Bill C-34 (Historical)

Protecting Victims From Sex Offenders Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code and other Acts

This enactment amends the Criminal Code, the Sex Offender Information Registration Act and the National Defence Act to enhance police investigation of crimes of a sexual nature and allow police services to use the national database proactively to prevent crimes of a sexual nature.
It also amends the Criminal Code and the International Transfer of Offenders Act to require sex offenders arriving in Canada to comply with the Sex Offender Information Registration Act.
It also amends the Criminal Code to provide that sex offenders who are subject to a mandatory requirement to comply with the Sex Offender Information Registration Act are also subject to a mandatory requirement to provide a sample for forensic DNA analysis.
It also amends the National Defence Act to reflect the amendments to the Criminal Code relating to the registration of sex offenders.

Protecting Victims From Sex Offenders Act

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill S-2, which is a very important bill but, as previous members have indicated, it follows on the good footsteps and foundation of steps provincially in Ontario and nationally by a former Liberal government in 2004. In that sense, it is trying to make existing law better.

Why do we need to make the existing law better? We could argue that in Ontario, Christopher's Law (Sex Offender Registry) is working quite well, which is probably very good for people in Ontario, but there are nine other provinces and three territories where Christopher's Law is not in place. Therefore, it is really important for us as parliamentarians for all the country to get it right.

In places outside of Ontario where the federal legislation is not working as well as the Ontario legislation and where in many provinces there is no registry provincially, we need to ask ourselves what the goal is here.

I am quoting from statistics in this regard when I say that the police have indicated that the present legislative framework does not allow them to prevent crimes of a sexual nature. Response times in the investigation of those crimes are critically important, especially in cases involving child abduction. Can we as a parent, a grandmother, a grandfather, an aunt, an uncle or just a member of a community imagine something more horrifying than having our child abducted or having a child in our community abducted?

All members of Parliament have either experienced that in their community and know people who have experienced it in their communities who react with shock and horror at even the prospect of this happening. As parents we all have those dreams and nightmares that we are at the mall or the hockey rink and one of our three to five children is gone because we turned away for a second.

Why is that response time so important after an abduction? Here are the statistics. Rapid response is so important because 44% of child victims are dead 1 hour after abduction, 74% are dead 3 hours after abduction and 91% of children abducted are dead 24 hours after abduction. This is not to say that every abduction is a sexual offence or a sex offender related offence but, sadly, most of them are.

I want to refer to some of the debate that has been taking place with respect to why the Ontario legislation is so much broader and so much better. It reminds me of a debate that we had recently with respect to protecting children from sexual Internet exploitation and there was a requirement to have Internet service providers report incidents of child exploitation or child pornography.

What we learned in that case is that the federal government of any stripe, as my friend from Scarborough--Rouge River indicated, operates on a much narrower principle of constitutional law with respect to our Criminal Code provisions and the acts that we enact here and that is the criminal law.

In the reporting of child pornography law, which we just studied, it was clear that the federal government felt that its criminal law power was not as broad as the provincial power under the family and child services act to protect children. Therefore, we saw across the country, in two instances, in Manitoba and Nova Scotia, where legislation has been passed protecting children from Internet pornography in a broader way by making it a positive duty on anyone who sees child pornography or child victimization to so report. That is because the child power resides with the provinces under our Constitution and we are enacting laws from the broader criminal provisions.

That is interesting because it has raised its head in this debate that perhaps the Department of Justice, in preparing the legislation in 2004, used the more narrow criminal law power and did not get as pervasive as the Ontario legislation in 2000 which was meant to protect all of the community no matter whether it was criminal in nature. I use that as a backdrop to say that Canadians may wonder why Ontario has the legislation and why federal legislation has been less effective.

It is my pleasure to indicate that we support the legislation which is meant to deal with the sensitive subject of sexual offenders. Members of Parliament, however, have a duty to deal with the crime in a serious way and to give the bill serious and thoughtful review. We would have liked to have seen Bill S-2 in its previous incarnation as Bill C-34 passed. The government knows there is no opposition to strengthening measures to protect Canadians from sexual offences, so I wonder why we did not get Bill C-34 through.

Bill S-2 aims to strengthen the current national sex offenders registry under the Sex Offender Information Registration Act that was enacted by the government of the day in 2004. The current framework is a national registry comprising mandatory information entered, such as address, telephone number, physical distinguishing marks, the offences and the characteristics of the victims, and it is information only available to police officers. Amendments were later made to the National Defence Act to bring it into sync with civilian laws.

As of April 2009, 19,000 offenders were registered in the national registry. It is important to say that the 2004 legislation had the effect of seeing to the registration of 19,000 sexual offenders. Only 50% of those offenders not criminally responsible, as in the mentally ill or youth, are under order to register.

The public safety committee heard witnesses who testified about the problems with the recent bill and possible improvements.

The Ontario registry system, as I mentioned, is used a lot more than the national database. The national sex offender registry is used, and I get to the real numbers of my comparison, 165 times a year, while the Ontario registry is used about 475 times a day. That is quite a difference. It is imminently clear that the Ontario registry is being used more often to prevent crime and to crack down on the crime the moment that it occurs, especially in the case of an abduction.

The reason for this much higher usage of the Ontario registry is thought to be that it could be used more preventively, something that cannot be done with the national registry as it exists. The national registry can be used only when police officers have reasonable grounds to suspect that the crimes investigated are sexual in nature. Police organizations have complained that this framework is hampering their work as police officers since the exact nature of a crime is not always known during an investigation.

While we all recognize the difficulty of the fight against sexual offenders, we also want to take a closer look at the morality behind the use of past offences to create reasonable doubt for the existence of a crime.

Our duty as legislators is to find a correct balance between the right to be presumed innocent, which is in our charter under section 11(d), and our duty to protect victims of sexual abuse, which no doubt comes from the override provisions in section 1 of the charter.

We cannot presume to have a suspect in hand for every crime because he has offended before. On the other hand, in crimes of sexual exploitation and in crimes of a sexual nature, compelling statistics suggest that there is a high degree of recidivism, so there may be a public duty that is higher and outweighs that of the presumption of innocence in this case.

At committee, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association was concerned about the provisions that grant the police additional powers to cross-reference the registry when they find someone acting suspiciously near a school. I have cited the statistics with respect to abduction and I suggest that the Ontario model is being used so much more and with such more efficacy that it ought to be adopted in these changes to this law.

The major effects on our legislative scheme would be several-fold. Bill S-2 has 65 clauses. Clause 19 adds 15 new sections to the Criminal Code. This is not an inconsequential bill.

I do not want to go through the 65 clauses and 15 new sections, but the main provisions of the bill in general are: to amend the purpose of the registry and give broader authority to consult, which seems very reasonable; to make registration automatic, which also seems reasonable based on the Ontario experience; and to make offences of a sexual nature designated offences for which DNA samples may be taken.

A lot has happened with respect to the use of DNA evidence in the courts. That is to be reflected in the changes to the Criminal Code, which is, after all, organic and needs to be updated.

There will be obligations for sex offenders convicted in Canada and outside Canada to register and provide information. There will be consequences for failure to comply with the order to register.

Members have talked about the aspect of persons outside Canada committing an offence and either returning to Canada or coming to live in Canada. They have a positive obligation to register. Our system of international crime statistic gathering makes it unlikely they would be here without the police knowing of their prior record, and therefore it would make our streets safer by having mandatory registration.

As I said, Bill S-2 provides for a regime. Fifteen new sections are added to the Criminal Code. For example, under clause 9 of the bill, the court may terminate an order if it is satisfied that the person has established that the impact on him or her of continuing an order or obligation, including on personal privacy or liberty, would be grossly disproportionate to the public interest in protecting society through the effective prevention or investigation of crimes of a sexual nature, to be achieved by the registration of information relating to sex offenders under the Sex Offender Information Registration Act.

And subclause 21(1) of the bill provides for the creation of a new offence for sex offenders who fail to comply with their obligations or an order made under the Criminal Code.

According to this bill, these new offences would carry maximum prison terms of two years and maximum fines of $10,000 or a summary conviction.

In general, I believe that this bill makes a number of worthwhile improvements to the law created by the Liberals in 2004. It is a new registration regime. There will surely be more room for improvement as the police learn to use this new tool. However, we have some concerns about the treatment of those found not criminally responsible on account of a mental disorder.

That is where I would conclude with the whole area of whether the net we cast by supporting this bill is too wide. We say we want to protect the public and make the federal legislation as wide as the Ontario legislation. We want to make sure our police forces are using the data bank of sexual offenders across the country to protect the public. We say that with some conviction. I think everyone in the House believes that.

We have to imagine a particular case where a person committed a sexual offence in his or her past. The person did it before being diagnosed with a mental ailment that caused the person to act improperly, criminally, and as a shock to the ethics and morals of the community in which the person lived. Perhaps since that time, the person has received medication and treatment and is no longer the same person as when the person committed the crime. That person may find himself or herself moving from community to community and being outed as a person who is on the registry of sexual offenders.

While that is within the aim of protecting society, this is where the rubber hits the road on the application of the law by the enforcement officials. This is where we have to put faith in our law enforcement officials, our crown prosecutors, and our judges to make the justice system work. This is where we hope that upon investigating someone who is registered in the circumstances just laid out, the person is treated fairly and with the good common sense that a cop on the beat would have in his or her community, to suggest the person is not the same person that he or she was before, this is not a person who presents a danger to the community in terms of recidivism, of performing acts such as those performed years ago by the person.

That is the non-legal aspect of this bill and all the bills we bring forward in the criminal justice area. We hope the players in the system use the discretion they have to investigate, to lay charges, to arrest, to defend, or to convict. Along the line of the criminal justice system, every player has some discretion. I have been in this House for five years and from day one I have been very adamant in suggesting to our friends across the way that they not poke sticks in the eyes of judges with respect to discretionary powers. They would not do it to police officers or to prosecutors, so why early on were they attacking judicial discretion?

I am pleased to report that we on this side have had some effect on the other side; not enough, and probably we never will, which is why we have elections. However, recent bills from the Minister of Justice have shown a willingness on occasion to restore and keep in place judicial discretion. That is what will make the difference between the laws we enact here being good for society or not being good for society.

I thank my colleagues who serve on the public safety committee. The committee report was replete with changes to the sex offender information registration act. Certainly the work of the committee was worthy. The greatest compliment is the imitation of one's work. The government, looking at the date on the calendar and realizing it had not done anything in this regard in five years, had to bring this legislation forward to replace Bill C-34. It looked at the work done by the committee and chose to do it. This is good. This means the committee was doing its work, in pushing the government toward a piece of legislation, with the caveat I mentioned about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms application at the federal level, but generally good legislation which we will support. It is primarily due to the good work of all parliamentarians who serve on a multi-party committee.

This is an example of how Parliament can work.

It has to be said that it is now 2010. The law was enacted in 2004. The Ontario law was there in 2000, and was working well. I am very firm in saying that as early as 2006, when various notable police officers appeared in Ottawa, to use a legal term, it was certainly reasonable for the players on the other side in the justice department to know that this needed to be updated. It is now 2010. The message is that we should get on with this law, but it should have been done four years ago.

With that I conclude. We will be supporting this piece of legislation. We hope it will make the streets and communities not just of Ontario but all of Canada safer.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand on behalf of the New Democratic Party of Canada to speak in favour of Bill S-2, which would make many necessary and important changes to the sex offender information registry in this country. Bill S-2 is the reintroduction of Bill C-34 from the last session, including amendments made by committee.

New Democrats support the bill and the concept of reviewing this legislation. We also support hearing from various stakeholders on how to improve the registry, both to improve public safety and to respond to the legitimate concerns of the police forces that work with this registry every day.

Bill C-34 was strengthened by amendments, including New Democrat amendments, to require sex offenders to provide their vehicle information and swiftly report any changes in their personal or work information to the registry. It is important to note that the public safety committee worked well and co-operatively in reviewing this legislation at the time this bill was brought forward, which I will talk about in a moment.

Despite all party support and the co-operative approach by the public safety committee, it has taken a year and a half to get this bill to the stage it is at today. Bill C-34 was introduced in June 2009 under a different minister but it was killed by prorogation. The government, of course, controls the House of Commons' agenda and it did not call the bill for debate until now.

It is relatively concerning and regrettable when we so often see the politicization of crime as an issue in this country. As I always do in my speeches on crime, I call on all members of Parliament to work co-operatively, intelligently and factually so that we can take real measures to make our communities safer, instead of just preying on people's fear and pursuing policies that we know do not work, that we know do not make us safer and that we know are prohibitively expensive.

It is important for Canadians to know that this legislation, when it was introduced some years ago, contained a mandatory review clause so that, within two years of being introduced, the public safety committee, or whichever committee was responsible at the time, would be charged with reviewing how the legislation and the sex offender information registry worked in this country.

That is a wise provision to put into legislation and we should do more of it in this House of Commons. We should periodically review legislation to ensure it is achieving the results that we had hoped it would achieve but otherwise we may not know.

At the time the public safety committee was doing that review, we had heard from many witnesses, had gone through each major section of the bill in tedious detail and had caught a number of items we thought could be improved upon.

As the committee was writing its report to the Minister of Public Safety so he would have the benefit of its hearings and testimony from experts, police officers, government officials, people who work in the criminal justice arena from every angle and others, the government and the minister did not even wait for that report to come out on the mandatory statutory review. Instead, the government hastily and swiftly put this legislation together and introduced it into the House. In examining that fact, I think there is strong evidence that the government was playing politics at that time.

