Mr. Speaker, this second amendment to Bill C-17, which has been granted to us to look at, study and think about, has not just suddenly appeared out of the clear blue sky. Somehow it seems as if this is a brand new idea that has just hit us.
This idea has been around for a long time. The victims who have had crimes perpetrated against them are people like you and me. In
our discussion of this amendment we should ask ourselves who the victims are. It is usually assumed that the person against whom a crime is perpetrated is the victim. We have extended it now to include the family. We should also include friends and neighbours. If we really want to come to grips with this issue we have to recognize that with any violent crime we are all victims. Directly or indirectly it affects every single one of us.
I will refer to two incidents that happened in my riding. In the first case a man came home and stabbed his wife repeatedly until she died. That victim could not speak and tell of the impact that had. That person was dead. There was no right for that victim anymore. That right had been taken away by the person who stabbed her. But she had a sister and her sister was very much involved in that family because there were children she wanted to train in the way they should walk and so on. Here was her brother-in-law who had been allowed to stab his wife, and the consequence was a minimal jail sentence.
Who was the victim in this case? The wife was stabbed and killed but the sister in training her family was deeply involved in this case as well.
I want to relate to another case that happened in our community, the case of Mindy Tran. Mindy Tran was a little girl who was abducted from her home and killed. Probably the most terrifying event for me was to listen to a parent describe what happened on the way to school as they were driving down the street to take their child to kindergarten class. This kindergarten child who was sitting in the car was watching another child who was walking down the street alone. She said: "Mommy, look, that girl is walking alone. She should not be doing that. That is what happened to Mindy Tran. She was alone and she was killed. Shouldn't we stop and pick her up?"
Who is the victim here? That child's life is forever affected by somebody else, a person she did not know but knew about because she had been killed. What about the mother of this child who had to listen to her daughter say "shouldn't we pick up that child?". This child who was in this car had more empathy for justice and protection of society than the judge who dealt with the case of a man like Mr. Stone who stabbed and killed his wife.
These are serious offences. These are serious implications for the victims against whom crime has been perpetrated.
Let me go one step further. Much has been made in the last couple of months of the Clifford Olson case, on the Bernardo and Homolka case. Should these people even have access to the press? In many ways one would say of course they should have access to the press, but these people have taken away the right of certain people to ever express themselves again. Many of the people who were associated with the victims whose life has been taken will not speak in public. Why? They will not speak because they do not want to relive the terror and the emotion that they experienced the first time around. They are people who care.
We as parliamentarians are in the position of being the guardians of the safety of the life and the protection of the property of law-abiding citizens. When we have minimal sentences offered and when we even suggest that there should be victim impact statements, as was the case earlier, and as a very strong demonstration of how inept and how incompetent in many areas this government is, now as a sort of last minute the government says that should be in there. It is obvious that it should be in there.
When will our judgment system become one that will take into account not only the violence and the heinousness of the crime but will also recognize that there are real people with real lives, with real emotions who have been affected and their lives forever changed because of this crime that has been perpetrated in their neighbourhoods, in their families or against their wives or their husbands?
We have never dealt with a more serious issue than the matter of justice in our society. When will we recognize that to do things like this, to commit the kinds of crimes that Clifford Olson committed, the kinds of crimes that Bernardo committed, the kinds of crimes by the person who killed Mindy Tran, or those of Mr. Stone who stabbed his wife, when will we recognize that the time has come that the consequences for these kinds of acts are more than a slap on the wrist, are more than temporary incarceration and actually do not create the kind of protection for the victims who remain?
Even though we do not live in that community we can identify, we can understand the fear, we can understand the terror, the pain, the emotion and the anger that wells up in people when these kinds of things happen.
Should that not have an impact? Should that not be a message to the rest of us to say that the time has come to introduce programs where we do have consequences for these kinds of acts? Far more important is the generation of a set of values that tells people that kind of behaviour is wrong, it ought to be stopped and there are serious consequences.
We need to reintroduce a clear definition of what is right and what is wrong in our society. Our children should know what is right and what is wrong. This Parliament should make it clear to judges what we believe is right and what is wrong. It is right to recognize that the rights of victims are more important than the rights of criminals.