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

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at the third reading stage of Bill C-10.

The House resumed from May 28 consideration of the motion that 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, be read the third time and passed.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

First of all, I agree with everything the last two speakers said, in particular in reference to Mr. Ménard. I think the witnesses were very convincing for me, and that's the purpose of committees. I would commend the government members to take the same attitude toward witnesses' evidence when they vote tonight on Bill C-10.

The main thing I want to say is that although I'm supporting this bill, it is with some trepidation, in that we found out—to the shock of parliamentarians and probably to the embarrassment of the government members—that there was no evidence to support this bill, that Canada has not actually collected the statistics of who is on bail, who is not allowed bail, and if they commit crimes on bail. We have a bill here with no evidence before us, and I know all members of Parliament are a bit worried about that. Nevertheless, as the previous speaker said, because the witnesses have convinced me that this pretty well occurs, that it's not going to make a big change, and that it is a useful bill, I will be supporting it.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that 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, be read the third time and passed.

Justice

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, all Canadians mourn when they hear of the death of a young person in these circumstances.

Our crime fighting agenda has been very clear. We have taken aim at the illegal use of firearms. We introduced almost a year ago Bill C-10 which would give mandatory penalties for people who commit crimes with firearms. I urge all hon. members to work expeditiously to get these bills passed before summer so that police will have the tools they need to keep our streets safer and our schoolyards safer.

Government Policies

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, we have been trying to get legislation through this Parliament. The difficulty is that with the opposition, in particular the Liberal Party, it is very difficult to do so.

Bill C-10, the mandatory penalties for gun crime, something that I know Canadians care about a great deal right now, was held up at committee for 252 days and then all the relevant portions of it were gutted by the Liberals. We had to rely on the hon. members of the NDP to restore those provisions. I could go through justice bill after justice bill where that has been the case.

What is more, they have used other devices, like concurrence motions, to take up, on 20 occasions, three weeks of House time with delay and obstruction tactics.

We are the ones who are trying to get the job done. It is the opposition parties that have been obstructing.

Criminal Code

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I was saying to my colleague from the Bloc, it is now my turn to point out all the inconsistencies of the two opposition parties to my right.

However, let me start with an acknowledgment that this is a piece of legislation that does divide the House. I think that division is also reflective of the situation in the country. I do not believe that there is a member in this House who does not want to do whatever we can do to protect our citizens. That is the absolute first and primary responsibility of any democratically elected government. It is not a responsibility that I believe any members in this House ignore or shirk in any way.

What Bill C-10 is really about is what methods best protect our citizens.

There are givens. The NDP recognizes that the overall violent crime rate in Canada has been dropping. I think this is quite provable by solid statistics for at least the last 25 years, as we have been keeping better statistics around crime rates. There is really no debate with regard to this. It is an accepted fact.

However, there are within that criminal activity certain areas where in fact from time to time we will see spikes in certain crimes or where some crime rates in fact are going up. One of the areas in which we have seen an increase has been crime with the use of guns, the use of handguns and illegal guns in particular, but long guns as well, and involving street gangs and youths in particular.

I have to say that most of those guns that get into the hands of the street gangs and the youth of this country and are then used in serious criminal activity almost always flow from organized crime activity. Many of the guns are smuggled in from the United States, where organized crime is the major actor behind that conduct.

That is the reality of what we are faced with in this country at this time. What we attempted to do with this legislation was to take a significant overreaction by the Conservative Party in the form of the present government and reduce the more radical parts of the bill to achieve what we felt was the proper method to respond to that specific crime statistic and crime conduct.

Is this perfect? I will be the first to admit that I do not think so. Is it better than what the Conservatives proposed? Yes. Is it better than what the Liberals proposed in the last election? If the Liberals' promise had been carried out, there would have been even more severe minimum mandatory penalties, not nearly as well focused, and that is a key point.

I also want to say for my colleagues from the Bloc that it is interesting to hear them rant against this bill, but we in this House passed mandatory minimums to fight impaired driving. Again, it was a condition in the country that had to be dealt with. The rate of impaired driving was going up. The casualities on the ground, on our streets and in our cities were horrendous. We used mandatory minimums to deal with it, and the Bloc supported it, as did the Liberals and the Conservatives and my party.

In the last Parliament, led to a significant degree by a charge from both the Bloc and the Conservatives, we introduced a whole bunch of mandatory minimums into child abuse charges, some of which I simply could not accept because they were so overblown and so irresponsible, in effect, but the Bloc members supported that. Not only did their member on the committee who led the charge support it, but when the bill came to the House they supported it 100%. There were a lot of mandatory minimums in that bill.

As the last speaker mentioned, the Bloc members also led the charge in introducing, properly so, mandatory minimums with regard to organized crime.

In each case, with the exception of some of those in the child abuse file, it was appropriate for this legislature to do that. It was appropriate because we had a specific problem in this country with regard to that criminal activity. If we are going to use mandatory minimums, we have to be sure we use them in a focused manner.

Again, I am highly critical of the Liberals. When they were in power, they introduced between 45 to 60 new mandatory minimums, depending on how we use the sections, in their 13 years in government. Thus, when they stand in the House and criticize the NDP for supporting mandatory minimums, they are being highly hypocritical, quite frankly, in particular because they used that method so often that it loses its effectiveness.

