Debates of Dec. 15th, 2011

Harold Albrecht Kitchener—Conestoga, ON

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her good work in helping us to implement some of the changes requested by citizens in every one of the ridings of members, and not just on this side of the House. Our colleagues across the way would tell us that they have been contacted by constituents in their ridings asking them to take action on behalf of victims. For far too long the victims of this country have been ignored as it relates to the criminal justice system.

In direct response to my colleague's question, it is important to note the two key elements of the changes in the bill. The citizen needs to make the arrest at the time the offence occurs or make that arrest within a reasonable amount of time after the citizen has found the person committing a criminal offence and must have reasonable grounds that it was not feasible to call the police in those circumstances.

Joyce Murray Vancouver Quadra, BC

Madam Speaker, I want to follow up on the question from my colleague from Winnipeg North. He asked whether the government would look at potential amendments based on merit.

The answer he received was that Bill C-10 had been widely discussed and amendments were considered. Of course, we know that zero amendments were accepted. In fact, there were several amendments put forward by my colleague from Mount Royal that were rejected out of hand at the committee railroading process, which later the minister decided actually were worthwhile. The minister tried to bring them forward at report stage but the amendments were rejected by the Speaker because they should have been done at committee stage.

This is exactly what we want to avoid. We want those reasonable amendments to be considered, discussed and potentially accepted in committee where it should happen. Will the member advocate for that with his minister and colleagues?

Harold Albrecht Kitchener—Conestoga, ON

Madam Speaker, in direct answer to that question I can say without any reservation that every member on this side of the House listens carefully to those ideas that are put forward by members of the opposition. However, I do not serve on the justice committee and I cannot speak for that committee. Each committee is the master of its own destiny.

I can assure the member that on this side of the House we listen to members on the opposite side in this House of Commons. As important, we listen to the constituents in our ridings who have been the victims of many of these offences that have literally destroyed the lives of our young people, whether it is a sexual offence, or getting hooked on drugs, or it is a violent crime that has injured them or, in too many cases, ended their lives.

We are listening. We will work with our opposition partners to get the best action for Canadians.

The Deputy Speaker Denise Savoie

Before resuming debate, I would like to advise the House that from here on the interventions will be of 10 minutes, followed by questions and comments of five minutes.

The hon. member for Winnipeg Centre.

Pat Martin Winnipeg Centre, MB

Madam Speaker, I can barely introduce what I want to say in 10 minutes, but at least I will try to make the most of what little time I have.

Pat Martin Winnipeg Centre, MB

Well maybe I will carry on. Unanimous consent, perhaps, would be a consideration if I do have more things to say than time permits.

As we approach the end of this parliamentary session of the 41st Parliament, I appreciate the tone and the content of the debate we are having in the House of Commons today. It has actually been a meaningful exchange for the most part on a very thorny question, a question that deserves the attention of Parliament.

Let me begin by recognizing and acknowledging Mr. David Chen, the owner of the Lucky Moose Foodmart in Toronto, which I suppose was the catalyst for the whole debate that we are having today. A hard-working new Canadian running a small corner grocery store was being repeatedly victimized by shoplifters and thieves, et cetera, and in a moment of frustration took action into his own hands, and apprehended and detained one of those who was knowingly and repeatedly stealing from him.

It is a matter of competing rights that we are wrestling with today. I will confess that I am not a lawyer. I have been somewhat of a bunkhouse lawyer over the years as a union leader on job sites where I have had to perhaps wrestle with this matter of competing rights, but I am glad to hear and I am glad to see that there are very competent and knowledgeable members of Parliament present today who are intervening with meaningful contributions to this debate. As I say, by and large, it has been civil, it has been interesting, and it has been meaningful.

I also confess some bias in my own personal experience. I had occasion to catch two people breaking into my home one time as I came home from work. I found two teenagers, who had just broken into the house next door and drank all the booze, who were now breaking into the rear lower windows of my house. As I pulled into the driveway, my headlights shone on these kids kicking in my window.

I tried to stop them and apprehended one, but while I was doing that, the other one grabbed my four-year-old son by the hair and started dragging him down the street, and told me he would trade me my kid for the kid I was holding.

