Bill C-48 (Historical)

Protecting Canadians by Ending Sentence Discounts for Multiple Murders Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to the National Defence Act

This enactment amends the Criminal Code with respect to the parole inadmissibility period for offenders convicted of multiple murders. It also makes consequential amendments to the National Defence Act.

Protecting Canadians by Ending Sentence Discounts for Multiple Murders Act

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

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois has already done so in the past and it continues to support suggestions for improvement. We believe that there are definitely times when the law may be too permissive. We have given the example of parole after serving one-sixth of the sentence for white-collar crimes. We feel that it is abusive and distorts the meaning of the judge's decision, and we want it eliminated. We introduced a bill in the House. We asked for unanimous consent so that it would be passed quickly since all of the parties said that they supported it. The Conservatives, in their usual hypocrisy, refused to give that consent. That shows that they do not really care about getting results; they only care about political marketing. They convinced themselves that they could not support a Bloc Québécois bill that proved that this party, like all the parliamentarians here, is concerned with the safety of Quebeckers and Canadians. Of course not.

We have also made significant proposals in the past. Do not forget that it was the Bloc Québécois that brought the idea of an anti-gang law to the House, which Canada then passed. Our former colleague, Richard Marceau, was a major proponent of this. We continue to make proposals, for example, to prohibit wearing symbols of criminal organizations that have been recognized as such by a judge. We know it is a form of intimidation, and we want it to stop.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on behalf the New Democratic caucus today to Bill C-48, a bill that would provide the judges of our country with the discretion to impose consecutive life sentences in cases of convicted multiple murderers, which would be a change from the current state of law that imposes mandatory life sentences but which are served concurrently.

Questions of crime and punishment are profound. They raise some of the deepest emotions that we as human beings are capable of feeling. They invoke and often deal with feelings of great pain and hurt. Of course, whenever there is a crime committed, we have a victim or multiple victims to consider and their families.

What is indisputable is that behind every crime there is tragedy, a tragedy for the victim and the victim's family and friends, a tragedy for the community, a tragedy for our society and, indeed, a tragedy for the perpetrator, as well as his or her family and relatives.

Any time a crime is committed, we as a society and as parliamentarians must deal with the fact that there are broken lives, damaged lives and, in some cases, permanent harm needs to be dealt with. There is no more profound expression of these concepts than when we are examining the crime of murder.

It has been said that one of the most fundamental functions of government is to ensure the safety and security of our citizens. I agree. A well-functioning and well-organized society is no more than a social compact between citizens where we agree that we will come together and relinquish certain rights and freedoms that we would have in the state of nature and we agree to limit those in exchange for guarantees for our security and our safety.

Going back to philosophers, such as Thomas Hobbes who described life in the state of nature as nasty, brutish and short, we have all agreed that we are all better off when we come together and agree on certain fundamental rules where we can have our personal safety guaranteed, the safety of our families and the safety of our property protected and preserved.

Foremost as citizens, I think fundamentally as citizens, we expect that the integrity of our physical beings is guaranteed above and beyond anything else. That is because we agree that in order to function as a society we need to agree to abide by rules.

Although we have a rights-based society, we all agree that our rights are extended only insofar as they do not offend the rights of others. In order to have a well-functioning society and to have a developing society where we all have our rights to pursue life, liberty and happiness, we must, above all, have our physical and property rights respected.

Those who commit murder commit the most profound violation of these rights. Therefore, the issue becomes that when a murder is committed, and in this case, as we will examine, when multiple murders are committed, what is the proper sentence to impose on someone who has violated such a fundamental and profound precept? More important and of relevance to this bill, what is the proper approach we should take to those who have committed multiple murders?

It is important that we remember that we are talking about murder. First degree murder is the planned and deliberate taking of a life, while second degree murder is a murder that is committed in circumstances that any reasonable person would know would likely lead to death. There are other concepts involved in both of those crimes but that expresses the elements of those serious crimes.

We are not talking about manslaughter where a death has been caused but perhaps without the intent necessarily formed by the person carrying out the act. We are talking about murder and multiple murders. We are talking about someone who has either deliberately or very recklessly, with some form of intention, taken the life of more than one person.

