Mr. Speaker, I feel this is probably one of the easiest topics to speak on in the House. Surely we have a very common desire on this topic, to see justice and fairness in our justice system enacted.
I would like to start off by saying that in my view Canada does have a justice problem. It is a problem that is typified by the fact that homicides are climbing, our schools are unsafe and smuggling is rampant. We have recently had House business that dealt with smuggling. Fraud in our country is commonplace.
I would like to put criminal justice on a priority list for members who are close to me on this side of the House. We have gone through social programs and priorized them. We put health care at the top of our priorities along with education, pensions for the needy and environmental issues. We put justice as the one area in our social program system that we would spend more money on. This is the one area, in spite of our deficit and debt problems, we would spend extra money on. We put a high priority on this specific issue.
This discourse is not in any sense meant to be confrontational. This discourse is meant to be informational. I hope it will be taken in that context.
Some statistics in our country trouble me: 3 per cent of the population are natives and 11.3 per cent of our penitentiary inmates are natives. I have talked to the native elders and have tried to ascertain what they thought the answer to that problem was. They think the old values of the native community need to be better taught. They talk of sweetgrass ceremonies, sweat lodges, and improving the status of the individual by their old cultural methods. I say we need a return of dignity and self-sufficiency for natives. People can only be proud of their culture when they are proud of themselves.
Another thing I would pause to reflect on is something I call a prison revolt. This revolt comes from the sociologists and criminologists in our society. They approach crime with the viewpoint that crime is not the fault of the criminal in many instances. It is simply the fault of upbringing, of poverty and of abuse. I recognize there are major problems in our society that contribute to crime. I recognize that education, prevention of poverty and prevention of child abuse are extremely important. They say the answer to the problem is compassionate, caring
therapy in a nice warm jail, with retraining opportunities and better recreation and library facilities than people on assistance have. I frankly disagree. That is not the answer to that problem.
We allow prisoners to vote. We release dangerous offenders on unsupervised leave. We sentence them to life but that means little. In my view in some ways we as Canadians have lost our marbles.
Turning to some other backward moves in our criminal justice system, we take our law enforcement officers, our RCMP trainees, and do not pay them very well. As trainees we give them a relatively low wage scale. As they go through their training process they reach a point at which they are ready to take on the more major responsibilities and with our frozen civil servant wages we leave them at the training wage scale. What talented young men would want to serve in the law enforcement agency realizing that they would be penalized? This is one area in which the civil service wage freeze is absolutely unfair.
When gun control measures were started, they were started to curtail violence with guns, a proposition that no one could argue with. Homicides with guns have not improved over the lifetime of gun control. Stricter gun control has no correlation whatever to better results on homicides with guns. I hear now that one of the reasons for stricter gun control is that guns are inherently dangerous. I also hear that we are going to prevent accidents and suicides by having stricter gun control. It just is not the reason to have gun control. On the other end of the scale we have a free vote coming up that is going to allow doctors to assist in suicides. These are the two ends of the scale that I think are completely wrong.
Honest gun users are also having weapons declared restricted and then confiscated without pay, a provision that is entirely unfair.
Another issue that I found fascinating about gun control is that when RCMP officers take their weapons off their hips, either in the detachment or in their homes, they must place bore locks in their weapons. Their weapons are then locked so that they cannot be used.
I spoke with RCMP officers at home and asked: "What advantage is there to you in doing that?" They said: "There is no advantage to us at all. We have always been extremely careful with our weapons, extremely careful because our own children could get the loaded weapons. The only advantage in that is to the criminal". In fact a criminal could wander into the detachment and spray the RCMP officers with rifle fire while they scramble to unlock their weapons. Again in my view in Canada on some issues we have lost our marbles.
It is not good enough to stand in the House and just complain, mutter and say that everything is wrong. It is only useful if we have some constructive comments to make. I would like to turn to that portion of my address now.
In our society family values have become less important. This has a major part to play in our problems with our criminal justice system. Single parent families today are 13 per cent of the families in society. Many reasons are given for this but a few stand out to me. More teens today are choosing to keep and raise their babies. There are fewer forced weddings and there is much more divorce in society today. I have tried to look very critically at why families are breaking down. I am partial to the one that says that families are spending too much time trying to raise their sights financially rather than raise their sights on their children.
When I was a young man of about 13 years of age and in grade seven my parents got their first home. It was a 1,300 square foot home; not very big, not very expensive. If they had paid for that mortgage over the span of their lives, they would have paid for it by the time that they were in their early sixties.
I look with interest as young families today set out very early in their lives to get big homes. Homes much bigger than 1,300 square feet would be the average. They borrow earlier. They take on more onerous financial duties. This forces both parents to get out into the workforce to try to pay that debt. This conscious decision does not allow as much direct parental contact with the children. I believe that contributes to some of the problems in our justice system.
Day care is not the same as parent care. Television care is not the same as parent care. A new BMW in the garage is not the same as close, loving parental care of a loved child.
The solution in part would be to change the tax rules so that there is encouragement for one parent to stay home. That need not be the woman; it could well be the man. Another change that could take place would be to allow our workforce to adjust hours so that there could at least be one parent at home.
The other specific area I wanted to address does not have very much to do with jails and what not. There is a very expensive area in our justice system. I want to refer to an article in the Medical Post from December that talked about obstetricians recommending defensive medicine to prevent lawsuits. The obstetrician in this article said that every single baby, just after it is born, should have a brain scan and the brain scan should be done to prevent a lawsuit ensuing in the future if things showed up in that baby's development. If cerebral palsy ensued the obstetrician could be blamed for problems at birth. Every single baby that had potential problems should have a brain scan, according to that obstetrician.
The lawsuits that this obstetrician is trying to prevent are lawsuits that involve huge amounts of money in our court system and huge amounts of money in terms of the actual awards that are given, settlements of up to $7 million.
In my view the confrontational legal system we are developing in our country mimicking the U.S. system when it comes to medical legal issues is costing untold amounts of money. The end result of the meeting-and this was a meeting that had a number of solicitors in it-was to suggest that no fault medical insurance would go a long way toward preventing the gladiatorial events of doctors against lawyers in our court system. I propose that as one specific item that we should be looking at. It involves the health ministry. It involves the justice ministry as well.
The justice issue transcends every political party. This issue transcends every personal philosophy, every level of income, and every age group. I want to co-operate in the House to make sure our criminal justice system is improved.