Why would the government not wait for the public safety committee to give its report and have the benefit of all of that study, testimony and co-operative agreement before it then drafted legislation, particularly when it was only weeks away? Why would the government do that other than to play politics with the crime issue?

The other reason that was regrettable is that, as one would expect with legislation drafted in haste for political purposes, the legislation had problems with it. I will give an example.

One of the things we found in the original legislation was that one of the critical pieces of information that a sex offender was not obligated to report to the registry was information about his vehicle, the make, model, colour, licence plate and registration number. As we all know, in some cases, sex offenders will utilize their vehicles as a way of luring children. They will go to playgrounds and try to lure children into their cars by offering them candy or luring them with a pet. This registry did not require sex offenders to report that information to the registry, both for cars they owned or leased. We caught that in committee and the New Democrats put forward an amendment to say that that was information that should be in the registry.

However, because the government and the minister did not wait for the report from our committee, they put legislation before the House that did not have that information in it. That just shows that not only is playing politics bad politically for this country, but it is bad from a public policy point of view and from a legislative point of view.

What is the sex offender registry? It is a national data bank that contains information on certain sex offenders who have been found guilty of designated offences under the Criminal Codes, such as sexual assault, child pornography, child luring and exhibitionism, or who have been declared not criminally responsible on account of a mental disorder but, nevertheless, engage in those activities.

Pursuant to the Criminal Code, it is the Crown that had to initiate the registration process. If a court ruled that the offender should be registered in the national registry, an order was issued requiring the offender to report to a designated registration office within 15 days following the issuance of the order of the offender's release.

In April 2009, the public safety committee was informed that the national registry contained the names of over 19,000 sex offenders in Canada. The registry was originally designed to help police officers investigate crimes of a sexual nature by giving them access to reliable information of offenders found guilty of crimes of a sexual nature or, again, found not criminally responsible on account of a mental disorder.

The registry has always contained information essential to police investigations, such as the offender's address and telephone number, the nature of the offence committed, the age and gender of the victim, the victim's relationship to the attacker, any aliases that the offender used and a description of any distinguishing marks or tattoos the offender might have.

I want to pause and say that through some good work done by the committee, we added to that list and put in language to the effect that added the person's modus operandi or any distinguishing ways that the offender repeatedly carried out his or her offences. That was also helpful information to police officers because they could identify patterns very quickly when they were investigating a potential sexual offence, particularly against children.

It is important to note that the public never has had, and would not have through this legislation now, access to the national registry. Only police officers can access it and only when they are investigating a crime of a sexual nature or, as I will talk about in a minute, when they are working to prevent a crime of a sexual nature.

Querying the national registry allows police officers to identify possible suspects among sex offenders living in a particular area when a crime of a sexual nature is suspected of having been committed, and also as a process, it should be noted, to eliminate certain people from a list of suspects in order to move the investigation in a new direction.

During her appearance before the committee, chief superintendent, Kate Lines, of the Ontario Provincial Police said that the registry:

...saves a lot of time for investigators, who can now move in another direction […] Taking someone off the list rather than identifying them has great value when investigative time is of the essence.

With that point in mind, the crucial factor in designing the registry and proposing amendments should be ensuring that those who pose a danger to the public are registered, but also equally important, that those who pose no danger are not on the registry because that wastes police time investigating pointless leads in those crucial minutes when lives are at stake.

Here are some statistics that were presented by Ms. Lines to the committee that illustrate the importance of a rapid response in these cases, particularly in cases where there is a potential child abduction. When a child is abducted in this country, Ms. Lines told us that 44% were dead within 1 hour of the kidnapping, 74% were dead within 3 hours and 91% of those children were dead within 24 hours.

What we need to do as parliamentarians is design a properly functioning sex offender registry that can give police accurate and quick access to the registry, and anything that slows down the police in those crucial minutes following a potential or real abduction of a child should be rejected out of hand by parliamentarians.

That brings me to something in the bill that is of concern. It is the use of automatic registration for a long list of offences. I would respectfully argue with the House that is another issue where politics and ideology dominated public policy and fact.

When our committee was studying the bill, we heard evidence from a variety of witnesses and we had debate and dialogue about the very issue of whether we should be going to an automatic registration system in this country. What that means is that automatically, upon conviction of a list of sexual offences, the person's name is put into the sex offender registry. The status quo right now and before the bill is passed is that there is discretion in the system. Right now, an application must be made to the court upon conviction and then the court will or will not order that person to be put on the registry.

The evidence we heard at committee from prosecutors was that sometimes prosecutors forgot to put that application before the court upon obtaining a conviction for a sex offence. Our committee addressed that concern and the New Democrats put forward an amendment to address that concern. The amendment was that immediately upon conviction, without any action required by anybody, the application would be before the court for designation to the sex offender registry. The problem would have been solved.

However, we then wanted to preserve judicial and prosecutorial discretion to ensure that in the odd case where it was not appropriate for a person to be put on the sex offender registry, that the opportunity was there for the court and the prosecutor to decide. Why do we want to have that discretion? Because we do not want to put people on the sex offender registry who should not properly be there because. if we do, we will slow down police officers when they are investigating an important issue. Police officers may end up having to knock on doors, make calls or talk to suspects who really have nothing to do with this kind of offence. That slows them down and it puts children at risk in this country.

The other thing that is important to remember is that, upon conviction of a sex offence, the burden falls on the accused to show why he or she should not be put on the sex offender registry, and that burden is a very heavy one. The accused must convince the court that his or her interest in not being put on the registry outweighs the public's interest in ensuring their safety is protected.

This is what we heard from a government witness about that issue. Mr. Douglas Hoover, who is counsel for the criminal law policy section of the Department of Justice, said:

We've had a number of Court of Appeal decisions on “grossly disproportionate” to confirm that the onus has to be on the offender. He has to step up. He has to prove this to the court's satisfaction. This is a very strict test. I think the Court of Appeal in an Ontario case used the term “in the rarest of circumstances”, which is similar to the language in a Nova Scotia Court of Appeal decision on the DNA.

So while there were some early and I guess interesting decisions in the lower courts, we're confident that right now it is working fully as intended,

That was the kind of evidence that our committee heard and the kind of evidence that I am proud to say our committee listened to when we were busy writing our report and when we were telling minister that we did not want to go to a full automatic registration system. We wanted to fix the problem of prosecutors forgetting or neglecting to make the application, which we did, and we wanted to ensure it would be very difficult for an offender to prove to the court that he or she should not be put on the sex offender registry. We could then preserve the rare circumstance where someone should not be put on the registry. We did not want this because we felt sorry for the person convicted of a sex offence. We wanted this because we wanted to ensure the registry was effective and that police officers would not have any extra burden on them when they needed full speed to investigate crimes of a sexual nature.

What happened? The government did not wait for the report and introduces this bill and puts in automatic registration.

Reference has been made to the Ontario model. The Ontario model does have an automatic registration system, but there is an important difference. The list of offences for which a person convicted in Ontario of a sexual offence who gets automatically registered in the provincial sex offender registry is smaller than the one in this bill. This bill has a longer list of sex offences that, quite conceivably, may result in someone being put on the sex offender registry who should not be there.

I want to pause for a moment on the constitutional question. We heard evidence before our committee as well that automatic registration was currently being argued before the courts as to whether it was constitutional. This issue has not been fully settled by the Supreme Court of Canada. In his testimony, Mr. Hoover of the Department of Justice said that if we went automatic, the constitutionality would be an issue. Therefore, that is another reason to be concerned about automatic registration.

I want to also comment on the addition of the word “prevention”. Under the current legislation, police departments can access the registry only when they believe a crime has been committed which they reasonably suspect is of a sexual nature.

We heard evidence that it was too tight of a test. Police departments need to have access quicker and they cannot be held down when they want to access the registry. The New Democrats listened to them, we heard that complaint and we acted. It is important that we widen the scope so police departments can access the registry when they need to and not be hamstrung by very tight tests of whether they can get access to the registry.

The New Democrats also put a really reasonable proposal to have a review of this in the next couple of years to see how it was working. By allowing police officers now to search the registry when they might want to prevent a crime is a good thing, because we want the police to be proactive, but we are also not exactly sure how that will be manifested in practice.

Just like it was a good idea to have the review of the sex offender registry by the public safety committee, where we caught many things that needed to be improved, we thought we wanted to do the same thing with this. When it comes to dealing with sex offences, particularly against children, we can take no chances. Parliament should be vigilant at all times, to be constantly reviewing legislation to ensure it is nimble, accurate and effective.

What happened with that amendment? It is not in the legislation to review the bill in two years time, and that is regrettable.

I want to conclude by commenting about what we need to do for victims of sexual abuse. It is a well known fact that a very high percentage of sex offenders were themselves sexually abused as children, not all of them, but a high percentage. Earlier this year Steve Sullivan, the federal ombudsman for victims of crime at the time, testified at our public safety committee. He spoke about the need for the government to fund child advocacy centres in major cities across the country. He said that for two years in a row he had recommended that the government put a very nominal amount, several million dollars, to fund these child advocacy centres so children who were victims of sexual abuse would have a place to go to get immediate help.

Not only is it important to help those children, but it is a proactive way that we can deal very quickly with the pain and suffering of victims of sexual offences so as to maybe interrupt that process where they themselves might grow older and have deviant sexual practices themselves. Therefore, it is good for public safety.

The government ignored those proposals two years in a row, but I am happy to hear that recently the government indicated it might be willing to fund such advocacy centres. I applaud the government for any move it takes on that side. It will have the full support of the New Democrats for every $1 it puts in to help victims of sexual offences, particularly children.

We support the bill. We have some reservations about automatic registration and about the way the access to the registry in terms of prevention will work out. However, the New Democrats will support the legislation because, at the end of the day, we want to ensure that victims are protected as much as possible.

I urge all parliamentarians to support the New Democrats proposal to come back to this issue in two or three years time so we can review how the bill has worked and see how we can improve it yet again. Once again, we want to ensure we get the legislation right.

The federal registry is less than 10 years old. It is very important that we continue to fine tune it to ensure it achieves the objectives that all parliamentarians and all Canadians want to see, which is to keep our communities safer and to cut down on sex offences in our country.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I will certainly talk to the bill and try to be as relevant as I can.

The information in the national registry that can be collected only to enable police services to investigate crimes they have reasonable grounds to suspect are of a sexual nature has been amended. We saw this through Bill C-34. In some of the comments during the committee work on the bill, it was pointed out that something was missing. However, the need for reasonable grounds has been removed from subparagraph 2(2)(c)(i) of the act. As a result, police may collect information for the purpose of preventing and investigating crimes of a sexual nature. During the examination of Bill C-34, no witnesses raised the possibility of any abuse of use resulting from these amendments.

Would the hon. member please comment if these new methods, for which we are casting a wide net in the usage of this registry, especially when it comes to peace officers, concern her, even though those member will pass the bill?

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that, as you are no doubt aware, the Bloc Québécois will support Bill S-2 on the sex offender registry.

This bill is an exact copy of Bill C-34, as amended by the committee during the last Parliament. We supported Bill C-34 in principle. We heard from witnesses who reinforced our position and we put forward amendments that were agreed to. We also proposed amendments to Bill S-2, but unfortunately, they were defeated because the Liberals supported the Conservatives. We proposed amendments relating to the automatic registration feature that my colleague discussed earlier.

This is another example of how the Bloc Québécois works bill by bill in an effort to be constructive without sinking to the level of grandstanding that we have come to expect from this government.

We believe that we must make tools available to the police that, on the one hand, are effective at preventing and fighting crime and, on the other hand, do not constitute an unjustified and disproportionate breach of fundamental human rights.

As all of my colleagues have said, we all worked well together on this. Bill S-2 seeks to make the sex offender registry more effective and more useful to the police. This is a critical tool for preventing sex crimes and supporting sex crime investigations.

This bill helps strengthen existing legislation on sex offender information registration, which came into force on December 15, 2004. It would enable authorities to include more individuals convicted of sex crimes on the registry and would record more information about those individuals, including DNA.

This bill would also strengthen obligations that apply to individuals listed on the registry, such as those related to moving or being away from their residences for an extended period of time.

The bill adds new violations requiring registration and, in clause 5, makes some changes in the procedure by which courts will order inclusion in the registry.

In the case of so-called “hands-on” sexual offences, which are generally quite serious, the current regime allows the Crown to decide whether or not to ask the judge to have the person included in the registry. Under the new regime, which will be in place shortly with the passing of this bill, the attorney will no longer have to make the request; it will be a question for the courts to decide upon. It must announce its decision when the sentence is handed down and automatically order the person to comply with the requirements of the law; this is automatic inclusion.

In addition, this new clause abolishes the exemption, or exception, that currently applies when an offender establishes that their inclusion in the registry and the resulting impact on them, including on their privacy or liberty:

...would be grossly disproportionate to the public interest in protecting society...

Consequently, a hands-on sexual offence would result in automatic inclusion in the registry.

One thing is certain: at some point we will have to evaluate how the registry fits into all of this because there will be a lot of names in it. Witnesses told us that when there are a lot of names in the registry, it is less effective.