This bill would give a judge the discretion to impose consecutive life sentences for each murder. The life sentence for each murder would be served consecutively, as opposed to be being served concurrently, at the same time. The practical effect of this bill would be that it would empower the judges of our country in an appropriate case, where a judge so sentences, that a person convicted of multiple murders would effectively never get out of prison.

There are some powerful arguments in favour of this bill. First, there is currently no difference in the practical effects of sentencing between someone who murders one person and someone who murders two, five or even 10 people. To most right-thinking people, that is a question that requires some serious answers. In many people's minds, it would be considered unjust.

Second, the argument is that it gives judicial discretion, which is a major reason that I am in support of the bill. I am not necessarily in support of a blanket application of this rule, but I am in favour of judicial discretion.

Judicial discretion is something that is strongly defended and supported by the New Democratic Party. Justice demands respect for our judiciary. It demands an independent judiciary. It demands a non-political judiciary. Justice demands that the person deciding a case does so after hearing all of the facts, after listening to each witness, watching them testify and observing their demeanour. Justice demands someone who is learned and skilled in the law, someone who is bound by rules of fairness and justice to make a decision.

I have great faith in the judges of our land. I have great faith in their integrity, skill and commitment to justice. I am not so sure that it is a faith that is shared by members of the government opposite at all times, who I think are more skeptical and cynical of the judges of our country. I, for one, have great faith in their skills and fairness.

I also have great faith in our appellate system, because when errors occur, and they do occur, our appellate courts are poised and our system is well developed to rectify those errors.

Third in terms of favouring this bill is that multiple murderers presently can apply for parole because they have life sentences that are served concurrently. That means that a multiple murderer can apply for parole even though, as I will talk about, it is almost impossible for them to get it. It puts victims' families through unnecessary pain and anxiety.

When we are dealing with multiple murders, I believe we are dealing with a particular type of criminal who is distinct from most, maybe even from other murderers. Someone who has broken the social compact to such a degree that they have taken the lives of two or more citizens is someone who I think we have to seriously look at locking up for the rest of their natural life.

Presently, as I have said, although a multiple murderer may be able to apply for parole, the truth is they will not get it. There is not one case that I can think of and not one case that has been cited by the government of a multiple murderer being paroled or ever getting out of prison under the current situation. So that leads me to the question of politics.

I think the Conservatives are playing politics with this issue. They have taken a cheap idea that has no practical effect or consequence and they have run with it to try to make themselves look tough.

Here is a case where the government has taken legislative time to propose a change to a law that has no problem to solve. There is no case of a multiple murderer who is getting out of jail on parole. So although philosophically I think this idea has merit and we support it, in terms of its practical consequence we should make no mistake that this bill is all about politics and not about fixing any real problem in our system.

I want to move to the short title of the bill as an example of these politics. The short title named by the government is “Protecting Canadians by Ending Sentence Discounts for Multiple Murders”. That is as motivated by politics and partisanship as it is factually wrong. There are no sentence discounts for multiple murders. There is no such thing.

When persons are convicted of multiple murders, they get life sentences for each of those murders, and that life sentence is a life sentence. When a judge imposes multiple life sentences, there is no discount. That is just a cheap and wrong title for the bill, but it is typical of what the government has done by injecting hyper partisanship into the legislation of our country, which I spoke about yesterday and which I think is regrettable and wrong.

I want to talk about what Canadians do want. If we really want to make a dent in crime in our country, Canadians want to see more community policing. They want to see more police on our streets and in our neighbourhoods.

Last week I was in Chinatown in Vancouver. I was meeting with Tony Lam and members of the Vancouver Chinese Merchants Association and members of the community policing office. They told me that they have had to hire private security guards in Chinatown to deal with the vandalism and theft that they experience every day because there are not enough police and there are not enough quick response times to the break-ins. They are demoralized. In fact, they told me that the future of Chinatown in Vancouver is threatened because of the crime that is going on in the downtown east side.

If the government was serious about really trying to take tangible steps to help people in this country, it would start pouring money into community policing, as the New Democrats called for in the last election. We called for the hiring of 2,500 more police officers in this country and that has not happened.

