Yes, Mr. Chair, we have a proposal that clause 2 be amended by adding after line 14.... This is in relation to the entire Bill C-10--that the act be amended by adding a new proposed section 3.1:
Within three years after this act comes into force, a comprehensive review of the provisions and operations of this act, including a cost-benefit analysis of its implementation that incorporates the costs to the federal government and, to the extent possible, the costs to provincial and territorial governments, must be undertaken by any committee of the House of Commons or of both Houses of Parliament that may be designated or established for that purpose.
If I may speak to it, Mr. Chair, as we all know, this is a most controversial piece of legislation. There are strong opinions on both sides of this. We've heard witnesses talk about how, first of all, this is going to be an extremely costly bill. The increase in the number of people who will be put into prison as a result of this will have a significant cost for federal and territorial and provincial agencies that bear the costs of having people in prison for less than two years because of the nature of the division of corrections responsibility in Canada. Also, of course, there are the human costs.
There are many who have appeared before us and many in the public who have said this is in fact a backwards step, that this will not reduce crime. The overall effect of these provisions.... And I say this on the clear understanding that we support some aspects of it. We in fact moved in the House of Commons, on two occasions, to take the new sexual assault provisions out of this bill and have them dealt with separately and fast-tracked to the House. But the overall impact of this bill, particularly with adoption of a more punitive approach that will see more people put in prison, has been described as being extremely detrimental to society. Some of our witnesses said there will be more crime, more victims, more social dislocation, putting increased numbers of people in prison for what you'd call petty trafficking, petty dealing of marijuana and cannabis products, for example. This is going to lead to creating more criminals, more social dislocation, more people who are unable to get into a rehabilitative life, which is one of the principal aims of the corrections system.
Judges, in dealing with sentencing, for example, talk about the protection of society, the question being how best to achieve that. We have very highly trained and expensive judges, who are given the task of determining how best to achieve that on an individual case. Are the principles of sentencing as a protection of the public best achieved by rehabilitating the offender or by punishing that offender for a lengthy period of time? That's what the principles of sentencing are all about.
We had the Minister of Justice in the House yesterday telling the opposition that they should not play politics with the judiciary and they should respect the judiciary. The respect for the judiciary recognizes that the judiciary has a responsibility and role in our society to craft a sentence that does the best job in terms of the protection of the public.
Many people feel this bill does not respect the judiciary, the people who are given the task by our society to determine how to deal with each individual offender. It's called judicial discretion, but it's not discretion in an arbitrary sense; it's a discretion that allows the application of the law to each individual case and the consideration of all the factors that go into a proper and fit sentence.
If you asked everybody in this country whether they think we need a justice system where the punishment fits the crime, I doubt very much if you would have anybody objecting to that. But that doesn't justify a regime whereby the legislature is setting out arbitrary sentences, mandatory minimums for swaths and swaths of crimes that ought to be dealt with by the application of judicial principles of sentencing that ensures the protection of the public. When we have experts in criminology, experts in corrections, experts in an understanding of law, law professors, etc., telling us that aspects of this bill will lead to more crime and more victims of crime, then we have a serious problem.
We're not being naive here. We can count. We know the numbers. We expect, I suppose, that much if not all of this bill and maybe some amendments will be accepted. We do live in hope. Our job is to try to be persuasive, and we will be trying to do that. What we need to recognize is that this bill, comprehensive as it is in nature, needs to have a review of the success or failure of its provisions in terms of doing what the government says it's going to do. We do know the costs are there. The provinces have told us that. Quebec's attorney general was here telling us about that. We've had extensive media coverage of other provinces concerned about the cost and the fact that it's being downloaded to them. Obviously there are going to be political implications for that, but from a Government of Canada point of view and the House of Commons, we want to see a comprehensive review as to how this has operated.
The provision here is inserted very early in the act, and it's not related to the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, but we were advised by the legislative draftspersons that this was an appropriate place to insert it early in the bill so it could receive consideration up front.
We believe this bill is greatly overreaching. It adopts a punitive approach rather than a rehabilitative approach. And unfortunately for those who are concerned about the costs of crime to victims, this bill and the consequences of this bill will lead to greater criminalization of our society and indeed more victims who will be suffering as a result. We'll be creating more criminals, whether it be the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act that are being proposed here, whether it be the lengthy periods of time that people will be incarcerated prior to trial who might otherwise not be exposed to that level of criminal element in our prisons. They will be hardened and less likely to be able to be rehabilitated. I could go on and on. There are provisions here that are mean-spirited when it comes to our pardon system, taking away the notion of pardon and changing it to sentence suspension, record suspension.
I practised criminal law for part of my career, but I practised law for 30 years. When you talk to the ordinary person about record suspension, that's no different in their mind from suspended sentence. It doesn't really have the same impact as a pardon. Saying they got a pardon for that offence they committed when they were 18 or 19 or 20 or 21, they've proved to the parole board and they've proved to society that they are rehabilitated, that to me is a meaningful expression of society's recognition of someone having rehabilitated themselves. To take away that notion that someone can redeem themselves.... Redemption is a very significant value in our society. It's part of Christian heritage and it's part of all religious heritage that someone who has offended can be redeemed somewhere along the way and demonstrate they are no longer a threat to society. The pardon encapsulates that. To say their record is just going to suspended has a very different aspect. That's a small example but an important one as to how this legislation fails our society, fails our system.
Something must be happening right. We know there are victims of crime, and every victim of crime deserves our understanding and our compassion and probably deserves far more than they get in terms of criminal injuries compensation. We had a half-decent system 10 or 15 years ago, but it's been mostly gutted across the province since the federal government stopped supporting it. There was recognition for victims on the criminal injuries compensation side, which has dissipated.
You can't just talk about how we support victims and we believe in victims. We do believe that victims need to be included in the system. You'll see, when we talk about this bill, that we support the involvement of victims in the parole process. We support victims’ having greater knowledge of where the offender who perpetrated the crime against them is located within the system—what discipline they're being subjected to and other things.
So there are aspects of this bill, as we proceed clause by clause.... Mr. Chair, I hope you'll indulge me a little, but I'm just giving a little bit of an overview here of our concerns about this bill. We do see aspects of this bill, particular individual points, that are improvements, but the bill as a whole needs to be re-evaluated after a period of implementation. We are proposing three years because we think it's a significant shift in how we approach criminal law and corrections in Canada.
We have grave concerns that by separating the notion of rehabilitation as a means of public safety it’s going to lead to greater criminality and a greater attack on our society. We're not talking about rehabilitation because we want to treat criminals in an easy manner; we're talking about rehabilitation for the benefit of society, so that someone who can be saved from a life of crime or rehabilitated back into society be given an opportunity to do that. That's for the purpose of public safety and for making our streets safer.
We have a name here, the “Safe Streets and Communities Act”. Well, you know this government has a habit of some laughable euphemisms for some of the bills they've brought through, particularly in the criminal justice area. But the reality is that we've received significant evidence from experts—people with experience and knowledge and statistics and significant academic records, studies, and demonstrations—that prove there is a—
