Bill C-59 (Historical)

Abolition of Early Parole Act

An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (accelerated parole review) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to eliminate accelerated parole review and makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Yes, please. I hope it will go more quickly than the first one. I'll read it first and explain it after, because I understand that you have a good report that we need to go through.

The motion is as follows:

That the Committee recommend that the government conduct a gender-based analysis of all legislation introduced by the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Public Safety before it is introduced to Parliament, and that this analysis be tabled in the House of Commons after each bill is adopted at first reading; and that this motion be reported to the House.

The reason I'm putting this motion forward, Madam Chair, is that we've seen through Bill C-59—and this was strongly reported by the Elizabeth Fry Society—that it had a big impact on women, and not only on women, but on women who had financial difficulties, women who were autochtone.

Here we are talking about women in very difficult circumstances.

For all those reasons, I think it's important, when we are asked to vote on motions and bills, that we be aware of their impact on women. That is the reason why we are tabling this motion today.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Mr. Piché, I have another question for you. I don't know if you're familiar with Bill C-59, which is the accelerated parole bill. Do you support that bill? Do you have any thoughts on that bill?

Taxation

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

Mr. Speaker, I can tell the member that the victims of Earl Jones and other large frauds wonder what that party did for 13 years. They wonder what that party is doing right now on Bill C-59 and why those members did not support the bill.

It is high time that members listened to their constituents. I know that Senator Larry Smith is listening to constituents. I wish the Liberals would.

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

Mr. Speaker, this is ironic. This issue came up in the House this week with Bill C-59. The victims of Earl Jones have been very clear on their expectations of the party opposite. They have been sadly let down. They were the first to tell us that.

I wish the member would have stood in his place and supported Bill C-59, but he remained silent.

Opposition Motion--Documents Requested by the Standing Committee on Finance

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to the Liberal opposition day motion. I must admit that this is one opposition day motion I like a lot and that my party will be supporting.

I would like read the motion. I listened to a lot of speeches and I never heard one word by any government member dealing with this motion in any way, shape or form. It reads as follows:

That, given the undisputed privileges of Parliament under Canada's constitution—

—and, obviously, the government does not believe that because it is disputing it—

—including the absolute power to require the government to produce uncensored documents when requested, the government's continuing refusal to comply with reasonable requests for documents, particularly related to the cost of the government's tax cut for the largest corporations and the cost of the government's justice and public safety agenda, represents a violation of the rights of Parliament, and this House hereby orders the government to provide every document requested by the Standing Committee on Finance on November 17, 2010, by March 7, 2011.

That is the actual wording of the Liberal opposition motion today. The question is why a party in the House would have to bring a motion like this in the first place. There are many other topics the Liberal Party could be dealing with and that we could debating today in the House, rather than presenting a motion requiring the government to do something that any sensible government would and should do in the first place.

A member of the Bloc spoke earlier today and I was rather impressed by his comments when he was drawing the parallel between this particular fight and the fight last year with the government over the Afghan detainee issue.

At that time the government said it could not provide the information because it involved national security. It was able to sell that argument to the public somewhat. Some members of the public might believe there may be some national security aspect to the information and that it should not be released.

However, the member went on to say that the information we are asking for now is the costing of tax cuts into the future. It is actually a projection. How could that possibly be called a national security question? If the Conservatives do not call it that, they will call it something else.

What possible argument could they have for not providing the information? Obviously they did not have an argument because, at the end of the day, they ended up tabling information just a couple of hours ago, which we have not had a chance to thoroughly digest yet. However, from what we can see of the information, it is certainly not the complete or full information that we would expect before we are required to make parliamentary decisions in the House, which could have long-lasting effects and cost billions of dollars.

The second part of the motion is the cost of the public safety bills. This is an issue that has been before the House for some time. There has been a lot of debate about it. We know that in other jurisdictions, the United States and elsewhere, there is a requirement that when a bill is brought in, it be fully costed.

As I had indicated briefly before, during election campaigns, reporters will be chasing all party leaders for costing of items. It is just something that is done. Why and how the government thought that somehow it could bring in this whole program of so-called tough on crime initiatives without anyone asking whether there was a cost to these items was absolutely crazy for them.