In terms of DNA samples—and this is somewhat related to the question I asked my Conservative colleague earlier—representatives from the two laboratories that do these tests clearly told us, when we met with them, that investigations are underfunded and that there are delays because it takes time for them to analyze the samples. These delays mean that these crimes sometimes go unsolved.

If it is urgent, they are efficient. But some samples may sit for a year before being analyzed because there are not enough resources.

Not only were they waiting for an agreement with the federal government, but they were also hoping to get more funding. It is all well and good to have legislation in place, but we need to have the means to enforce it. Will any money be invested in this bill? It is important to note that more and more people will be added to this registry, so there will also be more and more requests for DNA analyses.

Coming back to my point, when a direct sexual offence is committed, registration is automatic; however, for other designated crimes, it is up to the crown prosecutor to determine whether or not to apply to the court.

Clause 40 is another interesting point in the bill, because it makes a major change to how the registry can be used. This is very important, because it has to do with the notion of prevention. Under current legislation, the registry can only be used when there are reasonable grounds to believe that a sexual offence has been committed. Bill S-2 allows police to consult the registry for prevention purposes.

Consider the example of Cédrika Provencher, a tragic incident that took place not too far from us. What is interesting about this case is that the registry could have been consulted, which would have allowed for more effective prevention. However, according to the information we heard, some sex offenders had already been identified in that area, which the police were able to verify. As we know, when a child is kidnapped, it is important to find him or her within the first 24 hours. After 48 hours, the situation becomes even more worrisome, and as time passes, the chances of finding the child diminish considerably.

Clearly, this greater openness to prevention will have to be examined more closely to ensure that it is not used inappropriately. I trust the professionalism of police officers, but the fact remains that sooner or later we must have a closer look at this provision. Personally, I think it is a measure that could save lives.

The bill also proposes another worthwhile amendment. If this bill passes, there will be a correlation among offences that lead to inclusion in the sex offender registry and the sex offender's obligation, as I was saying earlier, to provide a DNA sample to the national DNA data bank. The bill will amend section 487.04 of the Criminal Code, which already requires a judge to order that such a sample be taken when a primary designated offence, a very serious offence, has been committed.

If the bill is so good, then why has it not passed yet? There are a number of answers to that question: first, this government nearly always introduces what at first is an absurd bill, ensuring that everyone is against it and wants to amend it; second, this government has gotten in the habit of putting on a show in the name of public safety; third, this government claims that these things are important and then turns around and prorogues the House, allowing all the bills to die on the order paper.

The opposition is not responsible for this delay. I have seen my colleagues work hard on getting this bill passed and on making worthwhile amendments to make the bill even better. I feel that the blame lies with the government, which unfortunately does not put its money where its mouth is. This is not the first time we have seen the Conservatives do this. I would not be bringing this up if I did not have a number of other examples.

Take for example former bills C-46 and C-47, which have been renamed and brought back to the House. The police have been calling for such legislation for over 10 years to help them conduct investigations, especially when it comes to the producers and consumers of child pornography. One of these bills ended up in the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and the other, in the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. Then, all of a sudden, they disappeared. And then the House was prorogued. I have had to ask why a million times in the House.

Not too long ago, I do not have the exact dates, they reappeared with new names. And we are still not working on them. The government should bring them forward because I would like to start working on them.

This government likes putting on a show in the name of public safety and too often shirks its fiduciary responsibilities with respect to our collective security. We saw this recently with its irresponsible attitude towards the firearms registry, which, despite everything the Conservatives are doing, works relatively well, in spite of their amnesties and their many attempts to secretly abolish it through private members' bills.

I would like to come back to the fact that police forces want another tool to protect our children and to catch producers and consumers of child pornography.

Since 1999, police forces across Canada have been calling for legislation that, within a certain framework—this is not a free-for-all—would require Internet service providers to disclose IP addresses, which identify their clients computers, without being forced to ask for authorization in court, since these authorizations would be given later.

An IP address is like 411, a telephone book where you can find a person's name, address and telephone number. It is the same for a computer. This makes it possible to take action and save lives in an urgent situation.

I am not the only one saying this. On April 22, when he testified before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, the former federal ombudsman for victims of crime, Mr. Sullivan, who was appointed by this government, said:

...if I were the Prime Minister today the Internet bill would be my absolute priority; it would be number one in the justice reform areas.

Mr. Sullivan gave a good picture of the tragedy the absence of such legislation causes. He said:

The longer we delay these initiatives to give law enforcement the tools, the more kids are going to be abused. I think that makes everybody angry.

That is true. It makes no sense that we do not currently have any regulations like these for the Internet. I can give some examples. In less than 10 years, we have seen a huge increase in the amount of child pornography on the Internet. We have gone from thousands of images to millions of images and videos. Every single image and every single video shows children being abused. I spoke to investigators from the child sexual exploitation unit who told me that the youngest sexual abuse victim they had seen was a two-week-old baby. That is unbelievable.

Imagine my indignation when, rather than passing a bill that would actually make it possible to save lives by giving the police important tools, the members of the House prefer to talk about other things. I would ask my fellow members to excuse me for being emotional but I find this so mind-boggling that I cannot even believe it. I think that a way must be found to let the police do their work and to also protect our children.

It is important to understand, as the Bloc Québécois did during the consideration of the bill that was the original version of Bill S-2, that the government must question and change its behaviour for everyone's benefit. It must do so to protect public safety and preserve Canada's credibility in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of the international community.

It is rather paradoxical that I, a sovereignist, am saying this. I strongly believe that Quebec and Canada are sister countries. So, when things go wrong in Canada, they cannot help but go wrong for us as well.

Unfortunately, we are still in Canada. Sometimes extraordinary laws are passed that help us to grow; however, there are other laws that diminish us completely both as individuals and as a society.

It is important for the government to understand that human rights are more than mere words. Human rights are fundamental. This institution is based on human rights in general and on the rights of children. The government must show its good faith by ordering a public inquiry on the G20 in Toronto. I asked the Minister of Public Safety and the government several questions and, as I understand it, they have shut the door on this issue.

I have sat on five committees. People came from everywhere to testify. There were organizations as well as individuals who had been arrested and who are no longer facing charges. With what we are hearing, if I were the public safety minister, I would call a public inquiry for the sake of the credibility of Canada and its police. Right now, it is all just suspicion and allegations. People are not crazy. They go on the Internet and see things. Articles are published and we hear statements in committee. It is a disgrace. A public inquiry needs to be called to clean all of this up. If it finds nothing, so be it. At least everyone will be reassured and people will say that some incredible work was done. But that is not what is currently happening; there is nothing but suspicion.

More than 1,000 people were unfairly arrested at the G20, and a tiny minority were incarcerated after charges were laid. It was the largest number of arrests made at a single event in Canada. It brings back bad memories, such as the October crisis in 1970. We have to wonder. I hear my colleagues opposite, who are at a loss. It might help them understand if they realize that the link is human rights. Based on facts that are gradually coming to light, many observers feel it is increasingly probable that respect for human rights was not a concern for the infamous G8 and G20 integrated security unit, which was headed by the RCMP. Everyone is responsible, but no one is responsible. It is as though—

Immigration and Refugee Protection Act

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to be speaking about Bill C-35, which we are debating today. We have talked a lot about immigration consultants, which are the focus of this bill.

I want to begin by speaking about the bill's title. Those following the debate since speeches started in the House this morning at about 10:20 a.m. would initially have seen it indicated on their screen that we are talking about the “Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act”, or the “Loi sévissant contre les consultants véreux” in French.

If they are watching now, they will probably see that we are talking about An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. This was changed because, likely, at the beginning of the debate the audiovisual team was using the former title of the bill.

In committee, it was decided that the title should be changed to make it more neutral and objective. There are a number of reasons for this decision. Even though we all agree that a bill title has no legal effect and is simply a secondary element in the debate about the substantive clauses and the actual provisions of the bill, the title is still important. On one hand, the title is important from a social point of view because it can affect how people perceive the bill. On the other hand, it is important from a political point of view because it is a tool used by the government to engage in political marketing and even to change the essence and intent of a bill for its own purposes. The government is using this technique more and more.

I will discuss both cases, beginning with the one before us, Bill C-35. It seems to me that the government was using the bill's original title for political purposes. They said they would attack crooked consultants. That sounds like an opinion to me. Opinions have no place in the law. The government should stick to a technical description of what the bill does, which in this case is amend the immigration act to require people who want to practise as immigration consultants and who are not already members of a provincial bar or the Chambre des notaires du Québec to be members of a body to be designated by the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. That is what this bill would do.

In practice, will this actually improve the situation and crack down on crooked consultants? That is a matter of opinion. Every member of the House is entitled to an opinion on the subject. I suppose that if the bill receives unanimous support, as it seems to have, that means people pretty much agree. Of course, the 308 members of the House can make mistakes. In the end, history may confirm that we have not. I do not think there should be anything subjective in the title.

If we want voters and the public to respect us, we should be humble enough to resist using bill titles to promote any messages, claims or opinions whatsoever. We must also take into account the potential social impact of an inappropriate title. In this case, they were calling it the cracking down on crooked consultants act.

Imagine consultants telling their clients to trust them because they have been accredited under the cracking down on crooked consultants act. As if. Picture the certificate hanging behind a consultant's desk, stating that the consultant has been accredited under the cracking down on crooked consultants act. That is not what the bill is about. This bill is about consultants who are not crooked. That is why the title of the bill was changed. Personally, I hope that the government will put an end to this practice, which has been observed in several House committees.

It is a ridiculous practice, one that wastes a great deal of parliamentarians' energy. In many cases, the bills do not even accomplish what is stated in the title, and that skews the democratic debate.

Since there is unanimity in the House on Bill C-35, I would like to provide a few other examples. In fact, most of the disagreement in committee was about the title.

There was Bill C-27, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act. Once again, the title was a claim. There was also the Protecting Victims from Sex Offenders Act. That is a matter of opinion; we may or may not agree that Bill C-34 will actually protect people from sex offenders. Then there is the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act. I gave examples from different Parliaments, and there are others from the current session. We have bills pertaining to security that are named in memory of a victim whose case has nothing to do with the bill in question.

Getting back to immigration, given that this is the subject of the bill before us today, there is Bill C-49, at second reading. The title, Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act, is an opinion. In fact, most observers, including the opposition members in the House, find that the bill does not in any way deal with smugglers, but rather targets refugees. The title also refers to people who abuse the immigration system. The bill does not refer to the immigration system but to the refugee protection system. The title is completely at odds with the reality and serves as a political marketing tool.

The government has said that people support their bill. It conducted a poll and asked whether people agreed with the law to prevent human smugglers from abusing our immigration system. Everyone is evidently in agreement. The problem is that the bill does not do what the title says.

Clearly, this is a ploy on the government's part. Basically, the government is admitting that it knows very well that it will not be able to sell the contents of its bill to the public. So it is using smoke and mirrors. It is using the title as an intermediary to try and suggest that one of its bills cracks down on crooked consultants and therefore must be a good bill. It has a bill that cracks down on human smugglers, so it is a good bill.

The most pathetic title we have seen in this House was the title of a bill that was something like: an act to stop the trafficking of minors, even though the word “trafficking” was not mentioned once in the entire bill. The bill had a title that referred to the trafficking of minors, even though the bill was not about that.

Clearly, this is a recurring ploy that must stop. I am very pleased that the members of the committee agreed to stop playing the government's game. I hope the government will have the wisdom and good sense to stop playing these ridiculous little games. The parliamentary secretary talked about it and so did my Liberal colleague, the hon. member for Papineau, and I imagine my NDP colleague will also talk about it, since we tend to work very well together on that committee; we respect one another, despite our political differences. If the government wanted to demonstrate its desire to co-operate and its respect for the opposition members, it could start by giving its bills legitimate titles, instead of making these inane attempts to manipulate public opinion.

I realize that was a long digression, but I had to do it. All that being said, I will now talk about the substance of the bill.

Those who want to immigrate to Quebec and Canada, whether we are talking about refugees, economic immigrants, immigrants in the family reunification category, or people who come on humanitarian or other grounds, are often overwhelmed and not sure what to do next. They are unfamiliar with our laws and are a bit distressed by the red tape. We can relate because we cannot keep up with all the bureaucracy, requirements and regulations either. It is hard for us to keep track of our rights. Imagine what it is like for an immigrant.

There is a real and legitimate concern and many of these people seek advice on the immigration application process. The advice they are given is extremely important because it can have a significant impact on the ruling to be made and on the rest of their lives. During this process, many decide to deal with lawyers or notaries. That is what I always recommend when people knock on the door of my riding office.

However, others seek advice and representation from an immigration consultant. The problem is that, unlike notaries or lawyers, immigration consultants are not really regulated. The regulatory body for these consultants, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, does not work at all; it is a colossal failure. This agency has serious governance problems and is run by people who commit flagrant abuses. They take liberties and do not administer the agency in the interest of its members or the general public. In my opinion, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants has to be abolished. It is beyond repair because it is fundamentally tainted by personal interests to the detriment of its members and the general public. I hope the minister will see it that way when he designates an agency.

A new organization must therefore be created that will better regulate the occupation. Let us hope that, with the new act, this organization will not encounter the same type of internal management problems and that it will have a much broader sphere of activity. Rather than controlling the relationship between the consultant and the government only from the day the application is filed to the day the application is ultimately accepted or rejected, the new act will cover the entire relationship between the consultant and the client or in other words, from the moment a client contacts a consultant or a consultant offers a potential client his or her services. This is a real improvement. However, the organization designated by the minister must do its work correctly and separate the wheat from the chaff.

