Mr. Speaker, I have been listening attentively to the debate. I have listened attentively to the Reform Party and its position.
It is difficult to be in opposition. The Reform Party sometimes forgets that our party was in opposition for nine years. It is not as if we do not know what it is like to be in opposition and how difficult it is sometimes.
I gather basically that what the Reform Party is saying is there is nothing wrong with Bill C-45 per se; what is wrong is there is not more in it. I take some solace in that. There is nothing wrong with Bill C-45 specifically. Everything can be improved. We can always do better. There can always be suggestions coming forward based on what happens in certain cases. That is no reason not to support a bill in which there is nothing really wrong, other than that it is not thick enough, I guess would be the way we would put it.
In my brief time I will concentrate on two aspects of Bill C-45 in the context of how individual members of Parliament can make a difference to the legislative process. This is reasonably relevant in view of the member's comments about puppets. There is an unfortunate belief pervading Canada that the individual member of Parliament cannot do anything, cannot contribute, does not make a difference.
I will talk about the history of this bill and what happens when individual members of Parliament take an interest. What piqued my interest in this topic was what one of the Reform Party justice critics said last Wednesday, September 20, 1995, the hon. member for Crowfoot, with whom I have worked on the justice committee. On page 14658 of Hansard :
Canadians can no longer tolerate the likes of Wray Budreo, who psychiatrists diagnosed as a sadistic pedophile having a 30-year history of molesting children, being released unsupervised from a maximum security prison because correctional services did not have the power to detain him even though the parole board ruled him likely to reoffend. They cannot tolerate it because the cost is far too high.
I have had an intimate relationship and knowledge of that particular section of the previous act and of the Wray Budreo case, which I am about to relate. I thought my friends in the Reform Party might be interested in the facts of that matter. They do not quite gibe with the quoted comments of the hon. member for Crowfoot.
While we were in opposition I was the official opposition critic for the solicitor general. As such, I was charged by my party with watching over Bill C-36, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. I struggled with my party with the very points my friends in the Reform Party have brought up today. Ultimately, we voted against the bill.
I put in something like 20 or 30 amendments, which were accepted and which in my view strengthened the bill. In the end, in our view there were sufficient problems with it to vote against it. In a parliamentary democracy we lost the vote and the bill proceeded. It is now the law of the land. It has been implemented. Correctional services asked us to give the bill a chance to work and if we found any errors we would plug them, thus Bill C-45.
Before Bill C-45 we came up with the problem of Wray Budreo, and that is specifically section 130 of the act. My friend will know how things go in these deliberations. We go over it with a fine tooth
comb, line by line, word by word, comma by comma. Fifteen or nine or however many members of the justice committee who were there at that time missed something. We did not purposely overlook it; we simply missed it. That was the serious harm clause which states that by statute every prisoner must be released after serving two-thirds of their term.
I am not talking about a life sentence here. Generally, if there is a fixed term then after two-thirds of that term you must be released unless certain things happen. One of those is a reference to the board. If the board finds that an offender, if released, is likely to commit an offence causing the death of or serious harm to another person before the expiration of the offender's sentence, according to law the board can order that they be kept in for the balance of their sentence.
We read that, agreed with it and passed it. I did not offer any amendments. What happened was that the Wray Budreo case pointed out to us that we had missed something. What happened? Wray Budreo is not, I suppose, depending on how you use the words, a sadistic pedophile, which implies what we might call actual physical assault on children. Wray Budreo is a pedophile, there is no doubt about it; but as far as we knew from the profile he did not sodomize young boys. What he liked to do was in effect pet them on the abdomen. This caused him sexual pleasure.
The board took the interpretation that petting a child in that manner, not even touching the sexual area, just the abdomen, was not serious harm as defined in that section. Serious harm was deemed to be, for example, sodomizing a young child. Of course, a petting would not be an offence likely to cause death.
The board felt its hands were tied and it would have to let Wray Budreo out after he had served two-thirds of his sentence. It agreed he was likely to reoffend. It agreed he was likely to find other children and touch them on the abdomen and various other places. It also agreed he was not likely to cause death and he was not likely to cause serious harm as that section had been interpreted.
When that hit the papers, perhaps to use some of the rhetoric of my friend, I went ballistic. I brought this matter before the justice committee, which at that time was chaired by Mr. Bob Horner, a Conservative. The committee was controlled by Conservatives. I asked the committee to review this section and see if we could come up with a suggested approach for the government. All of the parties agreed, and the New Democrats were represented on that committee as well. We undertook a study of section 130 in specific reference to the Wray Budreo case and we came up with a unanimous report, which we tabled in the House of Commons.
Sadly or perhaps happily, depending on whether we are looking at it politically or in terms of solving this problem, we were approaching the end of the Conservative mandate. There was not enough time for the Conservative government to react to this unanimous report.
The current solicitor general reacted to it immediately. As soon as he was appointed solicitor general one of the first bills he brought in was Bill C-45, the government's response to what I have just laid out as what happened in the Budreo case.
I will now quote from the amendment to section 130, contained in section 43: "The board may order that the offender not be released from imprisonment before the expiration of the offender's sentence according to law, where the board is satisfied", among other things, "that the offender is likely if released to commit a sexual offence involving a child before the expiration of the offender's sentence according to law".