Therefore, we know the government has the information and we have been asking for it. Just two days ago in a committee meeting on Bill C-59, the Abolition of Early Parole Act, the Liberal member for Brampton West asked a question of Ms. Mary Campbell, the director general of the Corrections and Criminal Justice Directorate at Public Safety Canada. He asked her if she had the information regarding Bill C-59 in terms of its cost, and if she could not provide it, did she have it all.

Her answer was, “I have most of that information. It's part of my responsibility in terms of developing legislation to consider costs. Yes, I have most of that information or access to it.”

She told the member for Brampton West that if she did not have it, she had access to the information he was looking for.

However, she also said that the issue was the disclosure of it. She stated, “As I said, the government has indicated it's a cabinet confidence.”

Therefore, the member for Brampton West continued, “So you've provided the costing information to the government about what it would cost for these changes?”, meaning Bill C-59.

She responded, “I said that I have the information or access to it. I really can't talk about what I've provided the government in any detail because I think that is cabinet confidence of advice.”

Finally, the member for Brampton West asked, “So if the government asked you, in theory, to provide it, you would be able to answer that question for them?”

She stated, “I think I'm able to answer almost all questions that I'm asked about legislative proposals.”

There is the answer to the question. The information is available just like we knew it would be. The information is there. The Liberal member asked three times at committee and Ms. Campbell said she had it and had access to it, but she could not give it to him because the government said it was a confidence issue and, therefore, he could not have that information.

That is a terrible way to be running a government. It is little wonder that the government finds us quite upset with the approach it takes and that the Liberal Party has brought in its motion, which will get the approval of all three parties in the House.

The government knows it is not a matter of national security. Therefore, it knows it will have to provide the information sooner or later. Therefore, perhaps the government thinks that somehow this information will be damaging if the public were to know how much it would cost to implement a crime bill.

Given that the Conservatives know when the election is going to be, or at least they think they know, perhaps their strategy is to put this off until after an election. The Conservatives want the benefit of running on the tough on crime agenda but not have to answer any questions on what the cost of that agenda would be. That is my guess at this point, because I know that the government will have to provide the information.

Some of this information can be put together just by extrapolation. The member for Windsor—Tecumseh has done calculations. In the case of the two-for-one remand credits, the member for Ajax—Pickering asked the government what those would cost. I believe he was told that the cost would $90 million. When he consulted with the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the latter said, no, the cost would $2 billion a year. Of course, the final costs are projected to be somewhere in the $10 billion to $13 billion range.

Also, there are implications for the provinces. No less than a few days ago, we had the Premier of Ontario being quoted in one of the national newspapers as saying that the federal government was simply transferring costs to the provincial governments. With the Conservative government planning to bring in $9 billion worth of prison development in the near future, we are going to see a lot of that cost absorbed by the provinces.

The provinces will be under a lot of pressure as they are already. The federal government will not just assume the extra costs, the provinces will as well. The government is off-loading part of that agenda onto the various provinces. The provinces are probably fearful of that, which, to me, is probably the reason the government is trying to hide the information.

When we ask for information from the government and, if it is a straightforward answer, it provides it. If the government does not see any negatives in providing us with the information, it will provide it to us. There is a lot of concern on the government's part about providing this information, perhaps because it thinks members of the public will be upset when they find out the true cost.

Bill C-59 was a good example. All the presenters at committee simply wanted their money back. They were not there to hear about the parole law for white-collar criminals in jail being changed from one-sixth to one-third. They will be quite surprised with the tough on crime government when they find out that Mr. Jones will stay in prison for an extra year. He received an 11 year sentence--

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the parliamentary secretary's speech, which was full of very good information, but not one word of it had to do with the Liberal opposition day motion we are talking about today.

The fact of the matter is that the government has been hiding information from the House on a consistent basis for a long time. Last year, it argued about the release of Afghan detainee documents on the basis of national security. The government had to be dragged kicking and screaming and we had to have a Speaker's ruling on the issue before the government would comply. Now it would like us to believe that somehow the cost of tax credits and of a public safety bill is a national security issue as well.