It would pour money into crime prevention, which the government has cut. There was $60 million budgeted for crime prevention in the public safety portfolio last year, and the government spent $44 million. It left unspent one third of the small amount of money on the table for prevention.

Those are the things on which Canadians want to spend: more on crime prevention, more on community policing. That would make a difference in Canadians' lives. That would help make our citizens safe in our communities. That would actually help to lower the crime rate. That would actually put more criminals in prison, instead of putting forth an ideological and philosophical bill that, while I guess we agree with it, will do absolutely nothing to make any Canadian safer.

I want to conclude by talking about some of the root causes of crime, because it is about time we focused on this in the House. Poverty and drug addiction are a fact. Eighty per cent of people in our federal prisons suffer from drug addiction.

I was in the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon this summer. I asked the staff there what percentage of people who are in prison do they think are in prison because of their addiction. They said 70%. It was not a bleeding heart saying this. It was not a New Democrat saying this. It was not a criminal saying this. These are the correctional officers who work in our federal correction system.

We need to start putting money into alcohol and drug treatment, not out of compassion only but out of cold, hard logic. If we want those people not to reoffend, we need to get at the root causes of why they are offending, if we can. I realize that is not possible for many, but it is possible for some.

To the extent that we can do that, we have to do everything possible as a society and as a Parliament to attack those root causes, because what every Canadian wants is the same thing. We want those offenders, when they come out of jail, and 96% of them do come out of jail, not to reoffend. That is what keeps us safe.

In fact, the victims ombudsman who was let go by the government, or I suppose the proper term is “not reappointed” by the government, Steve Sullivan, said that victims do not want criminals to be in jail longer; what they want is those criminals, when they come out, not to reoffend.

Those are two profoundly different things. Keeping someone in jail for four years instead of three and a half, or seven years instead of six, or 10 years instead of eight will not do anything if we are not attacking the reasons they are in prison in the first place.

I am curious as to how the government will react to what I am saying. I am sure it will attack in some manner, but I will stand by what I said because it is a matter of rational, fact-based logic. We have to attack the roots and that is what the bill does not do.

This bill deals with the consequences of murder. It does nothing to address what might be some of the causes.

In fairness to the government and everyone, we cannot stop murders in this society. We cannot get into the mind of what a Russell Williams is thinking or a Paul Bernardo. Those people have committed the most violent, aggressive, unacceptable breach that is known in society and they should be put away for the rest of their lives. They have lost the right to walk amongst free people in society. Perhaps there is nothing that can be done for people like that. However, people like that represent a small portion of society.

This bill deals with multiple murders and that represents probably the tiniest percentage of people in our federal prisons. I agree that those people should never get out, and in appropriate circumstances, I agree that judges should be able to give consecutive sentences to show society's opprobrium at their crimes.

A Clifford Olson or a Paul Bernardo ought to serve consecutive sentences. They should never be able to put forth a parole application and put the victims, families and communities through the suffering, anxiety and pain that they would have to go through. We know that those people do not deserve to come back into society.

I hope all parliamentarians join together not only in support of this bill, but in support of a broader, more intelligent, fact-based and comprehensive approach to crime in this country so that we can accomplish what we all want in this House, which is safer communities.

I will conclude by saying that the government constantly attacks this side of the House for not caring about crime or not caring about victims, and I wish it would stop doing that. Ad hominem arguments are the lowest form of argument. It is name calling. We usually learn in about grade two that it does not work.

In this House, let us have respect for each other. Let us respect that we all care about crime and victims. We may have different approaches to the best way to deal with those issues, but let us start learning from each other, listening to each other and broadening the debate so that prevention, root causes and rehabilitation can join with a punitive aspect. There is room for a punitive aspect in our penal system. That is part of what it is supposed to do, but it is not everything.

We should involve lawyers, social workers, criminologists, victim groups, police officers and prosecutors. They should be part of a national debate to take a comprehensive view of crime.

Let us stop the politicization of this issue and start dealing with this as a mature society looking at a complex problem. We need to have good policy on crime in this country. We do not need cheap politics in our policy, we need sound facts.

I am prepared, on this side of the House, to work with the government and take its good ideas when they come, and some do. I think this is an idea that is good. However, let us make no mistake: this idea is not going to actually make our communities safer at all. There is room for philosophical improvements in our law, and I think this is one of them.

