Thanks, Mr. Speaker. I get to speak for 10 minutes on this. I originally thought I would have about 40 minutes when this started but I was not back in Ottawa.
I initially wrote the bill on the national sex offender registry and feel somewhat attached to it having brought it into the House. In fact I had a difficult time getting the solicitor general at the time to understand what we were looking for. I think it was the lobbying between ourselves, victims rights groups and police across the country that got the bill into the House. I am glad to see that happen.
I find myself in a very awkward position of having originally written the national sex offender registry and now I will be voting against it because the government seemingly could not take very simple legislation and turn it into something that would be productive. I will go through that in a minute.
I asked my staff last week for a list, covering the last three months, of sex offenders, their convictions and things that have had happened with regard to sex offenders. Here is what is walking the streets of Canada today. These are all at random.
Colin Fuson, 39, was charged with committing an indecent act and breach of probation order and is subject to public alerts. He was released from jail last summer after a 10 year sentence for raping a Surrey woman.
Donald MacPherson, 44, was granted a conditional sentence on a sexual assault conviction of October 17. He is under house arrest, to have no contact with his victim and to take a sex offender rehab program.
Ross Lee Daniels, 47, was sentenced in 1992 to eight years after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a young girl over a four year period. Parole board records indicate every imaginable sex act was engaged in with the girl who was 11 when the assaults started. Springhill termed him high risk to reoffend. He was transferred to Dorchester and put in a sex offender program. He was deemed a high risk even after serving five and a half years. This guy is out on the streets or will be soon. This guy is in a community somewhere and we do not know where. Imagine that.
I could go through all of them all but I will not.
Brent Murray Gullison, 46, was initially sentenced in the spring of 1995 to 15 years in prison for molesting five boys who were between three and eight years old. In November 1995 the Alberta Court of Appeal reduced his sentence to 12 years. Gullison pleaded guilty to six counts of sexual assault. He is out on the streets and we do not know where.
Gregory Dean Knockelby, 43, has 21 previous convictions for indecent exposure. He admitted to exposing himself about 2,000 times. He went back to jail for two years on seven new charges. He is out on the streets.
Patrick Joseph Anthony Carson, 46, is an untreated sex offender released from jail and is labelled a predator who engages in extensive planning to secure his victims. He was sentenced last year to 18 months for sexually exploiting three girls under the age of 18 outside of Edmonton. He had a previous five year sentence for picking up underage prostitutes and choking them. He will be out on the streets in six months and we do not where. We do not know what name he will use. We do not know anything about it.
This is why we brought the proposed national sex offender registry to the House. This is the reason I wrote it originally almost three years ago. What do we get from the government? It comes in here and brags about how it has the new idea of having a sex offender registry. It basically said that it would put in all the things I originally put in the national sex offender registry except for the last two pages of the law. The last two pages are the joke of all time, a sick joke at that.
The registry will contain the names and addresses, dates, births, lists of sex offences and other necessary information about persons convicted of sex offences anywhere in Canada, including tattoos and markings, that sort of thing. That is a good idea and it is what we put into it. It was modelled after Christopher's bill in Ontario when the Ontario sex offender registry came into being. Jim and Ann Stephenson worked so hard with victims' rights groups after their son Christopher was murdered by a sex offender. It is necessary.
The bill states that every offender will register at a local police station once per year to provide updated information. That we put in the original registry. That means whether something has changed or not an offender must go to a police station and say that nothing has changed and, therefore, everything is A-OK. If offenders do not do that, they can be picked up on a warrant. This is good because then the police are proactive in going out and looking for these people.
It is good that a police officer can obtain a warrant to arrest any sex offender who fails to register and report as required. This offence would be punishable by a maximum of six months in prison for a first offence, up to two years for any subsequent offence and/or a $10,000 fine in either case. In other words, if a person does not report, it is an offence and the individual could be fined or sent up. That is good.
Sex offenders will be required to remain registered for one of three periods: 10 years for offences with 2 to 5 year maximums; 20 years for offences with 10 to 14 year maximums; and lifetime for offences with a maximum life sentence or where there has been a prior conviction for a sex offence. Those were all issues that we had in the original bill.
Offenders can ask to see personal information contained in the registry at any time to correct and update it. That is great. There is no problem there. In fact we had all those issues written up in the original bill.
What is wrong with this bill and why do I have to, as the originator of the original sex offender registry, vote against it? It is not that there is a bunch of people listening in here. There are three people on the other side.