hear the criminal defence lawyers laughing already. Those are the people who the Liberals consulted, between talking to Chuck Cadman and bringing the bill forward.

I was thinking a little about lady justice earlier today. I think we all remember the lady justice symbol of her holding up the two scales, literally weighing the evidence, with a blindfold across her eyes to symbolize her impartiality in the weighing of that evidence.

Under the Liberals there is a new lady justice. Her arms are thrown up in the air in a show of helplessness as criminal after criminal gets soft treatment, or gets day passes to amusement parks or gets house arrest, while victims in our system get re-victimized.

This new lady justice has dropped the scales at her feet because the evidence seems to no longer matter. Witness a lot of the court decisions. The evidence suddenly does not matter any more. This new lady justice still has her blindfold on, not to reflect her impartiality any more but because she needs to shield her eyes from the injustices that are committed. This new lady justice has been brought on by 12 years of Liberals being soft on crime.

Let the numbers speak for themselves. Already this year there have been 64 murders in Toronto, 44 violent crimes committed with guns. The Liberals say that the gun registry that is supposed to protect people. It is their answer to everything, like Kyoto is their answer to everything in the environment. They have a gun registry to protect everybody. It has not. People are being gunned down in our streets.

James Caza has 42 convictions. He is roaming the interior of British Columbia. I am sure the people in British Columbia feel real safe these days.

Serial rapist Larry Fisher was surprised himself that he was let out of jail so quickly. While out on parole he raped and murdered.

Liberal Senator Larry Campbell wants a soft approach on hard drugs like crystal meth.

Legal counsel from the Liberal government testified before the justice committee that mandatory prison terms for criminals would amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

A parole board handed out day passes to pedophiles to attend children's theme parks. I have four young kids. I will rethink how I spend my summers. Will we go to Canada's Wonderland? I have no idea who will be roaming around there and who will be a threat to my children.

This is wrong. Canadians should not have to restrict their freedom from operating in society because they do not know what criminals are lurking there, criminals that the Liberal justice system has let go.

The Liberal government opposed Bill C-215, a bill sponsored by my Conservative colleague from Prince Edward—Hastings, which proposed mandatory minimum sentences on indictable gun crimes. The bill has gained support from the victims of crimes and from those who enforce the laws in the land, our police. They know the bill makes sense, but the government does not support it.

The Supreme Court of Canada refused to consider the case of Dean Edmondson who was convicted of sexual assault for trying to have sex with a 12 year old girl. Instead of a prison term, he got house arrest.

It brings me to the obvious question. What is the Liberal priority? The Liberals want to solve overcrowding in our prisons. They want to solve our court backlogs, the mountain of cases that have clogged up our courts. They want to do it by making it easier to stay out of jail, even though these people wreak havoc on society. The Liberals want it to be easier to make bail. They want to make it easier for the courts to give the criminal house arrest and to give concurrent rather than consecutive sentences. God forbid if one were convicted of multiple violent crimes that one would have to serve sentence after sentence. Why not get a group discount? That is what the government approves.

The Liberal priority is to make it easier for a Liberal patronage appointee filled parole board to give day passes to fun parks to convicted pedophiles.

With Bill C-64, Liberal so-called justice means to get the handcuffs off the criminal and put them on our crown attorneys instead. That is what the bill proposes to do. Once again the Liberals are siding with the criminals. They are not standing up for victims of crime. They are siding with the criminals and the Liberal defence lawyers who donate to their election campaigns.

I think we all remember that Allan Rock was the Liberal justice minister for a time. He gave us the failed long gun registry on which the government has spent $2 billion. For what? It is not serving its purpose. It is allowing the criminals to continue wreaking havoc on society. It goes after law-abiding farmers and duck hunters instead.

Allan Rock gave us the Liberal policy of conditional sentencing with no direction to the courts as to which serious violent crimes should be exempted from the concept of conditional sentencing. What is the result? Liberal appointed judges rightly interpret that the Liberal government's desire is to let violent criminals get out of jail free. That is the Liberal priority.

Bill C-2, the Liberals so-called child pornography legislation, is sitting on the Prime Minister's desk. It has the legitimate use defence in it. It used to be called the artistic merit defence. We can dress it up, paint it up or call it whatever, but it is a loophole one could drive a truck through. It leaves our vulnerable children unprotected.

The Liberals voted against raising the age of consent from 14 to 16. That is not much to ask to protect our young adolescents. Instead, the government wants to keep it legal for a 40 or 50 year old man to have sex with a young adolescent.

