An Act to amend the Criminal Code (means of communication for child luring)

This bill was last introduced in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session, which ended in August 2015.

This bill was previously introduced in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session.

Sponsor

Fin Donnelly  NDP

Introduced as a private member’s bill. (These don’t often become law.)

Status

Outside the Order of Precedence (a private member's bill that hasn't yet won the draw that determines which private member's bills can be debated), as of June 14, 2011
(This bill did not become law.)

Summary

This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament often publishes better independent summaries.

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to expand the offence of luring a child to include all means of communication.

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

July 15th, 2014 / 11:50 a.m.
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NDP

Françoise Boivin NDP Gatineau, QC

Well, I think the parliamentary secretary missed my point, that point being that it's all about consent. If you're dealing with and buying somebody who is coerced and exploited, that is the main infraction.

That being said, I'm a bit surprised, because I find it's a complete reversal of the speech we heard from the parliamentary secretary on Bill C-213. The argument on Bill C-213 was that we want to get them off the street, because Bedford was all about the danger surrounding the street practice of prostitution, plus the fact that we don't want kids to see that.

Fine. They can go and do that in a much safer place, which is their own place. But he just said no, you're missing our point on Bill C-36. We want to criminalize any individual in every circumstance who buys.

So what the hell can they sell and to whom? That has been my question from day one. Maybe they would have been better to agree with Ms. Mourani who was plainly asking for them to abolish it, to call a spade a spade and say that the act of buying and the act of selling is wrong. But they're not doing that.

Maybe the officials can answer my question then. What can they sell and to whom, based on Bill C-36? Is there anybody who cannot buy sexual services except criminally, by virtue of Bill C-36?

Also, has your department thought of maybe using the notwithstanding clause based on section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to say the whole thing is illegal, that we don't want prostitution?

That's what I heard from the parliamentary secretary, that we want this done and over with, so no selling and no buying at some point in time, because what good is it to sell something that cannot be bought by anybody?

Protecting Canadians from Online Crime ActGovernment Orders

November 29th, 2013 / 12:35 p.m.
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NDP

Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-13.

The first part of the bill is very clearly a critical issue that we have been dealing with in Canada. I would hope that every member in this House would support expedited action, across the board, to prevent cyberbullying and the inappropriate, illegal, non-consensual distribution of sexual information, in particular related to children.

I welcome the fact, as do my colleagues, that the government is finally coming forward with a more reasonable bill, and that we do not have the slinging of insults. We appreciate the respect being given to this matter and the more respectful bill, and perhaps it is because the bill is now being tabled by the Minister of Justice. We hope we will have a better balancing of rights to privacy and the rights of children, and other people who are harmed by inappropriate acts through the Internet.

I do wish to bring to the attention of the House that this is not the first time that members of the House have sought action on the issue of cyberbullying and action, particularly where youth have been harmed, and in some cases have committed suicide, because of extensive bullying.

I would like to bring to the attention of the House the motion M-385, tabled by the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord in October 2012. It was debated in this House. The member recommended that there be a broad-based strategy on dealing with cyberbullying.

It is noteworthy that just before I rose to speak a member across the way referenced the report on cyberbullying that was put together by federal, provincial and territorial ministers of justice and public safety. The very first recommendation is that the working group acknowledged the benefits of a multi-pronged, multi-sectoral approach to the issue of cyberbullying and called for action in a comprehensive manner.

That is very appreciated. Obviously, the justice ministers and the public safety ministers across this country recognize that we need to have clarification in criminal law. However, we need a lot more than that.

The member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord recommended that. He recommended a broad-based strategy that all members of the House could develop together and, heavens forbid, reach a consensus on the measures we need to move forward on. Very sadly, the Conservative members all voted down that motion.

Also, members on this side brought forward Bill C-540, a private member's bill, from the member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour. In that bill, he recommended the creation of an offence to produce or distribute intimate images of an individual without their consent. That was the response to the tragic suicide of Rehtaeh Parsons in his province.

