Bill C-10 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (minimum penalties for offences involving firearms) and to make a consequential amendment to another Act

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to provide for escalating minimum penalties according to the number, if any, of previous convictions for serious offences involving the use of a firearm if the firearm is either a restricted or prohibited firearm or if the offence was committed in connection with a criminal organization, to provide for escalating minimum penalties according to the number, if any, of previous convictions for other firearm-related offences and to create two new offences: breaking and entering to steal a firearm and robbery to steal a firearm.

Criminal Code

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not disagree with my Bloc colleague's presentation on the bill before us, Bill C-10.

The previous speaker talked about causes. I am actually a board member of an organization called Transitions for Youth which helps young people, who are in trouble or who are about to get in trouble, to find a better way than the criminal courts or other areas. We have worked very hard at promoting what it does in the community. It does great work there and I am proud to be associated with that group.

I do agree that kind of work needs to be done but we also know that once one commits a crime, particularly with a gun, which is what the bill deals with, we need to have the framework to ensure they are penalized for what they do. We do need to make communities safer and I believe mandatory minimum penalties will do that.

Based on the Bloc member's position on the bill before us, am I to understand that the current four year minimum, regardless of the number of previous convictions, is good enough for her communities?

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

I absolutely agree with him that one of the best ways to help people prevent crime is to be more vigilant, to develop means for rehabilitation and, as he is doing in his own community, to help young people reintegrate. This is an approach that the Bloc Québécois supports.

Obviously the Bloc Québécois is not very supportive of minimum penalties, with the exception of penalties for pedophilia, which we accepted. The Bloc does not think that the 30 studies submitted to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights conclusively show that the penalties are useful in preventing crime or helping. They did not show that mandatory minimum penalties led to peace and justice and were deterrents to crime.

I believe that the Bloc's views on this are absolutely right.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, having spent the past 25 years working for the defence in criminal law, I have a specific question for my colleague. I would also like to congratulate her on her speech, which was perfect.

That is exactly it. We cannot control crime with minimum prison sentences. I hope that the members opposite will come to understand that. When I say “the members opposite” I mean not only the government members, but also those of the NDP, whose position I do not understand.

That said, my question is specific: does the member not think that by imposing minimum prison sentences we will increase the length of trials? Because lawyers will be inclined to argue cases to the fullest, so that they take more time.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question.

I agree with the member. Trying to impose minimum sentences in this manner will do nothing to facilitate things or relieve congestion in the legal system. On the contrary, this will definitely mean more congestion and more confusion. Once these minimum sentences are imposed, this will only paralyze another system even further, that is, the prison system.

I therefore see no advantage or benefit to this stubborn desire on the part of the Conservative government and the NDP, which is supporting it, to impose mandatory minimum sentences.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

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.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's intervention. I will be very quick so others may ask questions.

The hon. member is from Etobicoke North. My in-laws live at Royal York and Eglinton, so he may be their member of Parliament for now.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Are they moving?

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

They should.

At any rate, based on the conversation the hon. member had with us here in the House, I am not clear about the Liberal position.

In Bill C-10 we are increasing the mandatory minimum penalties for use of a firearm in the commission of a crime. That graduates upward. The hon. member was quoting U.S. statistics and so on and saying that mandatory minimums do not work or that the U.S. is moving away from that.

Is it the Liberal position that you would like the Government of Canada to move away from and get rid of mandatory minimum sentences?

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I will remind the hon. member to ask questions through the Chair, not directly.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me say for the member for Burlington that some people will do anything to get their in-laws to move from Etobicoke North to Burlington. I did not know members opposite were so desperate for votes over there, but perhaps they are.

I think mandatory minimums are appropriate in certain targeted areas. That is why I support our party's proposals to increase mandatory minimums in a measured way for gun related crimes.

I think my colleague from the Bloc put it very well. The problem is that we often read in the newspapers about the exceptional cases where a trial judge may have ruled in a certain way. I think it is useful to follow it on through to the appeals and not get flared up by information in the newspapers. It is all very emotional. When we know someone, a friend, a relative or someone in our constituency, who has been shot or who may have been killed, it is not very pleasant.

I believe in mandatory minimums in targeted areas. One of those targeted areas that I support is gun related crimes. That has been a problem in my riding.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated listening to my colleague from Etobicoke North. I appreciated hearing his comments on the issue of mandatory minimums and on the importance of the fact that in all studies virtually all experts are in agreement that mandatory minimum sentencing can be effective on a first conviction, because that then lays the groundwork if there are subsequent offences for the judge to take it into consideration and tailor a harsher sentence, a sentence that is tailored to the accused, to the circumstances of the crime, to the victim and to the impact on the community.

However, studies have shown consistently that if one also creates mandatory minimums on a second and subsequent conviction it in fact is counterproductive. I believe my colleague mentioned something about 25 states that had mandatory minimums and escalator penalties, which is what the Conservatives have attempted to do with Bill C-10, and those states in fact have now moved away from the escalator minimum mandatories. Perhaps the hon. member would like to give us a few gems from his thoughts on that.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know about the gems, but I want to thank my colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine and also congratulate her as our justice critic for working very hard on this file and for listening to people like me who are experiencing a lot of gun related crime in their ridings.

She makes a very good point. If we look at the incarceration rates in the United States, where incarceration is at a much higher level than it is in a country such as Canada, we would think that would have an impact on violent crimes, for example. Exactly the reverse is true. The United States has the highest incidence of violent and gun-related crimes and the highest levels of incarceration rates.

Someone might argue that of course if there is more crime there is going to be more incarceration, but some experts have actually done some analysis. They have concluded, by looking at the data and trying to pull out various variables that are controlled, that in fact crime rates alone do not account for incarceration rates in the United States.