I think it is clear that the Liberals are soft on crime in general and on vehicle crimes specifically. Our Conservative colleague, my seatmate, had his private member's bill, Bill C-293, a bill I spoke in support of in this House, a bill that proposed mandatory minimum sentences for vehicle theft.

The other so-called Cadman bill, Bill C-65, the companion to this legislation, dealing with street racing, does not honour Chuck. The Liberal government this time left out something very important from that legislation, which was the scale that Mr. Cadman had built into his bill of increasing punishment for repeat offenders. Apparently those who continue to threaten the safety of our communities get a discount for their anti-social choices.

Mr. Cadman was on a crusade for eight years to get tougher on criminals in crimes involving vehicles before his premature demise. During those eight years, seven were under Liberal majority governments, not a minority government like it currently is. The Liberals, if they were serious about vehicle identification number alteration, could have passed Chuck's bill quite easily. They could have rubber-stamped it post-haste. They had majorities for seven years in this House and instead they reserved the right to fast-track things for political pork-barrelling to Liberal cronies and friends. The talk of Liberal concern for Chuck Cadman's crusade is hollow, quite frankly.

The least the Liberals could have done this time around, if they truly wanted to honour Chuck's memory, would have been to bring forward his bill unaltered. I find it a curious irony that we are talking about altering vehicle identification numbers and yet the Liberals altered the bill of the late Chuck Cadman, an honourable and distinguished man, for their own political purposes. It is a moral crime, a crime against Chuck's memory, to allow the Liberal government to alter a good bill.

The Liberals can talk about Chuck's memory all they want but they are waxing poetic. They did not listen to Chuck Cadman at all. The loophole in Bill C-64 is proof of that. The Liberal government listened instead to Liberal defence lawyers and now defence lawyers and organized criminals will have a great time watching the crown frustratingly try to prosecute under this legislation.

I would contend that the Liberals, with their loophole in Bill C-64, have dishonoured the memory of Chuck Cadman. I do not say that lightly. I sat next to the man for my short time in this House and I spent my time getting to know him. He was one of the most decent men I have ever known, a good family man, a devoted husband and devoted father. He was not planning on being a member of Parliament. That was not his design, but he made it his crusade because he loved his son that much, to come here and ensure we had the laws and the direction to the courts that society wants criminals to be prosecuted to the fullest, that they should pay for their crimes, that Canadians should be protected and that they should not be revictimized in this process. Chuck was here to do that. I can say proudly that Conservatives have always stood for the principles in Chuck Cadman's original private member's bill.

Conservatives will continue standing up for safe streets, for healthy communities and on behalf of victims of crime and say, “No way”. The rights of Canadians should be respected in this country.

Mark Warawa Langley, BC

Madam Speaker, I want to give a little history of Bill C-293 and why it is before the House today.

Five years ago I started working on this bill but from a different perspective. I was a city councillor for 14 years and dealt with the problems of auto theft in the community. I was also a loss prevention officer for the insurance corporation of British Columbia. My job was to find out where the crashes and auto crimes were happening, why they were happening, and how to make our communities safer. I found out very quickly, through working with the police and different stakeholders in the community, that the typical auto thief was not somebody joyriding but somebody with a very serious drug problem.

There was a study called “Reality versus perception” done by Simon Fraser University released in February 2004. It was released at an auto crime forum in Surrey, British Columbia. We found out that the typical auto thief was somebody addicted to crystal meth and was stealing the car to commit another crime. A 27 year old male with 10 prior criminal convictions will steal a car again. He is driven by the drugs.

We heard from Superior Court Justice Wally Oppal at the time. He spoke at this auto crime forum and said that the courts had received very clear direction from Parliament that they were not to lock up these high risk offenders. That is the direction that came from the House. The evidence from Superior Court Justice Wally Oppal was that Parliament said not to lock them up as there were no facilities to send these high risk people.

He asked what to do with them as his direction from the House was to release them back onto the street. What we found in the study was that the courts would give probation. People would steal other cars and receive probation for breaching their probation. They were not keeping the peace. Time and time again these high risk offenders stole cars again and got probation for breaching their probation. There was zero consequence.

My consultation over the last five years was to find out from communities, stakeholders and police a way of dealing with this. Do we lock them up and throw away the key? No, that is not the solution. What is an appropriate sentence?

One of my colleagues asked earlier, what do we do when offenders do not have criminal records? Do we send them to jail? Bill C-293 would give the courts the discretion of giving a fine or time in jail or both. I see a judge in that case providing a fine and not sending this first time offender on a joyride. There would be a $1,000 consequence.