We have to admit that there are some good immigration consultants; however, there are others who do not do their work properly at all. When touring the country, we were told that some consultants were abusing their ethnic proximity a little or even a lot. Someone immigrates to a new country where they do not know the system and do not know whom to trust, and then they meet someone from the same ethnic group who has successfully immigrated to Canada. Human nature being what it is, they might have a tendency to trust that person more than someone else.

Many crooked consultants—that is how the minister referred to them at the beginning—will abuse this trust. Sometimes these people do not know French or English, nor do they know the laws. People may pay a consultant thousands of dollars and that consultant will not even bother to submit their applications. They wonder why they have not heard anything, so they call the constituency office or the department only to be told that their application was never received and no one has ever heard of it. It can take years before they figure this out. There was a similar story on the news yesterday morning: a lady paid thousands of dollars but her application was likely never submitted.

We have taken a step forward. The House can pass laws, but it does not create the regulations. It is not the House that ultimately does the selection. The minister's role in that regard is very important. He must make wise choices and not usurp the will of Parliament, as has happened in the past, particularly in terms of immigration. He must comply with legislation and ensure that there is finally a real regulator that lives up to that title. Competent people are needed in order to ensure that the immigration consultants in Quebec and Canada are competent.

I have one last aside. Throughout this process, I have insisted that we must ensure that immigration consultants in Quebec are familiar with the requirements of the Quebec immigration system, which has its particularities. There is an agreement between Canada and Quebec. This must be recognized. If there are two categories of immigration consultants in Quebec, people who are submitting an application will not know whether their consultant is able to advise them on all of the possible options or just those that fall under either federal or Quebec jurisdiction. I maintain that, in dealing with immigration issues, we must always remember that the situation in Quebec is different and requires special treatment.

I would like to repeat that there is a good deal of collaboration in this committee. If there are interesting bills, we will study them. I do want to share a little frustration that is not the fault of the committee members or our chair, but it is a result of parliamentary procedure, which seriously limits us with respect to amendment possibilities. We could have developed a better bill if we had had more latitude, as parliamentarians, to make amendments that would change the bill's scope and give it a better direction. That is a problem for all parliamentarians. I hope that we will be able to have a look at this issue in the near future.

In the meantime, overall, I think that the bill before us deserves the support of Parliament.

Protecting Victims from Sex Offenders Act

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his comments. I will continue along the same lines, but I want to explore the aspects of this bill that we find particularly interesting a little more.

The Conservatives should re-read this bill a little more carefully. They want to create a Canada-wide sex offender registry, yet they want to abolish the firearms registry. It is a little—how shall I put it—strange. I will leave it up to the public to decide. They want to create something with one hand while destroying it with the other. In 10 years they will probably want to abolish the sex offender registry. That would not surprise me, but of course we would oppose that.

It is important that both registries be maintained. I do not plan to talk about the firearms registry for the 20 minutes I have here today. We see that issue as having been settled. It is important to maintain it, considering how effective it is. Yes, that is what I said: effective. I think effectiveness is what should guide our work on Bill S-2.

We had begun studying Bill C-34 during the last Parliament. In fact, Bill S-2 is an exact copy of Bill C-34. It is important to remind those watching us at home that when a session ends with prorogation or an election, all bills die on the order paper. One of those bills was Bill C-34. The government decided to fast-track it and therefore introduced it in the Senate, which is why it is now Bill S-2. It is before us here today to be passed.

I would like to say right away that we will vote in favour of this bill, which is very interesting, although it still needs more fine tuning. As part of its proceedings the committee heard from a number of witnesses and a great deal of work was done, but there is still more to do. I would like to focus on a few points that still need to be debated.

Let us look at what this bill entails. There are many laws that deal with sex offenders. Today there is the Sex Offender Information Registration Act. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the same as the DNA Identification Act or the Identification of Criminals Act. The latter requires an individual who is found guilty of or has pleaded guilty to an offence to provide his or her fingerprints and photos. We looked at this briefly yesterday and we will have the opportunity to study it in committee. That is the gist of the Identification of Criminals Act.

The DNA Identification Act is different. In cases of murder, attempted murder, manslaughter and sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault—I am not going to list every crime—this legislation requires the individual to provide a DNA sample, in other words saliva, a hair or a drop of blood. The DNA is analyzed and entered into a data bank. This data bank is consulted by those who need it to conduct a criminal investigation in order to track an individual, for example. It is this DNA data bank that helped solve a 34 year old murder case in Montreal a year ago.

But we are not talking about that today. We are talking about the Sex Offender Information Registration Act. It is very important to point out at this stage that this legislation implies that the individual has been found guilty or has pleaded guilty to the offence.

I will not name every offence, even though there are some in the new bill that I wonder about and which I will come back to in a few moments. I can name a few such as aggravated sexual assault, sexual contact, sexual exploitation, incest, exhibitionism, sexual assault with a weapon and so forth that are in section 490 and subsequent sections of the Criminal Code.

An individual is found guilty or pleads guilty to one of these charges and receives a sentence from the court, whatever that may be. The court could—and that is the key word here—order this individual to register. Pursuant to clause 5 of this bill, registration means that the individual must supply his or her name, address, date of birth, gender, military title, such as officer, and so on. Everything is there. The individual must re-register every year, and that is the problem, and it was noted. It works very well for monitoring an individual who was convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to five years in prison and three years of probation. There is no need to look for the person so that he or she can register; it all works very well. It is once the probation is over that we start having problems. There are time periods set out in the legislation, which generally exceed the duration of the sentence, including probation.

But 80% to 90% of these individuals deliberately “forgot” to register. They did not care, because they were out of prison and had finished their probation. They perhaps had a job, and so we lost track of them. That is exactly what has happened many times in recent years, and Bill S-2 aims to put an end to these “lost” individuals, who disappear without a trace and suddenly reappear near a school or day care centre, or who find a job as a caregiver in a day care centre or school. We must absolutely put a stop to this.

It is easy now because the courts render a verdict and are obliged, in some cases, to issue an order to register. An easy example would be a case of aggravated assault or sexual assault with a weapon, when the courts would obviously issue an order. We have no problem with that. However, there are other crimes. In my day, they called it indecent assault, that is to say, a less serious sexual assault. It is harder in those cases because the word “assault” always implies violence, unfortunately, and we are trying to find the right words. There are some cases of sexual assault, for example touching at a party, where somebody gets drunk and unfortunately does something unacceptable. He is convicted and appears before a court. He could lose his job. He is charged with sexual assault, but as a summary conviction offence. Very often, the court passes sentence in this kind of case. Each case is obviously unique. I definitely would not want to generalize and would not want people to think I was generalizing about the kind of sentence the courts handed down. But in my career, I certainly saw a client of mine get this kind of sentence.

The court obviously did not issue an order to register because it was a moment of madness due to the overconsumption of alcohol and the person had never done anything wrong in his life. He is 55 years old and has a family. This is where the debate gets critical. We in the Bloc Québécois think that individualized sentences should be a priority. We believe it is very important that before a court passes sentence on someone, it should be careful to individualize the sentence.

When we start talking about individualizing sentences, this registry is directly involved. If we codify everything, we will have to take a very close look at all this in Bill S-2. In the schedule alone, there are four pages of designated offences. Included are offences of a sexual nature involving children, sexual touching, invitation to sexual touching, child pornography, luring by means of a computer—oops, I already start to have problems with that— and trespassing at night. When it comes to the latter offence, a question arises. If someone entered a house, was it for sexual activity or to commit the offence of theft? It is not clear. Throughout the list, there are offences that will have to be examined very carefully when the bill is studied in committee.

On the face of it, I think all of this will have to be studied very carefully, hence my questions about individualized sentences. We in the Bloc Québécois are convinced that if we want to rehabilitate people, it starts with individualized sentences that they accept. If sentences are handed down according to a formula and there is a single sentence including an order to register for both serious and less serious sexual assaults, there could well be a problem because the purpose of it all is distorted. The purpose of this bill—I agree and we agree—is very commendable. We think, just like our colleagues in the other three parties, that a registry is an absolute necessity.

I am having a little difficulty with the registry and I am going to come back to what my colleague said earlier. We think this should be a national registry. Who better than the RCMP to keep the registry, to know who is on file where? I will give an example of a case that has happened. My riding of Abitibi—Témiscamingue borders all of northwestern Ontario. So the only border we have is Lake Abitibi and Lake Timiskaming. On the other side, you are in Ontario. It has happened, unfortunately, that individuals who are on file only in Quebec or only in Ontario—we are not talking about the same individuals—cross over and commit offences on one side of the border or the other and the police forces are not aware of it.

We think it is important that there be one registry for all of Canada. As we know, people move around. We know that very often, unfortunately, sex offenders travel. They travel a lot and they move. Not just from one city to another, but from one province to another. They leave Quebec and go to New Brunswick or to Ontario or somewhere else. So we think there should be one registry. That is the first point that has to be considered.

The second point is automatic registration. There may be some difficulty in terms of the number of offences. It seems to us that there needs to be automatic registration. Consider the example of a person who is convicted.

Consider a case where the sentencing decision is very easy to make, a case of sexual assault with a weapon. It seems to us that this individual should be put on file and registered automatically. It cannot be left to the offender himself to give his name when he gets out of prison. That cannot be the case. We think it should be done automatically and there should be no hesitation.

For actual sex offences, the sentence does not present any problems for us, but the problem is all the fuzzy situations, as I said earlier. Consider a break-in at night, or luring by computer. We saw offences in the list that are somewhat difficult to analyze. For the moment, we will look at them very carefully, but we think it is important for it to be automatic registration.

As well, a problem arises in determining who may consult the registry. It also seems to us to be important that the registry be confidential and only people who are entitled have access to it. Obviously we are talking about police forces and investigators in certain cases. However, and I will say it straight, it seems to us to be essential to find resources, such as making sure there is adequate funding and making sure the laboratories and the sex offenders registry are able to absorb the anticipated increase in the number of DNA profiles to be analyzed, an increase caused by the change to the list of designated offences.

In other words, it is nice to have a piece of legislation, but if we are not able to implement it we will have problems, and that is what could happen with Bill S-2.

We are going to need appropriate tools. For the Bloc Québécois and for myself it is extremely important that police officers be able to act quickly. As my colleague mentioned earlier, when police officers receive a call from a school principal or from a kindergarten teacher, to the effect that a vehicle bearing such and such licence plate number has gone around the school three times, has stopped close to the entrance door, and so on, time is of the essence and police officers must know immediately whether they can make a quick check in the registry. They must be able to proceed very quickly, because the purpose of this registry is to identify potential sex offenders.

We must be able to have some control over an individual whose name is already in the registry, and for as long as he is registered. Otherwise, what is the point? So, we will have to quickly find ways to ensure that analyses are done and that the database is quickly established, because with the legislation now before us, prevention is obviously the goal. With regard to this bill, we should be able to engage in prevention.

Clause 40 provides that the registry can only be used when there are reasonable grounds to believe that a crime of a sexual nature was committed. Under the proposed change, Bill S-2 would extend the scope of section 16(2) by allowing the use of the registry for prevention purposes.

In conclusion, it is critical that, once the registry is established, it can be used for prevention purposes. We must also be careful with the provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In other words, we must respect the person's privacy. However, if an individual's name is already in the registry, and if that individual is required to stay away from schools but happens to be in his vehicle close to a school, we have a problem. Police officers must be able to make a quick check. As for the other provisions, we will be pleased to answer questions. I am looking forward to this bill being referred to the committee, so that we can take a close look at it.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, on behalf of the New Democratic Party, I am pleased to speak to Bill S-2, which is the reintroduction of Bill C-34 from last session, including amendments made by the committee to that bill.

New Democrats generally support the bill at second reading. We support a productive and, we hope, collaborative review of the bill at committee, as happened with Bill C-34 in the last session. Unfortunately, as has been pointed out by many of my colleagues, the bill died with the government's decision to prorogue Parliament.

The bill contains many important changes to the sex offender registry. The New Democrats support the general thrust of this. We believe there are important loopholes in the present legislation to close and there are strategic and surgical improvements that can be made to the bill that would strengthen the registry.

However, as with a lot of bills, the New Democrats have concerns with the bill. We have reservations around certain specific issues, which I will highlight in my remarks this morning. We trust that all parliamentarians will work together to ensure we have a strong sex offender registry that not only works to make our community safer but also is effective and, at the same time, respects the human and judicial rights of everybody involved in the justice system.

Sex offences generate a great deal of public concern and suffering for the victims of these offences. Many times offences of a sexual nature involve children. As parliamentarians, we are never more engaged than when we talk about protecting women, children and any type of victim from the egregious and horrific offence of a sexual nature.

As a result of these high personal and social costs, governments are constantly looking for tools and methods capable of reducing the incidents of sex offences and protecting the public against the threat that some sex offenders represent.

One attempt to find a solution was the creation, in 2004, of a national registry containing information on offenders who had been convicted of a sexual offence or who had been found not criminally responsible on account of a mental disorder. This resulted in the creation of the Sex Offender Information Registry Act, which established, for the first time, a national sex offender registry. This registry has been available to law enforcement agencies in Canada for slightly less than five years.

