Debates of Nov. 29th, 2011

Ryan Cleary St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL

Mr. Speaker, the justice minister of my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador has said that if the omnibus crime bill passes, our prison capability within Her Majesty's penitentiary in St. John's South—Mount Pearl cannot handle the increase in prisoners. The system cannot handle an influx of more prisoners.

On the one hand, we have been after the Conservative government for years for a new prison for Newfoundland and Labrador. The answer has been no. On the other hand, the government is pushing through an omnibus crime bill that is going to increase the number of prisoners in Newfoundland and Labrador's prison system. That makes no sense.

Is my province going to find it hard to pay for this? Of course. My province does not know where the money is going to come from. That is the question the Conservative government has yet to answer.

Mike Sullivan York South—Weston, ON

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member made reference at the beginning of his comments to such terrorist acts as the Air India disaster. If this law had been in place then, what would have been different for the victims of the Air India disaster?

Brent Rathgeber Edmonton—St. Albert, AB

Mr. Speaker, the Air India disaster was a black mark not only in Canadian history but also in global history. In many ways, as I indicated in my opening comments, the resulting inquiry into the Air India incident formed the impetus for the part of Bill C-10 with respect to victims of terrorism. As the hon. member will know from his review of the legislation, this bill gives victims of terrorism a cause of action against terrorists that they can prove caused the damage and losses to their family. This type of legislation would have been of great value to victims of terrorism such as those who suffered severe losses in the Air India incident.

Kevin Lamoureux Winnipeg North, MB

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the member would recognize that there would be a substantial cost to the implementation of Bill C-10, if it passes. We do not know what those costs would be. The Liberal Party has attempted to obtain the actual costs from the government, but we are beginning to believe that the government has no idea of the costs. We do know there are provinces that have great concerns in regard to the implementation costs and the ongoing costs of Bill C-10.

What would the member suggest to provinces that are having a difficult time trying to provide programs and services to prevent crimes from taking place? The programs and services are being imposed by Ottawa initiatives. They would cost them a great deal of money to implement. The Conservatives' proposals include such things as building prisons and large jails.

Brent Rathgeber Edmonton—St. Albert, AB

Mr. Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North will be happy to know that with respect to the provisions of Bill C-10 that deal with amendments to victims of terrorism and state immunity, there would be no costs to the government.

With respect to his broader question, members of the opposition are fond of talking about the costs of implementing our safe streets and safe communities agenda. They fail to realize the cost of crime which is borne by victims. Victims bear the majority, I think it is 80% of the estimated $100 billion, of the cost of crime to Canadians annually. Those costs are in terms of increased insurance premiums, lost wages, lost property, and of course the immeasurable damages when an individual loses his or her life. The costs of crime are much broader than simply the cost to the justice system. The portions of the cost of crime that are borne by the victims are often lost on the opposition.

Jack Harris St. John's East, NL

Mr. Speaker, if my insurance goes up because someone steals the member's car, that is part of the cost of crime in his calculations. That is interesting.

The member talked about the anti-terrorism legislation. The biggest criticism is with regard to the state list. We know, for example, that the Americans took Libya off the state list when they were rebuilding their relationship with Libya.

Is that not a problem with our bill, too, that the state list depends on the politics of the government of the day?

Brent Rathgeber Edmonton—St. Albert, AB

Mr. Speaker, I enjoy working with the hon. member on the justice committee.

As the hon. member knows, the issue of listing the states is complicated. There has to be a balance between the evidence of terrorism and what it will do to international relations with respect to those countries.

The remedy is that the list will be reviewed every two years by two ministers, the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. This will ensure that the list is updated periodically, to make sure that it adequately reflects the risk of certain states in their promotion of terrorism.

Linda Duncan Edmonton—Strathcona, AB

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-10, which is described as the safe streets and communities bill. I am rising today in my role as the critic for aboriginal affairs and northern development.

A number of members speaking to this bill have raised concerns that this approach does not fully respond to the concerns that have been raised over the decades by the courts, corrections officers, legal experts, corrections experts, and by the aboriginal community itself.