Let us join together and try to move to that next level as a country and as a society and deal with crime in a manner that I think our citizens want us to do.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his speech regarding Bill C-48. Last year, it was called Bill C-54.

For the last five years this government has been introducing and reintroducing the same group of crime bills, over and over again. It really has not been held accountable for this by the press. I was reading some press articles on some of these bills. The fact of the matter is that the reporters get the press releases from the government, simply regurgitate the press releases and announce a new initiative.

Somehow when the government prorogues the House or calls a needless election, such as in 2008, this same press does not do its research, pull up previous files and report that the government has already introduced such a bill. The press proceeds to report the legislation as some new initiative. I have been reading several of these articles and that is the impression I get.

Clearly, part of the responsibility lies with the press for not holding this government accountable for what it has been doing: torching its own crime agenda.

The government pretends that it is so important to the public, even with a bill such as this, and this is not the only crime bill. We have unanimous agreement on the part of all the parties in Parliament to pass this legislation, yet the government simply prorogues the House and we have to start all over again. That is not showing proper commitment and respect to the public in Canada or to the legislation being introduced.

I would like to ask the member to expand on those comments.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would prefer to start from the proposition that every member in the House is of good faith. I would like to move us to a debate where we can cease accusing each other of having improper motives and move toward actually debating criminal policy.

I would like to grant government members credit for their interest in the crime issue, and I am not sure that their reintroduction of bills is malevolent in any way. The effect of prorogation is that bills died, and we can question whether the prorogation attempts were valid, credible, or justified. But I would not go so far as to say that the government members purposefully damaged their crime agenda. I do not think that is the case, and I do not think it is fair to the government.

However, there is a real danger, which I have seen in the House, of using fear and crime as a political weapon. It is fair to say that my hon. colleagues on the other side have recognized that using crime and crime policy as a political wedge issue is effective politics in some cases. It can sometimes be bad policy and bad for our society. It can be divisive and make poor criminal policy. But I give the government respect: I believe that members of the government are interested in community safety. We may differ on the ways of achieving safety, but I respect their desire to make Canada safer.

I implore all members of the House, particularly the government, to cease using fear as a political weapon. Crime rates are going down across the board, and we need to approach policy from that point of view.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague discuss the bill, and I think I heard him say he is going to support it. That is a good thing. I also heard him talk about the lack of policing on the streets of Vancouver. There are two parts to my question.

Number one, I would hope that he would explain to the House that policing responsibility rests in the province. Second, it may be before the hon. member came here, but there were additional moneys put in a budget to provide for additional police officers in provinces and municipalities across the country. I wonder if he could explain why his party voted against that additional money to help put police officers on the street.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was not present in the House when that vote was taken, but there were serious problems with the way the government made moneys available to the provinces. Number one, Conservatives did not earmark that money to the creation of police. For this reason, we had cases where moneys were given to provinces, and the provinces took the money and put it into general revenue. It did not actually result in boots on the ground.

Also, the previous public safety minister made commitments to ongoing federal funding. But these commitments were reneged on by the government, and the funding that was given to the provinces was for only a three-to-five-year period. I have talked to police officers and chiefs of police who said they will not create positions if they do not have a guarantee of permanent funding. Without a guarantee, they might get those officers trained and on the street, only to have those officer positions dry up.

The NDP is in favour of creating stable, consistent, additional funding to put police boots on the ground, and that is something we will continue to push the government to do.

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

Mr. Speaker, an issue that was brought up by a colleague of mine goes to what, on the surface of it, is the veneer of all this crime legislation that we are seemingly adopting. It almost leads into the fact that there is some kind of grand vision, but there really is not.

The minister earlier spoke about his frustration with the debate on the title of the bill itself, and in essence that is exactly what is happening. It seems as if all these grand measures have trickled down to smaller measures. My colleague asked why we did not just do one bill and make the changes en masse to the Criminal Code. Perhaps the member would like to comment on that.

The prorogation occurred. There has also been delay after delay. But there does not seem to be one exact vision of what crime control is to become under the government, which has been holding itself out as the champion of crime control for quite some time. Would he comment on the fact that there does not seem to be that vision?

