Bill S-6 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code and another Act

This enactment amends the Criminal Code with regard to the right of persons convicted of murder or high treason to be eligible to apply for early parole. It also amends the International Transfer of Offenders Act.

Serious Time for the Most Serious Crime Act

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

moved that Bill S-6, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and another Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Madam Speaker, it is a great pleasure to rise today in support of the important Criminal Code amendments contained in Bill S-6 that will fulfill the government's platform commitment to repeal the Criminal Code faint hope regime.

As hon. members may be aware, the so-called faint hope regime is found in section 745.6 and related provisions of the Criminal Code. Basically, it allows those convicted of murder or high treason to apply to be eligible to seek parole as soon as they have served 15 years of their life sentence, no matter how many years of parole ineligibility remain to be served in the sentence originally imposed upon them.

Before going on I should note that because the National Defence Act incorporates by reference the faint hope regime in the Criminal Code, all the changes proposed in Bill S-6 would also apply to any member of the armed forces convicted of capital offences under that legislation.

Allow me to discuss for a moment the reasons these amendments have been brought forward and why the government places such importance on seeing them brought into law.

From the inception of the faint hope regime in 1976, the availability of early parole eligibility for convicted murderers has been a source of concern for many Canadians. These early concerns became more concrete as greater numbers of sentenced murderers began to benefit from early parole in the early 1990s. This in turn led to a citizens' petition for its repeal in the mid-1990s and to considerable negative newspaper commentary.

The passage of time has not alleviated those concerns. Many Canadians continue to be of the view that the existence of a mechanism that allows convicted murderers to short-circuit the lengthier period of parole ineligibility imposed at the time of sentencing offends truth in sentencing and appears to allow for overly lenient treatment of murderers.

In addition, victim advocacy groups argue that faint hope applications add to the trauma experienced by the families and loved ones of murder victims by forcing them to both live in dread that a convicted killer may bring an early application and then require them to relive the details of their terrible losses, during the faint hope review process and any subsequent parole board hearings. The measures proposed in Bill S-6 are in direct response to these concerns.

In this regard, let me briefly recap the current situation regarding parole eligibility for those who commit murder or high treason. I will not go into detail because Bill S-6 is virtually identical to Bill C-36 in the last session of Parliament and hon. members will already be familiar with the broad outlines of what is being proposed.

The Criminal Code currently provides that conviction for the offences of high treason and first degree and second degree murder carry mandatory terms of life imprisonment coupled with mandatory periods of parole ineligibility.

For high treason and first-degree murder, that period of time is 25 years, while for second degree murder it is 10 years except in three situations: first, it is automatically 25 years for any second degree murderer who has previously been convicted of either first or second degree murder; second, it is also automatically 25 years for any second degree murderer who has previously been convicted of an intentional killing under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act; and third, it may be anywhere from 11 to 25 years if a judge decides to go beyond the normal 10-year limit in light of the offender's character, the nature and circumstances of the murder, and any jury recommendation in this regard.

However, the point to be made is that all first degree and at least some second degree murderers must spend at least 25 years in prison before they are eligible to apply for parole. While this may seem like an appropriately long time, the reality is that the faint hope regime provides a mechanism for offenders to apply to have their ineligibility period reduced so that they serve less time in prison before applying for parole.

What this means is that murderers who are supposed to be serving up to 25 years in jail before applying to the parole board are getting out of prison earlier than they would be if they had to serve the entire parole ineligibility period they were given at sentencing.

Before I go on to describe the current faint hope application process and the changes proposed by Bill S-6, I would also like to set out the changes to the faint hope regime that have been implemented since 1976.

The original procedure was for the offender to apply to the chief justice in the province where the murder took place to reduce the parole ineligibility period imposed at the time of sentencing. The chief justice would then appoint a Superior Court judge to empanel a 12-person jury to hear the application. If two-thirds of the jury agreed, the offender's ineligibility period could be changed as the jury saw fit.

Upon reaching the end of the ineligibility period, the offender could then apply directly to the Parole Board of Canada according to the normal standards for parole. By 1996, of the 204 offenders then eligible to apply for faint hope relief, 79 had done so and 55 had seen their parole ineligibility periods reduced. In other words, of those who applied, a full 75% had been successful.

In response to the public concerns and petition I mentioned earlier, the faint hope regime was amended in 1995, with the amendments coming into force two years later. These amendments had three effects. First, they entirely barred the access to faint hope regime for all future multiple murderers. Thus, since 1997, the faint hope regime has effectively been repealed for any post-1997 multiple murderer. This includes those who were convicted of murder prior to 1997 if they had committed another murder after that date.

Second, for those murderers who retained the right to apply for faint hope, the procedure was changed to require the Superior Court judge named by the chief justice of the province to conduct a paper review of each application beforehand to screen out applications that had no “reasonable prospect” of success. Only if an applicant could meet that new standard would a jury be empanelled to hear the application.

Third, the amendments also set a higher standard of jury unanimity as opposed to a mere two-thirds majority before the parole ineligibility period of an offender could be reduced. In 1999, the Criminal Code was amended yet again in response to the report of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights entitled “Victims' Rights—A Voice, Not a Veto”.

As a result, a judge sentencing someone convicted of first or second degree murder or high treason must state, both for the record and for the benefit of the families and loved ones of murder victims, both the existence and the nature of the faint hope regime. In short, families and loved ones of victims are now at least made aware of the faint hope regime in order to allow them to prepare themselves psychologically in the event that an offender decides to apply later.

Despite these piecemeal attempts to address the criticisms of the faint hope regime raised by concerned Canadians over the years, the faint hope regime remains problematic, nor have parliamentarians been immune from this controversy. Many have also voiced their concerns over the last few years and at least half a dozen private members' bills have been brought forward in that time seeking to repeal the faint hope regime in its entirety.

In the face of the continuing controversy surrounding this issue and the concerns that have been raised both inside and outside the House, it seems clear that this is the time to deal once and for all with the faint hope regime. In this regard, the bill before us today has to two fundamental purposes. The first is to amend the Criminal Code to bar offenders who commit murder and high treason after the date the amendment comes into force from applying for faint hope.

In short, Bill S-6 proposes, effectively, to repeal the faint hope regime entirely for all future offenders. Bill S-6 would thus complete the process begun in 1997 when all multiple murderers who committed at least one murder after the coming into force date were entirely barred from applying for faint hope.

After Bill S-6 is passed and comes into force, no murderer, single or multiple, will be able to apply for faint hope and it will effectively cease to exist except for currently sentenced offenders and anyone who may be convicted or committed murder prior to that date. They will continue to be able to apply until they have reached the end of the original parole ineligibility period imposed upon them.

In this regard, hon. members are no doubt aware that it is a fundamental constitutional principle that a sentence cannot be changed after it has been imposed. Both the mandatory parole ineligibility periods I described earlier, as well as the availability of faint hope, form part of the life sentence imposed on an offender found guilty of murder or high treason.

Repealing the faint hope regime as it applies to the more than 1,000 already incarcerated murderers in this country would be a retroactive change in sentence that would not survive a court challenge under the charter. That does not mean, however, that stricter faint hope application procedures cannot be applied to those who will continue to have the right to apply once this bill becomes law. Thus, the second thing Bill S-6 would do is to tighten up the three stages in the current faint hope application procedure, with the goal of restricting access to these offenders.

Let me now go through the current three-stage faint hope application process in order to highlight the significant changes proposed in Bill S-6. First, as I mentioned earlier, applicants must convince a Superior Court judge in the province where the conviction occurred that there is a reasonable prospect that their application will be successful.

If this threshold test is met, the judge will allow the application to proceed. This is a relatively easy threshold to meet. Bill S-6 will strengthen it by requiring applicants to prove that they have a substantial likelihood of success. This should prevent less-worthy applications from going forward.

At present, applicants rejected at this stage may reapply in as little as two years. Bill S-6 will increase this minimum waiting period from two to five years. An applicant who succeeds at stage one must then convince a jury from the jurisdiction where the murder occurred to agree unanimously to reduce his or her parole ineligibility period. An unsuccessful applicant may reapply in as little as two years. Bill S-6 will also change this waiting period to five years.

An applicant who is successful at stage two of the process is able to apply directly to the Parole Board of Canada. Bill S-6 proposes no changes in this area.

The net result of the change in waiting period from two to five years at stages one and two of the current process will be to reduce the overall number of applications that any offender may make. At present it is theoretically possible to apply every two years once 15 years have been served, for a total of five applications: after having served 15, 17, 19, 21 and 23 years respectively.

In normal circumstances, Bill S-6 will permit no more than two applications: after having served 15 years and once again after having served 20 years. Five years following the second rejection, an offender will have served the full 25 years and his or her parole ineligibility period will have expired.

However, this is not all that Bill S-6 will accomplish if passed into law. As things now stand, convicted offenders may apply for faint hope at any point after having served 15 years. The possibility that an application may come out of the blue with no prior warning causes great anxiety to the families and loved ones of murder victims.

For that reason, Bill S-6 will change this by requiring applicants to apply within 90 days of becoming eligible to do so. This means that applicants will have to apply within three months after completing 15 years of their sentence, and if rejected, within three months of the expiry of the next five-year waiting period.

The goal is to provide a greater degree of certainty to the families and loved ones of victims about when or whether a convicted murderer will bring a faint hope application.

Before closing, allow me to address briefly a criticism of Bill S-6 that was raised in the other place, namely that it ignores rehabilitation in favour of retribution. This criticism is misplaced for it appears to assume a role for Bill S-6 in the parole application process that it does not have.

As I have already mentioned, Bill S-6 does not change in any way the third stage in the faint hope application process for successful applicants of applying directly to the Parole Board of Canada.

There is nothing in this bill that in any way affects the ability of convicted murderers to rehabilitate themselves and to apply for parole in the normal course once the parole ineligibility period imposed on them at the time of sentencing has expired.

The bill simply insists that, for all future murderers, the full time in custody to which they were sentenced following conviction be served prior to making an application for parole. In the same way, for those who will continue to have the right to apply after 15 years, the bill simply insists that they follow a stricter procedure in the interests of the families and loved ones of their victims.

This government is committed to redressing the balance in Canada's criminal justice system by putting the interests of law-abiding citizens ahead of the rights of convicted criminals and by ensuring that families and loved ones of murder victims are not themselves victimized by the justice system.

The rationale for the bill before this House is very simple, that allowing murders, those convicted of the most serious offence in Canadian criminal law, a chance to get early parole is not truth in sentencing. Truth in sentencing means that those who commit the most serious crime will do the most serious time.

I am proud to support this historic measure. The government promised Canadians that it would get tough on violent crime and hold serious offenders accountable for their actions. The measures proposed in Bill S-6 offer further proof that this promise has been kept.

The reforms proposed in this bill have been many years in the making and are decades overdue. They reflect a well-tailored scheme that both responds to the concerns raised by the public and by victims' advocates that the faint hope regime as presently constituted allows for far too lenient treatment of murderers and measures those concerns against constitutional standards.

Bill S-6 proposes to effectively repeal the faint hope regime for all future murderers, as well as to require that currently sentenced offenders who may choose to make an application in the coming years do so according to stricter standards that fairly balance their rights against the legitimate interests of the families and loved ones of their victims.

These reforms are tough but they are fair and they are long overdue. For these reasons I support the bill and I call on all hon. members of the House to do so as well.

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

Madam Speaker, I look forward to continuing to work with my friend on the justice committee. Scooping our position in our speech, we will support this to go to committee.

I would ask the member for some preliminary response from the government side with regard to one of the questions that we will ask at committee. The overall aim of all parliamentarians is the security of the public, without question. What about the argument posited by some penitentiary officials, officers who tend our prisoners and society advocates in general, that a murderer who is not given the faint hope of getting out on parole under supervision, if he has seen to his rehabilitative goals while in prison, becomes completely without hope and, therefore, an extreme danger to the good men and women in our penitentiary and correctional facilities?

What about the argument that if there is no hope of parole when a person has been rehabilitated and, therefore, in the judgment of officials, not harmful to the community, we are doing a disservice to the primary goal of security to the public?

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Madam Speaker, I also look forward to working with the hon. member in the future on the justice committee.

As he will know, for current offenders the faint hope regime will continue. They will still need to apply for parole and in order to achieve parole would need to show some rehabilitation. For future murderers we are simply saying that they would serve 25 years and that, at the end of that 25 years, they would still need to apply for parole when the parole eligibility period expires. If they want to be paroled at the end of 25 years they would need to show that they have been rehabilitated.

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

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this bill and give a few comments.

In response to the parliamentary secretary's speech, I have said that the official opposition, the Liberal Party, will be supporting sending this bill to committee for examination to see how it might be improved upon or at least made clearer.

However, because this is Parliament, we ought to debate or bring out subjects that perhaps are not top of mind for every Canadian and every parliamentarian, and that is the whole regime of how we treat prisoners and how we treat convicted murderers in Canada today versus the rest of the world compared to other periods before the death penalty was abolished, and how we might be treating convicted murderers in the future if this bill continues.

The first crime that I would like to speak to is the fact that this bill, Bill S-6, had a predecessor, which was Bill C-36. It went through the usual steps of being introduced, particularly with the present government in control, with multiple national news conferences to inform, excite and educate the Canadian public of the fact that help was on the way with respect to convicted murderers. They would not be given the chance of getting out and that the government would do something. However, it did not. Four years and eight months after it was first elected--and I will say that P word again--we were prorogued and the bill did not get passed.

This is the first crime we have to speak to from a justice point of view. The government must be held to account for not bringing forward good legislation that people were looking forward to getting at, improving perhaps and getting on the books.

This seems to be justice week. One of the topics is car theft. No one in this House is going to say that car theft is good. Another topic is white collar crime. No one in this House is going to say that white collar crime is good. Another topic is the security of the public by not having convicted murderers prematurely out on the street. No one is going to say that is not a good thing. However, all three of these subjects have not been addressed on a timely basis by the government and it is the government's fault because we were prorogued.

Specifically, with respect to the context of convicted murderers, we need to remember that in this country we had executions. I remember my grandfather talking about the last public execution in the province of New Brunswick. My family has been in the legal industry for a long time. I remember my uncle, a provincial court judge, talking about executions. I remember that he was part of a previous generation's set of mind that public executions happened and that executions for serious crimes took place. However, this generation, I believe, if I am speaking to the Canadian public, would not know that political milieu and that philosophical mindset.

The current generation of Canadians, the mainstream of Canadians, would not be amenable to the death penalty. It does not exist. Let us not talk in a vacuum. It is not part of the laws of Canada. It was in fact the law of Canada until it was abolished. However, when the capital punishment debate took place and capital punishment was abolished for murder, the compromise on this point was to institute a faint hope clause, the reason being that capital murders, as they were called then, would quite often end with no chance for parole whatsoever because there might be executions.

In this case, the idea of life meaning life or life meaning 25 years served was met with the idea that there would be no chance of rehabilitation if a person were to be subject to the death penalty, but there might be a chance of rehabilitation, which is very much a pillar of the Criminal Code of Canada, if a person serves up to 25 years without the eligibility for parole.

What the government and the Parliament of the day decided to do was insert the faint hope clause. The faint hope clause in simple terms means that a person convicted of a murder in Canada should be given an opportunity to rehabilitate himself or herself and therefore be returned to the public as a non-threat to the public. Having taken into account the principles of sentencing, rehabilitation, which is incredibly important because we cannot keep everybody who has done something wrong in handcuffs, which seems to be the mentality of the party opposite, must be a cornerstone goal. We also need to have an idea that the person understood and has been remorseful with respect to the crime that has occurred. Proportionality is always the case with respect to crimes and a sentence needs to be proportional to the crime committed.

