Please do not applaud for that. I do not deserve all of the credit, which must be shared by all of the people who worked on this. That squad was difficult to maintain, by the way.
I am for law and order, but I support finding the most efficient way to achieve it. I have compared European and American methods. The problem is interesting: most people think that crime is increasing, but it is actually decreasing. Anyone who checks Juristat will find that crime is decreasing.
People also think that judges are not being harsh enough. How can we determine whether judges are being harsh enough, Mr. Speaker? Look at how judges use incarceration. Yearly statistics on incarceration rates in different countries are available. Although Canada is not at the top of that list, it certainly ranks pretty high up.
Canada imprisons more people than Australia, than Italy, than Germany, than Austria, than France, than Sweden, than Finland, than Switzerland, than Denmark and than Norway. Those are countries we often compare ourselves to. But Canada imprisons far fewer people than the United States.
In 2002, the last date for which statistics are available, Canada imprisoned 116 people per 100,000 population; the United States imprisoned 702 people per 100,000 population. The United States is where I most often hear some of the arguments that have been made. Get tough on criminals, that is the solution. The United States is tough, much tougher on criminals than us. And yet if you go to the United States, you run a three times higher risk of being killed than in Canada. And in the United States, you are at an eight times higher risk of being killed with a firearm than in Canada.
So is that solution working? Can we really say that our judges, who sentence more people to imprisonment than the other civilized countries we compare ourselves too, are not tough enough?
There is something else that makes our job extremely difficult, because I recognize that the position I am taking is not a popular position. But I believe that when we are in government, there are things that we know precisely because it is our job to know them, and we have access to documents. We thought about these things before gaining public office. When a majority of people are on the wrong track, we have a duty to try to get them back on the right track.
There is a reason why people believe that crime is going up: the less crime there is, the more attention is given to the crimes that are committed, to keep the percentage of news coverage devoted to crime up to more or less the same level as everywhere else. A murder in New York does not make the headlines, but a murder in Montreal or Toronto is still big news. Obviously, the papers talk about the most horrific crimes, because those are the ones that get people’s attention the most. We are therefore told about the worst crimes and we still feel worried about crime. I realized this years ago, even before I entered politics: people think that crime is going up, when in fact it is going down.
As well, what sentences are being handed down? In this speech and in the ones that came before my own, I have not yet heard anyone talk about sentences that have been affirmed by the Court of Appeal. How many sentences may be handed down every day in a country like Canada? I would say that tens of thousands of sentences may be handed down every day in this country. Even with thousands, my goodness, in a system where there really are no simple rules, a system that is not mathematical, do we imagine that there will not sometimes be judges who make mistakes? What is the solution, then? Is it to require that all judges hand down minimum sentences, and tell them that they may not impose the real sentences that they ought to be imposing? Is the solution not, rather, to appeal to the Court of Appeal? Why not appeal all these sentences we have been told about, if they are that horrible?
There is a third reason why people have the wrong impression about crime. The media do not very often report the reasons that judges give to justify their sentences.
A few years ago, Anthony N. Doob, a researcher at York University in Toronto, did an interesting analysis of some 20 sentences handed down, of which there had been much talk in the media. He noticed that the judges generally gave 13 to 15 reasons to justify their sentences, and yet on average the papers reported only one and a quarter of them. So the public is aware of only one reason and a quarter. Guess which reason is chosen? Always the most sensational one, the one that seems most inconsistent.
However, he used certain target groups and had them read the sentences given by the judges. Most of his research subjects were in agreement with the decisions handed down. When people are properly informed of the reasons of Canadian judges—and they are comparable to those in other civilized countries—when they hand down sentences, they are in agreement.
I have always been struck by one other thing as well. In France, when there are jurors, it is they who decide on the sentence after a finding of guilt. In Canada, only the judges decide on the sentences. In 2002, France had an incarceration rate of 85 persons per 100,000 population, while we had a rate of 116 persons per 100,000. Thus ordinary people, when they are familiar with the situation, are generally less harsh than under other systems.
In Canada, we have the most striking proof that minimum sentences have little effect on the commission of crime. Take the case of marijuana. In 1966, I had never heard of marijuana. I heard about when I started working as a crown attorney in Montreal. At the time, marijuana was growing in Quebec. Indian hemp is in fact mentioned in La Flore laurentienne by Brother Marie-Victorin. However, the marijuana growing in Quebec had no effect because it did not contain THC, the chemical that produces the desired effect. That has since changed. So all the marijuana that began entering the country at the time of flower power, peace and love, and Woodstock was imported from outside Canada. What was the minimum sentence for importing marijuana? It was seven years. Now that is quite a deterrent.