I would like to see more than $1,000 fines, but in consultation it was agreed that a $1,000 fine would probably be an appropriate sentence. The average cost across Canada to repair a vehicle that has been stolen is $4,500, so a $1,000 fine does not even come close to covering that, but it is a minimum. A fair fine would be the cost of fixing the vehicle. This is only a start.

I am asking the House to send this bill to the justice committee where it can be debated. I am open to amendments. I am asking this of the House after five years of consultation. I worked on the immobilizer bill with Transport Canada. Five years ago I sent it to FCM and we now have that part of the protection. We have the engineering, but we need the enforcement part of it.

I ask the House to please send this bill to the justice committee where it can be debated and legislation can be established that will give direction to the courts to provide protection. It is our job as a Parliament to provide security and protection to our citizens. They are not getting it with probation. This bill will provide it and still give the courts discretion for appropriate sentencing.

Paul Szabo Mississauga South, ON

Madam Speaker, I wanted to add my voice to Bill C-293 sponsored by the member for Langley.

This issue of minimum sentencing has come up on a couple of other matters, such as child pornography. There has also been a lot of discussion about the merits of minimum sentencing with regard to grow houses and whether or not they should be applied there.

One of the arguments that has been made contrary to minimum sentencing has to do with whether or not it is a deterrent. I am not so sure that I am interested in whether or not a sentence is a deterrent to somebody else doing it or that same person repeating it. I am more interested in whether or not the public at large feels that the penalty actually is reflective of the seriousness of the crime. That is also important. It is just as important to me as a deterrent.

All Canadians have seen many programming stories about auto theft rings. As the previous speaker said, the typical profile is not the joyride. These are people who are highly likely to be involved in other criminal activity. When we see these problems, we must determine out level of tolerance.

The other argument that I have heard about dealing with matters such as criminal sentencing has to do with the fact that the courts are clogged up and the jails are full. The courts are clogged up because the system or the process has perhaps got out of hand.

I can remember observing some cases in court. There was a young man there and his lawyer walked in and said that his client had 27 convictions this year, but 30 the year before. The lawyer appealed to the judge that the number of convictions each year were going down and this was a good thing. His client was getting better.

I thought it was almost laughable. It really was laughable to think that in a court of law one could argue that since the number of convictions were going down, things were improving. When people have this affinity to continue to break the law, there are consequences. The consequences are not just to that individual. The consequences are to the public at large.

Most people who have had a break-in in their home, which is an invasion of their privacy, would say that the impacts of that are enormous. Their personal space is violated, and their security and safety come into question. Those kinds of principles come into account.

We are also talking about a process ostensibly that is not in the federal jurisdiction in terms of the courts dealing with these matters. However, the criminal law, with regard to the sentencing that the provincial courts and the police would have to impose, becomes yet another question. What happens with issues where the police officers are in the situation where they have so much time to spend in court? The courts are not dealing with it quickly and they cannot do their jobs properly, so we are also interfering and taking up the important time of the law enforcement agents.

There will be a lot of debate on this. I am sure that there are many good excuses. I think the fundamental principle that the punishment must be reflective of the seriousness of the crime is right and with minimum sentencing, there has to be some real time. I am not sure there is going to be a deterrent factor. It is something that would have to be studied over some period of time.

I am absolutely sure that the public at large who are aware of the facts of the case in its plainest form would feel that having to serve some time was appropriate given the nature of the crime.

One other argument I have heard was that if a mandatory minimum sentence was set, the sentencing that would always be applied would always refer down to the minimum and would never go to the full extent that was permitted under the law. I am not a lawyer by profession and I cannot say that I am too familiar with the statistics, but that kind of argument is basically an indictment of the integrity and credibility of the judges, and the courts as well.

There has to be a wholesale assessment of what is happening in the courts, both federal and provincial, to find out why it is that the resources seem to be used in a way which ultimately end up with nobody winning.

Convicted people who are involved in a range of criminal activity continue to be problems to society at large. There is no remediation. There is no rehabilitation. How does this happen? I hope Parliament provides a step forward and says that what has been happening so far has not been acceptable. We think that we can and should do better.

We should be able to say clearly that when it comes to matters such as auto theft, or possession of child pornography, which I think definitely deserves mandatory minimum sentences to reflect the seriousness with which society views that criminal activity, are not acceptable. This includes grow houses as well.

Most members know that the issue of grow houses is quite serious. A very large number of them involve organized crime. Moneys related to the growing of marijuana are not used in the business of selling marijuana, but are used to finance other illegal, more serious criminal activities such as the hard drug business, prostitution, money laundering and all kinds of other things.

Any time a member gets up in this place and says we have to talk yet again about where we are now, where we would like to be, and how we get there, that member will have my full support.