Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (minimum penalties for offences involving firearms) and to make a consequential amendment to another Act.
Regrettably, my riding of Etobicoke North has experienced much gun crime related to gangs and drugs. Certain pockets within Etobicoke North have had particularly bad experiences. We have been compared in Toronto to an area in Scarborough called Malvern as two of the highest gun crime centres in Canada. It is not a very proud statistic to claim.
Fortunately, in the last year or so the violent crime rate in my riding has diminished somewhat as a result of a number of factors. One factor was the very large swoop in Rexdale in May 2006 with 106 gang members being arrested and charged. They were generally involved in drugs and gangs. It was the anti-gang legislation that our government introduced many years ago that helped the police conduct that raid.
We have also seen a lot of changes in the way the police operate in the riding, more visible policing, and a lot of work has been done in the area of community building crime prevention programs. I will give a couple of examples. We have a program in my riding called breaking the cycle, which is funded by the human resources development department. It helps young people exit gangs and get back into normal family life, find jobs or go back to school. The program is working.
In Etobicoke North, we have taken advantage of much of the program funding that is available through the national crime prevention program, another federal program administered by Public Safety Canada.
Another program is Hoops Unlimited, a basketball program that provides young people with an alternative after school, instead of going to malls and getting involved with gangs and drugs.
The North Albion Collegiate Institute had a program where students were involved in a theatre production. We have had many such programs, which are all helping to keep young people engaged in a constructive way rather than a destructive way.
It was part of our government's response to gun crime in the last couple of years of its mandate that we saw it as needing a holistic response. We needed tougher sanctions, good gun controls and more community programming, and that was how our government approached it. In fact, it was our government that tabled tougher sanctions for gun crimes because the evidence was somewhat clear that while mandatory minimum sentences were not very effective, they could be effective in targeted ways for gun related crimes.
That is why our government proposed changes to the mandatory minimums for certain gun related crimes and why our party has tabled certain amendments to increase mandatory minimums for certain gun related crimes from one to two years and for other gun related crimes from four to five years, which are measured responses.
We need to understand that when young people go to jail, they are exposed to hardened criminals. They will get out at some point and we need to think about how we will rehabilitate them and turn them into productive members of society.
The evidence would suggest that in the U.S. many states are moving away from mandatory minimums for a wide variety of crimes because their jails are filling up but the crime rates are not diminishing and, in fact, they could be increasing.
We need a very holistic response. We can do better with our witness protection programs. While clearly right now there is an issue with the RCMP in one of the witness protection programs, the police in the city where I come from tell me that it is necessary to have the kinds of programs whereby people's identities are changed and they are sent off to live in another location.
However, we can bring witnesses forward in a much more constructive way through changes in the judicial process. That is why the Standing Committee Public Safety and National Security will be inviting various stakeholders, including the city of Toronto Police Service, to testify about what we need to do with our witness protection program.
In Etobicoke North and indeed across Canada, what the police are finding is that for violent gun crimes and drug related crimes people are not coming forward. That is hampering the investigations and the conviction of some of these criminals.
I believe also in the reverse onus provisions for bail. Too often we have people, not only young people but mostly young people, certainly in my area, who have been charged with gun crimes but are released on bail and reoffend. Therefore, our caucus is supporting measures that will bring in the reverse onus. In other words, a person who has been convicted would have to show a judge that he or she should be released on bail rather than the other way around. I think that is a good step.
In 2006 during the election campaign, the then prime minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard, came to my riding of Etobicoke North and announced the ban on handguns. It was criticized at the time, with people saying that it would not do anything. Of course on its own it would not have, but it was part of a whole set of solutions or prescriptions.
Certainly in my riding of Etobicoke North a ban on handguns went down very favourably. It did not go down so well in other parts of Canada, I would have to admit, but we need to have gun control measures. We need to have the kind of gun control and gun registry that is prevalent in Canada.
If we look south of the border, we can see that it is so easy to get a handgun, and we can see what happens as a result. Incidents of handgun crimes in the United States are in much higher numbers than they are in Canada. In fact, if we look at homicides generally, in the year 2000 there were 542 homicides resulting in a national rate of 1.8 homicides per 100,000 population in Canada, whereas in the United States the rate was three times higher at 5.5. We know that relates also to gun crimes. Guns per capita in Canada: .25. In the United States: .82 At rates per 100,000, firearms deaths in 1998 in Canada were at 4.3 and in the United States at 11.4.
We need good gun control. Certainly we know there is a black market in handguns, so that if someone is shot with a handgun in Etobicoke North, there is probably a 50% chance that the handgun came from the United States or a good chance that it was obtained on the black market. That does not mean we should not control handguns. That is a fallacious argument.
As for the licensing, I know the government is still committed to licensing and I say alleluia for that. However, we still need to control and register long guns because the reality is that long guns are responsible for as many gun related crimes as handguns.
We know, as I have said, that in the United States the mandatory minimums, the three strikes and they're out concept in California, is not proving to be effective. I will support measures that increase the sanctions against gun related crime in Canada and will have an impact in Canada. That is why I like our party's proposals. I will certainly be supporting them.
We know, as I said earlier, that to deal with this problem we have to deal with it in a very holistic way. I have argued, for example, that we should look at having an integrated border enforcement team in the city of Toronto.
Our government brought in integrated border enforcement teams, with I think 13 or 14 teams across Canada. They tend to be located in the major crossings like Detroit-Windsor and the Peace Bridge, but we do know that a lot of guns are coming into Toronto via these border locations. Integrated border enforcement allows law enforcement agencies to work together to solve and prevent these crimes.
Let us get tough on crime, but let us do it in a way that has results.