At that time, the faint hope clause was put in place with many safeguards. My hon. friend went through the history and the details of the faint hope clause regime as it exists now. It should be very clear to parliamentarians and Canadians that the faint hope clause is very faint in achieving, because, first, there is the chief justice who selects the Court of Queen's Bench judge, who then empanels a jury which then determines whether there is a reasonable likelihood of release on parole for the person based on their rehabilitation achievements. It is then sent further. There are all kinds of gates before a person can even be considered for parole.

Before I get into the details of faint hope, I want to ensure that people understand the context of time served for murder convictions. I think we will have a bit of a moral debate at the committee on this, but it is important to understand, right or wrong, how long people serve upon being convicted for murder. The following are some averages. An international comparison that was done in 1999 showed that Canada sat at some 28.4 years served for first degree murder. We might ask ourselves whether we are ahead, behind, serving more or serving less than other countries across the world.

The average in the United States, not surprisingly, is 29 years life sentence without parole, which is slightly more time than us. However, what I found interesting, not being a criminal lawyer with 24 years of experience, and not necessarily comforting and led me to ask many questions about other countries, frankly, is that other countries have much lower years of sentences served for convicted murders. They are New Zealand at 11, Scotland at 11.2, Sweden at 12, Belgium at 12.7 and Australia at 14.8. The United States has 18.5 for life sentence with the eligibility of parole.

As we get into the debate and as we will be sending this legislation to committee, we need to ask ourselves what is so different between Canada and the countries I have mentioned. Do we consider ourselves that different from any other British found Commonwealth like New Zealand and Australia? I do not think we do. Do we consider ourselves on a social level that much different from European countries like Sweden and Belgium? In some ways I do not think we do. We need to examine why their regimes render much lower time served for convicted murderers.

As I said, when the death penalty was abolished in 1976 and replaced with mandatory life terms of imprisonment, the faint hope clause was seen as a necessary safeguard to a sentencing regime without capital punishment to encourage rehabilitation. It was not left there in 1976. It was amended in 1997 by the Chrétien government to require judicial review and the unanimous consent of 12 jurors as a prerequisite to the National Parole Board application process. So further gates or controls were added to the faint hope clause situation.

Like everything in politics, sadly, there is a bit of a slip from reality and importance to what is perceived to be urgent and important. When we go to committee, we would like to know the actual number of convicted murderers sitting in our prisons now. I also think knowing the actual number who have applied and failed would be reassuring to Canadians. Does faint hope mean faint hope in practice as in law? The actual number of people who get out on a faint hope clause in a long process is a very small number.

However, what happens in politics is that the notorious cases get the attention. As I said, it has been four years and eight months since the government brought this forward as a campaign promise. It is something it felt very strongly about but did nothing about it until the introduction of the bill, and it will be over five years before it becomes law.

It has been brewing for some time. I think one of those instances was Colin Thatcher, who was granted parole through the faint hope application. He was convicted of killing his ex-wife in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. He was granted full parole in 2006 and that process certainly brought the faint hope clause aspect to the fore.

As I mentioned, with Bill S-6, having been through the Senate and having had now the second eyes look at it, there can no longer be the argument on the other side that the Liberal dominated Senate upheld the bill. In fact, we have many speeches on record from Conservative senators outlining the same history of the faint hope clause. The bill was sent to the Senate to be dealt with rather than having started it in the House of Commons.

There has been a revolution on the other side. The government now welcomes the Conservative dominated Senate in proposing bills. I do not know if this is a debate for another day, but I guess the other side has concluded that the work of senators and the work of the Senate, in general, is worthy, because we are sitting here discussing a Senate bill. Yet it is a reintroduction of previous House of Commons work in Bill C-36, which died on the order paper in 2009.

There is no doubt that serious crimes deserve serious time and that the desires for victims' groups for retribution must be balanced by a sense of justice toward all Canadians, including those who have committed crime. The statements of the minister and the statement by the parliamentary secretary would indicate that all we should be concerned with are the rights of victims. By implication, they are saying that we have never been concerned about the rights of victims. This is not true.

Victims like people convicted of murder and non-involved citizens of the public are all part of a rubric of public safety and public security. There is not a member of the House who does not believe that our community should be safe and that public safety and public security are the most important thing we do as parliamentarians.

This brings us to the main debate that we will have at committee with respect to the faint hope clause amendments. Is it really in the public's interest to deny convicted murderers of any chance of ever getting out on parole directed by parole officers? Carte blanche we may say yes. I am sure a victim might say yes.

However, as a footnote, many times, through the committee's experience since the time I arrived here, we would be surprised to see the number of victims' families and families of prosecuted persons in the organized crime milieu or in the gun control debates who would say that we should turn the other cheek and ensure that this crime, for instance, does not happen again. This type of violence is very much predicated on items that we believe very strongly on this side, such as early intervention, emphasis on rehabilitation, the idea that someone who commits a crime is someone else's son or daughter. Someone who commits a serious crime is a Canadian person usually brought up in our community somewhere and is deserving of an attempt at least to have he or she meet not only these serious consequences of crime, but have a chance to rehabilitate and reintegrate into the community as well.

I would hope that would be the goal of all parliamentarians and I would hope that these tightening provisions on the faint hope clause regime would not deny, even if it is one person, a person who committed a heinous crime but who has been rehabilitated, to get back into the main stream of the community under supervision.

Numerous briefs and calls have been made on the idea that if we have an inmate who knows he or she has no chance whatsoever of getting out of prison, even though he or she has made strides toward rehabilitation, that person might lose hope. Talking about faint hope of getting out, that person then has no hope of getting out and no real desire of keeping the peace and being on good behaviour while in our system. That presents a number of difficulties.

I was a difficult student in school and the nuns in Grade 8 told me that I was difficult and to go out into the lobby and read the encyclopedias, which I did. Therefore, it worked out for me. However, it is a lot more complex in the prison and correction systems in Canada because a difficult inmate sucks up resources that should be used otherwise within the facility. It is not only a matter of resources; it is a matter of attending to the other incarcerated individuals, many of whom will not be there for 25 years, but could benefit from the proper spreading out of the budgets of correction facilities. Therefore, corrections officers and their organizations will be before us to ensure that there is a balance here.

The parliamentary secretary in his remarks did strive for balance. I take him at his word, as a lawyer of some years, that the government is trying for balance. However, the rubber will hit the road at committee when we determine exactly where the balance would be and whether the removal of faint hope would be too far.

The bill itself has three provisions, which my friend went over.

No offender convicted of murder or high treason after the coming into force of the legislation would be eligible for early parole. An important footnote is that people already in the regime would have the rights that accrued from the previous legislation.

There are certain serious crimes. We have no doubt of that. However, we must consider the reasoning behind the introduction of the clause. It is designed to encourage prisoners to reform themselves, as I mentioned, and prison guards will be before us to say that there are some dangers presented by that.

As well, we know there is opposition from the Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers, Barreau du Québec, the John Howard Society and the Elizabeth Fry Society to the bill. We have to listen to the opposition with respect to the bill and why they oppose it. After four or five years, members of the justice committee, and the Conservative side in general, think that all the organizations I mentioned have nothing to say. Clearly if the first question asked of a John Howard Society or a Elizabeth Fry Society representatives is if they believe in greater security for the public, I cannot imagine them saying no. In fact, I can imagine them saying yes, that it is precisely for the greater security and safety of the public that they oppose the bill or have recommendations to amend it.

The provisions of the bill, which would permit early release, are very strenuous as is, and we will see that at committee. We will see it is not an easy wicket to get through to get out under the faint hope clause regime. We will have the exact numbers. We are well served by Statistics Canada, and I do not want to bring up the census debate, and juristat provisions in the Department of Justice working with Statistics Canada. They will be able to give us the updated numbers of persons who are eligible, who have applied and who have succeeded under the regime. I think we will see that this is a very small number of people.

As mentioned, amendments have been made to faint hope along the way. There were restrictions in 1997. It is very fitting in this day and age, when judicial discretion seems to be under attack, that the regime, as it was set up, relies on the wisdom of 12 men or women, Canadian citizens, to determine, at the first instance, whether there will be eligibility. Thankfully, that remains. Under this regime, if successful, a jury will be responsible, on a unanimous basis, as to whether an inmate deserves of early parole. Only following that unanimous decision would a judge decide that the file would be moved to the national Parole Board.

The reasonable prospect provisions, which will remain, would not be changed. It is just a matter of the time limits, the review, the degree of discretion involved that we must look at in committee.

We will support the bill going to committee and I very much look forward to a rigorous debate and I welcome questions.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Madam Speaker, I take this opportunity to thank the hon. member for he and his party's support for this very important bill, Bill S-6.

The member asked for some statistics. If he had an opportunity to catch all of my speech earlier, he would remember that I mentioned there were currently approximately 1,000 murderers incarcerated in our country. In 1996, 204 offenders to that point were eligible to apply for the faint hope clause, 79 had done so and of those 79, 55 were granted early parole, which represents an approximate 75% success rate. Perhaps he will find that interesting and will get updated information in committee.

I listened to the hon. member's speech with great interest and I did not hear him mention much about the impact of the constant possibility of faint hope parole hearings on the families and loved ones of victims. Could he perhaps comment on what impact that would have on people constantly worrying about having to relive the tragedies in their lives?

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

Madam Speaker, there is a case in my riding involving that. There is no question that the periodic fear and re-aggravation of the pain that was once inflicted is very hard on the Davis family from Riverview.

A side issue that the government has control of, however, is how the National Parole Board deals with the families of deceased with respect to the reinstitution of hearings of any sort. Some of them are not faint hope. Some of them are just regular Parole Board hearings, where the families are not treated very well at all. They are told that a hearing is to take place, that they will be reimbursed for their travel expenses, but the expenses will not be provided upfront. The government nickels and dimes them on every expense. If an adjournment is requested, they will not be told. If an adjournment is granted, they will not know and they will fly, take the train or drive, in some cases as far away as Atlantic Canada, to a hearing that does not take place.

The government should take some measures toward simplifying that process and really thinking of the victims with respect to the National Parole Board.

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

Madam Speaker, I will have the opportunity to talk about that when I speak about this bill.

Perhaps the error is due to faulty interpretation—I listened to the remarks in both English and French—but unlike the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, I am not sure that the Liberal Party will support the bill in its current form right up until it is passed. I do not want to put incorrect words into my colleague's mouth, but I believe that the Liberals simply agree that this bill needs to be studied by a parliamentary committee, even if we will not support it. I will tell you why we oppose it in a moment.

I would like to ask my colleague a question and quote from the hon. member for Windsor—Tecumseh, who sits with us on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights:

And what if the lack of hope crushed the desire for rehabilitation of the convicted and increased violence and the problems in prisons?

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

Madam Speaker, one thing is certain: the Liberal Party will support sending this bill to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. In committee, everything will depend on the evidence and new statistics. The parliamentary secretary's statistics only cover up to 2006. I hope that we will have more up-to-date statistics than that.

As well, in my speech I said that that it is very important to strike a balance between the hope of an imprisoned man and public safety. I believe that public safety is the top priority for all members of this House.

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

Madam Speaker, the hon. member opened his debate by bemoaning and, I would suspect, criticizing the government for its inability to pass Bill C-36. He cites prorogation as the cause. He would no doubt know from sitting on the justice committee that there is another bill before that committee, Bill C-4. We are having a difficult time getting this bill out of committee because of the endless number of witnesses that his party and the other parties in the opposition keep supplying.

I am curious if he will guarantee swift passage of Bill S-6 out of committee and back to this House for third reading. Canadians demand that this legislation be passed.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his question on Bill C-4. He knows that it was my motion in June, which he supported, that called upon the Minister of Justice to deliver the report, memoranda, or even the minutes of the 2008 round table meetings on youth criminal justice. They were held across the country and the Minister of Justice headed them up. But the justice committee has received no record or report of these meetings. The Government of Canada and the Minister of Justice went all across the country, found out what everybody thinks on Bill C-4, but never reported to us.

I ask the hon. member to get his Minister of Justice to table those reports and he will have a version of Bill C-4.

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

Madam Speaker, I am always fascinated by the Conservatives' double-talk when it comes to justice issues. They say they are going to get tough on crime, yet they leave more guns in circulation. All police officers are calling for the gun registry to be maintained, but the Conservative government will not listen to them.

Of course they always quote some “Constable Smith”, a traffic cop in some unknown town, saying that he is against the firearms registry, yet every police chief of all major Canadian police forces and associations told us that the firearms registry was needed.

Does my colleague not find that there is something hypocritical—and I will connect the dots—about saying they will get tough on crime and give criminals longer jail sentences, and the fact that they want to make things easier for criminals and undermine the work of police officers by trying to destroy the firearms registry?

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

Madam Speaker, certainly there are a number of contradictions.

The first one is that between five and six o'clock on the nightly news the government is tough on crime.

The government has not delivered any bills. It has not achieved anything on this issue. I think it is positively criminal that it took the government nearly five years to introduce any such bills.

The Conservative Party and all members of this House agree that the public needs all members of this Parliament to work very hard every day in order to improve public safety.

That is the crime that has occurred here. It has now been almost five years and the government did not get its bills through on important subjects like white collar crime, auto theft, and what we are speaking of today. If it is that big a threat, why did it not deliver the goods sooner? That is the crime of today.

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

Madam Speaker, if my colleague from Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe stays, he will hear the most recent statistics. My colleagues in the official opposition and the Conservative Party would do well to remember them. Today we are going to talk about what is really going on, and what this government is trying to do at this time.

I will present many statistics to explain why the system is working so well at present. It puts victims first, unlike what the Conservatives are presenting with Bill S-6.

As of April 9, 2009, of the 265 applications submitted for a reduction in the parole ineligibility period, 140 had been granted. The National Parole Board granted early parole to 127 applicants, 13 of whom later returned to prison. To answer the question on everyone's mind, none of these 13 people went back to prison for the same offence, murder. All of them returned to prison for lesser offences, such as violation of their parole or the conditions of their release, shoplifting or auto theft. So 13 out of 127 people went back to prison. There were 140 originally, so the number went down. Three people were deported, 11 died, one was out on bail and another was in temporary detention. Ninety-eight out of 127 complied with their parole conditions.

More up-to-date figures will be available in the coming weeks, but as of November 4, 2009, 1,023 prisoners who were likely to apply for early parole were in custody. Of this number, 459 had already served at least 15 years of their sentence and 542 had not yet reached the 15-year mark, but will be able to apply in future. On average, every year, 43 of these 1,001 offenders will become eligible to apply for early parole.

The death penalty was abolished in 1976. I know that some of my colleagues opposite would like it to be restored, but I believe that Canada is smarter than that. We will not bring back the death penalty, and we will not let them bring it back. In 1976, when the death penalty was abolished, the famous faint hope clause was introduced. It has always been known by that name. A new classification system for murders was brought in, with first, second and third degree murder.

I would like to explain how this system works for the people who are watching. I am a criminal lawyer, and I can say that a first degree murder is when someone plans a murder and carries it out, killing another person. A first degree murder is premeditated and carries a sentence of 25 years. An offender cannot apply for parole after two years, but has to wait 25 years before being able to apply for eligibility for parole.

Second degree murder is not premeditated. I often give the example of a man who comes home and finds his wife's lover. He takes a gun and kills the man. That is non-premeditated murder.

In that case the offender has to serve at least 10 years of his sentence before he is eligible for parole. Then what happens? The faint hope clause was implemented when the death penalty was abolished. This was done for a number of reasons. I will read an excerpt to prove that I am not making this up. I am citing the Department of Justice and therefore the government:

It had three main purposes: to offer some hope for offenders who demonstrated significant capacity for rehabilitation,—I will come back to that in a moment—to motivate good conduct in prison, and to recognize that it was not in the public interest to continue incarcerating certain offenders beyond a 15-year period.