The aboriginal community in Canada is less than 3% to 4% of the total population, yet tenfold more aboriginal Canadians are incarcerated. As National Chief Shawn Atleo has pointed out, aboriginal youth are more likely to be incarcerated than to graduate from high school.

The number of aboriginal women prisoners is growing and is more than the number of other Canadian women prisoners. Of the women in maximum security, 46% are aboriginal. There has been a 20% increase in the incarceration of aboriginal women just in the last five years.

I will give examples at the provincial level. In Saskatchewan provincial jails, 87% are aboriginal. In Manitoba, 83% are aboriginal. In Alberta, 54% are aboriginal. This is absolutely reprehensible. Surely this should have raised a red flag with the government. In coming forward with these proposals to address crime, to reduce crime and consider victims, surely the government should have considered this. However, that is not apparent on the face of the bill or in the debate.

Why is there a higher rate of aboriginals incarcerated? The reasons I mentioned have been reiterated in countless studies, court decisions, determinations by coroners, and so forth. The Auditor General has raised concerns about this and about the discriminatory treatment of aboriginals in more than 30 reports over a decade.

The coroner's report on the sad rate of suicide at Pikangikum raised the broader issues of concern as to why there are suicides and why there is a high rate of crime within the aboriginal communities.

The reasons have been stated decade after decade as discrimination against aboriginals in education, housing, sanitation, poverty, opportunities to engage in the economy. This has resulted in despair, gang membership, domestic disputes and intoxication-related crimes.

The cost of Bill C-10 for Canadian aboriginal communities will be far greater than just the price of expanding jails. The price to the aboriginal community will be an increasing loss of opportunity for aboriginal youth to have community supports, to continue their education, to participate in the economy, and to have the support of their families to become contributing members of society.

A good number of the witnesses on this bill raised the particular concern of the blanket policy of minimum sentences. Many legal experts testified on the government bill in the last Parliament and the current bill. They stated that the threat of minimum sentences will have a negligible deterrent effect for the majority of aboriginal offenders. Why? Because the majority of offences are related to: addictions; violence associated with intoxication; interpersonal violence; a sense of hopelessness; the legacy and impacts of residential schools; and adoptions away from their community. They also have been the unwitting victims of committing the crime or victims of the crime related to street life.

The experts are telling us that minimum sentences will do nothing to address the root causes of aboriginal offences. If the very purpose of the bill, as the government professes, is to deter further crime and to avoid further victimization, then clearly if the majority of people in our prisons are aboriginals, there is a problem. Where is the analysis of whether or not these measures will genuinely deter aboriginal criminals and reduce their crime rate?

The only predictable result of these measures would be the increased percentage of aboriginals in our jails, the increased probability of denied pardons, as they are currently called, and the increased number of aboriginals outside the economy. The government speaks all the time of the need to get our aboriginals engaged in the economy; this would have the opposite effect.

The Supreme Court of Canada has made very strong observations through its decades of experience in hearing cases involving aboriginal offenders. It raised very serious concerns about the overrepresentation of aboriginals in Canadian courts and the inability of the current court system to address the question of aboriginal offenders.

As legal and correctional experts have testified, aboriginal overrepresentation speaks to the failure of the Canadian criminal justice system to address the root causes of aboriginal offending. The point they make is not that no aboriginal should ever be jailed, but rather that due consideration should be made to any evidence of an inequitable effect of any laws or policies on aboriginal Canadians, and that when such an effect is found, those policies should be adjusted.

A year ago, the government finally signed on to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and thereby committed to removing any discriminatory policies and practices and laws that would discriminate against aboriginal Canadians. There is no evidence of that kind of due consideration in the bill that the government has brought forward. There is no evidence that it has given consideration to experts' testimony and submissions made on this aspect of their bill. Study after study, including royal commission reports, judicial inquiries, reports by Correctional Services, coroners' reports, Auditor General reports and recommendations in decisions at all levels of court have urged action on overrepresentation of aboriginals in Canadian prisons.

More aboriginals would be removed from the influence and support of their families and communities. We only need to look at the effect of these measures on the community of Nunavut. Those who are automatically incarcerated under the minimum sentence would be moved a long distance from their community. There has been evidence brought forward that the prisons are already overcrowded, but they would be moved to communities far from their community, thus removing any potential for family or community support or rehabilitation.