Every time we get some of this legislation, it goes madly off in several directions. For example, the next bill that we will debate will be about people who are incarcerated for longer periods of time receiving money. If that were such an issue, why was it not handled in 2006 when the government was first elected? Now, all of a sudden in 2010, it becomes part of a news item, and it therefore becomes public policy. Perhaps the member could comment on that.

Could he also comment on some of the crime prevention programs that he feels are being ignored?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I fear I do not have enough time to cover all of the important issues that my colleague has just raised, but the government has displayed a dual character.

It has indicated an attention to the crime agenda that I believe is motivated by its political philosophy. I sit on the public safety committee with many hon. colleagues, and I know that the government believes that we need to strengthen and make our penal system harsher as a way of dealing with crime, and I believe this objective is well intentioned.

On the other hand, I also believe fundamentally, and I think Canadians know, that the government has seized upon crime as a political issue. This is why it continually brings forth piecemeal approaches. It pulls out a crime bill whenever it is in trouble politically. It tries to bring forth these bills periodically as a political approach, and that is bad for public policy. One comprehensive bill would be a much more productive way to deal with these important issues.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on this bill. I was here earlier when the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca spoke eloquently about the need for parliamentarians to deal not only with those who commit crimes but also with those who have committed crimes without their knowledge or understanding. What he was talking about was fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.

Back in 1997, the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba did a survey of provincial institutions and found that approximately 50% of people in provincial jails suffered from alcohol-related birth defects or other alcohol-caused mental defects. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, or FASD, is a spectrum of disorders. It used to be called fetal alcohol syndrome or fetal alcohol effects, which had to do with the issue of prenatal consumption of alcohol by women.

In 1997, Anne McLellan, who was minister of justice at the time, rose in her place in response to a question that I posed about people in our jails in circumstances that could not be addressed through the rehabilitation process, because they did not understand that they had a mental deficiency that did not allow them to be rehabilitated. Our justice system is based not just on punishment but also on rehabilitation and re-integration, because people eventually get out of jail.

It was interesting that the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca raised the issue of FASD in the context of this bill, which deals with sentencing people to prison and how much time they should spend there. He mentioned as well that we have to deal with some complex issues, like unreported crime, which is really is mesmerizing.

The other part is that we are planning to spend $10 billion to build more jails. If we were to do the necessary analysis and consultations with our provincial counterparts, we would know that within our jails right now there are people for whom rehabilitation is not possible. Fetal alcohol syndrome is preventable but not treatable, and there is a shortage of institutions to deal with people. Many people who suffer from these alcohol-related birth defects get themselves into trouble.

As a matter of fact, I penned a monograph back in March 2000, which is titled, “Fetal Alcohol Syndrome--The Real Brain Drain”.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We are debating Bill C-48, which is about making sure that multiple murderers are not given one sentence but multiple sentences to reflect every life taken. I have no idea what relevance the member's intervention could have to the point at issue.

I know the member for Elmwood—Transcona appreciates me shutting down the member for pontificating and using extra words that have absolutely no relevance to the issue we are dealing with today.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I will ask the member for Mississauga South to try to bring his remarks quickly to the actual substance of the motion that the House is debating.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as you well know, when debate occurs in this place and people raise issues that they believe are relevant to the debate before us, others can also comment on those points that are raised.

The point that was raised by the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca was whether the issues of dealing with the sentencing and whether there was credit for time served in pre-sentencing are the only things we should be looking at in terms of this being a crime bill and the hypothesis that we should be tough on crime.

I wonder how many people have figured out whether or not the motivation of the government to put the bill forward is impacted at all by the conditions in our jails right now and who may be there. Maybe the Conservatives have not thought of who is there who should not be there. Maybe it would change the statistics about who is in our jails, and maybe it might even change our assessment about whether or not we can afford to have more people in our jails without building more jails.These are all related. The bill is very linear in terms of this aspect. The government has come to the conclusion that we need to eliminate the two for one, yet that issue is still relevant in the scheme of how do we address crime in Canada.