That original legislation contained a mandatory legislative review, which was supposed to take place after two years. Because of previous Conservative and Liberal governments, that review did not take place within the statutorily required two years. They will have to answer to Canadians for that.

However, the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security did commence and complete a review of this registry, beginning in 2009. I sat on that committee on behalf of my party and I was pleased to have participated in that review.

What is the sex offender registry? It is a national data bank that contains information on certain sex offenders who have been found guilty of designated offences under the Criminal Code of Canada. These include things such as sexual assault, child pornography, child luring and exhibitionism or, once again, those who were convicted of such offences but held not criminally responsibly on account of incapacity or mental disorder.

Pursuant to the code, the Crown must initiate the registration process. If a court rules that the offender should be registered in the national registry, then an order is issued that requires the offender to report to a designated registration office in the 15 days following the issuance of the order or the offender's release. In April 2009 the committee was informed that the national registry contained the names of over 19,000 offenders.

SOIRA is designed to help the police officers investigate crimes of a sexual nature by giving them access to reliable information on offenders found guilty of these crimes. The registry then contains information that is essential to police investigations, such as the offender's address and telephone number, the nature of the offence committed, the age and gender of the victim, the victim's relationship to the attacker, any aliases that the offender uses and a description of any distinguishing marks or tattoos that the offender might have.

It is important to note that the public does not have access to the national registry. Only police officers can access it and, under the previous act, only when they are investigating a crime of a sexual nature and have reason to believe that a crime of a sexual nature has been committed. Querying the national registry allows police officers to identify possible suspects among the sex offenders living in the area where a crime of a sexual nature may have been committed. It allows them to eliminate certain people from the list of suspects in order to move the investigation in a rapid and hopefully productive direction.

During her appearance before the committee, Chief Superintendent Kate Lines of the Ontario Provincial Police noted that a registry system:

—saves a lot of time for investigators, who can now move in another direction....Taking someone off the list rather than identifying them has great value when investigative time is of the essence.

With this point in mind, the crucial factor in designing the registry and proposing amendments should be in ensuring that those who pose a danger to the public are in fact registered, but equally, those who pose no danger are not on the registry. That wastes police time investigating pointless leads in those crucial minutes when lives are at stake.

Ms. Lines presented statistics to our committee to illustrate the vital importance of a rapid response in these cases. She said that in cases where a child was kidnapped and murdered, 44% were dead within an hour of the kidnapping, 74% were dead within three hours and 91% were dead within 24 hours. A well-designed, properly functioning sex offender registry is clearly an important tool for police across the country.

The sex offender information registry's purpose has always been based on the following principles. This is language from the current legislation, which has been supported by all parties in the House.

First, in the interest of protecting society through the effective investigation of crimes of a sexual nature, police departments must have rapid access to certain information relating to sex offenders.

Second, the collection and recording of accurate information on an ongoing basis is the most effective way of ensuring that such information is current and reliable.

Third, the privacy interests of sex offenders and the public interest in their rehabilitation and reintegration into the community as law-abiding citizens require that the information be collected only to enable police departments to investigate crimes that there are reasonable grounds to suspect are of a sexual nature and to ensure that access to the information and the use and disclosure of such information is restricted to police.

Proposals to amend the sex offender registry should be measured against those principles.

We have heard some reference to the current government playing politics with this issue and I reluctantly have to agree with that description. The bill could be law today, but the Conservatives prorogued Parliament and killed their own bill. This is a perfect example of the Conservatives playing politics instead of protecting victims of crime.

The public safety committee was 90% complete of our statutory review of the sex offender registry. While we were doing that mandatory legislative review and putting the finishing touches on our report, which had all-party co-operation and contained extensive recommendations after hearing voluminous evidence and careful study, the government introduced Bill C-34 in the last session without even waiting to read our report. Therefore, as might be expected, Bill C-34 contained many holes and did not include important changes that witnesses had proposed to the committee. I will give an example.

The NDP had proposed an amendment at committee that would require sex offenders to disclose the make, colour, licence plate and registration of vehicles they owned or regularly used and add that to the registry. The New Democrats proposed that important closing of a loophole and strengthening of the registry. The government introduced Bill C-34, which did not even have that in it.

We all know that in a case where sex offenders might be in dangerous areas, trolling around schools, knowing the vehicles they have access to and are using is a critical component to protecting our children. Yet the Conservatives, who always claim to be tough on crime, introduced a bill in the House that did not even require sex offenders to disclose the cars that they drove or used. It was the New Democrats who caught that and improved the bill.

This was something police officers testified they needed in cases where all they had was a report of a suspicious vehicle seen near a playground or a school. This shows what happens when the government plays politics instead of making sound legislation that is careful, considered and effective.

The proposed bill before us closes some serious loopholes in the registry. Currently there is no way to track whether a sex offender is presently incarcerated or even deceased. The criteria are so strict that what information can be tracked, police officers are legally prohibited from recording, whether they can even get that information. The bill closes that loophole, which is a good thing.

Because every minute counts in investigations of sex offences and in cases of missing children, police officers would be wasting their time verifying the whereabouts of dead or incarcerated individuals because of this flaw in the current registry.

The proposed bill will expands the range of data that is tracked in the registry and this also is a good thing. If we are investing money and police resources into maintaining the registry, it should contain all the information needed for police to rapidly investigate crimes.

However, I want to talk about something that, again, the government, in its rush to play politics with this issue, overruled its committee on, which makes the bill questionable. It has to do with the concept of automatic registration. The bill proposes automatic registration for all offenders who commit designated offences.

The committee undergoing the study examined automatic registration in great detail. After hearing from all the witnesses, even the Conservative members of the committee agreed there should be judicial discretion to not put someone on the registry where it would harm public safety.

The police representatives who testified before our committee that speed was of the essence when they were investigating. If there were a number of sex offenders who did not pose a threat to the general public, adding those people to the list would actually waste their time at critical moments where speed was called for. If they had 1,000 people on the registry who they had to check in a certain area and they only had 2 hours to do it, they had to track down all those people to rule them out as possible suspects.

We heard from police officers who were familiar with this registry. They said that it was far more important to put people on the registry who did pose a risk so the police could target those suspects in those critical moments. That is why judicial discretion and prosecutorial discretion are important in this registry. We should not put every person convicted of every kind of sexual assault on the registry. Some offenders are not appropriately put on that registry.

As an example, it might be an 18 or 19 year old male who commits a minor transgression, which is still considered a sexual assault. I want to be clear that all sexual assaults are serious, but there is a degree on the continuum and it may well be that it is not appropriate to put the person on the list. Maybe the person is simply not at risk, by any rational examination, of committing a sexual assault in the future. To add that person to the list clogs the system and makes our communities less safe as a result.

I want to talk about sexual abuse in general. The government is quick to go to the punitive side when we talk about sexual offences. I want to talk about helping victims of sexual abuse and show how the government's misdirected and misguided agenda does not really help in many cases.

Earlier this year, Steve Sullivan, the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, testified at the public safety committee. He spoke about the need for the government to fund child advocacy centres in major cities across the country. These centres would provide counselling, support and referrals to other resources for child victims of crime, particularly victims of sexual abuse. We know, and there is no question, the data shows that many sex offenders were themselves sexually abused, often as children. Therefore, child advocacy centres would be an important part of helping to prevent future sex offences.

The victims ombudsman asked the government twice for $5 million to fund these centres and the government refused. The government refused to put up $5 million so that child victims of sexual abuse in this country would have a place to go to in the major urban centres of this country where they could be treated and counselled.

Despite the fact that this was an egregious and terrible decision made by a government, we should think of the implications for public safety because once again, some of those victims of child sexual abuse will be more likely to become adult child sex offenders or sex offenders when they grow up because of their own victimization.

For a very small amount of money, the government could have taken a concrete step that not only helps the children of our country, some of the most victimized children who are most in need of our assistance, but it has also lost an opportunity to make a dent in preventing future sexual offences.

The other thing that is important to note is that we cannot just have a registry. We also need the resources necessary so that our police forces can have access to the registry. Nothing I see in the bill before us contains any increased resources for the sex offender registry. I am concerned that it downloads the burden on to already overstretched police forces. We will need to ensure that if we are to increase registration in the registry, we ensure police forces have the resources necessary to access that registry.

I also want to talk about crime prevention. The bill adds crime prevention to the list of purposes to the act. New Democrats agree with this because originally police officers told us that access to the registry was too rigid. They testified before our committee that the test of waiting until they had reasonable ground to suspect a crime had been committed of a sexual nature was too strict. The example they gave was that they might get a call from a distraught mother who said her child was missing. That may be enough to suspect that a crime has been committed, but there is really no reasonable basis at that point to suspect it is of a sexual nature. New Democrats heard from police officers and we agreed with them that we needed to make changes and expand the opportunity for police to access the registry.

I am pleased to see in the bill that the government is moving in that regard. By putting in crime prevention, it allows police to access the registry in order to prevent a crime, and I think that is a positive thing. However, we must also be careful to ensure that there are parameters around that power because once again, it is important to control access to the registry and the way police use it so that sensitive information is not used in an inappropriate manner.

I also want to talk a little bit about the New Democrat position on crime prevention because it is one of the major deficiencies in the government's approach to the crime agenda. Its agenda is always about measures to deal with a crime after it has been committed and it is always about punishing harder and longer. It does not put resources into crime prevention, which I think is what Canadians really want.

Canadians want to live in safer communities. We want to ensure we reduce our crime rate. We want to ensure there are fewer victims of crime, not harsher punishment of the offender after the crime has been committed.

In terms of crime prevention, what I am looking for from the government, not only with this legislation that is important to deal with offenders after they have committed a sex offence, but with my New Democrat colleagues, we will continue to press the government to add resources and to take legislative measures that will help prevent crime in this country.

I have already mentioned child advocacy centres. We have already heard that Steve Sullivan, the victims ombudsman, has testified that victims want more resources put into crime prevention because nobody can undo or understand the damage that is felt by a victim of crime.

What we need to do and what victims want is for us to pour resources into helping ensure that those crimes are not committed in the first place.

The government has a responsibility to work with offenders. We call on the government to ensure that we take intelligent measures, that when offenders are caught they get the kind of help and therapy that hopefully will help them not to reoffend in the future.

Protecting Victims From Sex Offenders Act

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to this bill. I have to say at the outset that I was very impressed with the approach of my friend, the member for Edmonton—St. Albert, to the bill. If the Conservatives put him in charge of the justice agenda, we might see better results than we are seeing right now. I do not know how much better, I do not want to go too far, but from what I have seen so far, he would be a big improvement on the front bench on that side. I would change some of the management if I were at the top over there, but I am not, of course.

This bill is one which we will support going to committee at second reading. We will examine it further and look at potential amendments. There is not a lot that I personally see wrong with the bill. The statutory review of the sex offender information registry by the public safety committee was under way with a confidential draft report having been circulated to the committee members on May 29. Despite this, typical of the government, in the same vein that it proceeded with the pardon issue, it chose to table the changes to the registry on June 1 in the form of Bill C-34.

In terms of the key aspects of this legislation, one of the major provisions is the mandatory registration of those convicted of a designated sexual offence. Currently, registration must be applied for by the prosecutor and granted by the judge. If an application is made, an order shall be issued, unless the offender can show that the impact on his liberty is grossly disproportionate to the public interest in protecting society.

The second aspect to the legislation provides for mandatory DNA sampling of those convicted of a designated sexual offence. Currently, the sampling must be applied for by the prosecutor and granted by the judge.

Another aspect of the legislation is the expanding of the police's ability to access the registry for crime prevention purposes. Currently, police can only access the registry to investigate a crime that has occurred with reasonable belief that it is sexual in nature. In terms of crime prevention, this is a matter that was mentioned by several other members this afternoon. I believe this is part of the Ontario legislation. I am looking to the member for Edmonton—St. Albert for confirmation on that. I believe that the ability to look at crime prevention is in the Ontario legislation and that has provided the impetus for us to look at that as an improvement to the federal act.

All we have to do is look at the statistics between the two pieces of legislation to see that the Ontario legislation has a much higher number of people on the registry than the federal registry does. Police evidently have a much greater appreciation and respect for the Ontario registry than they do for the federal registry.

The federal registry has been around for a number of years. Once again, the member for Edmonton—St. Albert pointed out that in 1997 the premiers and attorneys general of the day got together with the federal government and there was a lot of early co-operation which started this process moving. We owe it to our predecessors for having the foresight to move, but it was the province of Ontario that was the first to proceed. It appears to be the template for the federal legislation.

It is important to note that once the federal legislation was in force, there was to be a review process. That is what Parliament was engaged in when the government decided to bring in its own legislation. Once again, the government is short-circuiting the process, much as it did with the pardon legislation.

Many members have spoken about the process of the Prime Minister proroguing the House and having us start over again. I believe that the member for Churchill spoke at length about the potential for having omnibus legislation, as much as we do not like it. When it comes to Criminal Code changes, our justice critic, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh has spoken several times about the need to revise the entire Criminal Code of Canada. It is long overdue and it is a huge act.

We should take an omnibus approach to the bill. This would be an argument for that approach. We would include all of the amendments to the Criminal Code in one omnibus bill and bring the Criminal Code up to date, rather than what the Conservatives are doing. They are bringing the Criminal Code amendments in one at a time in a boutique approach so that they can get a press release and a bump in the polls for each and every initiative. In fact, they should just include them in one big omnibus bill and be done with it.