In other words, there are more people in the United States and there is a higher crime rate in the United States, but these levels do not explain the incarceration rates. If we control for crime categories that are defined, the U.S. still locks up more people than any other nation per incidence, the exception being robbery in Russia, so we need to understand that putting people--

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I feel it is very important to rise today to speak to Bill C-10, which I have had the opportunity to study. Indeed, for some time, I was a member of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. When this bill arrived before us, we had the opportunity to carefully examine it and to see what the government had in mind.

I would first like to invite all hon. members of this House to watch a criminal lawyer at work for a day in a court house. For those who are unfamiliar, I would like to explain how it works.

Unless they are very well-known, people who practice criminal law, generally speaking, do not have only one client. We usually have several. We do not represent only people involved in organized crime, the mafia or other criminal groups. Quite often, we represent people who are appearing before a court for the first time and who, in a moment of weakness—and God knows, we have all had them—decided to rob a convenient store in order to make ends meet. This is a classic example.

Under this bill, if individuals already have a similar offence on their record, or other offences in reference to this bill, they would receive a seven year sentence. This is what will happen. The individual will go to court. He will ask to be tried by a jury with a preliminary hearing, all in an attempt to drag out the process as long as possible. Since there are hundreds of thousands of cases in Canada every year, there will be a considerable backlog in the court houses. Since the administration of justice comes under provincial jurisdiction, the federal government will have to give provinces considerable amounts money to appoint new judges, new crown prosecutors, hire new police officers and, especially, to build new prisons.

In the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights we obtained some figures. It seems that between $20 million and $22 million in additional funds will be needed annually to implement Bill C-10.

I want to appeal to my colleagues opposite and explain to them that they are going down the wrong path by thinking that implementing automatic processes in sentencing will reduce crime. That is not so. This premise is wrong and sends the wrong message directly to the public. Crime rates in the U.S. were not lowered by imposing minimum sentences. In fact, the crime rate went up.

I can understand the position of the Conservative Party, but I do not understand the NDP's position. I do not understand the New Democrats, unless they have a strictly political agenda, but I dare not say. I think they are going down the wrong path by supporting such a bill.

When the time comes to sentence an individual, one of the primary criteria, the essential criterion that the Supreme Court determined in a number of cases—that I will not name here—is that the sentence has to be individualized. I will explain what that means for my colleagues opposite. We have to sentence the individual before us based on the crime he committed and his chance for rehabilitation, in order to send a clear message that this type of crime should not be committed.

Rehabilitation starts when an individual accepts his sentence. When I was a criminal lawyer, before sitting in this House, I had the obligation to explain to my client that the court would impose a sentence of three to five years. We can prepare our client to accept this kind of sentence for very serious crimes. As soon as the individual accepts this sentence, the rehabilitation process can start.

Because of what the NDP is preparing to do, along with the Conservative Party, individuals will dig in their heels. I promise you that court backlogs will increase considerably. We are aiming at the wrong target.

Judges receive direction and information. Unfortunately, contrary to my colleagues opposite, whether from the Conservative Party or the NDP, supreme court judges, appeal court judges, superior court judges and Quebec court judges—in the case of Quebec—read court decisions. They are able to understand that their sentence was not severe enough and that the appeal court has overturned it. I do not need to give examples. As I have several times been in appeal court, I know that the learned judges were asking us whether we did not think that our client should have received a sentence that was more severe, given the seriousness of the crime. We knew right away that they would overturn the sentence that had been handed down in the court of first instance.

I have said it before and I will say it again, and I hope that some of the members opposite will understand this time. The problem is not with sentencing, but with carrying out the sentence, with when they get out. Perhaps we should take a closer look at parole. Perhaps convicts get out too quickly. Perhaps, but that is not what I am talking about.

Individualized sentencing is essential if we want our legal system to work. It is the foundation of our legal system. Individuals appearing before a judge need to know that the judge will be talking specifically to them and sentencing them, and that they will be the ones serving the time. If we bring in automatic sentencing, people will play that game and commit armed robberies with knives instead of guns. The Conservative and NDP position in terms of Bill C-10 will not solve anything.

About 30 studies were submitted to the committee. I can assure you that I read them all, and I tried to prove that my colleagues opposite were right, but none of those studies indicated that minimum prison sentences lowered the crime rate. Not one of them.

The homicide rate in the United States is three times higher than in Canada and four times higher than in Quebec. Will minimum prison sentences expedite cases? Absolutely not. They will be dragged out, they will take a long time, and nothing will be resolved. Bill C-10 will not help the Conservatives and the NDP achieve their goal. Down the road, they will come back here and say that maybe they made a mistake. By then, the Supreme Court will probably have decided that the sentences are too harsh and that we MPs will have to rethink this.

In closing, I would like to suggest that every member spend a day with a criminal lawyer at a court in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver. If they do, they will realize that the Bill C-10 solution proposed by the Conservatives and the NDP is not a good one.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate the experience the hon. member from the Bloc has brought to the floor today and I recognize his passion. I would like him to recognize that I and many other members also share a passion; it is obviously different, but it is an honest principled belief, with all respect, that the Bloc position is wrong. Our approach on crime is a much more principled approach. It is a difference of opinion, but I recognize it is an honest difference. I hope the hon. member would also recognize that gesture comes from this side as well.

I will mention a couple of points. We are not talking about misdemeanours here. We are talking about serious criminal indictable offences: rape, robbery, murder, manslaughter, extortion, kidnapping. These are not just over the counter offences. These are serious threats to life and limb.

If the member had a son, daughter, mother, or wife who was a victim, would he think $22 million was too much to pay for--