In addition, another member on this side, the member for New Westminster—Coquitlam, tabled Bill C-213, which very succinctly addressed the matter of communication for the purposes of child luring.

Very clearly, the members of the official opposition strongly support action by the government to address child luring and to address and punish any cyber crime that would lead to bullying and could cause serious harm or suicide of our children.

Canadian families would clearly be grateful for expedited action, certainly the families of the victims of previous bullying incidents would. Most importantly, we would like to prevent any such incident from ever occurring again. I think all members of the House would concur with that.

What we want to do is to protect our families from harm. I concur. I join with my colleagues in strongly supporting the first provisions of this bill, which deal with and address cyberbullying. I am certain that we did our best to try to suggest to the government that it would be wise to expedite these measures by dividing the bill.

We may need to strengthen the investigative powers but, as I will speak to later on, we need a lot more than stronger criminal law; we need to make sure that our enforcement officers are fully capable of actually taking action on these matters.

However, as I mentioned at the outset, the most important measures we need are ones to prevent these acts from occurring at all, not simply taking enforcement action after the fact.

Why do we have these issues? Why are Canadians, in particular legal experts and privacy experts, raising concerns with the majority of the provisions of this bill? I am informed that 37 of the 47 clauses of the bill do not directly relate to cyberbullying. Therefore, it appears eminently reasonable that we would have further debate on those provisions to expedite the cyber crime provisions.

One of the matters that was of deep concern to Canadians from coast to coast to coast, in particular legal scholars, was the previous provision of a bill that was tabled in the previous Parliament. It would have allowed for intervention into accessing Internet material without a warrant. When objections were raised, the then minister of public safety accused anybody who had raised any concerns or had proposed amendments to the bill of being pro child pornography. That caused the government to ultimately withdraw its bill, and I think appropriately.

We are encouraged that the government has moved forward now with a more reasonable bill. However, legal experts are raising some concerns with the direction the bill is taking on the way it is imposing conditions on warrants. Those are critical matters.

We have long-standing legal precedents on when it is appropriate to allow for the seizing of material and where it might be a violation of a charter right. The prerequisites to obtain a warrant have been long debated in the courts. If we are to move in any way on shifting the burden on having to show cause before obtaining a warrant, it justifiably merits a good discussion in committee over those matters. However, the government has decided that it does not want to divide the bill, so unfortunately all matters will be going to committee.

I previously mentioned the matter of the warrantless disclosure. An equally concerning matter is the possibility for Internet providers to voluntarily disclose information. I would suggest that is a matter that also needs to be looked at closely. People exchange information of a private matter day in and day out. There should be some level of protection when there is an exchange of that information.

As I only have a few minutes left, I would like to speak to a matter that comes from my personal experience. I was involved for many years in the field of environmental enforcement. One of the lessons I learned from that is that the best way to deter a crime is to have a high probability of detection and punishment.

In order to make that happen, most agencies now, when they are developing legislation, are simultaneously taking a look at the capacities of their enforcement agencies to deliver. They ask whether they have enough personnel and whether they are appropriately qualified. This is an area that police and enforcement officers have been identifying for quite some time, that it takes very special skills and training.

I have not seen the government come forward with a parallel skills, training and capabilities strategy. I would encourage it to move expeditiously on that, so that the moment the bill becomes law, the government is immediately capable of enforcing that law.

In closing, the bill is going in the right direction, generally speaking. However, it will be important for particular matters, including the changing of the burden of proof and warrants, to be explored at committee with the appropriate experts.

Corrections and Conditional Release ActPrivate Members' Business

September 20th, 2012 / 5:50 p.m.
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NDP

Sylvain Chicoine NDP Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC

Mr. Speaker, during the introduction of this bill at second reading, I spoke in the House to express my concern about the potential impact this bill could have on the proper operation and security of our penitentiaries.