The question is why is the government trying to hide this information? The government clearly has it, because Mary Campbell, the director general of the Corrections and Criminal Justice Directorate, Public Safety Canada, at the committee hearings just two nights ago on Bill C-59, indicated that she had the information but that the government would not let her give it out.

The question is, why is the government afraid of letting this information out? Does it think it is going to be embarrassing? Does it think it is going to change people's minds against the crime bill?

Is its strategy to make certain that the information does not get out until after an election? Is that what its strategy really is all about?

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

Mr. Speaker, two days ago we had a committee hearing regarding Bill C-59, Abolition of Early Parole Act. The member for Brampton West asked Mary Campbell, the director general of Corrections and Criminal Justice Directorate, Public Safety Canada a question about information regarding the crime bill in terms of what it was going to cost. She said, “I have most of that information. It's part of my responsibility in terms of developing legislation to consider costs. Yes, I have most of that information or access to it“.

The problem is the government refuses to allow her to give the information. She went on to say in response to a second question from the member, “I said that I have the information or access to it. I really can't talk about what I've provided the government in any detail because I think that is cabinet confidence...”.

The final question by the member was, “So if the government asked you, in theory, to provide it, you would be able to answer that question for them”?

Mary Campbell said, “I think I'm able to answer almost all questions that I'm asked about legislative proposals”.

There we have it. The government is caught deliberately hiding when we know it has the information because the director general of Corrections and Criminal Justice Directorate said so three times at a committee two nights ago.

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

Madam Speaker, last night we had a take note debate on the promotion of democracy in Iran. The government members spoke all night long about how important it was for the Canadian government to take an active interest in promoting democracy in Iran. Two weeks ago we had a take note debate on democracy in Egypt. Perhaps we should have a take note debate on democracy here in Canada.

We have a Conservative government that is deliberately hiding information from members of Parliament, information that we as members of Parliament have a right to know, because we are tasked with making decisions that affect the entire country. We cannot find out the information that the government already knows on crime bills like C-59.

We had the deputy minister at committee admitting, when questioned by a Liberal member about the cost of the bill, that she had most of the information and would like to tell members the cost of the bill but could not.

The government had muzzled her and would not allow her to provide the information. That is absolutely unfair and not acceptable.

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

Madam Speaker, the government members who are speaking are simply trying to change the channel and hide from what they know is certainly wrong. They want to hide from what they actually criticized the previous government for.

In fact, I was at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security hearing two nights ago, on February 15, when we were discussing Bill C-59, the abolition of early parole act. The member for Brampton West specifically asked the deputy minister of public safety about the costing of the bill. He asked her specifically if she had that information and to provide it to the committee. The deputy minister's response was: “I have most of that information. It's part of my responsibility in terms of developing legislation to consider costs. Yes, I have most of that information or access to it”.

The question is, why can she not give out the information to the committee members in the House? It is because the government will not let her.

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

Madam Speaker, to prove the government is hiding crime bill cost information and muzzling its own deputy minister, we only have to look at the committee hearings of two days ago

On Tuesday, February 15, we dealt with Bill C-59, Abolition of Early Parole Act. The member for Brampton West asked the deputy minister a question about the costs of the crime bill. He asked if she had that information and if she could provide it. The deputy minister said that she had most of that information, that it was part of her responsibility in terms of developing legislation to consider costs. She said that she had most of that information or access to it, but the issue was the disclosure of it because the government had indicated it was a cabinet confidence.

The member for Brampton West went further, asking if she had provided the costing information to the government about what it would cost for these changes. In response she said that she had the information or access to it, but she could not talk about what she provided the government in any detail because she thought it was cabinet confidence of advice.

We clearly have a government that knows what the information is but is deliberately hiding the information from members of the committee and members of the House.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Madam Speaker, the question is, how far does the Conservative government plan to go in its attack against the proper functioning of Canadian democracy? This is the basic question that would once again have to be asked if the government were to vote against the motion of the member for Wascana.

A hostage to its culture of secrecy, the government is turning its back on Canadians and depriving them and their elected officials of the right to obtain essential information that the government has no real reason to hide.