In Canada, we also have a positive example of other means of modifying criminal behaviour. I am referring to impaired driving. Here again, when I began as a young crown attorney, impaired driving was a veritable scourge, even though there were two possible minimum sentences. A first offence received 15 days in prison. A repeat offence brought three months in prison.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, we began to really tackle drinking and driving, and achieved results. I remember, when the roadblocks first started, the number of people in violation of the law were counted in percentage points. During roadblocks today, the number of people in violation are counted in fractions of percentage points. We therefore successfully educated the public very early and raised their awareness. I remember being surprised by my children. Although I had never suggested it, when my children went out with their friends, they would have a designated driver. No one ever thought of that kind of thing when I was their age.
Thus, we achieved positive results without making the laws any tougher. Even with iniquitous legislation--to such a degree that the Supreme Court later declared it unconstitutional--we were not able to stop marijuana from entering Canada.
What must be understood is that criminals are not familiar with minimum sentences. Besides, do we even know what they are? If I were to ask how many minimum sentences are specified in the Criminal Code and what they are, I am convinced that even lawyers would make mistakes. The primary characteristic of criminals is that they are maladjusted. I have observed that they tend to be socially maladjusted. Are we to believe that criminals know what the minimum sentences are? Are we to believe that they think about how they will be sentenced if they commit a crime? The main reason they commit a crime is because they think they will not be caught. They are seeking immediate gain. They believe this because they are often under the influence when they commit crime. Some get carried away.
There is no real answer to crime, I said. Crime is as complex as psychology, and psychology is the branch of medicine that offers no simple answers, like other branches of medicine sometimes do. Doctors can remove a tumour or prescribe medication, for example. Nevertheless, dealing with crime depends in part on psychology.
The key is to have educated, responsible, knowledgeable, intelligent people pass an appropriate sentence in each case. Certainly the seriousness of the offence is an important factor, but it is not the only one. Other considerations such as the circumstances in which the offence was committed, the offender's age and how the group influences the offender or how the offender influences the group must be taken into account before a stricter sentence is handed down.
Crime is not on the rise. I see that I have about three minutes left, so I will talk about what particularly strikes me. I am surprised to see the Conservatives following the Americans' lead. Objective data indicate that the United States incarcerates six times as many individuals as Canada does, yet three times as many Americans are victims of homicide. How can anyone say that this system works?
In sharing these facts, I am not trying to show contempt for my colleagues, but to convince them. I believe that the Conservatives think as most people do. However, knowing these facts, we must bring them to the public's attention to justify individualized sentencing, trusting in our judges and appointing better judges if necessary. I will say that the Conservative agenda offers other proposals that I agree with wholeheartedly. For example, having a larger police force is a good idea, but it needs to be distributed better. The problem of street gangs is being addressed through the combined efforts of police officers doing community work in the field and investigators planning operations.
In addition, as the expression goes, they want to “send a message” to criminals. My heavens, they might as well send a message to extraterrestrials. I am very interested, of course, in the origins of the world and think it is amazing that we send messages into space. We send the series of prime numbers, that is to say, the numbers that cannot be divided by any other number. We suppose that if a civilization is developed, like ours, it should have discovered this mathematical truth, and we are listening for its answer. We stand as much chance, though, of receiving an answer during our lifetimes to the messages we send to extraterrestrials as we do that our message will get through to criminals.
Criminals do not read the legislation. They are not familiar with it. When they plan a crime, their only concern is not getting caught.
That is why preventive measures are so effective. We had a preventive measure that was working. This government wants to get rid of it. The Conservatives will thereby go down in history. People will study what happened in the past objectively, and the Conservatives will be thought to have made a bad choice.
Why are there three times as many homicides in the United States? Any intelligent person would say it is because there are too many guns. The gun registry is important. It should be said that the Conservatives are smart enough, actually, not to want to abolish it completely, even though that is in their program, by the way. We must acknowledge that the handgun registry has had beneficial effects in Canada since 1934. It is probably one of the factors behind the huge difference between the number of homicides committed in the United States and in Canada.
We have a system that has reduced the number of homicides committed with guns by 10%, and they are withdrawing it as a preventive measure. This system has succeeded in reducing the number of homicides committed with rifles or shotguns by 43% and the number of armed robberies by 48%. The reason why women have such different opinions from men on registering guns is probably that the number of women killed by guns has fallen by 31% in 10 years.
They are withdrawing a preventive measure that works in order to institute minimums that do not.
We may well end up some day with the same results as people in the United States have already obtained with these measures.