The difference between that approach and the idea of using omnibus bills in terms of budget implementation is that the Conservatives use the omnibus approach and go way beyond budget implementation. They throw in the post office remailers, the sale of AECL, and on and on. We are talking about an omnibus bill that would deal with Criminal Code changes and all of these particular issues. Then we would not have this constant problem of being stuck with prorogation and election calls.

If things go well at the summits and the numbers start to improve in the next few weeks, knowing that their long-term future is not so rosy, the Conservatives may decide to cut their losses and call an election in September. We would be at it again and all of these bills would be back at square one and after the election we would have to go through this whole process again.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is really a pleasure for me to rise to speak to the merits of Bill S-2, Protecting Victims From Sex Offenders Act.

This legislation proposes to enhance the current provisions respecting the registration of information related to sex offenders. As hon. members will know, and we have heard some debate here this afternoon, this is an extremely important bill. It is a bill that deserves our utmost attention, as it deals with ensuring the safety of our children and other vulnerable Canadians from sexual predators.

As hon. members know, public safety is an objective shared by all parliamentarians, both here and in the other place, where this bill originated. Moreover, Bill S-2 carries on initiatives undertaken by all premiers and all territorial leaders, in concert with the federal government, calling for a national sex offender registration system.

Let me give the House a little bit of history. As early as 1997, the principle features of a registry were thoroughly discussed by all of the ministers responsible for criminal justice in their own provinces, the federal government, and all territorial jurisdictions. Their endorsement led to the Sex Offender Information Registration Act of 2004. Indeed, Bill S-2 reflects and continues a national consensus that responds to a concern shared by all Canadians.

Since forming government in 2006, we have taken a series of actions to better protect Canadians from sexual abusers, and we will continue to do so. I would like to reiterate that the legislative foundations for this bill we are considering here today stand out as a wonderful example of what can be accomplished when federal, provincial, and territorial interests are accommodated through consultation and co-operation. I should also mention that this bill has the support of law enforcement, prosecutors, and victim advocacy groups.

Bill S-2 has been reported by the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, and was previously examined, as Bill C-34, by the parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, of which I am a member, in the last session of this Parliament.

This legislation reflects input from a number of sectors, including corrections, law enforcement, child protection agencies, and victims groups. The Senate committee provided a forum for a thorough discussion of a range of views and positions regarding the efficacy of a national sex offender registry.

I would submit that this is a strong indication that the government's proposals were a fitting response to urgent suggestions that the sex offender database be more inclusive.

These multi-sectoral consultations I referred to led to the significant amendments that have been before the legislative drafters for some years. Discussions have covered the viability of the registry and have monitored the implementation of the act.

Perhaps the most pressing question in this debate has been about arriving at a balance between limiting or increasing the scope of the registry. The question becomes this: What parameters should govern the number of offences, and which offenders ought to be included in a registry?

The following questions also need to be resolved and have been resolved by these amendments: How long should a registration order remain in force? Who should determine whether an offender should be registered? In other words, once a list is begun, where should it end?

These questions were pivotal to the establishment of the national sex offender registry. Experience gained by criminal justice practitioners can now be applied to better balance public safety and human rights in this legislation.

At the time of its inception, the only sex offender registry in Canada was maintained by the Province of Ontario. Aspects of that registry were then being contested in the courts, and we now have the benefit of a number of judicial decisions.

Accordingly, our government has drafted legislation that is responsive to public safety concerns across the country, while it achieves a balance with concerns about fairness and human rights.

Although, Mr. Speaker, you need no education in the area of criminal justice, please allow me to refresh the memories of those who were present when the national registry was created and to provide background for more recent arrivals.

The initial legislation, which I referred to, the starting point for the legislative changes we are considering today, proposed a registry that was to have included only those convicted of designated offences after the legislation came into force. However, during review by Parliament, the registry was amended to include offenders previously convicted of scheduled offences who were, as of the date of coming into force, incarcerated in a provincial or federal institution, under conditional or intermittent sentence, or on probation or parole.

Also included are those offenders under a detention order or who had not been absolutely discharged subsequent to a finding of being “not criminally responsible” for that offence. This latter inclusion stems from the fact that while a disposition by a court that an offender is not criminally responsible means there has been no finding of guilt, it is still a finding that the offender committed the offence.

For reasons that are apparent, it was deemed desirable to keep this class of offenders within the registration scope of the act.

Parliamentarians heard from a number of sectors regarding registration and made appropriate amendments. The registry's effectiveness has been monitored through the implementation period. With the benefit of this experience, the government believes the time has come to ensure a more rigorous approach. The final outcome of our efforts here today ultimately focus on the central concern of all involved, the safety of Canadians from exploitation and crime. Protection from sexual predators is the raison d'être of this legislation.

Briefly, I will touch on the main features of Bill S-2. To reinforce what others have mentioned, the key provision is that registration under both the Sex Offender Information Registration Act and the DNA Identification Act would become automatic upon conviction, making it mandatory for the sentencing judge to impose an order to register and provide a DNA sample whenever a conviction for a scheduled sexual offence had been entered against the offender.

The crown prosecutor will no longer be required to bring an application for an order. This legislation would empower police officers to take action if they detected suspicious activity on the part of a registrant, even if no overt criminal activity was under way. Prevention becomes possible that previously was beyond the scope of the law.

Certainly in committee, upon examination of the former Bill C-34, we heard anecdotally and otherwise of many instances when crown prosecutors would not ask the court for an order of inclusion on the registry. Some of this was a matter of a plea bargain. Occasionally, it was a mere oversight. However, in any event, under the proposed legislation before the House, the crown will no longer be required to bring an application. Such inclusion will be automatic. I think all members will agree that change is worthy of their support.

Furthermore, police will be able to identify registered sex offenders who are travelling to other jurisdictions, both domestically and internationally. Again, a level of prevention is made possible by these amendments. In addition, corrections officials will be able to notify police forces of both the release and the re-admission of registrants.

Finally, and just as important, the registry will be enhanced by the inclusion of vehicle data to assist authorities in monitoring, investigating and, if necessary, prosecuting registrants where necessary.

To sum up for all members of the House, the development of Bill S-2 sets out a framework for continuity in a co-operative effort among federal, provincial and territorial governments. Significantly this is a national system, unlike the efforts elsewhere, where duplication and confusion may reign. We have the advantage of a single common approach that combines the efforts of various criminal justice sectors but, at the same time, respects the provincial role in the administration of the system.

The additional measures we will be passing in the House after due consideration will further simplify, unify and strengthen efforts to protect the vulnerable among us. It must be emphasized that these goals will be achieved while respecting both the needs of law enforcement and the courts and the civil liberties of all Canadians.

Bill S-2 is an undertaking to improve earlier legislative efforts that, although well-intentioned, have proven to be less than comprehensive. In this we have benefited from the experience, the expertise and the goodwill of many sectors within the Canadian criminal justice system.

I believe we can move this matter to a timely conclusion. I understand there is support among all members of the House, or the majority of the members of the House, to pass the bill at second reading and to send it to the public safety committee in which I and all its members will give it a thorough examination.

Accordingly I urge all hon. members to speed the passage of this important bill. Canadians have asked for it. Victims of crime deserve no less.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Bill S-2 was originally Bill C-34 before prorogation. It is one of the law and justice bills the government is famous for introducing. It is just one of the bills that fell by the wayside because of prorogation.

For reasons known only to the government, it brought the bill back through the Senate. If prorogation had not occurred, would this bill be law by now? Why would the government bring it back through the Senate instead of the democratic way, which is to bring it through the House of Commons?

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise in the House and speak to Bill S-2, a bill that has been raised in the House before. It is a bill which the government feels so strongly about that prorogation did not stop the Conservatives from going through with their agenda. They did not feel democracy needed to have respect but certainly when it comes to their priorities, they brought back these kinds of bills, mostly focused on the crime and punishment agenda as many of us see it.

This bill was originally Bill C-34, a bill on which my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway had done a great deal of work, along with the public safety committee, to make sure the bill was at its best. Many hours were spent bringing in witnesses for debate and discussion and I understand it was a very healthy debate and discussion. Amendments were made, amendments that we put forward and supported. The discussion was a very vigorous one, but unfortunately as I noted, political games prevailed and the government's disrespect for our democratic institution came first and the result was prorogation. Yet, here we are discussing the bill in a new incarnation today.

We do support the bill at second reading, but we support a very important productive review of the bill at committee as is what happened with Bill C-34 in the last session. I spoke of the important discussion that took place.

There are a number of important pieces that were part of Bill C-34 and continue to be part of Bill S-2. For example, the bill loosens the definition of when the sex offender registry can be accessed. It widens some of the information included, such as vehicle registration and information that is important to police officers who would be conducting the investigations. It also allows police officers to notify authorities in other jurisdictions, both foreign and Canadian, when an offender travels to their area. Those are laudable goals that we support.

Mention has been made of the particular tragedy of Canadians going abroad and taking advantage of victims in other countries that perhaps do not have the same regulatory or investigative powers. The offenders feel they can get away with it. The bill aims at putting a stop to that. We hope it is a great deterrent to those kinds of offenders.

There are some good amendments, as I mentioned, such as vehicle information, not just licence plates but also descriptions. These kinds of details are important. The bill closes some serious loopholes that existed in the registry. As the registry currently stands, there is no way to track whether a sex offender is presently incarcerated or perhaps deceased. The criteria is so strict about what information can be tracked that police are legally prohibited from recording that kind of information. We find the stipulations in the bill that serve to close that loophole to be very useful.

We also know that every minute in an investigation counts. Investigations of sex offences which are particularly serious impact individuals, their families and communities in such a tragic way. Sometimes they result in cases of missing children, young people and women. Closing that loophole and having a better tracking system will mean that police will not be wasting their time verifying the whereabouts of offenders who perhaps have died or are incarcerated. It is very important to close that loophole.

However, despite the positives and some of the amendments that have been made, we feel that it is important to send this bill to committee in order to improve on its faults, to seek the provision of deterrents to sexual crime offences, and to support victims and prevention undertakings.

We do find a number of issues with this legislation. First, this legislation proposes automatic registration of every offender who commits one of the enumerated offences. This takes away prosecutorial and judicial discretion. Most of the offences under the Criminal Code of Canada, that are captured by this legislation, would have no difficulty with automatic registration. However, in the cases of a couple of hybrid offences, such as sexual assault, we believe that these are important pieces where prosecutorial and judicial discretion and decisions must definitely be applied. There ought to be room for that.

There may be an occasion where it is not appropriate to make an order against someone convicted of an offence. It should be up to a prosecutor and judge to determine when that exception may apply. That is very much in line with a pattern we are seeing from the government, which is an overriding of that judicial and prosecutorial discretion.

This is surprising, considering that the House is made up of people who come from the legal profession. We know that the judicial body is considered an independent body from government, yet we do not see that kind of respect from the government. Rather, we have a top down directive often fueled by the desire to make a spectacle, to pick on some sensational issues, and to come to quick conclusions on bills.

For that reason, we feel it is important that this be carefully discussed at committee and that we ensure there is room for that prosecutorial and judicial discretion that we in Canada pride ourselves on. It is something that we would like to see made applicable, not just to elements of this bill but to the overall agenda when we are dealing with judicial decisions and crime in our country.

We see other gaps in this bill. For example, in the area of funds, the Conservatives like to introduce crime bills such as this one to suit political purposes, but they are not so supportive or keen when it comes to putting money up to pay for these necessary kinds of changes. The public safety committee, in discussing Bill C-34, heard much testimony in its study about the Ontario sex offender registry. Police and victims groups talked about that registry as a model.

The national registry has an operating budget of $400,000 to $600,000 per year. By comparison, the budget for the operation and centralized management of the Ontario registry is close to $4 million per year, not including the expenses incurred by local police departments. Somebody who is not as gifted at math might be saying that one of 10 provinces and three territories is spending $4 million on this kind of an operation while we have a national government that is proposing to do the work of an entire country on far less, between $400,000 and $600,000.

That is clearly inadequate. We support strengthening the registry and closing the loopholes, but let us do it in a way that matters. Let us not do a job half well done, or in this case, one-tenth of the way well done. Let us truly look at making it meaningful. We owe this to the victims of sexual offences. We owe this to Canadians who are concerned about these kinds of crimes.

Let us not shove that issue of appropriate funding aside. We all know that the job will not get done right without that proper funding. The bill contains nothing to increase resources for the sex offender registry and instead downloads the burden on to already over stretched police forces.

If I can just point out the irony that the government often claims to stand by our police officers and people in uniform, but the downloading of such an onerous responsibility on police officers, detachments and organizations that are already under incredible strain, that as we know are lacking personnel, would be a true shame. We should not go forward without appropriate funding.

There are other issues in the way in which this bill is inadequate. I feel that it is important to perhaps focus on the one area that we have raised with respect to other issues under the government's crime agenda. It is around the area of prevention but also support for victims or for potential victims, young people, people who are often in vulnerable positions and on the margins of society.

Earlier this year, Steve Sullivan, the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, testified at the public safety committee. He spoke about the need for the government to fund child advocacy centres in major cities across the country. These centres would provide counselling, support, and referrals to other resources for child victims of crime, particularly victims of sexual abuse.

These centres would be a concrete and meaningful way to improve the lives of victims. We know that many sex offenders were themselves sexually abused. Therefore, child advocacy centres would be an important part of preventing future sexual offences.