This is going to hurt because at the end of 15 years they are going to say blah, blah, blah. These three principles are extremely important, including the very first one, “offer some hope for offenders who demonstrated significant capacity for rehabilitation.” We are going to settle this once and for all for those across the way who do not understand anything. It is clear that no one has a right to apply for parole before the end of their prison sentence. That is clear. That person has to have made an effort and demonstrated a capacity for rehabilitation in society. In prison, people are monitored for a very long time before they find out whether they are eligible to apply. Not just anyone can apply. What is more, victims are considered in all this. In my career I had two clients who made this type of application. I told one of them to just forget it. He had no chance because he was not ready. The current system would not release an individual like him, who shows no remorse for his crime.

Our Conservative friends should accept this once and for all. The Parole Board of Canada and the correctional service closely monitor and prepare those who are eligible to apply. As I said earlier, of the 140 eligible persons, only 127 could apply. How does that happen? They tell us that we do not care about the victims.

I will not cite all the Criminal Code provisions, but all the corresponding sections are in the Code. An offender who wishes to file an application must first apply to the chief justice of the court in which his or her conviction took place. That is the first step. For example, the prisoner applies to the Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Québec. In that court, there was a trial with jury. What does the Chief Justice do? The Chief Justice appoints a judge. What does the judge do? The judge has the individual appear without witnesses. The judge asks the offender to convince him that, if 12 people formed a jury, those 12 people would be likely to unanimously recommend that the sentence be reduced.

The Conservatives must stop panicking. It is not true that the person is released if the application is successful. The sentence is reduced but the offender is not released. If the sentence is reduced, the offender may apply to the Parole Board.

I will now come back to the judge. The judge listens to the offender, who must convince the judge that he or she can—not just might—convince a jury. The offender must convince the judge first. That is the first step. If they do not get past this first step, it is game over. The offender must wait another two years before re-applying.

No victims are called, nor do a murder victim's relatives attend. There is no one.

Let us look, for example, at someone who gets past the first step. The judge sees that he has made an effort in prison, that his character has changed, and that it is perhaps worthwhile. The judge summons a jury in the judicial district where the murder was committed. It is not true that people are brought to the prison where the individual is being detained. It all takes place in the judicial district where the individual was convicted.

If a jury does not care about victims, I do not know who does. The individual makes it past the first step and the jury is summoned. The 12 people sit down, and it is the individual, through his lawyer, who must prove, beyond any doubt, that he can get his sentence reduced. He better be up good and early, be prepared, and have done some assessments. This is where the psychologists and psychiatrists come into play. If the Conservatives do not understand that, it is not my fault because I tried. It is clear that the individual who is requesting a reduced sentence must express a degree of sensitivity for the victims of the murder he committed. That is clear.

If he answers the first question by saying that he is not remorseful, his case will go no further. If he says that he would do it all over again, obviously, it will go no further. And at that point, we can say that we did the right thing. What the Conservatives do not understand is that a lot of work has been done with the victim's family before reaching the jury stage. Unfortunately, the murder victim, as far as I know, is dead. This process is far more relevant to those close to the victim.

Not just anyone can apply. The hearing may take hours or days because the individual has to convince the jury. He has to convince 12 people from the judicial district where the murder took place 15, 17, 19, 20 years ago. I know that people in Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary or Vancouver might not remember, but I can tell you that people still remember a murder committed in Abitibi 20 or 25 years ago. I still remember very clearly a murder committed by two individuals; they killed two little aboriginal girls. I know that they are still in detention, even though they applied. Their applications were denied, of course.

In the end, the jury must agree unanimously. It cannot be 10 to 2 or 11 to 1. All 12 people on the jury must agree that the person has convinced them. And if they say yes, what happens then? The jury has been convinced, which means that the individual can apply for parole. The best example is the case of lawyer Michael Dunn. He was charged with and found guilty of first degree murder in the death of his colleague, a lawyer named McNicoll. This happened in Lac-Saint-Jean. He was sentenced to 25 years. He served 17 or 18 years before applying for and being granted parole under the faint hope clause. Today he is an in-reach worker helping criminals reintegrate into society. He is a good person.

Why should we not want to have this type of person rejoin society? Why not keep the faint hope clause? Why change a system that works well?

We asked the Minister of Justice these questions. When he appears before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, I will ask him again to provide just one example of a case that did not work out. I just want one. There is not one. There are none because we have ensured that those individuals not ready to return to society are not released. It is that simple.

Individuals get past step one before a judge. They get past step two by convincing a jury. Then they move on to step three. Once leave has been given to have the application heard before a jury, and once the jury has approved the application, the parole board must be convinced. That is step three, and for some it is very difficult. The offender must convince the Parole Board, the board that is responsible for protecting society, enforcing sentences, and ensuring that the offender is ready to return to society. What is the National Parole Board's priority? Protecting society. Is that clear enough?

Hence, it is wrong to say that we do not care about the victims. It is an outright lie that the Conservatives have been spreading in an attempt to ram through Bill S-6. It is false. Not only do we care about protecting victims, we also do everything possible to ensure that an offender does not return to society if not ready.

What happens after that? When an offender applies to the National Parole Board, they must convince the Board that they have a release plan. The Conservatives are not familiar with release plans. They should tour the penitentiaries now and again to see how they work. A release plan is established when an individual is preparing to leave jail. An offender does not go before the National Parole Board and claim that he should be released because he was allowed to apply and appear before the board.

That is not how the system works, not at all. The offender has to submit a release plan. What is a release plan? It is a document that indicates what education the offender has received. Has he taken any training? Has he been rehabilitated? Does he empathize with his victims? What is he going to do if he is released? Does he have a job? Does he have a place to live? We have to remember that we are talking about people who have served 17 to 25 years for first degree murder and a minimum of 10 years for second degree murder, so there has to be a plan for their release.

Now, let us look at how this works. The former Bill C-36 has become Bill S-6 because the Conservatives want to sneak it in through the Senate. I have looked carefully at the bill. The Conservatives are saying that people can make multiple applications. That is not true. The Conservatives are saying that victims are forced to travel for no reason, that they have to go through things that make no sense and that it is not right to bring them back. I want to say one thing about that. An offender who does not make it past the first stage has to apply to a judge. There are no witnesses.

Now, if someone is told by a judge that he cannot go before a jury, he cannot re-apply for two years from the date his application is dismissed. What happens then? The offender has served 17 years of a 25-year sentence. After 17 years, he submits his application. The judge says yes, but the jury says no. The jury is not convened the very next week.

I will conclude by saying that we cannot vote for this bill. If the bill is sent to committee, we will ensure that it is in line with the faint hope clause.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Madam Speaker, I do not know if the Conservatives are aware of this, but I think my Bloc colleague knows that this legislation was put in place because the death penalty was abolished in Canada in 1976. At the time, people looked at what was happening in other countries around us. There was a report on what was happening in Australia, Belgium, Denmark, England and two or three other countries. It became very clear that offenders should not have to wait 25 years before they could apply for parole, but rather 15 years.

I wonder if my colleague thinks we need to look at the work done by other countries when it comes to this kind of bill.

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

Madam Speaker, my answer is yes. We cannot achieve justice in a vacuum. We have to look at what is going on all around us. I think we should at least look at how this has been handled and is being dealt with in the Commonwealth countries.

When the death penalty was abolished in 1976, the intention was not to release people back into society as quickly as possible because the prisons were full and the penitentiaries were overflowing. That is not true. Studies were done. We looked at what was going on in a number of countries. We can do that again. I would say we absolutely must look at what is happening elsewhere. We absolutely must give inmates a chance. If not, what would an individual in a penitentiary do with no chance? I can tell you that an individual who does not see a light at the end of the tunnel will commit murder or become involved in a gang. There is an interesting book called Green River Rising that I will bring to committee. It is about life in a penitentiary. The book is quite violent because the individuals have no chance. They have no opportunity. When someone has no chance left, as this bill proposes, what happens? It is not complicated. These individuals feel they have no choice but to kill or become strong arms for groups in the penitentiaries. This has been demonstrated. This will probably come up in committee. There are reports showing that violence increases in penitentiaries when individuals have no chance of being rehabilitated or released.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Madam Speaker, as I have been listening to the debate today, I must admit I have been suffering from some real pangs of frustration. This is a terrible bill; it really is as simple as that. The background behind it and the role the Conservative Party has played, and the Reform and Alliance parties before it, and I cannot put it any other way, in using the faint hope clause as a way of stirring up fears among the families of the victims of murderers in this country is, quite frankly, shameful.

As we have already heard from the Liberal member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe this bill has sat around for quite some time. It is a typical example of a government and a political party that claims to be concerned about victims and sees its members as self-appointed champions of victims, but when it came to prorogation last December, the Prime Minister had no hesitation and, I believe, gave absolutely no consideration to the various crime bills that were going to go down and to the delay it was going to cause in dealing with issues.

I am also frustrated because the way this bill has been handled by the Conservatives is a classic example of the government refusing, as we saw most recently with the census, to deal with facts and reality if it at all clashed with the government's ideology.

What I am referring to is that evidence came forward from Correctional Service Canada on this particular bill and on the whole issue of the faint hope clause in the Criminal Code. As a result of questions from me and the Bloc, further evidence was required. The department prepared a report in answer to those questions. It sat on the desk of the minister of public safety at that time until after we completed clause-by-clause study. The evidence that came out in that report was quite damaging to the government cause and it was never heard by the committee. The bill came back to this House without that evidence having been considered.

The evidence was clear that this bill is not going to do anything in terms of dealing with the one problem that exists with the faint hope clause, and that is how we treat the victims in the process. That is the only issue that has some validity here. Unfortunately, I do not believe it is an issue that can be dealt with in any serious way by legislation.

There are practical solutions. One of them is for the government party to stop the fearmongering around this issue, to tell the victims how the system actually works, how it has worked for almost 35 years, what the effect is on the murderers who are incarcerated, and what impact it is going to have on them. There are ways of doing that. The Conservatives have not done any of that in the five years they have been in power. There are ways of softening it.

It is important to put this into context. The faint hope clause came into effect when we did away with the death penalty. At that time we looked at what the penalties were going to be for first degree murder. Most of my comments today are going to be with regard to first degree murder.

When we investigated it at that time and looked around the globe to our normal allies, that is, societies that are close to what Canadian society is, the average maximum sentence for first degree murder in those other countries was 15 years. We did not do 15 years; we did 25 years.

We then said, “Okay, we trust our judges and our juries”. This bill is really an insult to both of them. We trust our judges and our juries to look at individual cases, to say that 25 years is too much, that the person is rehabilitated and will not be a risk to society and the recommendation is to allow the person to apply for parole earlier than 25 years. That is what the faint hope clause did at that time.

It was in consideration of looking around the globe at societies similar to ours, and those societies have lower murder rates than ours and some of them have 15 years as a maximum for eligibility for parole, and in a good number of them, it is 12 years. That is still the case today. In fact, in that period of time, most of those countries have reduced it from 15 years to 10 or 12 years. That is the factual situation. That is how it works elsewhere, and it is how it works here in the sense that the clause does work.

The parliamentary secretary stood up in the House today and put forward figures and facts that are grossly misleading.

Here is a fact that every Canadian should know. This is a fact that the Conservative government should be passing out to every Canadian. The average time that someone who commits first degree murder in Canada is incarcerated is 28.5 years, not 25, not 15, before the person can first apply, and most of them do not, but it is 28.5 years. That is the longest incarceration period in the world. That is the situation in Canada today.

These facts came out during the course of hearings on Bill C-36, which preceded this bill but is identical. We are dealing with a problem that does not exist in terms of the years. I repeat that 28.5 years is the average incarceration period in Canada and it is the longest in the world, longer than that in any of the United States. That is the so-called problem we are dealing with.

I made earlier reference to the request that I and the Bloc made for more information. We did get it. These were the facts, and I want to read them into Hansard today.

I have a letter from Don Head, the commissioner of Correctional Services Canada. None of this evidence got into the record at committee before the bill was returned to the House. I wanted to know the factual situation. I would have thought the government would have wanted to know this before it drafted the legislation. Here are the facts of the situation in Canada.

For those people sentenced to first degree murder, there is no eligibility for parole under 25 years. As of October 18, 2009, there were 622 people in custody who were in that category. Of those 622 people, 174 applied for and received a decision from our courts as to whether they could apply for an earlier parole. Thirty of them were rejected; 144 were granted the opportunity to apply.

On the first application, 140 were granted the opportunity to apply--and let us consider this carefully--by a jury composed of people who live in the region where the crime was committed. That is how the system works. This was not one of those, as the Conservatives like to think, elitist juries or an elitist judge totally disengaged from the community. They are people who live in the community. They are given all the evidence as to the nature of the crime. They are told all the facts about the individual's record while incarcerated. It is an in-depth process. It is the jury, not the judge, that ultimately makes the decision as to whether an individual is going to be granted a reduction in the number of years he or she has to serve before being able to apply for parole. Even then, of the 144 cases where the individuals were granted the right to reply, those individuals still had to go through the parole process and 10 of them were not granted parole.

If we look at it, and we heard some of this from the Bloc, of those who were granted parole, there was only one serious crime that had been committed. It was an armed robbery, but they were not able to give us information. We do not know what kind of weapon was involved, whether it was a gun or not. We do not know if there were any injuries that came out of it. There was only one serious crime, and we do not know how serious it was.

There were a number of people, 14 in total including that one, who were sent back to prison. The other 13 were all because of breaches of their conditions, usually because of abuse of drugs or alcohol. In some cases the abuse was as simple as changing their place of residence and not telling the person where they had moved to, but they continued to comply with the rest of the provisions. It is a very rigid supervision that is done through that period of time, for life.

Perhaps I should stop at that point. We have to remember that the sentence is a life sentence. Even when they get out in these circumstances, they are still serving life sentences and their parole can be pulled at any time, up to death. The supervision goes on for the rest of their lives.

Again as we heard, three were deported, eleven died, and one is missing. They did not know where one person was. There seems to be some indication that they thought the person had left the country, but that was the situation as of a year ago.

What we get from the government is that we have a major problem here and it is going to toughen this up. I do not know how it would toughen it up. What does it want? Does it want the average time spent in custody to be 35 or 40 years? Does it want to bring back the death penalty?

In fact, the only way we are actually going to deal with the one problem that is here, and that is how victims are treated by the system as the process happens, is by bringing back the death penalty and killing the murderer. The problem that exists is that we have people who are told that the person who committed the murder against a person's friend or family member has applied for eligibility for early parole. There is no one who was sitting on that committee who did not understand the implications for the emotional and psychological well-being of the victims' families. We understood that. That is not an issue here. We understand there is a problem in this area, but the solution that is being envisioned by this bill is not an answer to that problem.

I have been on the justice committee for more than six years and a number of different pieces of legislation have come forward. We have heard of the problems that victims have in dealing with the criminal justice system. We have seen occasions where there are some systems in place, usually regional ones, across the country that go quite some distance to support victims and their role in dealing with the criminal justice system, whether as witnesses or, as in cases like this, where they are coming in as family members or friends of the victim of the crime.

We know there are ways of lessening the burden. One of them clearly in this situation is education. So let us have the Conservative Party of Canada stop running around the country fearmongering on this issue. Let us have it simply put out the correct information.

Less than 25% of the people who are incarcerated with no eligibility for parole for 25 years apply. That is the first figure that victims and victims' families should know.

The second one they should be aware of is that the process itself takes a long time. One of the facts I have not given that came out, and this one is not nearly as clear, is that most of the applications do not come at the 15 year mark. Most of them start at around the 17 to 18 year mark.