That is a direct response to a private member's initiative, which plugs the Wray Budreo loophole. That is a response brought forward by the government in direct response to the entreaties initially by me and ultimately the justice committee. It addresses a wrong and a loophole we did not notice in our initial examination of the bill.
That is the history behind that amendment. That is why the amendment has been brought forward. It still leaves in place the requirement of death or serious harm for other circumstances, but it protects children.
Often the very damaging serious psychological harm takes 20 or 30 years to manifest itself. While touching the abdomen of a young child might not be considered serious harm in a physical sense, it might be serious harm in a psychological sense 20 years later. That is the whole purpose behind this particular section.
This is an example of what individual members of Parliament on a committee can do in terms of strenghthening legislation.
Clearly this is an amendment that needs to be supported. If it is in a bill that has all kinds of other terrible things in it, obviously we cannot support it. If it is in a bill that for all intents and purposes is not criticized except for what is not in it, it can be supported and still go after what is not in the bill in amendments by members at committee and in private members' bills. Sometimes the germ of the idea of a private member's bill gets accepted by the government of the day.
The second aspect I wish to talk about in Bill C-45 pertains to section 743.6 of the Criminal Code. I relate it to private members and what I talked about in my question to my hon. friend about the courts, whether we tell the courts what we mean or whether they tell us what we mean.
According to law you must be released after serving two thirds of a fixed sentence unless certain things occur, which I just talked
about. In the same way, you are automatically by law eligible to be considered for parole after serving one third of your sentence.
In some circumstances, and I am sure my friends in the Reform Party will agree, there are egregious cases in which people say no, there should not be automatic eligibility for parole after one third of your sentence.
A section was passed in the Criminal Code which in part says: "Where an offender receives a sentence of imprisonment of two years or more for an offence set out in schedule I or II to that act", that is very serious offences, prosecuted by way of indictment, "the court may, if satisfied, having regard to the circumstances of the commission of the offence and the character and circumstances of the offender, that the expression of society's denunciation of the offence or the objective of specific or general deterrence so requires, order that the portion of the sentence that must be served before the offender may be released on full parole is one half of the sentence or 10 years, whichever is less".
What does all that mean? It means that if a judge sees a case that he thinks requires that the offender serve at least one half of his time before being eligible for parole then he can so order under this section. In my view, it is pretty clear what the House of Commons meant by "the objective of specific or general deterrence so requires". What do I know about what is clear?
On February 20 of this year there was an article in the Toronto Star about a drug trafficker. The trial judge, quite rightly I think, thought it was a pretty bad crime, that we did not want drug traffickers, particularly in heroin. The gentleman was sentenced to only three years, but the court ordered that he serve one-half of his sentence before he be considered eligible for parole.
Because I do not rely on what is in the newspapers I did some research by pulling the court of appeal decision in the case and finding the trial judge's reasons which stated:
The most important factors of sentencing that ought to be brought to bear in my mind on this case are the factors of individual and general deterrence. General deterrence means that the sentence should send a message to other persons in like situations, or who are considering becoming involved in like situations, that this is likely what you will receive.
The trial judge got it right. That is exactly what the House meant when we passed the legislation. It was as clear as a bell to me and I thought it was clear in the words of the section.
Along comes the court of appeal of the province of Ontario to state the following:
Unfortunately the wording of section 741.2 provides the judge with very little guidance to determine when this exceptional authority over parole eligibility should be exercised.
It also states:
The presumption is that Parliament intended section 741.2 to have some additional purpose.
I thank the court of appeal. Of course it did. It then states:
It then falls to the courts to give the section meaning and function.
When I read that I said that it was wrong. It is up to us to tell the courts what we mean when we pass a statute. Therefore I brought the matter to the attention of the justice committee. My friend from Wild Rose was on the justice committee at that time. I pointed out that was not the intention.
The court of appeal overruled the trial judge and stated that the section could only be used in the rarest of circumstances and that in all cases rehabilitation of the offender must be paramount. That was not the intention of Parliament. I was here and I know what the intention of Parliament was. We heard the debates, which were obviously not read by the court of appeal.
The court of appeal states:
In my view section 741.2 should only be invoked as an exceptional measure where the crown has satisfied the court on clear evidence that an increase in the period of parole ineligibility is required.
There is no onus in this section for the crown to shown anything. There is no requirement on the crown to prove anything.
Therefore I asked the justice committee if it would consider an amendment for the sole purpose of overturning the Court of Appeal's interpretation of what Parliament meant when it passed that section. The result of my request to the justice committee is subparagraph (2) of that section, an amendment in Bill C-45 which states:
For greater certainty, the paramount principles which are to guide the court under this section, are denunciation and specific or general deterrence with rehabilitation of the offender, in all cases, being subordinate to these paramount principles in this section.
If that is not clear to the court of appeal, we had better send it back to school.
There was unanimous recommendation of the justice committee. The government accepted the recommendation and the amendment. It has already been passed in Bill C-41. It will pass if we vote for this bill. It is another example of how individual members of Parliament on their own initiative, working with others in committees, can make bills better.
I support the bill. We know from the other party there is nothing wrong with what is in it. We can understand there should be more things in it. They can work for those, but they should not throw the baby out with the bath water. I urge members to support the bill.