It is unbelievable. Like the member for Beauséjour said, the government expects the members of this House to support, without argument, the purchase of extremely expensive warplanes, while this same government made its choice without holding a bidding process, without knowing whether these were the best planes in this post-cold war era, and without providing updated estimates or specific analyses from the Department of Finance regarding the cost of purchasing and maintaining these planes. All we know is that the cost will be exorbitant.

Canadians have the right to this information. It is their money that is being spent. Their elected officials need this information to make an informed decision. This is not a matter of state secrecy. The government must tell Canadians how much the F-35s are going to cost them based on the Department of Finance's most recent estimates and analyses. How much? Why is the government so afraid to reveal this amount?

It is even more important that we obtain this figure because the Auditor General has already criticized the government for cost overruns and extremely long delays in the area of military procurement.

Another thing the government is hiding is the cost of its megaprison program, its delusional prison regime. Against all common sense, the government is stubbornly insisting on bringing a bad anti-crime strategy to Canada, a strategy that failed everywhere, including Great Britain and Australia, and that the Americans themselves no longer want to use because it does not reduce the rate of crime or recidivism. On the contrary, this simplistic strategy drove these rates up. It overcrowded prisons and clogged the prison system forcing governments to bleed themselves dry to pay for these megaprisons.

What this all boils down to is that there is less money available to help victims, less money to equip our police officers, less money to prevent crime, and less money for healthcare, education and the environment.

On January 7 in The Washington Post, and as reported in The Kingston Whig-Standard today, Newt Gingrich is urging American legislators to think and act with courage and creativity to “save on costs without compromising public safety by intelligently reducing their prison populations”.

Newt Gingrich is not precisely a lunatic leftist intellectual. In talking about the recidivism rate, Gingrich describes it as a catastrophic disaster and says that “half of the prisoners released this year are expected to be back in prison within three years”.

Do we want that in Canada? Absolutely not, especially when everyone knows and can prove that the crime rate in Canada is going down thanks to the effective and rigorous strategy used by the Liberal governments to fight crime and protect Canadians.

This Conservative government, which has already reduced its budget to help victims by 43% and its budget to prevent crime by 70%, needs to tell Canadians how much it is going to cost them to import the mistakes that others are trying to correct.

The government is racking up bills, but refuses to put a value on them. It is unheard of. Where is the transparency it used to go on about? Once again, the Conservative government is flouting the Access to Information Act. Under section 69 of the act, the cost analyses of bills are not cabinet confidences.

It is insulting: they have to nerve to demand that parliamentarians support a litany of bills, on behalf of Canadians, without disclosing the government's cost estimates for those bills. The government is mocking people and flouting parliamentary democracy. It is showing contempt for the people and their representatives.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer puts a figure on these extravagant expenses. He is warning us about the additional billions of dollars the Conservatives' prison plan could cost the federal and provincial governments. The government is disputing the findings of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, but where is the government's credibility? Let the government make its own analyses public, and then we will see how serious it is or how irresponsible and incompetent it is.

Let us look at the most recent ill-conceived bill, Bill C-59, which the government got passed quickly yesterday with the Bloc's help. Instead of targeting only major white collar criminals, this piece of legislation will mean that thousands of petty criminals who are ready to return to society, rehabilitated, and whose risk of recidivism is low will unnecessarily be kept in prison at high cost. We are talking about 1,500 people a year, more than 60% of whom are women. The cost of this exorbitant measure: $130 million a year. In the meantime, there is nothing to provide more resources to help investigators find the fraudsters, nothing to accelerate the legal process to recover the funds lost by the victims and nothing to help the victims recover their money.

Unlike what it claims, the government does nothing for victims. On the contrary, its appalling policies will increase crime and, therefore, the number of victims. Canadian taxpayers have a right to know how much this mess will cost them. It is their money, after all. And how much will it cost the provinces, which are struggling with huge deficits and which do not know how to pay for the increasing costs of health care, schools and universities?

Why is the government so afraid of making these figures public? No doubt because they will expose the Conservatives' incompetence and ideological blindness. Imagine. The government wants to waste up to $6 billion a year in borrowed money to fund additional tax cuts for corporations, when it has already sunk us into a deficit of over $50 billion, when corporate taxes in Canada are already 25% lower than in the United States, and when the Minister of Finance himself thinks that there are better ways to stimulate the economy. If the government wants the luxury of having such a costly and questionable policy, it should at least have the decency to back it up with figures.