The victims ombudsman asked for $5 million to fund these centres but the government refused. That refusal I believe is something that we need to see the government quite frankly change its line on. Here we have somebody that the government hired and his work seemed to be quite useful up to now and now we hear that he has come under a great deal of distress. The man who is a specialist in this area came forward with a proposal that was done in consultation with victims themselves, with specialists in this area, counsellors and medical professionals. He said that this would go a long way into cutting down on those offences and into supporting victims. To hear that the government refused that kind of action to me flies in the face of the government's commitment to supposedly cut down on these kinds of offences, and is something that I find to be quite disconcerting. I am not sure how it can respond to that with Canadians.

We all want to see any crime, but certainly sexual crimes, to be dealt with in the right way. We can all see the value of prevention so that we do not need to deal with a crime after the damage has been done, after the victim has been abused, after the tragedy has occurred.

Prevention is very critical. If I can perhaps share the experience of my constituency on that important piece. I have the honour of representing the riding of Churchill in northern Manitoba which is a very diverse riding. In it there are many first nations and Métis communities. They are very diverse communities, but they are communities that have also dealt with extreme tragedy.

Last week we commemorated the second year of the residential schools apology that the government made. As we all know, the residential schools were a place of great horror for aboriginal people. Many aboriginal young people were victims of sexual abuse at these schools. I have consulted with many elders and community members who have told me that cycle of violence, not just physical but sexual violence, is a difficult cycle to break from.

We are talking about children who were ripped away from their parents, ripped away from their identities, and subjected to the kind of abuse that many of us would have difficulty wrapping our heads around. Many survivors were not able to deal with this abuse and were so traumatized that they took their own lives, a tragedy that many of us have acknowledged. All of us here were honoured and proud to hear the government's apology.

There has been little done to deal with the needs of aboriginal people. I would like to point to the failure of the government to provide funding for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, an organization that provided counselling for survivors of this abuse, for their children and their grandchildren. I had the honour of working hard with my colleagues in this House to save this organization. In some cases, survivors were incarcerated. They did their time and sought out rehabilitation. The community programs supported by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation were critical to breaking the cycle of sexual violence.

This government claims to be on the side of victims. It claims to be the government that will cut down on crime and here we are today talking about sexual offences. It was the present government that did away with a very successful program that helped to do the very same thing.

Prevention is not only specific to preventing a particular crime. It is also about ensuring that young people, women, are strong, and that they have support in their communities to achieve their potential.

I represent isolated first nations such as Shamattawa, Oxford House, God's River, God's Lake Narrows, Island Lake, Red Sucker Lake, Wasagamack, St. Theresa Point, Garden Hill, Bloodvein, Berens River, Little Grand and Pauingassi. I think of the many young people who have spoken to me of the lack of recreational programs and the fact that government programs are inadequate. These young people know that their generation is falling into the trap of criminal behaviour and gangs. They want to fight back. They want to ensure they have positive and healthy activities, a space for them to pursue healthy alternatives in their own communities. They want education and proper health care and also proper infrastructure. All of these pieces are integral to that prevention agenda.

We feel that Bill S-2 is lacking in that approach to prevention, something that would go a long way in deterring and cutting down on sex crimes. The government needs to answer the call. It needs to support people on the margin. It needs to support people who are seeking to break the cycle of violence, who are seeking to ensure that their families, their children and their communities are safe. Only then will we see true leadership when it comes to cutting down on crime and supporting Canadians throughout our country.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is a great honour for me to speak today on Bill S-2, which is an exact copy of Bill C-34 as amended by the Standing Committee on Public Safety during the last Parliament.

We were in favour of Bill C-34 in principle and the witnesses we heard—I was also on the committee at the time—reinforced us in our position. We proposed some amendments that were adopted. By the way, I would like to congratulate my colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, with whom I worked on this file.

The Bloc Québécois is in favour of this bill on the sex offender registry. It is further proof that when we work on bills, we work on them one at a time in a constructive spirit, without engaging in the demagoguery and Conservative grandstanding to which we have become accustomed.

First, I would like to remind the House that the current Sex Offender Information Registration Act came into force on December 15, 2004.

Bill S-2 is intended to make the sex offender registry more effective and helpful to police forces in their preventive efforts as well as during investigations of sex crimes.

It aims, therefore, to register more people convicted of sex crimes and to include more information about them, especially their DNA.

Bill S-2 also imposes further obligations on the individuals listed in the registry if they move or expect to be absent from their homes for an extended period.

Some changes were made. Specifically, in addition to adding more offences that result in inclusion on the registry, clause 5 of the bill changes the procedure through which the courts order inclusion on it.

In the case of what are called direct sexual offences, the current system gives the crown attorney a choice of whether or not to ask for the person to be included on the registry after being convicted of the offence.

With the new registry in Bill S-2, this is no longer in the hands of the Crown. As soon as someone is convicted and sentenced for a sex crime, he or she must automatically comply and be included on the registry. I want to make it clear that this applies to sex crimes.

Furthermore, the new clause eliminates the exemption that applied when the offender established that the impact of his or her inclusion on the registry, including on personal privacy or liberty, would be grossly disproportionate to the protection of society.

In other words, when a direct sexual offence is committed, registration is automatic. Individuals convicted can no longer justify that their inclusion on the registry would be disproportionate to the penalties they would suffer in their private lives or regarding their liberty.

For other designated crimes, those known as serious crimes or conspiracy to commit a sex offence, thus more indirect crimes, at that point it is up to the Crown prosecutor to determine whether to ask the court to include the individual on the sex offender registry.

Clause 40 of Bill S-2 also makes an important change regarding how the registry can be used. Under current legislation, the registry can only be used when there are reasonable grounds to believe that a sex offence has been committed. Bill S-2 allows police to consult the registry for prevention purposes.

In addition, if this bill passes, there will be a correlation among offences that lead to inclusion on the sex offender registry and the sex offender's obligation to provide a sample of bodily fluids in order to add his or her DNA to the national DNA data bank.

Now I would like to talk a little about money. As my Liberal colleague and my colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin mentioned, this will call for a lot more analyses, whether for investigations or for prevention.

In its last budget, the government announced $14 million over two years for DNA testing. In fact, in April 2009, in committee, we met with the directors of two major laboratories, one in Quebec and the other in Ontario. The third laboratory in Canada is the RCMP laboratory. Mr. Prime, from the Centre of Forensic Sciences, and Mr. Dufour, from the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale, told us in April 2009 not only that was there no agreement with the federal government, but that they also had to do a huge number of tests with very little money. Unfortunately, it might take over a year to get results.

On March 18, the minister met with us at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. We asked him questions about this, but we did not get many answers. I have also spoken with a few officials, who have confirmed that there was still no agreement with Quebec and Ontario. They were not even able to tell us how much of the $7 million would be going to the laboratories in Quebec and Ontario.

If we look to previous funding, it was approximately $2 million per laboratory. We might imagine that there is really no increase. With this bill, whether or not it is intended, there is going to be a major problem if we do not invest more money in forensic laboratories. We are certainly going to see increases.

I will be told that this is nothing new. We see all the bills they are introducing. We see people being increasingly treated like criminals. They want to have longer sentences, but they are investing billions of dollars in just anything, be it for a G8 or for a G20. Obviously we will have to invest billions of dollars in correctional services and for public safety. When a decision is made to incarcerate people, they have to be sent somewhere. I hope it will not happen as it usually does, that they will invest in bricks and mortar, but nothing will be put into programs. In correctional services, at present, 2% or 2.5% of the total budget is allocated to programs.

I will continue on the subject of Bill S-2. The present legislation provides that the database may not be used where there are reasonable grounds to believe that a crime of a sexual nature has been committed. With Bill S-2, the database can be searched. But it will cost, and it will cost a lot.

The Bloc Québécois believes that police forces must be given tools that, on the one hand, effectively prevent and fight crime and, on the other, do not trample the fundamental rights of Quebec and Canadian citizens.

The proper protection of our children requires a number of tools. One of them, which is important and seems fundamental to me, is the Internet. Unfortunately, it is also the tool of choice for the child pornography industry. I will provide some statistics in support of my comments.

It is estimated that more than 65,000 people—I find this to be a conservative figure as I believe the number to be much higher—exchange child pornography, both photos and videos, on the Internet. In February 2009, the Ontario Provincial Police dismantled a child pornography ring involving 31 people in different Ontario communities.

Mr. Stewart, of the OPP child sexual exploitation section, stated: “Unfortunately, I believe there's thousands of children we're not getting to, and that's particularly difficult.”

In 2004, 480,000 child pornography sites were identified in the world, compared to 4,300 in 1996. In addition to movies, more than five million images of sexually abused children are circulating on the Internet. The pictures are becoming increasingly explicit and feature younger children and the use of violence. Many movies are shot live for the entertainment of pedophile clients and they show abominable sexual abuse of children under the age of seven.

In addition, it is estimated that there are between 50,000 and 100,000 organized child pornography rings, with a third operating in the United States and a portion in Russia. Are we immune to it? No, and I will cover that. We also have a large number of these types of sites. I am not talking about individual sites or images put on the Internet by a “family man” who abuses his child. I am not talking about amateurs, but about organized professionals.

According to research conducted by Cybertip.ca from 2002 to 2009, 57.4% of images on Internet sites containing child pornography depicted children under 8 years of age; 24.7% showed children aged 8 to 12; and 83% were of girls. More than 35% of the images analyzed showed serious sexual assaults. Children under 8 were most often depicted being abused through sexual assault (37.2%), and 68.5% of extreme sexual assaults occurred against children under 8. Canada is in the top three. That is amazing. According to Statistics Canada figures, we rank third in the world among countries that host child pornography sites. The United States ranks first with 49.2% and Russia, second with 20.4%. Who is in third place? We are, with 9%.

We also have people who produce child pornography in Canada. A police officer told me he had even seen images of assaults on newborns. We have to wonder.

I mention this because Bill S-2, which is a rehash of a previous bill, is not the only bill that targets this sort of crime. There are also Bills C-46 and C-47, which still have not been reintroduced here in the House.

Since 1999, police forces across Canada have been calling for a law that would respect human rights, of course, but would force Internet service providers to reveal the IP addresses of their pedophile clients and to have the technology to keep that information.

On April 22, during his testimony before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, Mr. Sullivan, who was then the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime and who had been appointed by this government, answered my question. I asked him what he thought about the fact that these bills still had not been reintroduced. He answered, “...if I were the Prime Minister today the Internet bill would be my absolute priority; it would be number one in the justice reform areas.”

Mr. Sullivan perfectly described the problem resulting from the fact that this legislation is not on the books. I will read what he said. It is horrible.

Right now, depending on where you are in the country and what ISP company you're working with.... Some ISPs will actually cooperate with law enforcement, and some won't.

We've heard about cases from law enforcement. They have an IP address. They actually are able to trace the guy to where he lives, and they go, because he's trading in child pornography.

They actually found and arrested the person. He had with him his 11-month-old son, who he was sexually abusing. Now, law enforcement had no information that this was taking place. They had no idea that this child was in that situation. Had they not tracked him down, that child today, four years later, would still be undergoing sexual abuse. The longer we delay these initiatives to give law enforcement the tools, the more kids are going to be abused. I think that makes everybody angry.

I find that disappointing, especially since we know how many years it can take to develop a bill. It is high time that this be passed.

The former victims' ombudsman lamented the fact that in 2007 the former public safety minister and member for Okanagan—Coquihalla did not want to follow up on repeated requests from the police to adapt investigative tools to the current Internet reality. However, in fall of 2009, the Conservative government finally introduced Bills C-46 and C-47 to respond to this Internet loophole. And what did the Prime Minister do? He prorogued the House and these bills died on the order paper. How convenient. It was put off until fall and then they prorogued a few months later, as if by chance. And they did not reintroduce them.

The Conservatives say that pedophiles are a priority and that this is a serious issue. As usual, they are serving up the same old announcements, about victims and children. They are grandstanding for everyone, trying to score political points. They are not really fighting crime. Have they reintroduced the bills? No. Why? That is the million-dollar question given that this government says that it wants to protect children and fight against crime and criminals.

Here is the question we must ask ourselves: what interests are preventing this government, which claims to be a champion when it comes to cracking down on pedophiles, from bringing back the old bills C-46 and C-47 so that we can study them in committee and improve them? Police forces have been waiting for 10 years now, and this government, despite advice from the former victims' ombudsman, has still not dealt with an issue that the ombudsman and I both believe could save children's lives. Ask any police officer; they will all say the same thing.

There is something else that just does not make sense. In my riding, and probably in other ridings in Quebec and Canada, the government is letting pedophiles live in halfway houses and community correctional centres near elementary schools and daycares. That makes no sense. I have asked three different public safety ministers about this. Three public safety ministers later, nothing has happened. That is absurd. Can a government that makes a huge show of introducing big, important bills not send a simple directive to community correctional centres through Correctional Service Canada? These centres are not even private; they belong to the CSC. The government cannot even send out a simple directive to ensure that there will no longer be pedophiles near elementary schools.

The government is waiting for another scandal to break out. Then they will react, just as they did with Olson and Karla Homolka. They will react by saying that the matter is very serious and that they want to introduce a bill.

That is shameful. According to the former ombudsman, every month that goes by, children could have been saved, as I said before.