In the last Parliament and in this Parliament, we have heard about the cuts over time to community support programs. There have been cuts to the healing centres and to rehabilitation, and closure of the prison farms.

Nowhere is this mistaken path more evident than in the case of the Samson band in Alberta. The Samson band had come to the federal government begging for support to build a centre for its youth so that the youth would be diverted away from increasing engagement in gang violence. There have been sad cases over the last several years of children and community members being killed. The band undertook the effort to do a major review with the RCMP, community leaders and leaders outside the community. The top recommendation was to build a centre and put the programs in place to get the kids off the street and divert them from crime. Instead, very close to them is a prison; that is simply where the youth will continue to be diverted, and crime will continue in their community.

We even had the United Church of Canada calling for greater attention to the discriminatory effect of this law on aboriginal Canadians.

Therefore I call upon the government to rethink and to give consideration. The federal government has unilateral responsibility for first nations Canadians, and I believe it is incumbent upon the government to give closer consideration the discriminatory effect its measures will have on aboriginal Canadians.

Bruce Hyer Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON

Mr. Speaker, I have been reviewing some of the costs that we are coming to now. A single new low-security cell will cost a quarter of a million dollars, a single new medium-security cell almost half a million dollars and a high-security cell $600,000. The total annual cost per woman inmate is $343,000, and for a male it almost $225,000. This is at a time when we could be investing in children.

As you may know, Mr. Speaker, and as I know the hon. member from Edmonton knows, we are spending less than half on each aboriginal student in Canada. Certainly that is true in Ontario.

Does this make any sense when, for a small investment in education and a small investment in feeding programs in the schools, we could be preventing future costs of such magnitude?

Linda Duncan Edmonton—Strathcona, AB

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his astute question.

We heard only today in the House, during question period, the reply by the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development when concerns were raised about the slow pace of response to the crisis in Attawapiskat. His response was that he is concerned that despite the spending a lot of money in this community, the problems have not been solved.

The amount of money that the minister raised pales in comparison to the money being spent on the imprisonment of our aboriginal population. It pales in comparison to the moneys we are spending on the education of our aboriginal youth.

As the national leader of the Assembly of First Nations has pointed out, if we do not turn the corner, we are still going to be incarcerating more youth and we are going to be graduating them from high school.

I will share the quote from the Supreme Court of Canada in the Gladue case:

These findings cry out for recognition of the magnitude and gravity of the problem, and for responses to alleviate it. The figures are stark and reflect what may fairly be termed a crisis in the Canadian criminal justice system. The drastic overrepresentation of aboriginal peoples within both the Canadian prison population and the criminal justice system reveals a sad and pressing social problem.

Sean Casey Charlottetown, PE

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her presentation and for focusing on the impact on our aboriginal communities.

It strikes me that when the only implement in the tool box is a sledgehammer, everything starts to look like a rock.

I would seek the hon. member's comments on a more sophisticated approach to reforming our criminal justice system, as opposed to the one before us in the bill, and in particular with respect to the misplaced emphasis on retribution versus crime prevention and a focus on the root causes of crime.

Linda Duncan Edmonton—Strathcona, AB

Mr. Speaker, the member's question basically sums up the concerns that have been raised on this side of the House.

Canada has been renowned for having a justice system that tries to balance the scales. What is more important is that if the government is, as it professes to be, concerned about the victims of crime, then surely our focus should be on the prevention of crime and the prevention of victimization of youth.

One part of the bill that members on this side of the House fought very hard to have separated out of it and expedited in the last Parliament is the sexual exploitation of children. I notice that Senator Patrick Brazeau has authored a piece talking about the fact that nowhere is the devastation of sexual exploitation more pervasive than among aboriginal children and that they represent as much as 90% of those being exploited. Senator Brazeau is calling for programs to deal with this and to prevent the sexual exploitation.

Surely that makes sense. Surely we need to pool our resources and move towards addressing this critical discrimination of the victims being aboriginal children.

The Acting Speaker Bruce Stanton

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Beauharnois—Salaberry, Health; the hon. member for Halifax, The Environment; and the hon. member for Cardigan, Fisheries and Oceans.