During first reading of the bill, I was concerned about the fact that the commissioner was being granted the discretion to designate an offender as a vexatious complainant without placing limits on this power by establishing clear criteria. In my opinion, without such criteria, we cannot guarantee that decisions will be made in a fair and equitable manner.

Something else that concerned me at that time was that the bill did not take into account the reality of the inmates being designated as vexatious complainants. The agencies working in penitentiaries and the Office of the Correctional Investigator stated that many of the complainants who could be designated vexatious by the commissioner were actually people who have mental health problems or who are not well educated.

We have to remember that, when this complaint and grievance process was implemented in the early 1970s, the objective was to channel inmates' frustrations by using a constructive process that would allow inmates to participate in improving the living conditions in penitentiaries. So the objective was to improve safety by ensuring that inmates did not use violence to express their discontent and frustration.

It was also felt that this process was a tool that helped ensure transparency and accountability, allowing us to assess the effectiveness of correctional policies and identify problems in Canadian prisons.

Another benefit of this complaint process was that it made it possible to identify individuals with problems, whether mental health problems or low levels of education. Once identified, they could be directed to programs adapted to their circumstances.

The government should focus its efforts on increasing the correctional investigator's capacity to investigate so that he can quickly identify the problems in prisons.

Yes, the volume of complaints is a problem. However, we do not believe that reducing access to the complaint and grievance process is the answer.

In my view, this new bill is likely to cause more frustration for inmates who are unable to access the grievance process. This could in turn increase the level of violence and reduce the safety of inmates and prison workers.

We believe that the most effective way to guarantee open access to the complaint and grievance process, while reducing the volume of complaints, is to create mediator and grievance coordinator positions.

The Conservatives ignored all the recommendations of the experts and the external and internal review committees. Many of them said it was important to create those types of positions, which would allow prisons to maintain an open-access complaint and grievance process, while reducing the volume of formal complaints through informal resolution.

Our approach is also supported by many experts and stakeholders in the corrections field, including prison law and criminology experts.

Nevertheless, the member for Scarborough Centre seems to have ignored all this, as have the Conservative members of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. Not only did they ignore the experts who came to share their points of view, including the correctional investigator, but they also ignored the recommendations in David Mullan's report on the external review process, which was commissioned by the government itself.

In his report, Mr. Mullan made a number of recommendations regarding various aspects of the complaints and grievance process, including recommendations concerning staff and training. Mr. Mullan made recommendations to improve the informal complaints resolution process. Several recommendations touched on reducing the administrative burden of the complaints process, accountability and involving the offender in the process.

None of the 60-plus recommendations in the Mullan report were implemented or taken into consideration during the drafting of Bill C-213 or in the amendments that were made to the bill later.

Yet the recommendations made sense and the government itself commissioned the report. Why did the Conservatives not implement the recommendations in the Mullan report? Is it because the recommendations are not in line with their ideology even though the experts agree on this issue?

When I was a member of the committee, it became clear to me that the only approach that was acceptable to Conservative ideology was punishing criminals. That is what this is about.

I did not support the introduction of this bill at first reading. Unfortunately, the final version is even more disappointing because the only clause left states that, if the commissioner believes an offender has submitted vexatious complaints, he can prohibit that offender from submitting any further complaints.

I feel that the Conservatives did not listen to James Bonta, an expert witness who testified during the electronic surveillance study. Mr. Bonta is a clinical psychologist who presented a psychological explanation of punishment to the committee. I will read a portion of his testimony:

Punishment can deter or suppress behaviour, but only under certain conditions....It has to be immediate, it has to be the right intensity, it has to be predictable, and it has to be done with the right kind of person....

It works really well for people who think in the future, who have little history of being punished, and who think things through. Is this your typical offender? Offenders tend to be concrete thinkers who think in the here and now. They have a long history of punishment. They were raised in families in which most of them were physically abused. Some were sexually abused....

I'd strongly encourage you not to expect deterrence to have a great impact on the behaviour of your moderate- to [even] high-risk offender. You need to put your hope and your money into rehabilitation programs.