Of the 622, we have only had one case where somebody applied immediately after the 15 years and was granted the right to apply, and in fact was granted parole. He actually came as a witness and testified before the committee. He is the only one. He was granted parole at about the 17.5 year mark. That is a fact that people should know; there was only one.

The vast majority, around 22%, of people apply on average at 17 or 17.5 years. The process itself takes more than two years. That is how long it is taking at this point. A number of them do not get out. They are rejected. Of the people who actually get out and who are released back into the community, the best figure we could see was at somewhere from 19 or 19.5 years up to 23 years. That is the range for people who are released.

When we think about the number of people who are getting out, the 20% to 22%, I want to go back to the 28.5 years. They are included in that group. The balance of somewhere between 75% and 80% of the people who are incarcerated in Canada for first degree murder spend well over 30 years in custody. A number of them, and this was an interesting fact that came out from the John Howard Society, after 25 years, are pressed by authorities to apply, and they will not do it. Some never do apply. They die in custody.

Those are the kinds of facts that victims who survived the loss of a loved one should be aware of. The education part is something that should be done. It has nothing to do with legislation. I posited, as we were going through this process, the possibility of one amendment, which would be that we do not tell the victims in the initial stage that an application has come forward, because as I already indicated and I think we heard it from a member from the Bloc, the way the process works is that when the initial application is put forward, it goes before a judge alone. The judge then takes a look at it and decides whether the application has any merit at all. As has already been said, there were 174 of them and 30 of them were rejected at that point.

It seems to me that if we said to the victims that we would let that initial phase go forward before telling them because we want to spare them from that, because they do not have the opportunity to make representations at that time, that is one of the solutions. I must admit I got both positive and negative responses from victims groups on that.

I want to make a final point with what we could be doing with victims, which is to provide them with a support system that is meaningful. Oftentimes, if there is an adjournment of the proceedings, they are not told. They travel to wherever the hearing is, if they are not in the immediate community. They are compensated for that eventually, but they are not told, so they oftentimes have to go repeatedly. Every time they go for a hearing, the memory is jogged and they suffer those emotions.

That is another area where we should be doing much more, both with our prosecutors and with the financial support we provide. The financial support is really quite limited and we should be doing more. Those would be good practical solutions. There is no legislation required. This is something the government could have done five years ago, and of course it did not, because it wanted to play politics with it.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my colleague's remarks. He started by saying this is a terrible bill and accused my party and predecessors of fearmongering. He then proceeded to do his own fearmongering about bringing back the death penalty.

He brought up the bogeyman of prorogation, even though prorogation is something that has happened 105 times in 140 years, as though that were some scary thing.

The member says this is an ideological debate. Actually, it is an ideological debate and not on one side of the House. It is about competing ideologies. His position and that of the Bloc is certainly no less ideological than the position of other members in the House. Certainly there is an ideology about how we manage very serious crimes. We are talking about first degree and multiple murderers and about what has been characterized as the faint hope clause.

This debate is about truth in sentencing. We are talking about a 25-year sentence before parole. That is what murderers are given, but the faint hope clause allows them to apply much earlier.

The member is advocating now that victims should not be informed of early parole for a murderer, but we are talking about a 25-year sentence for murder. Victims' families have lost a family member, communities have lost a family member and the sentence for the person who has been murdered is life for sure. The deceased has lot an entire life at that point.

We are talking about the consequences for serious crimes. What is it about this debate that the member thinks is ideological only on one side of the House and why does he not honour the concerns of the victims?

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

First, Mr. Speaker, I am not advocating at all that we should not advise victims of the process. I am saying that we have to look at whether it makes sense in what would oftentimes be a short period of time, and since victims are not going to be allowed representation at that time, there is no need to put them through the pain if in fact the initial application is going to be rejected by a judge as having no merit.

It is very limited. There were 30 cases as of October of last year. In those 30 cases, the families would not have been notified. There would have been no reason to notify them because there was nothing further to do. It is a question of trying to save them pain. It has nothing to do with ideology. That is just humanity.

With regard to whether this is an ideological debate, I want to be very clear that this is not for us an ideological debate. It is for the Conservatives. This is all about their very typical American right-wing agenda of wanting to portray themselves as being tough on crime. This should be a practical debate. What is the proper practice? How do we best protect the victims? This does not do it.

The member used all these buzzwords, such as truth in sentencing. Yes, we want to be truthful about sentencing and tell people that the average time that a person is incarcerated in Canada for first degree murder is not 25 years. That is not what convicts are going to spend in jail. They are going to spend 28.5 years in prison and 80% of them are going to spend even longer than that. That is truth in sentencing.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, our justice critic certainly laid out very coherently the major flaws with this bill and the underlying approach that the government is taking. Yet it appears to be pretty much a template of almost every piece of legislation we have seen the government bring in.

In fact, if we look back on the last five years, we have never seen such a meagre result from any government in the history of Canada that has put forward such hot-button, wasteful legislation. It is so disconnected from its own legislation that it prorogued the House a number of times and sunk its own legislation, but it keeps people on the hamster wheel of fear.

Meanwhile, on the issue of pension reform, which is a major crisis facing our country, it has done zilch, nothing, nada. On the need to deal with climate change and the pollutions coming out of the tar sands, it has done nothing.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague this question. In light of crime bill after crime bill that the Conservatives bring forward, in this case trying to strike fear over multiple murderers and the fact that prisons are being built for phantom guests that have not yet been identified, why does he think they are continuing trying to use these wedge, divisive issues when the real serious issues affecting safety in our communities and security for senior citizens and others in our country have been completely neglected by that lot over there?

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a relatively simple analysis here that I think has been made by the government's strategists: create a bad guy, create the devil, create the demon, and use that as a way of avoiding other issues. Appeal directly to a relatively small percentage of the population, but then spread that message throughout society.

On a short-term basis, and we have seen this any number of times in our history, it works. However, as people begin to recognize what the major issues are that are confronting Canada, whether it is within the criminal justice system or in any number of other sectors of our society, they begin to say, “What are you doing?” And that is what has happened. I think the breaking point for them occurred during the summer when, as my friend already indicated, we had the Conservatives saying, “We are building prisons. We are going to need to prisons because we have all this unreported crime”. That was absolutely so shallow that the average Canadian, even a number of the hard-core supporters of the Reform-Alliance-Conservatives, identified it. That was probably the breaking point. When $9.5 billion is spent on prisons when we have declining crime rates, the average Canadian says, “Enough is enough”.

However, it has worked for them up until this point. That was their strategy. It is going to fail on an ongoing basis now if they pursue this.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on Bill S-6.

We already know the basics about this bill after hearing the speeches of the Conservative and NDP members, but I would still like to give a brief history before going into more detail.

We know that Bill S-6 was introduced prior to prorogation as Bill C-36, which had passed through the House with Liberal support. At the time of prorogation, the bill was being debated at second reading in the Senate. Therefore, when the Prime Minister decided to prorogue the House in late December 2009, he did so knowing that his decision would kill this bill. That is the first point that needs to be made.

The second point that needs to be made is that Bill S-6 will amend section 745.6 of the Criminal Code. That section is the so-called faint hope clause, which offers offenders sentenced to life imprisonment a chance to apply, at the 15-year mark in their sentence, for an earlier parole eligibility date . Bill S-6 would amend section 745.6 of the Criminal Code in such a way that offenders who commit murder on or after the date that this proposed legislation comes into force will no longer be eligible to apply for early parole.

However, a point that the government seems not to want to make known to the public is that this legislation would not change anything for offenders currently serving a life sentence in prison. They will still benefit from the faint hope clause as it now exists.

Therefore, even if the bill was adopted, proclaimed, and enacted today, it would apply only to those sentenced today or thereafter to life without parole. That means the practical effect of this legislation will not be seen for about 15 years. Under the existing faint hope clause, people sentenced to life without possibility of parole for 25 years could apply for early parole at the 15-year mark.

In fact, the practical impact of this legislation, if it becomes law, will be seen only in 15 years. That is the second point I wish to make.

The third point that I wish to make is that the existing section 745.6 of the Criminal Code was included in the Criminal Code in the wake of Parliament's 1976 decision to abolish the death penalty. Capital punishment at that time was replaced with mandatory life imprisonment for first- and second-degree murder. The faint hope clause was seen as a necessary means of encouraging rehabilitation in a sentencing regime without capital punishment.

I would like to remind anyone who is listening to this debate that rehabilitation is one of the core principles of our criminal justice system. Deterrence is one; rehabilitation is another. That is important and people should remember it.

The section was amended in 1997 by the Chrétien government to require judicial review and the unanimous consent of 12 jurors as a prerequisite to the National Parole Board application process. In 1997, the section was also tightened so as to remove the right to apply from anyone convicted on more than one count of murder. In fact, as of 1997, with the amendments brought to the faint hope clause, someone convicted of more than one count of murder is no longer eligible for the faint hope clause. That is the third point.

Fourth, during the 2005-06 election campaign, the Conservatives actually pledged to repeal the faint hope clause.

The election took place on January 23, 2006. We are now closing in on January 23, 2011. That means the government has definitely been in place for four years. Counting every month from January 2006 to now demonstrates that this government has been in place for four years and nine months. It is only now moving on this bill.

Who knows? The Prime Minister may decide to prorogue again and kill this legislation yet again, as he has done with every single one of the criminal justice bills that were on the order paper, in debate at second reading, before a committee, at report stage, or were at third reading in the House or the Senate. Each time the Prime Minister prorogued the House, he knew he was going to kill every one of those bills.

When the Prime Minister brought Parliament back, he had the opportunity to reinstate those bills at the stage they were in at the time of progrogation. He chose to do this with a number of the bills, but not with all the criminal justice bills. That is another point I would like people to understand.

Perhaps the most famous instance of a prisoner's being granted parole through a faint hope application is the case of Colin Thatcher, who was convicted of killing his ex-wife in 1984. He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. In 2006, Mr. Thatcher was granted full parole under the faint hope clause.

On June 28, 2010, the Senate adopted the bill, on division, with no amendments.

These are just a few of the points I wish to make before going to the substance of the bill. I thought it important to raise these points, because they provide the context for the bill.

We know that the repeal of the faint hope clause is something that victims of crime and their families have been calling for for a long time. No one wants someone who has been convicted of a serious crime to get out of serving a long prison term.

When we were in power, we tightened up the faint hope clause to ensure that anyone who committed more than one murder was not eligible. We believe that there needs to be a balance between rehabilitation and punishment in the correctional system. We would like this government to put more emphasis on rehabilitation.

We continue to support the fundamental principles behind the faint hope clause, in particular because they encourage good behaviour and encourage prisoners to work toward rehabilitation. However, since this provision can have some serious repercussions for victims of serious crimes and their families, it is important that we examine it in light of recent data and statistics.

We all know this is a government that is not interested in scientific data or evidence. Witness the decision to eliminate the long form mandatory census. However, Correctional Services, through its appearances before House committees and its annual reports, provides statistics, some of which I will be using in my speech.

As I mentioned, Bill S-6 was first introduced before prorogation. At the time, it was known as Bill C-36, which had passed through the House with Liberal support and was being debated at second reading in the Senate. As I already mentioned, it was the government's decision to prorogue the House that caused the delays for all of its criminal justice bills.

During the 2006 election campaign, the Conservatives promised to repeal the provisions, but they did not fulfill that promise and they are trying to do so now, four years and nine months after their election and their promise. Way to go. It is four years and nine months later, but congratulations, anyway.

I already talked about the fact that in 1997, a previous Liberal government amended the provision to require judicial review and the unanimous consent of 12 jurors as a prerequisite to the National Parole Board application process. I have already mentioned that, at that time, the provisions were also tightened so as to prohibit anyone convicted on more than one count of murder from applying for early parole. I think that is a very important point.

Our criminal justice system has a number of different purposes. Yes, punishment is a large part of the system, but so too is rehabilitation, crime prevention, and victims programs. This bill, if not all Conservative justice bills, does not address these other important aspects of criminal law, and these other important aspects are key to ensuring public safety. They are key to ensuring that each and every member of our society remains safe.

While Liberals believe in appropriate sentences for crimes, we, unlike the Conservatives, understand that appropriate sentencing is only one piece of a much larger puzzle, and that this larger puzzle includes crime prevention. If we are not willing to attack crime prevention at the entry point, then what comes out at the end will not change. Studies have shown time and again that tougher sentences, locking someone up and throwing away the key, do not create or enhance public safety.

One has only to look at the United States, where states like California instituted “three strikes and you're out” laws. Crime rates in these states went through the roof. Meanwhile, prisons became breeding grounds for more serious criminality than the individuals had been convicted of, instead of becoming a milieux that offered some inmates a chance to rehabilitate themselves.

The Conservative government, by tackling only one piece of the criminal justice system, that is, the sentencing portion, and not working to enhance the crime prevention portion of criminal justice, is in fact endangering the safety of our communities. The Conservatives have slashed spending to programs that stop crime before it happens. I am not making this up. Government department reports have clearly demonstrated this.

During the last full year the Liberals were in power, the National Crime Prevention Centre supported 509 projects in 261 communities for a total investment of $56.9 million. At present, the Conservatives have cut over half of that spending, cutting a little more every year. In fact, 285 of those projects are no longer being financed and the total spending for that program is only $19.27 million.

Four years and 9 months ago, under the Liberals, the National Crime Prevention Centre supported 509 projects in 261 communities for a total investment of $56.9 million. Today, 285 of those projects are no longer being financed, and the total financing under the National Crime Prevention Centre is only $19.27 million. That is a big cut.

As for inmates sentenced to life imprisonment with no eligibility for parole for 25 years, but who might be eligible under section 745.6 of the Criminal Code, here are the numbers.

In 2007, 921 inmates were eligible for hearings under the faint hope clause. That figure comes from Correctional Service of Canada. If the Conservatives want to say that it is being made up, then it is their own department that is making it up.

The other piece of information that Correctional Service of Canada provided us is that of the 921 inmates eligible for hearings under the faint hope clause, only 169 actually had hearings and, of the 169, 125 individuals were released on parole. Of the 125 inmates released on early parole under the faint hope clause, and that is out of 921 inmates, 15 were returned to custody.

I will provide some information on those 15 inmates. The vast majority of individuals returned to society without incident, which means that 110 inmates convicted of life imprisonment with no possibility of parole before 25 years but who were eligible under the faint hope clause in 2007, had a hearing, successfully pled their case and who were released on early parole, are still out there with no incidents, meaning that they have not violated the conditions of their parole, that they are integrating into society and that they are not a risk to the public. Fifteen were returned to custody.

I will provide a bit of information, which again comes from Correctional Service of Canada. on those who were returned because they violated the conditions of their early release.

Instead of going to the stakeholders, I will just say that, from what I understand, the groups that support victims and families of victims are strongly in support of this legislation. The Liberals already supported it when it first came through the House and we will be supporting it l again going to committee. We again want to hear from all of the different stakeholders, particularly the association of prison guards who work in the federal penitentiaries, as to what their view of the amendment through this legislation would be.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's speech. Personally, I am quite worried by the Conservatives' approach to crime. The bill before us today deals with the issue of serious and violent crime. Yet at the same time, the government is doing everything in its power to abolish the gun registry, which the police want to have at their disposal because it helps them in their work.

This morning we spoke about another bill concerning justice and white-collar crime. This government, just like the Liberal government before it, is refusing to address the issue of tax havens. Even if white-collar criminals are put in prison for a while, if they can hide their money in tax havens around the world and spend the rest of their days living off the proceeds of their crime, it is not much of a deterrent.