We have a situation where the provinces have clearly said that half the people in provincial jails should not be there at all, and the federal justice minister said on the record that half the people in there should not be there. If flowing from this piece of legislation is the consequence that we do not give that credit for time, and all of a sudden people will be spending on average longer periods of time within our penal institutions, this means that if the jails are already bursting at the seams, consequentially we have to build more prisons. At a cost of some $10 billion to deal with a growing prison population, we have to ask ourselves whether or not there is a contribution to faulty thinking by this particular bill.

I raised it, and the example of the provinces just happens to be related to the situation. I happen to know something about that. The member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca spent half his speech talking about it this morning, without having been interrupted. I can only assume that the House believes it was relevant then and I still think it is relevant to raise the fact that there are other things to take into account, not only when we deal with the sentencing, parole, house arrest and some of the other things we dealt with, but this is all part and parcel of the strategy of the government on how we address crime in Canada. How do we deal with those who commit serious crimes?

Yesterday the CBC did a special on a white collar criminal who defrauded about 70 clients out of about $25 million, and the Ontario Provincial Police laid charges in the case of the very last person who had been defrauded. Ultimately there was not enough court time, there were not enough resources to deal with that, and the charges were dropped.The person, who is in hiding, got away with fraud of some $25 million. The court officials described it by saying they had two choices: they could deal with someone who took money from people, or they could deal with a rapist and someone who committed serious assault and somebody who committed manslaughter. They had two choices.

When we look at that we have to ask ourselves whether or not it is important for us to deal with issues like recidivism, to deal with things like crime prevention. I have learned a lot about crime prevention from my own community. We have a wonderful crime prevention council, and Mr. Victor Oh took me under his wing and made sure that I was engaged in that kind of stuff. However, it is all related to how we address crime and criminals. It is not enough, in my view, to say we are getting tough on crime. It is not enough just to say, “if you do the crime, do the time”.

It is a slogan but it does not make a lot of sense when we are dealing with people in our jails who cannot be rehabilitated. We do not have the institutions to care for them before they commit a crime, and we certainly do not have the institutions to take care of them when they get out of those places.

I do not want to take up any more of the House's time. I know members would like to get on with dealing with the specific clauses of the bill.

I was motivated and encouraged by the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca who brought to the floor the fact that when we deal with criminal justice issues we have to deal not only with punishment but we have to deal with rehabilitation, reintegration, the whole gamut. We have to make sure there are supports for people so we do not have the recidivism rates that we have had, which continue to add to the growing population in our jails.

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

Mr. Speaker, clearly the government is not overly committed to its crime agenda. It called an unnecessary election in 2008 and prorogued the House on two occasions.

This bill has the support of all parties in the House. It took the government 216 days into the current session to re-table this bill. If that is not an example of the government not being overly committed to its crime agenda, then I do not know what is.

I would like to also observe that the justice system has probably never been totally revamped and there certainly has not been a major revamping in 40 years, and the Criminal Code is over 100 years old.

Would the member agree that perhaps the proper approach for the government to take would be to involve all opposition parties and come up with a comprehensive bill that would deal with all of the little bills that the government is dealing with? A comprehensive bill would be a single approach to the issue.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his suggestion. One of the things I have learned about this place is that people think that for every complex problem there is a simple solution, and that is wrong.

Some of the things that we deal with in this place on a criminal justice basis are very similar and probably should be dealt with in an omnibus bill. A number of bills propose changes to sentencing. Rather than having a separate bill for car theft, or another one for some other issue, et cetera, an omnibus bill tends to make the place inefficient. I would agree that if the government was serious about its crime agenda it would have brought like items together. The committee work could happen at the same time and the same witnesses could appear.

The member also raised another interesting point about the government being serious about its justice agenda.

Back in 2005, Internet service providers appeared before justice committee to say that they disagreed with being obligated to report matters related to the exploitation of children on the Internet. In 2006 the Conservatives took office and today we are still debating that bill, all because they want to have a silly, pissy short title for the bill. Rather than dealing with that directly they called an election and prorogued. The bill was Bill C-58 at one time and is now Bill C-22.

This shows that even on a straightforward issue such as dealing with the sexual exploitation of children through the Internet, the government is still spinning its wheels. Since 2006 the Conservatives have been holding up this bill. They are still holding it up just because they want a short title that says they are doing the job and getting tough on crime. This is outrageous. It is irresponsible.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my remarks are going to be pretty short. The member from the New Democratic Party gave an excellent speech about this particular bill.