It is a clinical psychologist who made this statement to the committee. The first reading version of the bill had a provision to implement this type of corrective program or plan in order to break the complaints cycle. This was a worthwhile approach, but the provision in question is also one of the first ones that the Conservatives members of the committee removed from the bill.

The end result is that most of the provisions were removed from the first version of the bill, leaving only one provision that allows the commissioner to prohibit offenders that he designates as vexatious complainants from filing any new complaints, and another that allows the commissioner to review the complainant's status annually rather than every six months in order to reduce the administrative burden.

We are therefore not at all convinced that a review after one year would help the process, even if it does reduce the administrative burden. Leaving an offender in the system for one year can only increase the administrative burden while jeopardizing the safety of inmates. This will only make the situation worse. The parliamentary secretary on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security took most of the provisions in the first reading version of the bill and included them in the regulations.

She mentioned that this bill was a legislative burden that would make the administration of the grievance process more expensive. She therefore proposed an amendment, which was passed, to include the administration of the grievance process in the regulations rather than in the act. She wanted the commissioner's authority to prohibit a complainant from filing a new complaint to be included in the act but enforced by the regulations.

These regulations would be submitted to the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations. Our critic, the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, had also proposed an amendment to ensure that the commissioner, when making a decision, would take into account mental health issues and low levels of education. However, the parliamentary secretary would only include these factors in the regulations. Therefore, we believe that this is an empty promise because there are no guarantees that these provisions will be included in the bill.

I would like to remind my colleagues opposite that the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations examines the regulations after the fact. In my opinion, this will allow the government to avoid debating this bill, because the experts do not agree with its position.

In closing, I would like to emphasize that this bill only addresses a very minuscule part of the problem. Improving the efficiency of the process is the problem, not just dealing with vexatious complainants who only represent a handful of Canada's inmates.

The government has chosen to ignore the opinions of experts and the Mullan report, which they commissioned. They have decided to punish inmates—and we are only talking about a few inmates, as I mentioned—rather than introducing a bill that really tackles the problem by supporting the grievance procedure while enabling inmates to reform. This bill is not the answer, and it is obvious that we will not support it.

Criminal CodePrivate Members' Business

April 24th, 2012 / 5:55 p.m.
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NDP

Dany Morin NDP Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to the Liberals' Bill C-273, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cyberbullying). As I mentioned in the questions I asked my Liberal colleague, it is commendable to introduce a bill to move Canada forward and protect adult and youth victims of online cyberbullying. Still, many people believe that harsher punishment for cyberbullies may not be the best way to prevent cyberbullying. I will leave it up to each individual to consider that issue.

What I want to talk about today is the Conservative government's lack of leadership on the cyberbullying issue. Since coming to power, the Conservatives have done nothing to protect young people who are victims of bullying or cyberbullying. That is why my Liberal colleague felt the need to introduce a bill.

There are all kinds of things the Government of Canada could do. Even if the Conservative government does not agree with me, it has a role to play in fighting bullying and cyberbullying.

There is no magical solution to combat youth bullying. Nevertheless, every stakeholder has a role to play, whether it be the federal government, the provinces, the school boards, parents, the young people being bullied, or those that witness it. Everyone has a role to play in addressing this problem.

I am going to give the Conservative government some advice and offer good examples of what has been done by other countries that have decided to take a leadership role in the area of cyberbullying. I would advise my Conservative colleagues to take notes.

Finland has developed the KiVa program, generally considered one of the best national anti-bullying programs in the world. Education is at the heart of this program, and the objective is to encourage witnesses to take action and to put an end to bullying when they see it.

When bullying occurs, instead of removing the culprits from their environment, discussions are organized between the bully, his victim and other young witnesses. The focus is very much on including the community, broadly speaking, in efforts to combat bullying. Schools, for example, are subject to fines if they fail to deal with bullying. Bullies are also subject to fines, regardless of their age. I admit that in Canada, this is an area of provincial jurisdiction.