Does my colleague have the same worries about the Conservative government's doublespeak and hypocrisy when it comes to justice issues? They play the tough guy and boast that they are tough on crime. But when it comes time to take real measures, and not just change the length of a prison sentence in a bill—and you have to wonder if criminals often read the Criminal Code—that is another story. They need to do more than just grandstand. We need real, meaningful measures to fight crime and, in terms of prevention, measures for gun control and control of tax havens. Is that not doublespeak right there? The government has done nothing in terms of prevention, but it has been very big on repression.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my Bloc colleague, the member for Jeanne-Le Ber, for his question.

The Conservative government engaging in doublespeak. We need only read the titles of its bills. The bills in question seem to be marketing tools rather than bills to improve our criminal justice system and ensure public safety for all Canadians in all communities.

It costs approximately $101,000 per year to keep a person in prison. Supervision of an inmate on probation or parole or in a community release program costs $25,000 per year. That is a big difference. Statistics and studies clearly show that the vast majority of people who commit crimes will not reoffend. In the case of non-violent crimes, if people are not members of an organized crime group, they can easily serve their sentence in the community. The Conservative government's priorities make no sense.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as the nuns used to teach us back in grade school, there are the sins of commission and the sins of omission. It is the same with the sense of what is criminal or what should be criminal. For example, I would suggest that it is criminal that we have thousands of aboriginal children being educated in substandard, basically shanty shack buildings and we have a government that says these children are not a priority. The government will not spend any money on those children who are in mould-infested classrooms and yet it would spend $9 billion to build prisons for non-existent prisoners. I would think, in terms of crimes of omission, that would certainly be one of the major glaring examples.

I would suggest that in terms of output for any legislative government in the history of Canada, we are looking across the bench at the ultimate underachievers. They have done zero, nada in terms of moving forward an agenda on dealing with any number of issues and yet they bring in one crime bill after another that all follow the same template because none of them are grounded in the reality of the communities and none of them are grounded in basic public safety and justice.

Given the vicious attack we saw this summer on the long form census and the attack on anyone with credibility who ever challenges the myths that the current government perpetrates, why does the member think we are once again having to deal with a government bill that is based on fear-mongering, wedge issues and division?

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is clear that a government must make choices and the party that forms the government must decide where its priorities lie and what is important to that party and to the people it represents?

In the case of the Conservative Party, which is the government and has been the government now for four years and nine months, it has decided that its priorities do not lie with average Canadians, middle class Canadians, poor Canadians, low income earners and aboriginal communities. If those were the government's priorities, it would not now be ready to borrow $6 billion in order to provide tax breaks to the most profitable large corporations, rather than invest in our families that are struggling today to make ends meet, struggling to deal with an aging population or struggling to deal with family members who are either terminally ill or ill with a chronic disease. The government has its priorities elsewhere.

That is also why we have seen the cut in crime prevention. Rather than put money where it will in fact do good work, it puts it in advertising, doubling and tripling its funding.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday we were debating white collar crime. One of the parts of Bill C-21 would place the onus on a judge to review restitution. It would appear that the reason for that is to concentrate on deterrence and ensure that those who abscond with public funds or private funds will be held accountable.

The parole system also acts as a deterrent. If it is very clear that the likelihood of parole is not there unless criminals keep in mind the need to participate in rehabilitation programs while in prison, what happens if they do not? Does this bill come to grips with a judge having to focus on their records, not only outside but inside prison?

I think the House would be interested to know why it is important in committee to have prison guards give some input with respect to this bill and its impact.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, yes, of course deterrence is part of it, as is rehabilitation, and yes, of course the way in which inmates conduct themselves during the time they are serving their sentences is looked at by the National Parole Board to determine whether they have proven themselves capable of being out in the community.

It is important to hear from the prison guards when this bill goes to committee, as I hope it will, because they are the front line officers when we talk about inmates. They will be able to tell us whether the faint hope clause, as it now stands, is something that is a useful and effective tool for them or whether it makes no difference if it is changed in the way that the Conservative government wishes to change it, which is to repeal it. They will be able to tell us that.

The Conservatives say that they are the party of law and order. Let us listen to what the law and order in the penitentiaries have to say.

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

Mr. Speaker, this is the second time this bill has come before us. We voted against it the first time and in any case, because of prorogation, it was never enacted. It went through the Senate before and now comes to us from that other place. Basically, the bill makes it harder to obtain parole before a minimum period under the law for the most serious murder, first degree murder, specifically, a period of 25 years. For second degree murder, the minimum period before an offender can obtain parole is decided by the presiding judge, who has the discretion to give between 10 and 25 years.

Under current legislation, after 15 years, a convicted murderer sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for 15 to 25 years can apply to the court to have his or her case heard by a jury. The jury decides if that individual can obtain early parole. That was not the case in the beginning, when the legislation was passed several years ago. Now the jury must be unanimous.

This is just one more piece of legislation brought forward by this government that, at first glance, makes it look like they are being tough on crime. According to the government's propaganda, anyone who supports a reasonable approach to fighting crime is defending the rights of the accused or of criminals. These arguments, which are given repeatedly, should convince any observer who hears them long enough that the criminal justice reforms proposed by the Conservative government are motivated by demagoguery. When introducing such bills, the government never considers how effective its proposed measures will be or what ills they may prevent. Instead, it always considers how the measure will affect its election campaign and the majority of voters' superficial understanding of its criminal justice program.

In that respect, the Conservatives are almost blindly following the policies of the Republicans in the United States. Even Democrats win votes when they take a tough-on-crime attitude and describe anyone who advocates a smart, effective approach to fighting crime as being a champion of criminals' rights. This is the only reason the Conservatives introduce these bills. This one is a case in point.

Does this law work? When we look at the statistics, the answer is clear. First, very few people who can apply under this law do apply. Second, not all applications are granted. It makes sense that most applications are granted, given everything offenders have to do to support their application. Have these people reoffended? Not one has committed another murder. Not only have there been no repeat murders, but only one offender has committed a serious offence, and that was a robbery.

So I do not believe that this proves that this bill meets any need whatsoever, unless it is the Conservatives' need to cause conflict with reasonable representatives of the opposition calling for reasonable solutions. Such solutions are not always clear to the general public. The Conservatives introduce bills like this one because it is an easy thing to do and it serves their demagogic purposes.

I want to give an example of how we have always taken a different attitude. A few years ago, legislation was passed that prohibited an offender convicted of multiple murders from applying for parole before having served 25 years.

Let us consider multiple murders. Objectively, multiple murders are certainly more serious than single murders. But should we be guided by this objective factor alone when we decide to release someone? The decision has to take into consideration all the guarantees that have been provided, what this person has had to demonstrate and the fact that this person will remain under the supervision of the National Parole Board for the rest of his life.

In Quebec, we have a striking example of a single murder of a prison guard by a member of the Hells Angels who—according to the jury—was following orders from the leader of the Hells Angels. The latter was found guilty. When the person committed the murder, as he was ordered, the weapon he was using jammed in such a way that when he aimed at two prison guards who were standing next to each other, he killed the first guard but was unable to kill the second. This is certainly one of the most serious crimes not only because it is a murder, in other words deliberately causing the death of another person, but also because of the subjective factors in this case. We are talking about someone who can consider taking a life in cold blood in exchange for some benefit. At the time, Mom Boucher, who had delusions of grandeur, wanted to attack the representatives of law and order to better control his lucrative dealings, and he did so by physically eliminating his competition.

Let us compare that to other multiple murders we have seen recently in Quebec. Early last year, the Chicoutimi police were called by a woman in distress. When the police arrived on the scene, the woman's husband and two children were dead. By all accounts, the woman seemed to still be under the influence of some sort of drug. We knew that the mother and father had both lost their jobs. They had appealed to their immediate family and friends with no luck. They were so desperate that they both decided to end their lives and those of their children. They procured very strong drugs that they gave to their children and then they ingested the drugs themselves. The father died, but the mother survived. The mother is still alive, so in her case this has to be considered a murder, a multiple murder to boot.

We need to look at the motivation behind it. It is an extremely sad story, but it is clear that it is not on the same moral level as Mom Boucher, who ordered one of his flunkies to kill two prison guards in cold blood, simply because they were prison guards.

We saw the same thing last year in the Saint-Jérôme region. We were shocked to hear about another terrible family tragedy. A well-known cardiologist was appreciated for his professional abilities, his rapport with patients, the care he provided, and his dedication to the hospital where he worked. He was married to another doctor. They appeared to be a very happy couple, at least until she decided to leave him. It is difficult to understand the kind of desperation he must have felt, but he decided to kill his two children.

Once again, it is extremely sad. He is not insane to the point of not being criminally responsible, but there are certainly some psychological factors to take into consideration, and it is completely different from the crime committed by Mom Boucher. I believe that Mom Boucher's crime is much worse, and that he certainly deserves a much harsher punishment than those involved in the family tragedies I mentioned. Frankly, what is the point of saying that for one, you are eligible, but for two, you are not?

Here is my view, or the view of my party and the majority of Quebeckers: in these cases, we must also always think about prevention. Yes, we must find a fair punishment for the guilty party, but we must not use simplistic reasoning. We need only look at what we are fighting for with the firearms registry. The current firearms legislation states that all firearms must be registered because they are dangerous. They are not dangerous simply because some people use them to commit murder, but because, very often, they are used in cases of suicide. They are also used by desperate people who sometimes kill other family members before killing themselves.

The current law states that when a person is depressed like that and might commit desperate acts, a court order can be requested in order to take his guns away. It is obvious that this person is likely depressed. But that person may not be depressed forever. They could work through it. However, while that person is depressed, any guns they might have should be taken away. So it is important that the police know what guns to look for and what guns they should take with them to execute the court order. This is one of the provisions that cannot be applied efficiently or effectively if these guns are not registered.

It is telling that some of the biggest advocates of the gun registry are suicide prevention organizations. They were the most ardent supporters in Quebec. Since the bill was passed, there has been a significant drop in suicide rates in Quebec. That is surely not the only reason, but the people who work in suicide prevention feel that it has certainly helped. In fact, even though it is not mandatory to register your guns in Quebec, there are still people who believe in it and register their guns, which shows that they do not intend to use them for criminal purposes.

In any case, it is important because people do change. If their attitude suggests that they might use weapons, if their lives have changed, if they are depressed, we must be able to find them. In fact, that is how it is done. When they are no longer depressed, based on their psychiatrists' opinion, their weapons can be returned to them.

That is the difference in attitudes. It is more complicated to explain and it does not look as good on the hustings as it does to say “we are tough on crime and they are soft on crime”, or say that those who want to enforce criminal law intelligently are defending the rights of the accused and of criminals. That is not the case; it is more complicated than that. I am convinced that if most voters were familiar with these specific cases they would understand that what we are defending is better measures. That is somewhat the case here.

The Conservatives know they have people's superficial support when they say we must be tough on murderers. We must not forget that in this case, a jury of 12 people from the community where that person lived and where the murder took place must unanimously agree to grant the possibility of early parole. The public has representatives to speak on its behalf. If one person out of the 12 does not agree, the request for early parole is refused. Furthermore, to get even that far, the offender must convince a judge that a jury is likely to grant early parole. That is why offenders' behaviour is monitored in prison and reports are produced to determine whether they have changed since committing their crimes.

This is especially important in the case of a crime committed by a young man—someone who has reached the age of majority but is still not very old—who kills his no-good father because he beats his mother and is dangerous. Certainly, defending his mother is no excuse for killing his father, under any circumstances. But if this person is convicted of murder, then that has to be taken into consideration after some time has gone by.

There are other reasons for maintaining such measures. People who are sent to prison need to have hope that if they change their behaviour and make an effort to become rehabilitated so they no longer pose a threat to society, they can get something in return. Human nature is such that behaviour can change out of fear of punishment, but generally it can change much more out of hope for a benefit. Napoleon understood this and awarded lots of medals and so on. Criminologists are well aware of this. People who are sentenced to long prison terms have to be given hope.

It is also important for the safety of correctional officers. If someone knows that good behaviour could get him paroled, then he is more likely to be receptive to rehabilitation and measures to maintain order in the prison. To date, there have been no abuses of these provisions, and it is very difficult for an inmate to get an application approved. The provisions have at least three main advantages, and experience has shown that they work well.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague, who has extensive experience in the issues of criminal justice and rehabilitation. Those are two key elements in developing safe societies. They are two elements that the Conservative government has tried to wedge apart with its devices of dumbed down policies on crime.

I had the great honour to live with a number of people who came out of prison and to work with them on rehabilitation. One of them lived with my family for 17 years and he became like a grandfather to my children. He had been in every prison in Canada. He taught me a great deal about prison and the need to have policies that actually, as he said, were rehabilitation, not re-humiliation.

I have watched the crime agenda for the last five years. I have seen a government that is not interested in facts or in a forward-looking vision of how to deal with the problems. The Conservatives are only interested in frightening people and then going back to those people asking them to give the government money to help continue whatever crazy cause they are running at any given moment.

From his extensive experience in the criminal justice system, what does the member think about the danger of poisoning discourse around criminal justice and basing policy not on fact but on the ideology and on the attack machine of the Conservative Party? What does that do to the legitimacy of the criminal justice system and the ability of a society to develop legislation that protects citizens, that incarcerates criminals and that finds a path for the rehabilitation of those who have been caught up in the prison system?

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

Mr. Speaker, I do not think I have enough time to answer that question, but I can say one thing for certain.

We can see an example of how this type of principle is working close to home, just south of the border in the United States. In less than 25 years, with this type of policy and this type of attitude, the United States has become the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world. The U.S. incarceration rate is somewhere around 730 per 100,000 inhabitants, while in Canada and most western European countries, rates range from 65—I think—in the Netherlands to 130 in Great Britain. Nevertheless, it is always around 100, give or take. That is a big difference.

Is the United States seven times safer than Canada? Quite the contrary and never mind the human cost. Someone who is rehabilitated becomes an asset to society. We can cite many an example. What is more, according to religious principles—I am no longer practising and I wonder whether I am agnostic—I see that every religion teaches the benefits of forgiveness. They recognize that people are not perfect, that they will commit sins, crimes, but when they do, we must try to rehabilitate them and put them back on the right path. That is not what we have here. The Conservatives are fixated on being tough on crime in order to please the masses.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the faint hope clause has been very controversial for a long time. There are many cases where people would say clearly that they do not want to see a particular person out of prison, but eventually people have to get out of prison.

I want to ask the member how the faint hope clause fits into the whole concept of parole. Eventually, when people demonstrate they are no longer a danger to society, we still have a system of parole. It seems that the faint hope clause is simply an extension of the parole system.

Is the bill undermining the foundations of parole in Canada?

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

Mr. Speaker, the member is quite right to point this out. It is part of a set of principles whereby when someone enters prison for a certain period of time, not only are they kept in prison, but they are also offered programs to help them be better people when they get out. This information is given to the National Parole Board which, when the person has made sufficient progress, may agree to early parole. In any event, in the case of murder for which the minimum sentence is currently life imprisonment, this person remains under the jurisdiction of the National Parole Board until their death. They are monitored continually. They are not completely free. They are released with conditions. Experience shows that those cases in particular have been very successful.

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

Mr. Speaker, clearly the Conservatives want us to believe that murderers are lined up to get out after 15 years. In fact, as has been pointed out, less than 25% even apply under the faint hope clause and very few actually get out. In Canada the average time in jail is 28.5 years, not the 25 years that is commonly thought of. The faint hope clause does what it is supposed to do. It encourages good behaviour in the prisons.

We only have to look at the best practices of other countries to see how much time is spent in jail. In 1999 an international comparison was done on the average time served in custody by an offender given a life sentence for first degree murder. It showed that the average time served in Canada was 28.4 years, greater than all the countries surveyed. In New Zealand the average time served was 11 years. In Scotland it was 11.2 years. In Sweden it was 12 years. In Belgium it was 12.7 years. In Australia it was 14.8 years. In the United States it was 18.5 years.