As any parent would, I saw red. I dropped the one youth and sprinted after the one who had kidnapped my son, and ended up giving him a fairly sound thumping, which I thought was well-deserved at the time. My wife participated as well. If you have ever tried to wrestle down a 15-year-old, Madam Speaker, all hopped up on hooch, it is not as easy as it might look, even if you are a fit carpenter

To make a long story short in what little time I have, I ended up in court for the next six months for assaulting this young man who was trying to break into my house. It took six months of legal appearances and an awful lot of time and energy for the Crown prosecutors to finally drop the charges against my wife and I, and apply the charges where they belonged, to the break and enter.

I confess to a bias that I am sympathetic to the bill, and I also want to acknowledge and pay tribute to the member for Trinity—Spadina, who is the member of Parliament who represents the neighbourhood where the Lucky Moose Foodmart resides. I believe she has done a good job in advocating on behalf of her constituent, whom I believe the law did not serve well.

The Crown dropped the charges for kidnapping and carrying a dangerous weapon, which turned out to be a box cutter that any store owner would normally carry with him anyway, but charges were proceeded with against Mr. Chen of forcible confinement and assault for apprehending this thief who was stealing from his store

When he went to court months later, after the great cost and expense of having to defend himself, these charges were dropped, but it pointed to the inconsistencies, ambiguities and overlapping provisions in the Criminal Code to deal with these two competing rights. That is always the difficulty.

I should share with the House that whenever I canvass and survey the constituents of my riding as to what their top of mind concerns are, overwhelmingly, by a factor of four to one, the number one top of mind concern is crime and safety on their streets. People have a right to walk their streets without fear of being assaulted or molested. They take that very seriously in the inner city of Winnipeg where, I am not proud to say, crime and safety are often legitimate concerns.

They also want more steps taken to get guns off the streets. There are families in my riding that will not sleep in the outside rooms of their houses for fear of the gun play that occurs every night. They are afraid of stray bullets going through their homes. They want guns off the street. They want tougher measures and controls on crime and safety issues. They want less guns in their communities, and fairness in the administration and application of justice.

There are times, especially in an area that is plagued by a disproportionate amount of crime and violence, when homeowners have to take things into their own hands to protect themselves and their families. They should not be arrested and prosecuted for what is, by any reasonable objective third party's point of view, legitimate self-defence and defence of their property.

If people tuned in to watch the proceedings of the House of Commons today, this is the kind of bill that Canadians would agree Parliament should be seized with and it is the tone, content and type of debate they would be pleased we are having. My only criticism is that it is highly unlikely any amendments will be contemplated or tolerated during the consideration of this bill. I can say this with some certainty because in the entire 41st Parliament, the government has never accepted a single amendment on a single piece of legislation since May 2 when Parliament began.

Any reasonable person would have to concede that some of these issues are not straightforward. Some of them need careful deliberation and would benefit from a healthy, robust debate, exchange, and legitimate points of view put forward by members from the opposition. No one has a monopoly on good ideas in the House of Commons or in Parliament. In fact, the way to test the strength of arguments is to subject them to rigorous and robust debate. That tests the merits of the positions people hold.

I believe that this balance is not as it should be yet. There are recommendations for amendments that New Democrats would like in this bill. We support half of the bill at least because much of its origins are from a private member's bill put forward by my colleague from Trinity—Spadina. There are further elements of the bill that give us great concern. There are recommendations from the NDP justice critic, who is a well-respected lawyer and has given both professional and personal considerations to the issues we are dealing with today. They should be treated seriously and incorporated into the bill, so that it will stand the test of time, and stand up to challenges in court and serve Canadians well.

Denis Blanchette Louis-Hébert, QC

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his speech. Two very important points stood out. On the one hand, he mentioned that both sides of the House want to improve the legislation and this bill helps to some degree. On the other hand, he asked that the bill be improved and pointed out that, despite our best efforts, not one amendment to any bill has been accepted thus far.

I wonder if the member could really emphasize which parts of the bill could be improved. I hope the members opposite will listen carefully to these suggestions.

Pat Martin Winnipeg Centre, MB

Madam Speaker, our complaint with this bill is similar to that with previous pieces of legislation, that it has not fully matured yet. It has not gestated into a finished product. It is like a cake in the oven that is not yet baked. It still needs work and we are not doing anyone a service by going ahead with incomplete legislation that we would be stuck with for a long time. It is unlikely that these clauses of the Criminal Code will be reopened again in our generation. So it is incumbent on us to get it right.

I point out that sections 34 and 35 of the Criminal Code, which deal with the right to self-defence, have inherent ambiguities that have caused difficulty in the jurisprudence since 1892 and it is only now that we are addressing them in the Parliament of the latter days of 2011.