Here is another example that will perhaps better reflect the way things work in Canada. In United States, the U.S. government created the website www.stopbullying.gov, which provides information for the public on combatting bullying. Additionally, the government organized a White House conference on bullying prevention. I congratulate the American president, Barack Obama. In 2011, with a view to bringing together experts in the field, the government also organized an annual summit for federal partners who work in bullying prevention. The aim was to bring together key stakeholders in the fight against bullying. The stakeholders come from all levels of government and civil society, and they include parents and young advocates. The aim is to encourage co-operation and share best practices.

As a Canadian citizen and an NDP member, I would very much like my own Prime Minister to show as much leadership as the U.S. President. I live in hope, but I am still waiting.

Sweden is also a good example. This country really is a frontrunner in various social areas and has made a number of progressive breakthroughs. Since 1994, the federal government has required that every school develop a plan to fight bullying. It is the responsibility of school principals to ensure the plan is followed. This is something that concerns schools, but there are other things that the government can do. Unfortunately, over the last few years, cyberbullying has spread in society, particularly through social media. More and more young people are victims of cyberbullying.

There have been good initiatives at the provincial level, and I hope the federal government is doing everything it can to support them.

In Ontario, for instance, the Accepting Schools Act sets out potential consequences for bullying, which include expulsion. It also includes increased financial support for training on bullying prevention and encourages schools to create gay-straight alliances.

British Columbia is another leader in the fight against cyberbullying. In 2007, the provincial government gave school boards a mandate to establish policies to fight bullying.

That is a great pity, at the end of the day. It is now 2012, and the Conservative government has not yet put anything on the table. Besides, as far as I know, and I have discussed it with some Conservative MPs, nothing is expected to be put forward that will allow the Canadian government to finally take an active part against cyberbullying.

Coming back to British Columbia, not all of the school boards in the province took part in the initiative. The proposed codes of behaviour for students require that schools work closely with students and parents to fight bullying.

I could talk about many other things. Alberta’s Bill 206 contains some good initiatives. Nova Scotia, unfortunately because of the suicide of a student, Jenna Bowers-Bryanton, has also put forward a measure to respond to cyberbullying. Manitoba has been active on this issue since 2004. Quebec has also passed legislation that requires school boards to develop a plan to fight bullying.

There are many things that different levels of government and society are doing to take action and help young people who are victims of cyberbullying, because the ones who are victims of cyberbullying are primarily—we must admit—young people.

Several economic, government and social players have a role in this. Currently, the Government of Canada is still absent from the equation. We have no national plan to combat cyberbullying, or bullying in general, and no concrete government plan. It is quite deplorable.

I am going to tell my Conservative government what I want. What I want is for the federal government to clearly adopt a leadership role and work alongside the provinces, anti-bullying groups and other key stakeholders in order to address the issue of bullying, particularly, as I mentioned, among youth.

This means more than simply making changes to the Criminal Code; it also means developing a national strategy to fight bullying. Our communities need resources and programs to help them deal with the root causes of bullying.

This is why I will vote in favour of my Liberal colleague's bill. It is a step in the right direction, because currently, the federal government is doing nothing. I thank my colleague for her bill.

The notion of cyberbullying may be abstract to some people. I will try and define it by using the definition of Bill Belsey, who a decade ago created www.cyberbullying.org, an information-packed resource that for years has been providing support and assistance to the young victims of bullying. I would invite my colleagues to visit this website to see the good work that he does.

Cyberbullying involves the use of information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated and hostile behaviour by an individual or group that is intended to harm others. I agree entirely with this definition of cyberbullying because, at the end of the day, it involves aggressive behaviour that has very serious ramifications for our youth.

To establish a link with Bill C-213, I should point out that the public also agrees with criminalizing cyberbullying and including it in the Criminal Code. Indeed, an Angus Reid poll has revealed that 65% of Canadians believe that bullying should be considered a crime, even when it does not involve physical violence, while only 19% of Canadians think that bullying should be considered a crime only when it involves violence. Just 6% of Canadians believe that bullying should not be considered a crime. It is quite evident that the vast majority of Canadians support this type of initiative, because people realize that not enough is being done.