I would think these would be countries with which we would want to compare favourably. They are not countries that we look down on the world as having systems that are extremely different than ours. They are our peers.

If these countries are all considered best practices, then why are we out of line with them?

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

Mr. Speaker, I had his notes.

What the previous speaker said is quite right. I spoke at length about other aspects, but I would now like to add that the homicide rate in Canada has fallen steadily over the past 30 years. I am certain that my statement has taken more than half the general public by surprise.

The Conservatives use rhetoric because all they want is to win votes. They never mention this. Canada's murder rate is about one-third that of the U.S. If there is one American failure that is clear, it is certainly this blasted tendency to look like they are tough on crime, which has disastrous results.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

There is enough time for the hon. member from Jeanne-Le Ber to ask a brief question.

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

Mr. Speaker, in his eloquent speech, my colleague demonstrated the wisdom of the Bloc Québécois' position.

He also decried the Conservatives' grandstanding. I would like to add something to that and ask his opinion. The Conservatives have an increasingly ludicrous habit of giving their bills ridiculous titles such as the Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act, Sébastien's Law or the Keeping Canadians Safe Act. The bill title has become a kind of political marketing tool instead of an objective description of the bill's scope, as is usually the case in the House.

Does my colleague feel that this demonstrates the Conservatives' grandstanding?

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin has 30 seconds to respond to the question.

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

Mr. Speaker, that is a fact, and I am looking into it. It is clear that the bills they are introducing have titles that serve as propaganda.

We will soon be looking at their proposed legislation to reduce opportunities for sentences that can be served in the community. They say they want to ensure that people convicted of violent and dangerous crimes cannot benefit from things like that. But the current law already states that a judge cannot give this type of sentence if it presents a threat to public safety.

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

Mr. Speaker, this is my first time speaking on this type of legislation. Prior to being called Bill S-6, it was Bill C-36 before the prorogation. I would like to talk about the process by which we get here and the tough on crime agenda that many of us on both sides of the House have referred to. There has been so much time spent on the issue of tackling violent crime, yet we have been using this, for the most part, as a divisive political wedge between many sections of the country, many sectors of society, and unfortunately a lot of what I would call the mature debate has been lost as a result of that.

Yes, I support sending the bill to committee at this point and I support the fact that we are able to carry on a mature conversation about people who are convicted for life for serious crimes. Even the bill's title, the serious time for the most serious crime act, in and of itself almost sounds like an advertising slogan. I feel as though we are trying to sell something through the Shopping Channel, pardon the vernacular, but nonetheless, members get the idea. This is how revved up this debate has become, to a point of wedge issues, fear tactics and all around misinformation by both sides because both sides have been so vehemently opposed to the other that we forget the fact that we at some point have to listen to the other side as to which part of the debate is germane to the situation and which part of the debate matters the most.

I want to provide a few more notes on that issue, but before I return to that, I want to talk about the background on the bill and the analysis of Bill S-6. As I mentioned earlier, it was introduced in the House as a Senate bill, but it was before us a while back as Bill C-36. It passed through the House with support of the parties here and was debated at second reading into the Senate when we faced the prorogation. I am going to leave the prorogation matter out of it because we have debated that ad nauseam. I do not think it was a fair thing to do, but nonetheless, we will leave it at that.

Section 745.6 is the clause that was devised and included in the Criminal Code in the wake of Parliament's decision to abolish the death penalty in 1976. Capital punishment was replaced with mandatory life terms of imprisonment for first degree and second degree murder. The faint hope clause is essentially the vernacular we use for what is being debated here today. That clause was seen as a necessary safeguard to a sentencing regime without capital punishment, to encourage the rehabilitation. Therein lies the other aspect of this debate that is so very important to this, which is rehabilitation.

Unfortunately, in terms of the idea and the concept and the methods by which we rehabilitate people who are convicted, that argument seems to be lost and I do not think we have had the full argument on this particular issue for quite some time. Since 2006, since crime has become far more at the forefront of the agenda than in the past, that part of it really has been left out. We have focused a lot on the crime itself. We have focused a lot on the victims, and there is nothing wrong with that. I am certainly in favour of that, and if I were not in favour of it, I would not be supporting that the bill go to committee. Nonetheless, we also have to have that mature debate that I spoke of that sometimes escapes us about the idea of rehabilitation and how this country deals with rehabilitation for people who get parole and go back onto the streets.

Are they rehabilitated? Are they a threat to society? Do we believe that our system allows these people to be rehabilitated enough? Do we raise the bar by which these people can be brought back into society? Does our penal system believe that these people are rehabilitated? Would our penal system benefit by focusing more on the more violent criminals who cannot be rehabilitated? These questions are the reason we should have a more fulsome debate on this issue.

I spoke of section 745.6. As I mentioned, the section goes back to 1976. Amendments by the Chrétien government in 1997 changed this particular section so as to require judicial review and the unanimous consent of 12 jurors as a prerequisite to the National Parole Board application process. Even at that point it was decided that the faint hope clause was a serious issue.

Several stories in the media referred to the faint hope clause as being used by people convicted of first degree murder and being released back into the public. There are several sides to every story, but on the surface this shocked people. There is shock value to this. Unfortunately, there are groups that use the issue of rehabilitation, or the lack thereof, for shock value in the media. It was addressed at that time in some of the stories that came out.

The most famous instance where a prisoner was granted parole through a faint hope application was the situation with Colin Thatcher, who was convicted of killing his ex-wife in 1984. He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. Mr. Thatcher was granted full parole in 2006.

That is just one example of how we have sensationalized many of the issues involved in first degree murder, dangerous offenders, and rehabilitation.

In the international context of rehabilitation and in the context of how we deal with this issue, are we really having an honest debate?

I spoke earlier about the politics of the issue and I would like to return to that for just a moment.

A key benefit of being involved in the political system is our ability to rely upon expert advice. We listen to the experts and we find out how they deal with a particular situation. As politicians, we become generals. All issues come before us. I have issues to deal with. I just had a major flood in my riding and I am dealing with disaster relief. I dealt with employment insurance this morning and now I am dealing with serious crime. One of the benefits is that we have the resources to get as much material as we can in a very short period of time.

We can also hear the stories of serious crime that affects everybody: yes, the victims, and yes, the people involved in the penal system who have to rehabilitate serious offenders while at the same time looking after them.

Societies outside the penal system know quite a bit about this issue, so we should look to them for advice. Victims of crime groups generally support the elimination of the faint hope provision. Some other groups do not, and their opinions mean quite a bit to us.

The John Howard Society opposes the legislation. It believes the faint hope clause as it currently exists encourages prisoners to reform their behaviour in the hope of being granted early parole. The Elizabeth Fry Society opposes this bill and believes there are already sufficient checks and balances in place to ensure only offenders unlikely to pose a threat to public safety are paroled based on faint hope applications. The Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers, as well as the Quebec bar, oppose this legislation. To varying degrees, prison guards believe the faint hope clause makes their job safer.

These are just a few snippets of the stakeholder reaction to this. There are many groups out there that believe we should get rid of this. Victims of crime obviously believe people who are the most serious offenders should be doing the time, not going through the faint hope process.

I would also like to mention what my colleagues noted earlier about the fact that as far as the international context is concerned, and I certainly have the notes here as well, 28.4 years is the average time spent in jail for a Canadian convicted of first degree murder in this country. At 28.4 years, that is certainly on the high end of the scale.

In other countries, I think Sweden, Belgium and other European countries were mentioned, it was close to half that length of time. In the United States of America, it was also less, and several other countries followed suit.

There is certainly quite a bit of time spent here, on average 28.4 years. It still goes back to the situation of the faint hope clause. Do we provide a faint hope clause for people who have been convicted of first degree murder?

I can honestly say that in this particular situation I do support this bill going ahead to committee because I think it deserves further study. However, I also believe that the faint hope clause may provide an incentive for people who are not rehabilitated to go back into society and this is going to cause problems. It is something that concerns me greatly and it greatly concerns people I represent.

I do believe that in this particular situation one of the issues we should be giving more emphasis to is the idea of rehabilitation. I implore the House not to shift back into an example where we are using this as a poster or a sound bite for a political issue of the day, which unfortunately happens too often.

If we start using labels in this particular situation, we could be denying the public an honest debate on rehabilitation, which I feel needs to be debated in this country. I mean that in a general sense, not just for those who are convicted of doing the most serious crime.

I would suggest to the House that we take this issue and give it the reading and study it deserves, especially in regard to rehabilitation.

In this particular situation, we can look at examples of people who cannot be rehabilitated. A small number of those, we know, do receive a favourable hearing with respect to the faint hope clause. Even though the number is not great, we have to look at that as well. This was talked about in the campaign in 2006, to get rid of the faint hope clause. This just might be the way to go. However, I feel deeply within my heart that we have not fully debated how rehabilitation is handled in this country.

I thank the Speaker and the House for this time to present a few of my thoughts.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague gave an excellent speech.

We can take a look at early interventions that will have the most profound impact upon the trajectory of individual lives. We know right now that what happens in the first five years of a person's life will have a profound impact on his or her life.

Subject a child to violent sexual abuse, improper nutrition, or improper parenting and the trajectory of that child's life will change significantly. Ensure that the child is in a loving, secure environment with proper nutrition, is subjected to a healthy environment, and that child will be the best that he or she can be.

Early learning head start programs have the most profound impact upon the trajectory of that child. When it comes to youth crime, an investment in early childhood intervention will actually decrease youth crime by 50%.

I would like to ask my colleague a question. Does the member not think one of the most powerful things the federal government can do is work with the provinces to ensure that Canadians from coast to coast will have access to early childhood education?

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleague asked a great question. We have touched on many other subjects today. He mentioned a 50% reduction in youth crime where there is an early childhood education component. It is of vital importance. We are now seeing the studies and data that prove to us the benefits of early childhood education, and I mean for the very youngest, even before a child is one year old. The trajectory dictates that with the right amount of education, a person will have a more fulsome and healthier life, and so on and so forth, as my colleague pointed out. The problem is that in this country right now we do not target the investment in this particular type of education.

What bothers me about this is that there is a satchel of money that is provided for day care, but that is not the point. The point is that the federal government does not say that it believes in early childhood education. It just gives a bit of cash and people can do with it as they may.

On the surface, it sounds like it is a wonderful thing that the government gives people money to do with as they want, but we also have to provide some of that money to people who are early childhood educators. They provide such an invaluable service. Since I am not an early childhood educator, I do not know the full benefits of what it is educators provide, but I can say they provide fantastic benefits and one of them is the reduction in crime that my hon. colleague spoke of.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as a follow up to my colleague's response, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder is the leading cause of preventable brain damage in neonates. The fact is it is entirely preventable.

The federal government believes that in matters of health, the province is the lead manager, and it is correct, but nothing precludes the federal government from using its convening power and its financial levers to work with the provinces to develop innovations in health care that would improve the health of our citizens. Because these problems are transboundary, nothing precludes the federal government from doing this. We desperately need this type of leadership to deal with problems like FASD.

If FASD is the leading cause of preventable brain damage in children, does my colleague not think it is crucially important for the federal government to use its power, work with the provinces and implement best practices?

I have worked in jails as a guard and as a physician. The average IQ of somebody with FASD is 67. How on earth are people with an IQ of 67 able to integrate, engage and be productive members of society? They cannot.

As a matter of humanity and being progressive in our country to deal with a fundamental issue that is so trying and difficult for those who work in the judicial system and the medical system, does my colleague not think that the federal government should work with the provinces to implement best practices in the prevention of FASD?

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

Mr. Speaker, after that speech I think my colleague should be one of the ones to lead the charge. I certainly put the compassionate argument. I will go back to what I said in my speech. One of the benefits of being a member of Parliament is that we have access to resources and people who work within the industry, people who are experts, people who know more than we do. Believe it or not, some of us actually believe there are others out there who know a lot more than we do. Because of the member's personal experience, he is able to bring the matter of FASD into this House and certainly give it the full debate it deserves. That goes back to the idea of the faint hope clause.

It is an incredible way to debate this issue through the measures he mentioned. The convening measure, the first ministers conference, is certainly something that can bring the whole country together, not to be divisive but to lift the bar on how we can address rehabilitation for people who commit the serious crimes and for people who are victims of FASD, and the member talked about IQs.

That being said, the federal government has that power through the Canada health and social transfer. It can become one of the driving agents behind this. There is nothing wrong with that, because by being in the driver's seat on this particular issue, let us face it, we also safeguard the five principles of health care across the country, which is universal to all despite in which territory or province people live.

I commend my colleague for bringing this up. I think that is all part of the debate within this House. Sometimes we do not give these issues the debate they deserve. It becomes a series of sound bites and cute little slogans that we use from time to time to gain ourselves momentum into the next election. Unfortunately, that may be what I would call the negative aspect of a minority Parliament, if indeed we want to use that. However, there are positives of a minority Parliament and the positives include fulsome debate in order to get something passed. Otherwise, if we do not have the numbers, we have to have honest debate.

Am I convinced that we are using this House in a situation like Bill S-6, the faint hope clause, which was formerly Bill C-36, and the idea of rehabilitation, or protecting victims or allowing victims to receive the justice they so desperately deserve? We need within this Parliament to give these people the voice that they deserve. If we surround it with sound bites and politics and divisiveness, which we see normally on the 10 o'clock news, then they become the ones to whom we have given short shrift. That is the unfortunate part of this.

I implore my colleagues, this is the big reason that I want to send this bill to committee, so that we can discuss these issues. Unfortunately, we did not have that chance before, but now we do.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, since the debate has gone all the way from the faint hope clause to fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, I want to ask the member a question about that. Indeed, we are all concerned about fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. However, recent evidence has shown that a simple folic acid supplement helps to reduce the methanol content that is also in the alcohol products, which seems to be the main problem contributing to fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

Would the member therefore recommend that Canadians at risk and people in communities where they are at risk take a folic acid supplement to mitigate that risk and to help prevent that syndrome from happening in the first place?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am not really aware of that part of FASD and how to treat it in that particular sense. Quite frankly, as I said earlier, I am just not qualified to say that at this point. The member has brought up a good point. I suggest that he press this point even further within this House. If it is okay with him, I would like for him to send me the information that he is speaking of because I think it is a valid point.

That being said, in the spirit of providing a decent debate within this House, I want to thank the member for bringing that up. I can guarantee, thanks to Google, that I am going to try to figure out what it is he is talking about. I think that will add to the debate of FASD as to how we can reduce it, especially in the most vulnerable societies.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to stand and speak on behalf of my party and the constituents of Vancouver Kingsway to this important bill, Bill S-6, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and another Act, sub nomine, serious time for the most serious crime act.

Bill S-6 amends provisions in the Criminal Code regarding the right of persons convicted of murder or high treason to apply for early parole. This is done through the elimination of the so-called faint hope clause as it is commonly known by which those given a life sentence for murder or high treason could apply for parole after serving 15 years of their sentence.

A similar predecessor bill, Bill C-36, was introduced during the second session of this Parliament but did not become law before that session ended when the current government prorogued Parliament at the end of 2009.

It is important when we discuss profound issues, particularly ones that involve critical issues of crime and punishment and proper approaches to our carceral system, to have a very sound understanding of the structure and facts. I will spend a little time reviewing what the current law is.

Section 745.6 of the Criminal Code, known as the faint hope clause, provides offenders serving a sentence for high treason or murder with the possibility of applying for parole after having served 15 years when the sentence that they have been imprisoned for amounts to life without eligibility for parole for more than 15 years.