What we do today has a lasting impact. We want to get it right because it does a great disservice to ordinary Canadians like Mr. David Chen if we do not get it right. Imagine the confusion of a new Canadian, proud to be a small businessman in his chosen country, when this kind of crazy thing happens to him and he winds up being the one accused of wrongdoing when all he is trying to do is protect himself.

We do not want that to ever happen again. We want to ensure that the language we incorporate in the context of this bill precludes that from ever happening again to any Canadian.

Harold Albrecht Kitchener—Conestoga, ON

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and especially for the very personal story that he started out with. I am sure my colleagues here would agree that most of us find it very difficult to imagine the member becoming angry, but I am so glad that he was forthright in sharing that story because it does illustrate the fact that in the heat of these moments, when people have no option to call the police, they want to take action to protect the person with them or the property.

My colleague shared a number of facts about his riding in Winnipeg, the high crime statistics there, and certainly that is a cause for concern, not just in Winnipeg but across our country especially in our urban areas. I wonder if my colleague would agree that it is time in this country to restore that sense of balance to our criminal justice system that begins to recognize the rights of victims.

Pat Martin Winnipeg Centre, MB

Madam Speaker, I take my colleague's question very seriously. I would be willing to entertain any measures that actually had the desired results. We know from empirical evidence that the best results to give us safer streets come from more money spent on crime prevention and rehabilitation, and substance abuse treatment centres.

I will give one example. A young woman, a sex trade worker, walked into my office not two months ago. She plies her trade right in front of my office in Winnipeg and she is clearly addicted to crack cocaine. She said she wanted to get off the street, she wanted to change her life. So we started phoning around and finally found a treatment centre that could take her in six weeks. We cannot tell a junky to come back in six weeks. When people are willing to make a change in their life, they need those supports and that help now.

I do not say this in criticism of this government or the provincial government. I am just saying that more attention needs to be put to crime prevention than to crime punishment and we would have safer streets.

Randy Hoback Prince Albert, SK

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased today to rise to speak to Bill C-26 .

However, before I do that, I want to wish my constituents a happy and merry Christmas and a safe holiday season. I also want to relay those best wishes to my colleagues here in the House. It is great to work with them. It has been a privilege and an honour to discuss and debate things like this bill.

I think Canadians are very happy. In fact, the latest polls show that they think this government is going in the right direction and they applaud us for the work we are doing.

I trust we will all have a good time back in our ridings and will be able to talk to our constituents about pieces of legislation such as this one, Bill C-26.

This piece of legislation is one of balance. I think balance has always been the key around this piece of legislation. It is trying to get the balance right.

If we get the balance right in this legislation, I think a lot of radio talk show hosts would be out of work or would not have the old safety net of, “What do I talk about today? Let's talk about victims of crime. Let's talk about people who make citizen's arrests and then become the person who is convicted”.

That is what constituents are asking. If I were to go back to the riding of Prince Albert, which I represent, and talk to constituents, that is how they would instruct me when it comes to looking at victims of crime or balancing--or, in this case, rebalancing--the right of citizens to defend themselves or their property.

It is interesting that when we talk about public security and the ability to defend ourselves, those terms have different connotations depending upon where we are in the world. If we go down to the States and talk about the right to protect ourselves and our property, we envision somebody stepping inside the door and meeting a nasty end. That is not what we are doing here in Canada. That is not even close.

If we go to some other parts of the world, such as Central or South America, where public security is always an issue, they would like to see what we are doing here today. They would think this would be a reasonable and balanced approach and they would like to see their police forces up to the level of our forces here Canada.

I also want to remind members that we are not proposing to remove the police force. We understand the role of the police force. If someone is in an unfortunate situation and is going to be a potential victim of crime or if someone sees a crime taking place, we would recommend that the first response should be to dial 9-1-1. I do not think anybody is debating that. I think everybody is saying that we should involve the police as quickly as possible.

However, there are always circumstances in which that is just not possible. There are always situations in which people just cannot get a speedy response. I am not blaming the police; it is just the reality of the vast geography of our country.

In my hometown of Canwood, Saskatchewan, if the police officer on duty that night is at the far end of his area and something is going on at the farm or we see somebody stealing gas, we can call 9-1-1. However, the reality is that it is going to take him probably 15, 20 or 25 minutes to get to my farm just because of geography. It does not matter how fast he drives; that is what it is going to take.