As we speak, children are being attacked on the Internet, and pedophiles are living near schools. I would like to know when the government will take real action to properly protect our children.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would first like to say how much I appreciated the member’s speech. He is very eloquent—he has quite a talent—and he bases all his arguments on facts that he has verified. He clearly demonstrated that in his speech.

I worked with him in the study of this bill a year ago when it was Bill C-34. Since that time, I have moved to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, but he will certainly remember some relevant facts he did not have time to mention, in particular regarding the DNA data bank that they want to use here once again. In fact, in the course of our study, we learned that the time for getting a DNA result is now more than a year, I believe. Certainly if there is a very urgent case, at a crime scene, they can be had faster, but the number of times the DNA data bank is used means that it takes an extremely long time. With this bill and the amendments being proposed, an even heavier load will be put on the DNA data bank.

We also learned, if I recall correctly, that training a DNA technician to be able to testify in court is something that takes years. Perhaps the member still recalls the exact time. I would not want to give inaccurate figures. I do not like to give figures when I have not verified them.

However, it strikes me again how the Conservatives have this habit of always making a show of how they are really doing something to tackle crime. Are they not going to extremes that will mean that at some point we are going to be unable to administer these laws, and so they will not be very useful to victims?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the amendments to the Sex Offender Registry. It is not an easy issue to talk about. Any time we talk about sex offences, it is one of those issues that really causes us great personal pain. Whether as parents or as members of the community, when we hear about these offences, we recognize they are some of the most despicable and horrible acts that can happen in our communities. I do not think any member of the House would say that we should not put at the disposal of police officers every tool they possibly can have to stop one of those crimes from happening, to stop there being a victim in the first place.

I am pleased to be generally very supportive of these changes, but I will do something to start that I do not typically do, and that is to quote myself. The reason I will do this will become clear in just a moment:

We the know of the Stephensons, who lost their son, and all the work they did in developing Christopher's law. It has led in Ontario to some very effective legislation, legislation that is used many hundreds of times a day and searched far more than the national registry. The success of that registry underscores the failure of the national registry. When we look at the statistics, and it is hard to believe, the Ontario registry is used four times more in a day than the national registry is used in a year.

I do not think there is any disagreement from anyone in the House that the sex offender registry is in need of modernization and amendment, and I welcome that debate.

The reason I quote myself is because that was almost exactly a year ago in June 2009 when the House had this debate. At that point in time, I made a speech on the necessity of moving forward with then Bill C-34. Everyone was participating in that debate agreed there was a need to move forward expeditiously.

However, we are here after prorogation, after the government killed that bill, to debate it yet again. What is so frustrating about the bill is the government not only short-circuited, through prorogation, the efforts of the House to deal with modernizing the National Sex Offender Registry, but in committee when we had undertaken a mandatory legislative review, as dictated by the government. We cleared our committee calendar. We pushed away all other business. We said that this was important, that we ought to sit down and work on this in a bipartisan way, We did exactly that.

We went over the National Sex Offender Registry. We had witnesses come from across the country and heard their testimony. As we were developing our report for the government, the government short-circuited all of it and tabled its bill without having even the courtesy of listening to the conclusions of the committee before ignoring them. Our committees are used to being ignored, but usually the government has the courtesy of letting the committee table the report before it ignores it. In this case, it did not even wait for that report. The Conservatives stated that the reason they needed to short-circuit our process was the legislation was so urgently needed, it was so desperate to push this forward and have it done, that they could not even wait to hear from the committee.

Then the summer passed, then prorogation and now we have the bill again. They would not wait for the opinion of committee, yet it was okay to prorogue and cancel the bill and now bring it back and talk about it with great urgency yet again, a year later. It shows of pattern behaviour. The government holds a reservoir of crime bills that it puts forward, retracts, puts forward, retracts, prorogues, kills, moves to the House and there is a curious timing with these bills. They seem to coincide with big Conservative problems.

Right now the government is embroiled in a rather large scandal, involving more than $1 billion that is being wasted on G8 and G20 summits. If Conservatives do not want to talk about fake lakes, gazebos, sidewalks to nowhere and some of this colossal waste they have undertaken, they switch to a crime bill and say that we have to deal with it, that it is urgent. They expect everyone is going to forget that they killed their own bill, are reintroducing it, short-circuited committee's process a year ago because they said that it was so urgent.

Canadians are a little smarter than that. They see the game and it is unfortunate because, as I said, these changes should have been made a year ago.

My colleague from Scarborough—Guildwood asked an excellent question to which he did not get an answer just a few moments ago. Why on earth, if all of these bills are so urgent, did the Conservatives not reintroduce them in an omnibus fashion? They did it with the budget, Bill C-9. They put everything but the kitchen sink into the budget bill. Yet when it comes to a crime bill, they have to reintroduce them one at a time, month over month and there is suddenly time to match whatever controversy they happen to be embroiled in at the time. It certainly makes one ask the question of why the Conservatives are introducing these bills when they are. It would seem that they are channel-changers more than genuine attempts to change legislation.

It is important the committee identified a number of items within the sex offender registry that needed change. The bill has now incorporated many of those amendments, now that the government has waited a year and actually listened to what the committee had to say.

One of the provisions in the bill, which is clearly very important, is automatic inclusion, the idea that people who commit offences of a sexual nature be automatically included in the sex offender registry. When we were hearing from those who were involved in creating Christopher's law in Ontario, they told us how important this provision was. We heard that there were roughly 12,000 people, as of last April, on the Ontario sex offender registry. On our entire national registry, there are only 19,000, to give an example. As I mentioned earlier in my speech, it was being used more times in a single day in Ontario than it was being used in a year. Clearly police did not find this registry reliable and automatic inclusion was an important provision with which to move forward.

The second element we heard again and again in the committee testimony was the importance of the ability for the police to use this tool proactively. As an example, if people call in suspicious activity around a school or somebody acting in an odd way that is causing them concern, if police officers are called, they are able to reference that person against the sex offender registry to find out if that person has a history of sexual-based offences. This is something police officers could not do before and it something they said they needed to do. The bill before us today can do that.

The next point is it allows accredited law enforcement agencies to share information. What we do not want to have is silos, where the RCMP is guarding its information, a municipal police force is guarding its information and there is no exchange of data. In that situation, with those silos, there is opportunity for information to be missed, for somebody who should have been recognized or noticed before a crime occurred not to be noticed. That inclusion is important.

Another provision that one would have thought was in there but was clearly a mistake and an oversight was the fact that if somebody committed an offence overseas in another country, he or she would not be included on the National Sex Offender Registry. Clearly this is a huge loophole. We are aware, unfortunately, that sex crimes are very prevalent in certain parts of the world, where people will actually travel to commit sex crimes. It is essential that this information be captured in our national database and that when police search records, it is not just domestic instances that are picked up, but also anything that happened internationally.

Something left out of the bill, which we recommended as a committee a year ago, was vehicle registration and ensuring the licence plate and vehicle were also registered. This was a big omission. Clearly when police officers are trying to ascertain whether there is something amiss, a vehicle with the plates registered to somebody who is a sex offender is very useful information.

None of these items unto themselves necessarily will stop every crime, but we are trying to empower our police officers to the best of our ability, to give them the tools they need to get the job done.

There were a couple of areas throughout the committee hearings that were concerns and to some extent remain concerns. Christopher's law in Ontario includes a very focused list of sex offences that have been very effective when used by police.

We heard from some witnesses that they were concerned with some of the additional lists of sex offences that were included in the sex offender registry, as they could weaken the registry, for example, if someone were charged with an office indiscretion. None of us want to see that sort of behaviour go on. Clearly it needs to be addressed and needs to have justice be served. However, does it make sense for an office indiscretion or for a mistake of a minor nature to land somebody on the sex offender registry? What the police said was this would weaken the sex offender registry by including too many people who were not an imminent threat to their community and therefore lengthening the amount of time police officers had to search through data and information to get at what was relevant.

For expressing and voicing the concern that police had about weakening this registry, one of the hon. members with the Conservative Party labelled me as trying to weaken the sex offender registry on a panel on national television by saying that I was against the sex offender registry. Again, this leads to yet another tool that the Conservatives often use with their crime bills.

If members ask any questions or raise legitimate concerns, concerns that police themselves are asking, the Conservatives try to make it sound as if we are somehow for sex offenders. Nothing, however, could be more patently absurd or intellectually dishonest.

Another issue for which there was concern had to do with judicial discretion, which is tied to the first point that I made. The committee and the Senate made recommendations, which failed, that said that only in the most extraordinary of circumstances, where judges recognized that inclusion in the sex offender registry would be a gross miscarriage of justice, should there be the opportunity for a judge to say no, that it does not make sense to put that person on the list. So, in the rarest of rare circumstances, would a judge be given a modicum of discretion to ensure that only the right people get on that registry.

Again we were attacked for making that point but it is an important one. Policemen say that they would be put into a situation where the discretion would be forced on them to decide whether putting somebody on the sex offender registry would serve society well or be fair to that individual. Suddenly, the discretion is being put on police to make the decision to not to charge that person. Now, somebody who has committed a more minor offence might be in a situation where he or she is not charged at all after having committed the offence. That remains a concern.

In a broader context, there are a couple of other concerns that raise the question of how we deal with victimization before it happens. I was deeply disturbed when I had the opportunity as public safety critic to tour this country and meet with groups, including the Salvation Army, Boys and Girls Clubs and church organizations, that have seen their funding slashed for crime prevention, for the work they do on the front lines to try to stop crime before it happens. This is stuff that often does not get big headlines because, if it is successful, it never turns into a story.

If one has worked really hard at crime prevention, one can wake up one morning in a safer community. There are no headlines and nothing is trumpeted. There are just less victims and less crime. If we strip away all the rhetoric, should not one of the most major goals of government be to ensure communities are more safe, that crime never happens in the first place and that there are no victims to write about?

This slashing of that base infrastructure that communities have to stop crimes before they happen and to break the cycles of violence is deeply distressing because violence does not come out of the ether. It is not something that appears magically. More often than not, people who commit acts of violence have themselves been victims. They are caught in a cycle of victimization where they are playing out the same tragedy over and over again over successive generations.

What is desperately needed is intervention, to provide people with the opportunity to turn their life toward a bright path, particularly when they start to walk down that dark road. Again and again, when we talk to communities about the most important thing we can do to improve community safety, it is that, and yet, by more than half, spending on crime prevention in this country has been slashed and cut while prison spending has skyrocketed, an issue that, if I have time, I will come back to.

The second area of broader concern is the 41% cut to the victims of crime initiative, which is front line work with victims. The Conservatives often try to haul out the most tragic, terrible, awful examples that make all of our stomachs turn, but the reality is that victims cover a whole range. More often than not, very tragically, victims are aboriginal mothers stuck in a violent situation and needing help to get out of it. The victims of crime initiative worked with those victims to empower them and help them.

The victims ombudsman, the person the Conservatives put in place to be on the front lines of helping victims and recognizing their needs, said that the government's plan was unbalanced and would not work. When he decries the cuts to the victims of crime initiative, there is a pretty big gulf between the rhetoric of the government on victims and the reality. It is a gulf that is unfortunate because, more often than not, it seems that crime is a political tool. Instead of first asking how we can develop good policy, how we can work with stakeholders, how we can develop good legislation and then develop talking points and communiqués around that, the government seems to first want to create communiqués and talking points and then find legislation to make it match.

Another area of concern deals with lawful access. An hon. member of our caucus put forward a private member's bill several times through successive parliaments that would have given police the ability to go after crimes of the digital age. Police have been asking for many years to implement updated powers and abilities to track criminals online, to deal with new technologies and new ways in which criminals are communicating, planning and conducting crimes. When we are dealing with sex offences, particularly sex offences against children, this is an area that is particularly relevant.

In 2005, the then Liberal government introduced a bill to modernize our lawful access rules and to empower police to use the most modern investigative techniques to go after these types of crimes. Unfortunately, that legislation has languished. It was first killed by an election. It was then introduced by a Conservative government but it killed it by calling an election. It was introduced again and cancelled again by it calling an election. It was introduced again and then killed when the Conservatives prorogued. They have introduced it yet again and we still do not have it. It follows a pattern of a lot of talk but very little action on something that is very relevant to both sex offenders and to fighting crime in general, something that police have been demanding.

The last point I will make is with respect to broad concerns as they affect the sex offender registry, and they have to do with the DNA data bank. There is a provision in the bill that ensures that somebody who is on the sex offender registry is automatically included in the DNA data bank. That is something that is laudable and supportable. However, the problem is that the DNA data bank is desperately underfunded. We know that the RCMP is taking seven to eight months to turn around requests and that its office simply cannot handle what is given to it. This automatic inclusion of all of this additional data will mean that the backup will be even bigger.

Again, we have a government passing something but not following it up with the resources to really make it work. If we are to have automatic inclusion in the DNA data bank, it is rather meaningless if the police do not have the resources to actually process and use that information.

We want to see the bill move forward. We are deeply disappointed that we are dealing with it yet again. It should have been dealt with more than a year ago. However, we look forward to its speedy passage through this place and the opportunity in committee to ask some of these important questions.

Public Safety and National Security

[Garry Breitkreuz, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fourth and fifth reports of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. The fourth report is in relation to Bill C-34, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and other Acts, and the fifth report is on the statutory review of the Sex Offender Information Registration Act.