Offenders convicted of first degree murder receive life imprisonment as a minimum sentence with the earliest parole eligibility date set by law at 25 years. For offenders convicted of second degree murder, a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment is also imposed with the judge being able to set parole eligibility at some point between 10 and 25 years. Judges have that discretion in our Canadian courts.

Those serving a life sentence can be released from prison only if granted parole by the National Parole Board. Unlike most inmates who are serving a sentence of a fixed link, for instance two, five or ten years, lifers are not entitled to statutory release.

If granted parole, those convicted of a life sentence remain subject for the rest of their lives to the conditions of parole under the supervision of a Correctional Service Canada parole officer.

One thing that is important to point out is that in this country, those who are given a life sentence do have a life sentence. That sentence is and will be applied to them for the rest of their natural lives. The question is whether or not and when they will be permitted to serve that sentence in the community as opposed to being incarcerated.

Parole may always be revoked and offenders returned to prison at any time if they violate the conditions of parole or if they commit a new offence. Of course, not all people who have been given a life sentence are granted parole. Some offenders are never released on parole because the risk of their reoffending is too great and that is appropriately so.

During the years following its initial introduction in 1976 the faint hope provision underwent a number of amendments so that now the criteria for the possible release on parole of someone serving a life sentence include the following. The inmate must have served at least 15 years of his or her sentence. An inmate who has been convicted of more than one murder where at least one of the murders was committed after January 9, 1997, which was when certain amendments came into force, may not apply for a review of his or her parole ineligibility period. To seek a reduction in the number of years of imprisonment without eligibility for parole, the offender must apply to the chief justice of the province or territory in which his or her conviction took place.

The chief justice or superior court judge designated by the chief justice must first determine whether the applicant has shown that there is a reasonable prospect that the application for review will succeed. This assessment is based on the following criteria: the character of the applicant; the applicant's conduct while serving his or her sentence; the nature of the offence for which the offender was convicted; any information provided by a victim at the time of the imposition of the sentence or at the time of the hearing under this section; and any other matter that the judge considers relevant to the circumstance.

If the application for early parole is dismissed for lack of a reasonable prospect of success, the chief justice or judge may set a time for another application not earlier than two years after the dismissal, or he or she may declare that the inmate will never be entitled to make another application.

On the other hand, if the chief justice or judge determines that the application has a reasonable prospect of success, a judge will be assigned to hear the matter with a jury. In determining whether the period of parole ineligibility should be reduced, the jury should consider and does consider the five criteria I just mentioned. The jury determination to reduce the parole ineligibility period must also be unanimous.

The victims of the offender's crime may provide information either orally or in writing, or in any other manner that the judge considers appropriate.

If the application is dismissed, the jury may, by a two-thirds majority, either set a time again not earlier than two years after the determination when the inmate may make another application, or it may decide that the inmate will not be entitled to make any further applications. Furthermore, if the jury determines that the number of years of imprisonment without eligibility for parole ought to be reduced, then a two-thirds majority of that jury may substitute a lesser number of years of imprisonment without eligibility for parole than the number then applicable. The number of years without eligibility for parole that they may assign can range from 15 to 24 years.

After all that extensive process, once permission to apply for early parole has been granted, the inmate must apply to the National Parole Board to obtain parole. Whether and when the inmate is released is decided solely by the board based on a risk assessment, with the protection of the public as the foremost consideration. Board members must also be satisfied that the offender will follow specific conditions, which may include restrictions of movement, participation in treatment programs and prohibitions on associating with certain people, such as victims, children and convicted criminals and the like.

A faint hope clause review is not a forum for a retrial of the original offence, nor is it a parole hearing. A favourable decision by the judge and the jury simply advances the date upon which an offender will be eligible to apply for parole.

This section, of course, has been considered by the sharpest legal minds of our country, the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada has stated that the purpose of this review procedure is to re-examine a judicial decision in light of changes that have occurred in the applicant's situation since the time of sentencing that may justify lessening the parole ineligibility period.

Section 745.6 of the Criminal Code gives the jury broad discretionary power to consider any matter governing the offender's situation, and the Supreme Court has provided guidelines for the judicious exercise of that discretionary power. The jury, for instance, must consider only the applicant's case and must not try the cases of other inmates who may have committed offences after being released on parole. The court has also stated that it is not the jury's role to determine whether the existing system of parole is effective.

The faint hope clause was added to the Criminal Code in 1976 in the hope that it would provide an incentive for long-term offenders to rehabilitate themselves and therefore afford more protection to prison guards, as well as fundamentally achieve greater justice in our country. The provision is also said to represent Parliament's awareness of how long other countries imprison persons convicted of murder before allowing them to apply for parole. For example, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, England, New Zealand, Scotland and Switzerland keep persons convicted of murder in prison for an average of 15 years before they may be paroled.

The very first judicial review hearing under the faint hope clause was held in 1987. Here are some statistics that the House might find instructive.

As of April 12, 2009, 991 offenders had been deemed eligible to apply for a judicial review. Court decisions have been rendered in 173 cases, and 143 inmates have been declared eligible to apply for earlier parole. Of these, 130 were granted parole, representing just over 13% of those who had been deemed eligible to apply for a review of their parole dates.

I spoke about comparing Canada to other countries, and there are some other instructive facts that would be helpful for parliamentarians as we consider this difficult matter.

In 1999, an international comparison of the average time served in custody by an offender given a life sentence for first degree murder showed that the average time served in Canada is 28.4 years. Moreover, that is greater than in all countries surveyed, including the United States, with the exception of offenders in that country who serve life sentences without parole.

Here is the average time spent in custody by offenders convicted of first degree murder: New Zealand, 11 years; Scotland, 11.2 years; Sweden, 12 years; Belgium, 12.7 years; Australia, 14.8 years; United States for life sentence with parole, 18.5 years; and United States for life sentence without parole, 29 years. Once again, Canadian inmates convicted of first degree murder served 28.4 years.

I know the government is fond of saying where Canada sits on the world stage. It uses those facts when it thinks they are helpful. Let us then take a look at this fact: Canada keeps its first degree murderers in prison longer than every country on earth except for the United States.

Those who favour the retention of the faint hope clause have a number of arguments. They argue that judges and juries who consider whether to reduce the parole ineligibility period often take into consideration the circumstances that have led criminals down the wrong path, factors like poverty, fetal alcohol syndrome, low cognition, and other factors. They also recognize that mistakes can be made in court rooms from time to time resulting in innocent people being convicted.

Those who commit murder do deserve to be treated severely. Despite the government's constant attempt to try to simplify any argument other than its own or its attempt to make up straw person arguments that are easy to beat up, let it be said that there is no parliamentarian in this House who does not think that someone convicted of first degree murder ought to be treated severely. Of course they should. Anybody suggesting that any parliamentarian thinks otherwise is simply trying to mislead the Canadian public.

However while acknowledging that, people who favour retaining this section believe that offenders should not necessarily be utterly robbed of all hope, since one of the aims of punishment is rehabilitation. They believe, in other words, that justice must be tempered with mercy.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member still has eight minutes left to conclude his remarks. As it is just about 2 o'clock, we will start with statements by members, and the hon. member will have the floor after question period.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill S-6, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and another Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

When the matter was last before the House, the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway had the floor, and he has eight minutes remaining in the time allotted for his remarks. I call upon the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, before we broke I was talking about the important matter of the faint hope clause that is in the Criminal Code and the desire of the current government to eliminate that provision.

As the vice-chairman of the public safety committee and someone who is the public safety critic for my party, I have had occasion to visit more than 25 federal prisons, not only in Canada but in Norway, Britain and indeed Taiwan. I have visited medium security prisons, maximum security prisons, minimum security prisons, and I have met and talked to dozens and dozens of offenders, many of whom have been convicted of life sentences.

I visited inmates in all institutions. I want to explain why inmates with life sentences exist in all three of those institutions, minimum, medium and maximum security institutions. It is because the designation of offenders and where they serve their sentence is not characterized by their crime but rather by the security risk they present.

I was quite surprised to find that there are many people serving life sentences in this country who are serving their sentences in minimum security institutions, as well as medium security institutions. The reason for that, of course, is that despite the fact that they have committed a terrible crime, a serious and heinous crime, in many cases they have proven themselves to be capable of serving their sentences and improving their behaviour.

One thing I found is that prisons are undeniably very profound places. They are places of justice, social safety and judgment. Prisons in our society are places where society has chosen to send people who have broken the normative laws of our society, and they are sent there for good reason. They are sent there to protect the safety of the public. They are sent there to carry out the sentences they owe to society for breaking the rules.

They are also places of sadness, compassion and mercy. Prisons, when they operate properly in a society, can and should be places of redemption, atonement and rehabilitation. Indeed, I have pointed out in this House on several occasions that the name of our department is Correctional Service of Canada. It is not called “punishment services of Canada”; it is called “corrections”.

The reason for that is that, in a civilized society, we hope that when we send people to prison, one of the goals we hope exists for every prisoner sent is that they can acknowledge the harm they have caused and perhaps correct their behaviour. In most cases, I would say in over 95% of cases, we hope that those people are able to re-enter society and conduct themselves as law-abiding citizens.

I want to talk a little bit about redemption and atonement. This weekend I was at a retreat in Vancouver. A very wise lawyer, someone who practices law in Kentucky and does death row cases, Mr. Don Major, pointed out the Lord's Prayer. He pointed out that part of the Lord's Prayer says that we ask the Lord to forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. It leads to this concept that at some point we must be capable of forgiveness and atonement in as many cases as we can.

Many people who are in federal prisons with life sentences will never get out of prison, and properly so; they should not. However that does not mean that every single prisoner who gets a life sentence is incapable of same.

What the faint hope clause does is it gives the opportunity for that person, those rare people who actually can acknowledge their crime, who can correct their behaviour, who are capable of redemption, to have a chance, just a chance at applying for parole.

I spent a large part of my opening speech going through all the details and the administrative structure of how the faint hope clause works. Any person who reads those sections and listened to that speech will see that there is a very careful, measured, guarded, complicated step-by-step process before anybody even gets considered for a faint hope provision.

I want to spend a moment to talk about the victims. I think all parties in this House agree that victims of crime in this country need and deserve to be protected. They need and deserve to be respected. They need and ought to have the chance to be involved.

Victims in this country deserve to be reimbursed for any expenses they have if they participate fully in the process. They deserve to be informed at every step of the process, and they deserve the right to participate in the judicial process.

We on this side of the House in the New Democratic Party champion the rights of victims to be full participants in the judicial process because, after all, they are the ones who are most wronged and harmed by crime in this country.

I am also mindful of the fact that Steve Sullivan, the former federal ombudsman for victims of crime in this country, stressed after working with many victims that victims do not want vengeance and victims do not want punishment or cruelty. What they want is to be heard, to be acknowledged and to be safe. Most of all, when those offenders re-enter society, what victims want is to make sure our country and our system does everything it can to make sure they do not reoffend. That is their prime goal.

That is why a faint hope clause with all of the protections in the present system can be reconciled with the rights and interests of victims. We can achieve all of the aspects that we hope to. We can achieve redemption and we can achieve justice for victims.

I want to talk about guards. It has been said time and time again that the faint hope clause, by giving hope to offenders, acts as a form of behaviour control in prisons, and that helps keep our guards safe. Correctional officers will say that giving a carrot to offenders to behave well gives an incentive for them to follow the norms and rules in prison. If we take away all hope from someone in prison, we are giving that person a licence to misbehave, and that threatens the safety of everyone in prison and outside.

I urge every member of the House to deal with this issue from a compassionate, rational and caring point of view. Let us make sure that the faint hope clause stays in the Criminal Code, so that we make sure that people in our country have a chance at redemption, when it is appropriate to do so, and make sure that the victims' rights and interest are fully respected and taken into account at all times.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Vancouver for his insights into the faint hope clause. I know it is a difficult subject for many people and I think he gave it a very sensitive treatment and tried to embrace both sides of the debate.

I was in the government operations committee earlier today, where we tried to put a price tag and enumerate some of the many crime bills that have come through this Parliament in recent years, as they will impact the correction services.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer was there to try to explain to us some of the predictable consequences of having many of these bills with mandatory minimum sentences and doing away with the credit for time served in a remand bill and the predictable explosion in incarceration. We are going to be stacking up prisoners like cord wood in these prisons pretty soon or having to build new ones with price tags of billions of dollars.

Some more cynical people have even implied that this is the Conservatives' alternative to the absence of a national housing strategy. They are going to lock up a whole generation of young native kids in prison instead.

The question I have for my colleague is this. People are coming to the conclusion that perhaps what the government is really doing is laying the foundation for a wholesale privatization of the prison system so that companies like Onex or Halliburton can perhaps offer to house a prisoner for $100,000 a year. The government is charging $147,000 a year. It would be pretty tempting, now that they have the member of the board of directors of Onex Corporation advising the Prime Minister in the Prime Minister's office. Who is to say he is not dropping a bug in the Prime Minister's ear, saying this could be a business opportunity. Let us make lemonade out of lemons and turn the prison system into a revenue-generating private business. Onex could build prisons for the government.

Is it paranoid to assume that these people could be laying the foundation for a wholesale privatization of our corrections system?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would not want to ascribe base motivations to my hon. colleagues on the other side of the House, but it is instructive to be reminded of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's comment that we should distrust anyone in whom the desire to punish is strong.

I also would point out that it is impossible to imprison and punish our way into a safe society. If we could get a safe society by simply imprisoning everyone, then the United States would probably be the safest place on earth and we know that is not the case.

Prison plays a role. Having a corrections system is absolutely an incredibly important part of the justice system where we do need to have a place we can send people from whom society needs to be protected and we need a place of justice where people can pay a penalty for their transgressions.

However, I want to quote William Trudell, the chair of the Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers, who pointed out that no offender can be released from prison under faint hope provisions unless a jury agrees it is appropriate. So, of course, we have the input of the public, a decision of peers, based into the system.

He also characterized the present bill before the House as:

erosion of discretion in the system moving towards rigidity that is really changing the criminal justice system as we know it

This is from the point of an experienced criminal trial lawyer, and he added:

[e]very situation has got a human story to it and you have got to allow some discretion and weighing of circumstances.

That is what I think is the essence of the faint hope provision, that it allows in the sentencing process the possibility after 15 years that the odd person who has served a life sentence may have conducted themselves in such a way that they are deserving of at least an application for parole.

Remember that a faint hope application does not give the person parole. It allows the person to apply to the National Parole Board with all the attendant safety mechanisms and safeguards that are present in the national parole system. The National Parole Board would never release anyone who did not meet the criteria present in that system.

To conclude, I do not want to point to any negative motivations on behalf of the government. I do think it is well motivated and it does care about victims and wants to take steps that will make society safe. On that, all parliamentarians agree, on all sides of the House. The question is what mechanisms are best taken to do so. I fail to see how removing the faint hope of an offender who has redeemed himself after 15 years in prison to potentially return to society can do anything but make guards less safe, make the public less safe, and frustrate justice.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to follow the member for Vancouver Kingsway, who has made an excellent presentation on this bill, as well as the NDP critic, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh, who spoke to the bill earlier today.

As I pulled out my file on what is now Bill S-6, I noticed that it was labelled as Bill C-36 from last year. I have only been here not quite two years yet and already I am finding my files are rather heavy and there are multiple numbers for essentially the same bill. Perhaps this will be the last iteration of this bill. Let us hope that the government does not see its way to proroguing the House again or finding another way that would cause us to have to start this all over again.

This particular bill, now Bill S-6, is an act to amend the Criminal Code and another act. It was given first reading in the Senate on April 20 of this year. The bill would amend the provisions of the Criminal Code regarding the right of persons convicted of murder or high treason to apply for early parole. This is done through the elimination of the faint hope clause by which those given a life sentence for murder or high treason could apply for parole after having served 15 years of their sentence.