The official opposition is not asking for the moon. It is simply asking the finance department to make public its projections about pre-tax corporate profits. That is routine information that the department made public up until 2005, that is, as long as there was a Liberal government. It is not a state secret.

But I am talking about the government and the finance department when really it is the Prime Minister who is at fault. He controls everything and wants to impose his culture of secrecy and his penchant for withholding information on everyone. He is keeping a minister who, on two occasions, not just one, misled the House. And he allows his ministers to ferociously attack the Parliamentary Budget Officer instead of engaging in an open, adult dialogue with him.

This Prime Minister prefers to personally attack the Leader of the Opposition in petty, pathetic televised propaganda instead of providing him, and the rest of us, with the information that we need and that we have every right to see in order to do our job, which is passing legislation that is good for Canadians, with full knowledge of the facts.

The Conservative government, with its culture of secrecy, is threatening the proper workings of Canadian democracy. This time, it has achieved the impossible. It has beaten its own record for withholding information. The government needs to recognize that and can start by complying with the motion by the member for Wascana and producing all the documents requested by the Standing Committee on Finance.

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

Madam Speaker, the Liberal opposition day motion specifically calls for the government to produce the costs of its crime agenda, specifically the costs related to the individual crime bills it has introduced.

The committee dealt with Bill C-59 just two nights ago. In response to questions by Liberal and NDP members, the deputy minister specifically informed the committee that she knew what the costs of implementation were for Bill C-59, but she was not prepared to provide the information because she did not have the government's approval. She basically said she was being muzzled by the government. This was the Deputy Minister of Public Safety at a committee hearing being asked a direct question by the member for Ajax—Pickering and others about this, and she is being muzzled by the government.

She has the information, the government has the information. Why will they not release it?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is just incredulous. It is outrageous. The member uses the example of one bill and the gap between what the Parliamentary Budget Officer says and the government says is the cost of that bill, $90 million, and then it is into the billions of dollars. This is astounding. This is why we have to get to the bottom of it.

Bill C-59, which we just passed yesterday, was rammed through by the government in a matter of a couple of days. The committee meeting was held for a few hours at 11 o'clock at night. In fact, there were witnesses who wanted to come who could not make it because of the short time. This is not democracy.

For a deputy minister to say she knows the information but she is not going to disclose it to us is an affront to every element and principle of democracy and to how the House functions. This is why it has to stop. This is why this motion has to be passed and implemented.

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

Mr. Speaker, when we were debating the bill to end the two-for-one remand credit, the Minister of Public Safety, when pressed, admitted that his estimate was that the bill was going to cost the system $90 million. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated it would be between $10 billion and $13 billion. That is one huge difference.

The Conservatives have been asked repeatedly on debate on Bill C-59 over the last couple of days, and every single one of them has avoided and hidden from responding to that question. At committee the other night on Bill C-59 the deputy minister of public safety, when she was asked if she knew the answer, said she did know the answer. She knew the cost of each one of these crime bills, including Bill C-59, but she could not tell the committee. She could not tell the committee because the government will not let her tell the committee.

Would the member like to comment further on what happened at the committee the other night?

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

Mr. Speaker, yesterday and the day before, during the debate on Bill C-59, speaker after speaker asked government members to give the costing for the proposed new prison system. Not a single Conservative speaker would provide that information. Yet in committee the other night the deputy minister was asked the same question several times and admitted that she did know what it would cost the government to pass Bill C-59. She was not at liberty to give the information because the government had not given its approval for her to do so.

It is totally outrageous that the government actually knows the true cost of the bill, but refuses to provide it. As in the case of an earlier bill on the two-for-one issue, the government misrepresented the amount by deliberating saying that it would cost $90 million. The Parliamentary Budget Officer later indicated it would cost between $10 billion and $13 billion.

The government is deliberately stretching the truth or hiding the information. Why would it want to hide the information? I am told that in the United States legislative initiatives automatically include a costing. The same is true in Canada, except the government is hiding the costs.