Clearly, it is not easy to know why our children are victims of bullying. There may be a number of clues: the child may lose interest in going to school, might be irritable, or may have trouble concentrating.

I will conclude with a sobering observation. People do not realize the extent to which young people are affected by bullying. An analysis of schools in the Toronto area showed that a child is a victim of bullying every seven seconds. It truly is an epidemic. We must at all costs mobilize and fight cyberbullying.

I conclude by saying that the NDP will be pleased to vote in favour of this bill. However, the federal government must do more.

Safe Streets and Communities ActGovernment Orders

September 27th, 2011 / 1:25 p.m.
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NDP

Fin Donnelly NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to the omnibus crime bill, Bill C-10, Safe Streets and Communities Act. I support the sections of the bill that aim to protect children from dangerous sexual predators.

In fact, I have introduced legislation myself, Bill C-213, that makes it an offence for an adult to communicate with a minor by any electronic means. This bill would close a loophole in the Criminal Code that allows sexual predators to communicate with children by any electronic devices such as cellular phones or even the social media. This legislation would give more tools to the courts to address the issues of child luring and abuse.

These changes to the Criminal Code are long overdue. This legislation was first introduced in 2008 by my predecessor Dawn Black. I brought forward this legislation when I was first elected and I recently reintroduced it in this session. The government has not addressed this loophole in the Criminal Code for years now. The Conservatives want to use it as window dressing for building mega prisons.

The world has changed in three and a half years, with cellphone and Internet use exploding. During these years, the government has left children unprotected. The government should have taken swift action and moved on this bill but has instead included it in a highly controversial omnibus bill which has many problems associated with it.

The people of New Westminster, Coquitlam and Port Moody want effective public safety policies from the government. Coquitlam has one of the lowest police-to-population ratios in British Columbia. The police are constantly being asked to do more with less and this crime omnibus bill will only exacerbate the problem.

If the government were serious about protecting neighbourhoods, then it would ensure that communities like Coquitlam have adequate funding for the RCMP. The federal government has yet to deliver on its 2006 commitment to fund 2,500 new RCMP officers and to sit down with municipalities to review their community policing needs.

I believe we need to focus on crime prevention. My riding has experienced gang violence, a prevalent issue in the lower mainland. We need to increase funding for youth gang prevention programs as well as the number of police officers on the street. We need to prevent kids from getting involved with gangs to begin with.

In my riding we have a very successful youth restorative justice program. One organization, Communities Embracing Restorative Action, has been working in my riding since 1999. It aims to provide a just and meaningful response to crime, rehabilitate people who commit crime and to engage the community. The organization also offers preventive programs, running an empowering youth program in local schools. The program is aimed at crime prevention to give young people tools and information before crime emerges, and to build strong and inclusive relationships at an early age. The program has grown to be successful and is an excellent alternative for working with our youth.

We also need to increase support to those suffering from drug addiction and mental health problems. This legislation would increase the overrepresentation of offenders with mental health and addiction problems in our prison system. Our prison system is already strained for resources and resource programs. Currently, only one in five inmates has access to programs for anger management and substance abuse. How will the prison system cope with an influx of inmates needing this treatment?

This is one of the key problems with this crime omnibus bill. It downloads an extra cost and burden to provincial and territorial governments. To date, there has been no analysis nor consultation related to the increased costs for enforcement and prosecution which will be downloaded onto the provinces and territories.

Paula Mallea from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives states:

The cost of the [government's] crime agenda will be colossal, and a large part of it (some say most) will be borne by the provinces, who are responsible for implementing whatever the feds pass. So provinces and territories (many of them in elections as we speak) will be expected to pay for additional courts, clerks, prisons, Crown Attorneys, judges, sheriffs, court reporters and so on.