A similar predecessor bill, Bill C-36, as I mentioned before, was introduced during the second session of the 40th Parliament but did not become law because of the abrupt ending of the session on December 30 when the Prime Minister prorogued the House.

In terms of the history of section 745.6 of the Criminal Code, it is known informally as the “faint hope clause” because it provides offenders serving a sentence for high treason or murder with the possibility of parole after having served 15 years. We will see later that there are a number of comparable countries to Canada with similar systems that have a much lower number of years for murderers to serve.

In our case, it is 15 years, where the sentence is imprisonment for life without the eligibility of parole for more than 15 years. Offenders convicted of first degree murder receive life imprisonment as a minimum sentence with the earliest eligibility for parole set by law at 25 years. For offenders convicted of second degree murder, a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment is also imposed, with the judge setting parole eligibility at a point between 10 and 25 years. Those serving a life sentence can be released from prison only if granted parole by the National Parole Board.

Unlike most inmates who are serving a sentence of a fixed length, for example, 2 years, 10 years or 20 years, lifers are not entitled to statutory release. If granted parole, they remain subject for the rest of their lives to the conditions of the parole and supervision of a Correctional Service of Canada parole officer. Parole may be revoked and offenders returned to prison at any time if they violate the conditions of parole or commit a new offence.

Not all lifers are in fact granted parole. Some are never released on parole because the risk of their reoffending is too great. In fact, I will look later at the numbers of people involved in this situation and we will find that a very small number of people in prison, at the end of the day, would get parole.

During the years following its initial introduction in 1976, the faint hope provision underwent a number of various amendments. Now the criteria for the possible release on parole of someone serving a life sentence are as follows.

The inmate must have served at least 15 years of the sentence. As a matter of fact, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh pointed out this morning that it is usually around 17 years before applicants normally apply and that in fact very few people actually do apply even at that point.

An inmate who has been convicted of more than one murder, where at least one of the murders was committed after January 9, 1997 when certain amendments came into force, may not apply for a review of his or her parole ineligibility period.

To seek a reduction in the number of years of imprisonment without eligibility for parole, the offender must apply to the chief justice of the province or territory in which his or her conviction took place.

The chief justice, or a Superior Court judge designated by the chief justice, must first determine whether the applicant has shown that there is a reasonable prospect that the application for review will succeed. The assessment is based on the following criteria.

One is the character of the applicant. We have already mentioned that we have excluded multiple murderers from the applying in this case, so the judge has to look at the character of the applicant. If the character is bad, that person would not qualify.

Another criterion is the applicant's conduct while serving the sentence. I am assuming that if the applicant has been involved in something like a prison riot or some other altercation with other inmates within the prison or just has not co-operated, that too would disqualify him or her from applying.

Next is the nature of the offence for which the applicant was convicted. That too, would vary with the individual.

Another one is any information provided by victims at the time of the imposition of the sentence or at the time of the hearing under this section. So once again we are looking at victim impact statements. The judge then has a better opportunity to look at the total picture of each and every situation.

Finally, any other matters that the judge considers relevant in the circumstances can be considered.

If the application is dismissed for lack of a reasonable prospect of success, the chief justice or judge may set a time for another application not earlier than two years after dismissal, or he or she may declare that the inmate will not be entitled to make another application.

The point here is that it is not a simple process. It is a long, involved process and there has to be an exemplary situation on the part of the inmate for him or her to get through all stages of the process and achieve release.

If the chief justice or judge determines that the application has a reasonable prospect of success, a judge will be assigned to hear the matter with a jury. In determining whether the period of parole ineligibility should be reduced, the jury should consider the five criteria that I have outlined. The jury determination to reduce the parole ineligibility period must be unanimous.

Evidently, before, that was not the requirement. I believe it was two-thirds, but now it has to be unanimous on the part of the jury.

The victims of the offender's crime may provide information either orally or in writing, or in any other manner that the judge considers appropriate. This is also an excellent provision of the rules.

If the application is dismissed, the jury may, by a two-thirds majority, either set a time not earlier than two years after the determination when the inmate may make another application, or it may decide that the inmate will not be entitled to make any further applications.

We see within the bill that there are some changes to these provisions later.

If the jury determines that the number of years of imprisonment without eligibility for parole ought to be reduced, a two-thirds majority of that jury may substitute a lesser number of years of imprisonment without eligibility for parole than the number then applicable. The number of years without eligibility for parole that they can assign can range from 15 to 24 years.

Once permission to apply for early parole has been granted, the inmate must apply to the National Parole Board to obtain the parole. Whether the inmate is released, and when, is decided solely by the board, based on a risk assessment, with the protection of the public as the foremost consideration.

We can see from each of these steps that if there is a red flag popping up at any of these stages, that should end the process. The process should not continue beyond that.

Board members must also be satisfied that the offender will follow specific conditions, which may include restriction of movement, participation in treatment programs, and prohibitions on associating with certain people, such as victims, children, and convicted criminals.

One of the points we have continually made is that progress can only be made if the people in the prisons are actually being rehabilitated. The fact that they are participating in rehabilitation programs is something that we as a society want. We do not want people sitting in the prisons for years and years and refusing to take part in programs. By taking part in programs, the inmate enhances the possibility that at some time, away in the future, there could be some faint hope down the line.

It has been mentioned several times today that Colin Thatcher, a former Conservative member of the legislature in Saskatchewan, had been in jail since 1984. In fact, he wrote a book while he was in prison. He served 22 years or more for the murder of JoAnn Wilson. At the end of the day, I believe the faint hope clause did apply to him only two or three years from the time that his 25 year term would have expired.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

If you can rehabilitate a former Tory cabinet minister, you can rehabilitate anyone.

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

As the member for Winnipeg Centre has said, if we can rehabilitate a former Conservative cabinet minister, we can rehabilitate anybody. I think this would apply to anybody from any party, because that was a very sad case.

I followed it very closely at the time. I used to go out to Saskatchewan quite a bit during those periods. It was very sad for the family, the children and everybody. It is just that this case brought excessive amounts of publicity by virtue of who Colin Thatcher was. If it had been another person who did not have his fame, we probably would not even remember the case today.

The faint hope clause review then is not a forum for a retrial of the original offence, nor is a parole hearing. A favourable decision by the judge and the jury simply advances the date on which the offender will be eligible to apply for parole. As stated:

The Supreme Court of Canada has stated that the purpose of this review procedure is to re-examine a judicial decision in light of changes which have occurred in the applicant’s situation since the time of sentencing that might justify lessening the parole ineligibility period. Section 745.6 of the Criminal Code gives the jury broad discretionary power to consider any matter concerning the offender’s situation, and the Supreme Court has provided guidelines for the exercise of this discretionary power, namely that the jury must consider only the applicant’s case and must not try the cases of other inmates who may have committed offences after being released on parole. The Court has also stated that it is not the jury’s role to determine whether the existing system of parole is effective.

The point is to counter the misinformation spread by agents of the Conservative Party and the media, which like to give the impression that prisoners are basically in a revolving door, that they are standing in line at the prison, ready to get out and move next door to law-abiding citizens or across the street. Anyone listening to these steps can see it is very rare that someone will be able to follow through on all of these steps and walk out of prison under this program.

The argument of many here, including the member for Vancouver Kingsway, is that maybe only 1% of 2% will get out, but as long as 100% have hope that someday they might get out, they probably will behave a lot better. They will try to rehabilitate themselves and stay out of trouble. We have it on record that the prison guards actually support that. The prison guards of Canada feel the last thing we need are people in prison without hope, who will resort to doing things they should not do, which might endanger the guards, other prisoners and people who should not be endangered, if this system is not in place.

The faint hope clause was put in for very good reasons, dating back to the days of Pierre Trudeau, and I will get into the history of it now.

A lot of us here today were around in those days. This is not an environment for a lot of young people. We do not see young people being elected to the House. The odd person does, but most start in the city council areas, the school boards and the provincial legislatures and work their way up. By the time we get into the federal House of Commons, we have earned that grey hair.

In July 1976 Parliament voted to abolish capital punishment, and I remember how controversial that was at the time, for Criminal Code offences as opposed to the death penalty for military offences, which was abolished in 1999. The Criminal Code was amended and the categories of murder were changed from capital and non-capital to first and second degree murder.

Mandatory minimum sentences for murderers were introduced. The compromise arrived at between the supporters and the opponents of the death penalty was its replacement with long-term imprisonment without parole. The faint hope clause was adopted in 1976 in connection with the abolition of the death penalty.

Speaking in favour of the abolition of the death penalty and the addition of the faint hope clause in the Criminal Code was the solicitor general of the day Warren Allmand. I could read his quote, but it was well said and made sense, certainly for that period of time. The faint hope clause was added to the Criminal Code in the hope that it would provide an incentive for long-term offenders to rehabilitate themselves and therefore afford more protection to prison guards.

The provision is also said to represent Parliament's awareness of how long persons convicted of murder who were imprisoned in other countries served before allowing them to apply for parole. These countries are our peers. I think most people understand that we are not talking about Third World countries, with systems that are radically different from ours. In fact, we are talking about Australia, part of the Commonwealth, Belgium, Denmark, England, New Zealand, Scotland and Switzerland. Key persons convicted of murder are imprisoned an average of 15 years before they may be paroled.

That is why we have heard many speakers today talk about the chart, which shows these countries, on average, keeping people in prison for 15 years, where in Canada it is 25 years. Canada is higher than all those other countries. In fact, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh pointed out today that people stayed longer than 25 years in prison. It is more like 28.5 years.

The first judicial review hearing under the faint hope clause was held in 1987. People want to know how many people are involved in this. As of April 12, 2009, 991 offenders have been deemed eligible to apply for a judicial review. Court decisions have been rendered in 173 cases and 143 inmates have been declared eligible to apply for earlier parole. Of these, 130 were granted parole, representing just over 13% of those who had been deemed eligible to apply for a review of their parole date.

The most recently published Correctional Service Canada statistics concerning the fate of prisoners released on parole under the faint hope clause, as of April 12, 2009, show that of the 130 offenders who had been released by that date, 101 were being actively supervised in the community. They are not running around on their own. Fourteen of them had been returned to custody because they had not behaved themselves. Eleven were deceased, one was on bail and three had been deported.

These statistics also showed that out of a total 22,000 offenders under Correctional Service Canada jurisdiction at the time, 4,495, or 19%, were serving life sentences, almost all of them for murder.

By comparison, in July 2009, 140,000 people, or 9% of the total prison population, were serving life sentences in the United States.

My time has run out, although I find it hard to believe that was a full 20 minutes. I am sure the clocks are off by just a bit.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to my hon. friend and he mentioned some statistics. If he had been listening earlier today when I was speaking, he would have heard some statistics that I quoted about a study done in 1996. Of the 204 offenders then eligible to apply for faint hope, 79 actually did apply and 55 were successful. That is a success rate of 75%. The member said that it was very rare, but certain statistics contradict that.

In addition, I would like to ask the member a question about the impact of the constant threat of a faint hope application to the loved ones of the victims of crimes. Currently a convicted murderer can apply at least five times, after the 15th year, 17th year, 19th year, 21st year and 23rd year of their incarceration, under the faint hope clause. Could he comment on what it would be like for the loved one of a victim who had been horribly murdered when the murderer could apply five times? The loved ones would have to go back five times to relive the horror of the loss of a loved one. Canadians would like to know about the impact on victims. We hear a lot about rehabilitation from the member's party, but we never hear very much about the impact on victims. This government stands up for victims.

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

Mr. Speaker, we are extremely sympathetic to the victims. In fact, the Conservatives appointed Steve Sullivan as the ombudsman for victims and after three years, they did not renew his contract. He has criticized them for not performing, not doing what they said they would do to help victims.

We are sensitive. Today the member for Windsor—Tecumseh talked about victims and the fact that victims should be compensated if a hearing were cancelled. A lot of administrative things can be done to deal with victims.

The bill will go to committee fairly soon. It does have, as the member knows, provisions which would reduce the number of attempts a prisoner would have in the future to actually apply under the faint hope clause. He knows that is the case.

However, we will bring forward amendments at committee to deal with these issues. Our utmost concern is the rights of victims. The Conservatives oversold their position on the rights of victims because Steve Sullivan would not be as critical as he is right now had they not.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, both my colleague and a previous speaker referred to the very low percentage of those under the old regime who had applied for parole and received it. There was a caveat, though, that another percentage were given parole, who did victimize others when they were on parole and were sent back to jail.

How can we err on the side of caution and on the side of victims to attempt to totally minimize those who would be given parole and would go out and commit further crimes, even after they had been found guilty of very serious crimes? Does the member not feel we should find every opportunity possible to protect those who have been victimized and to ensure that those who are on parole do not victimize others? The Canadian public deserves to have an explanation of how we feel as legislators about the potential that even one could get out and would victimize further. Do we not owe it to those we represent to ensure that it does not happen, to leave no stone unturned?

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

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely correct. That is what governments do in terms of reviewing legislation, reviewing practises.

We have a bill before the House that will go to committee where we will hear witnesses who will deal with different issues. Amendments will be brought forward by that member's party, our party, the Bloc and maybe even government members.

I agree 100% with my colleague that even one person is too many. We should always try to improve the system. No system is perfect and when we find a flaw or an open door we should move to make some adjustments. We should not just throw out the whole concept because of an ideological prism through which we are viewing the whole thing.

The fact is that the faint hope clause is there for a reason. It was put in by the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau when the death penalty was abolished. It was designed to give 100% of inmates some glimmer of hope, even though most of them do not apply even after 15 years. It is a very small number apply. I went through all the hoops that they must go through and it is very hard to make it through all the way. As the member said, there is always the potential for the odd person to make it through, and perhaps we ought to look at making some more adjustments, but we should not just throw out the whole concept.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member will know that prior to coming here I was part of the labour movement in Hamilton. In Ontario we have the Ontario public service unions and some of those unions are for prison guards. On more than one occasion we have had discussions with those particular people in regard to workplace safety. They told us that we should not to take away the faint hope clause because there was nothing between them and a prisoner, and a prisoner has no hope, there would be no reason in the world for that individual not to murder a prison guard.

We have great empathy for the families of victims and what they suffer through, but on the other side of this case, we do not want further victims in the families of those prison guards.

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

Mr. Speaker, prison guards are the closest to the situation. Since they deal with inmates on a personal basis day in and day out, week after week, month after month, year after year, we do need to pay some attention to their observations. I know they support keeping the faint hope clause but even they too may be willing to have the concept tweaked and changed a bit. Even they would not write it off and say that absolutely no changes. If the changes are reasonable, they may go along with them.

Many organizations have pointed out that this is a worthwhile program. Even if we plumbed it down, I think a lot of government members would support it, but they are being whipped by their management. They do not have an independent idea among all 143 of them over there because--

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. I can take one more brief question or comment. The hon. member for Nanaimo--Alberni.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member quoted the member for Windsor—Tecumseh who stated earlier in the debate that families of victims should perhaps not be notified when a murderer applies for early parole, say after 15 years, like the families of the victims of Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo for example.

I wonder if the member supports the position that families of victims should not be notified when an inmate applies for early parole under the existing system.

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

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the member should re-read the speech of the member for Windsor—Tecumseh. I heard him definitely say that we should go further and maybe even compensate victims. If a victim or family member has to go to a hearing and that hearing is adjourned or cancelled, those individuals should be compensated for their costs.

The member for Nanaimo—Alberni is totally wrong in what he is representing because the member for Windsor—Tecumseh did talk about the rights of victims.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Resuming debate. Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Call in the members.

And the bells having rung:

Accordingly the vote stands deferred until tomorrow at the end of government orders.