Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in support of this private member's bill and the initiative taken by the hon. member. One of the most amazing things to me is having had the opportunity now to take a look at this, I would suggest to all members that they probably have a number of people currently in their constituencies falling through the cracks relative to this issue.
Most of us are involved with people in our society who are supposedly the law-abiding people, the upstanding citizens, the people we never hear about in the courts. Certainly we never read about them in the paper. As we are all aware with criminal justice there are situations in our constituencies that require the attention of the police and the courts and of course all of us want to see justice done correctly.
Part of the justice system are the witnesses who come before the courts. They are a very important part, at the risk of stating the obvious, to getting the convictions we would like to have in our criminal justice system for those who are guilty of a crime.
The information these witnesses provide is absolutely invaluable to crack the case. Unfortunately, however, it is very obvious that we would end up in a situation of tremendous fear on the part of some individuals when they are confronted with a situation of facing the accused in a court or coming forward with information. They have tremendous fear and very understandable fear.
I happened to notice in the Edmonton Journal this last weekend that there was a case of an individual who on September 6, 1988 got four months in custody for uttering threats, carrying a concealed weapon, failing to comply. On February 10, 1989 this person was sentenced for six months open custody for forcible confinement and assault with a weapon. On September 20, 1989 this person was sentenced for two months open custody for solicitation, and on and on. There are four more cases on top of the first three I have outlined. Then on September 9, 1992 this person was sentenced to 30 days in jail and fined $400 for uttering threats against a woman police believed might implicate this person in a murder.
We have seen particularly in western Canada very successful so-called crime stopper programs in which crimes are brought forward on television. People are encouraged to come forward and act as witnesses but the difficulty is that even if they come forward in confidence, even if they come forward in secrecy, even if they provide the information in such a way that it will result in a conviction, it is not infrequent that mistakes will occur in the investigation or mistakes can occur in the court where the name of that person who has come forward as a good responsible Canadian citizen suddenly is applied in court. Then the accused person at that point, particularly if it leads to a conviction, is fully aware of where the information came from. Fear is an absolute factor in this equation.
Right at the moment this is a police responsibility, and as the member from Quebec stated, this leads to a patchwork, very spasmodic kind of a system. It leads to inconsistency from jurisdiction to jurisdiction because there will be different attitudes on the part of different police departments even throughout our constituencies. There will also be different budget constraints and respective police forces will have different attitudes toward the issue of budgets.
Another problem that currently exists is what I call the 97 per cent factor. I have been led to believe on the basis of research I did before speaking to this issue that 97 per cent of the people who would be protected by the witness protection act are people who were involved in some kind of criminal activity with respect to the issue that would be before the court.
It becomes part of the plea bargain or it becomes part of the "if you will give us this evidence in court to lead to this conviction, although you were involved" and this bargaining goes back and forth.
I suggest with police being human beings they would undoubtedly have an attitude problem from time to time with some of the people they would be using in an attempt to gain convictions because the people they are dealing with as far as they are concerned do not fall into the responsible citizen category.
This legislation would lead to a specific protection department. I support it because it would be separate from the police force for the reasons I have just outlined. This protection department for witnesses would also, in my judgment, be best served by getting people who are trained in counselling.
Can we imagine the stress on individuals of coming forward as a witness, particularly in very serious crimes or crimes where there are tremendous numbers of people involved? I see the witness protection department as having counsellors who are trained.
By having a department separate from the police forces, we would not only gain uniformity of application across the country, but it would give us an opportunity to develop some kind of standard policy across Canada.
The Reform Party, of course, is noted for always talking about how much it is going to cost. With the current incarceration and rehabilitation programs for people who are convicted of criminal offences we are currently looking at an expenditure of about $2 billion. In the area of enforcement under federal jurisdiction alone we are looking at a cost, I believe, of about $1.7 billion.
What we should be doing with the $1.7 billion is looking at the cost effectiveness of using dollars where people would have confidence in a witness protection plan to be able to come forward. I cannot help but think that this would have a direct impact on being able to roll back the cost of some investigations, where the investigations would not have to go forward at continuing cost because people would feel comfortable in coming forward.
The relocation of a witness is an issue. Again I suggest that within the $2 billion which we are currently spending on incarceration and rehabilitation, we should be able with some ease to find some dollars for the issue of relocation of witnesses.
In conclusion, the sentence that a criminal receives for his or her criminal activity is measured in months and years. I suggest that the sentence that a witness gets is a life sentence, particularly in situations where the person who is convicted of a crime makes it very clear that he or she is going to continue to pursue the witness. We must set up retraining for these people to get them from the field that they are currently working into another field. This would help to isolate them from their previous situation. We must set up documents, set up protection for the people who we are asking to be witnesses in these criminal cases.
I look forward to the thoughtful support of all members to move this bill forward to committee.