There really is not a lot of opposition to the substance of the bill itself. What has caused concern to me and others is the fact that on the surface there does not appear to be a need for this Criminal Code amendment. The reason is that if there is a homicide, a first degree murder, there is a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment.

Life imprisonment means a life sentence. It does not necessarily mean that every day is going to be spent in prison. However, there is no sentence greater than a life sentence. If I could go back 25 or 30 years when the death penalty was here, if that was still the case now the penalty for a first degree murder would be death. There is not a more significant penalty than that. If there was a double murder or a triple murder, the person can only be executed once.

When the law was changed, we ended with a life sentence. Life means life. A sentence cannot be any longer than that. It was absurd to talk about consecutive life sentences. We only have one life to live at this point in our human history. The impacts were felt to be pretty minimal.

Second, as has been pointed out here, no one has raised any particular instance of releases of individuals who are serving life sentences for multiple murders. There has not been one. If there has not been a release of that nature, why was it found necessary to draft a bill to change the law to prevent something from happening that is not happening anyway? That is the second reason why this bill does not appear to be necessary.

Third, it is really quite egotistical of a House of Parliament to make an assumption that what it would do in this House would have a huge impact on the street in terms of preventing crime. I hope no one here is naive enough to think that by merely sitting in our comfortable seats and changing the law we are going to immediately impact life on the streets in terms of crime prevention. This is not the case.

Many of us think that way from time to time. We politically posture to pretend that by changing the law in some little way we will make Canadians safer. Only in some cases is that a fact. In most cases we are just changing the law that our police and our courts work with.

These are three reasons why will bill looks pretty unnecessary. However, there is a place for this bill. My colleague of 22 years from Mississauga spotted it many years ago. This is that one of the objectives of sentencing under the Criminal Code, one of the specifically written objectives that this House enacted 15 years ago, is societal denunciation for the crime.

In looking at the application of a life sentence, at first blush there does not appear to be much room for additional denunciation. A life sentence is a life sentence. However, it just so happens that in our laws governing parole there did appear to be a failure to take advantage of an opportunity to show denunciation, further denunciation.

Our law does permit parole eligibility, not automatically granted parole but the ability to ask for parole after 25 years have been served. As has been indicated here, the average release time for someone, and this is the average across all those convicted and given life sentences, is about 28 years. They serve 28 years before they apply for parole. Therefore, by the time we take in those who are less than 25 years and those who are over, there are a lot of long sentences being served here.

However, in dealing with the parole eligibility dates, there was an opportunity for society to show an additional element of denunciation. That would involve saying if people killed a second time, they would have to have another 25 years or another period of time of actual in-custody sentences served before they could have eligibility. That was the reason this concept of increasing the denunciation was born. I can support that. In this case, the bill would allow for judicial discretion in applying these penalties.

However, lest we think that this additional denunciation in relation to parole eligibility would have an impact on the street, I can say without any hesitation, and I hope members are realistic enough in the House to agree with this, that there is virtually no case involving a homicide or a double homicide, whether at the same time or sequenced later in time, where the individual involved in that tragic circumstance will pull out a calculator and try to figure out whether or not he or she should proceed because there is some enhanced denunciation involving parole eligibility dates.

It is our hope, naive as it might be, that if someone were to think about, he or she might take it into consideration before taking the drastic action of taking a life. In some case I hope that would happen, that the additional denunciation related to the increased parole eligibility application periods would actually provide some pause or thought on the part of the perpetrator. In most of these tragic cases, I doubt that will happen. In 99% of the cases, the individuals involved do not even think about it and do not think they will ever get caught, so the event happens. It is a tragedy time after time after time.

I will support the bill. As has been mentioned, one might as well consider my words as notice to members opposite that the short title of the bill probably will not survive the committee's consideration. It might, but it is a warning to the drafters of these bills and the short titles that the House is not likely to accept the insertion of political commercials into the short title of bills anymore. Let us get a good objective statement of the change in law proposed by the bill and we will live with that. Do not over-torque it.