In British Columbia, our court system is already strained. Our prisons are already overcrowded. According to the B.C. government employees' union that represents prison guards in British Columbia, says jails in the province are at 150% to 200% in overcrowded conditions. Also, understaffing and overcrowding is responsible for an increase in attacks on prison guards. The province of British Columbia closed nine prisons in 2003 and made cutbacks to the corrections system.

How are the provinces and territories to deal with an influx of prisoners who are sent to jail on mandatory minimums?

Growing even six marijuana plants would trigger an automatic six month sentence with an extra three months if it is done in a rental unit, or is deemed a public safety hazard. According to Neil Boyd, a criminologist at the Simon Fraser University, this legislation could increase the proportion of marijuana criminals in B.C. jails from less than 5% to around 30%.

Has the government taken this into account? Is this the best use of our resources? Has this been fully costed? Unfortunately, I think the answer is no.

One of the key concerns with this bill is the cost. When the Conservative government came to power in 2006, the federal corrections system cost nearly $1.6 billion a year. By 2013-14, according to the department's own projections, the cost of our federal penitentiary system will have increased to $3.147 billion. In 2010-11, more than $517 million will be spent on prison construction. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the total annual cost per prison cell is about $260,000, while a new high security cell amounts to about $600,000.

Aside from the cost associated with actually building prisons, the cost to incarcerate inmates is high. The average cost for a female inmate is about $343,000 per year. For a male inmate in maximum security the cost is $223,000 while medium security is $141,000 year. Even while out on parole the average cost per inmate is $39,084 per year.

The crime rate continues to decline. The crime severity index, which measures the seriousness of crime, also dropped to its lowest point since the measure became available in 1998. So why is the government putting forward such costly legislation when crime rates continue to drop? Why is the government pursuing tough on crime policies that have failed so miserably in other jurisdictions such as the United States?

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Much of this is the result of mandatory minimums and the so-called war on drugs. It has not made the United States a safer place. In fact, most evidence indicates that it has not deterred crime and could even lead to less safe conditions in prisons and in communities.

Just as the costs are expected to be a large burden on our provinces and territories, the costs have proven to be crippling for the states. For example, Texas has recently moved away from using mandatory minimums because the costs to the state were too high.

The bill is not based on evidence. The government has failed to produce information that its legislation to impose mandatory minimums and lengthen sentences would have any deterrence on crime. The Minister of Justice the other day is quoted as saying, “We're not governing on the basis of the latest statistics”.

It has been shown time and again that the government fails to understand the importance of statistics, facts and science. To put forward such costly legislation without having statistics to back it up is inappropriate. To put forward legislation based on failed U.S. policies is shortsighted. We need to be moving forward not backward.

Mandatory minimums remove judicial discretion and this is highly problematic. In some cases, it could lead to judges giving lesser sentences then they otherwise would because they need to rely solely on legislation for sentencing.

According to the Canadian Bar Association, there are concerns with several aspects of the government's proposed omnibus crime bill, including mandatory minimum sentences, an overreliance on incarceration, constraints on judicial discretion to ensure a fair result in each case, and the bill's impact on specific already disadvantaged groups.

While the bill has some parts that I am in favour of, it is only on a case-by-case basis.

My concern is that the government has mixed good legislation in with bad and plans to ram it through all at once. It is ineffective and expensive. I cannot support the bill as it stands.

Criminal CodeRoutine Proceedings

June 14th, 2011 / 10:10 a.m.
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NDP

Fin Donnelly NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-213, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (means of communication for child luring).

Mr. Speaker, I rise again to reintroduce legislation to strengthen laws to protect children against child luring and abuse. The legislation would expand the definition of “child luring” to include all forms of electronic communication, be it a cellular telephone or any other communication device. The legislation would provide law enforcement and the courts with additional tools to protect children from predators and would, again, close a loophole in the Criminal Code.

I encourage all members of this House to adopt the bill.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)