When we talk to farmers or people in rural Canada, they are not talking about revenge. They are not talking forming a posse and tracking down people who commit crimes. The John Wayne scenario of the westerns of the 1800s is not what we are talking about here either. Nobody would accept that. What we are talking about is just balance, simple balance.

When that farmer comes across a guy stealing a quad out of his shop and is able to apprehend him and hold him, he should not be charged with kidnapping. He should not be charged with assault. He should not be charged at all, especially when we look at the situation and the facts around the situation. That is all we are doing: trying to clarify for the courts and the police when they should lay a charge and when they should not. We are trying to balance that out.

I know the opposition members talk about amendments that they want to bring forward. I would encourage them to bring them forward in committee. That is how we end up with good pieces of legislation. I trust these amendments are ones that their constituents want to see in the bill. When those amendments come forward in committee, the committee will look at them. I trust the committee will study all those amendments and make suggestions back to this House. Then we will stand to vote, based upon what our constituents want. That is how our government works.

Therefore, when it comes to amendments, I would encourage members to take their amendments forward at committee. I would encourage members to bring them forward, make their passionate arguments, state their case and then let the committee members and members of Parliament decide their fate at that point in time.

The different types of crime that go on in ridings represent a very sad state. Nobody ever wants to be a victim of crime. Nobody ever asks for that. If a farmer in rural Saskatchewan has somebody drive into the yard at two o'clock in the morning, go up to his gas tank and proceed to break the valve and steal gas, the farmer did not ask for that. That farmer should not be penalized when he goes out and apprehends that person. That farmer should not be penalized when he confines that person.

That is what happening in the courts today. As the member for Winnipeg Centre said earlier, people who go about their day-to-day lives are put in a situation they did not create, and then all of a sudden, they end up in the courts. They have to defend themselves in court. They did not bring this on themselves; they did not ask for that person to come to their farm and steal gas. Why should these people have to go through a six-month legal battle?

That is all we are looking for in this piece of legislation. That is what this legislation does. The word is balance.

The legislation proposes a clarifications of the law. We are basically providing the police with some clarification about when they should or should not lay a charge. We are basically clarifying for the courts when it would be appropriate to pursue a charge or not.

If a person is using excessive force to restrain somebody or is being vindictive, or is planning to be, we expect that person to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. This legislation will not be a licence to blow somebody away because he showed up on your property. That is not what we are doing here. What we are doing is finding a balance, and people will not have a licence or a blank cheque to do whatever they want if somebody enters their land. They will not have that. What is acceptable and what is not acceptable is very clear in the legislation. Again, balance is the word.

That is the theme in this piece of legislation. The word “balance” should be repeated over and over again. If we get the balance right on this legislation, I think Canadians will be very happy with the government and with Parliament because we will have tackled an issue that has annoyed Canadians for years.

That is one thing my constituents will say when I go back to the riding during the break. They will say, “At least the Conservative government did stuff. You went to Ottawa, you made promises and you kept your promises. You did what we wanted. The Conservative government delivered on what Canadian constituents wanted”. They will respect and thank us for that.

As we go back to our ridings on the break and as this piece of legislation moves forward, I would encourage all members to talk about this piece of legislation with their constituents. What we are trying to do should be properly explained.

Members who want to can distort it or rile people up if they want to. Anybody can do that. However, we should sit down and explain that we do not want another situation like the one we saw with Mr. Chen. How do we properly balance that so that it does not happen again? How do we make sure that a farmer who is wakened in the middle of the night by somebody stealing his gas is not in front of the courts for eight months just because he stopped that person from stealing it?

That is the balance our constituents want; that is the balance Canadians need, and that is what we are doing in this piece of legislation. If constituents have suggestions to make this bill better, then members should bring those suggestions to committee as amendments. They should trust the committee to come forward with what they think is the best work to develop this piece of legislation.

I do know one thing: what we have today is not working. When we have people who are the victims of crime being convicted or being pursued harder than the guy who actually commits the crime, then we know something is out of balance. We know something is not correct.

I will close with that comment, and just remind my colleagues as they go back to their ridings that they should talk to their constituents about balance and about appropriate levels of security for public safety. It will be interesting to see the response that members get.

If we get this right, as I said when I started, a lot of talk show radio hosts will suddenly lose a topic to talk about over the next two or three years.