We saw this in particular with regard to impaired driving. We put together a program in this country, led by citizens' advocates, our police, our judiciary and, yes, members of the House at that time. The message that went out to the country was that we had a major problem with impaired driving and our laws were not adequate to deal with it, not only with regard to the actual legislation but also the enforcement.

In that period, we brought in the use of the breathalyzer, which as an enforcement tool was phenomenal. I happened to be practising criminal law at that time, doing defence work, and I know how easy it was to get people off on the impaired driving charges at that time, but as soon as the breathalyzer came in and there was a scientific method to show that the person in fact was impaired, the ability to get acquittals dropped dramatically.

We had a really good enforcement methodology, a good technique and a new technology. As governments, both provincial and federal, we spent the money to make sure that our police officers across the country had access to that technology. We had a major advertising and promotion campaign to fight against impaired driving, to get the message out to society at all levels that it was wrong, and yes, we introduced mandatory minimums. We had mandatory minimum suspensions for licences. We had mandatory minimum fines. Also, if there was more than one conviction, if there were subsequent convictions, the person was looking at jail time.

That is the system we have in this country. Again, is it perfect and has it stopped impaired driving completely? No, but we have reduced the rate of impaired driving in this country quite dramatically.

That is what we are trying to do. That is what the NDP is trying to do in supporting the legislation as it has been amended. We have to do the same thing. We must have legislation in place that sends a message from this House, the House that governs this country, that we are going to be very serious in how we treat individual criminals who are convicted of serious crimes involving guns. This is the message that goes out with the passage of the bill.

At the same time, we know it is not enough. In fact, I again will be critical of the government and the Conservatives for trying to get the message out that this is the be-all and end-all and we are going to make our streets safe by passing this particular bill, 100%. That is a false message. That is not what is going to happen. It is going to have some impact, but we need to be doing much more. In fact, the impact of the legislation, I always say, is relatively minor compared to what we have to do in other areas, enforcement being one of those other two areas.

Part of this was interesting in that we had the opportunity to go to Toronto and take some evidence from the chief of police there, Chief Blair, and hear about some of the experiences he had in dealing with some of the street gangs, the exact people we are trying to get at with this legislation, and about some of the methods he put into place. He was able to do so only because additional moneys were given to him by the province of Ontario and the city of Toronto to focus specifically on the gangs and specifically on gun crime.

He was quite successful. The violent crime rate in one area of the city was reduced by 40% in one year. It was a phenomenal experience and is attributable to his skill and that of his officers, but also, at the governmental level, resources were deployed. We need to do that in a number of other communities across the country. The government needs to help in that regard, because certainly there are provinces, and I think in particular of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, where additional resources are needed for provinces that are not as wealthy as Ontario and do not have the ability to deploy resources.

Coming back to it, what we are dealing with here is legislation, yes, recognizing that it is of small impact, and enforcement, yes, because it has a much greater impact, but there is a third area in which we need to be doing much more work. Again I am critical of the government because it has not spent enough money. There are all sorts of programs that need to be deployed, again specifically targeting youth, and particularly the youth in our inner core cities, not exclusively but primarily, programs that will get them before they get attracted to those street gangs and get involved in criminal activity at a very young age.

That is not happening right now. The government has spent very little money in this regard. It is not well targeted, but at the very base it is no sufficient. We can pass this bill, and we should, but we cannot say to the country that we really are doing what we are supposed to be doing to prevent these crimes from happening unless we put additional resources into crime prevention. There are a lot of good programs out there, a number of which we can identify, and we should be assisting them to a much greater extent than we have up to this point.

There is one final area that I want to cover with regard to the nature of this bill and what could have been done in addition to it. I have said this in the House repeatedly. Every time I get up to speak to a government crime bill, I raise it, and I am going to do so again. Perhaps at some point the government will finally get the message.

I accuse the government of this and I will convict it as well: the government has been guilty of highlighting specific crimes with specific bills. Then the government is critical of the opposition for taking too long to get those bills back through the House. This bill in particular is a classic example of how the alternative would have been so much more effective and efficient, both in using the time of the House and in terms of dealing with the problem.

We have a bill, Bill C-10, which deals with mandatory minimums for gun crimes, for guns that are used in serious violent crimes. In effect that is what the bill is about. Currently before our justice committee we have another bill that deals with crime of a serious violent nature involving guns. It is a bail bill. It is a reverse onus bill. It is one that all the parties support. It is one that would go through very quickly.

It is one that could very easily have been combined with Bill C-10 a year ago, so that Bill C-10 would have been about both mandatory minimums and bail review, the reverse onus of bail. That bill would now be before the House. We would be voting on it either this week or next and it would be on its way to the Senate and hopefully shortly after that would be the law of the land.

However, what is going to happen is that the bill is not going to get back to the House before we break for the summer. It is probably not going to get through the process until the latter part of this year and then go on to the Senate and royal assent and the rest of it. Roughly a year later, it is going to come into effect.

We need that bill. We need it in conjunction with this mandatory minimums bill that we are dealing with. It was a logical one to do.

This can be repeated. I do not know how many crime bills we have had from the government. I think there have been 10, 12 or 15 up to this point, since January of last year. Any number of them could have been combined and we could have gone through this.

For members of the House, who already know this, but for the Canadian public as well, the same witnesses repeatedly appear before committee, whether it is the police associations, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, sometimes retired judiciary people, advocates around crime, defence lawyer associations, bar associations or academics in this field. We keep hearing the same people over and over again. They could have come once to give us their evidence on a whole bunch of points. However, the government is insistent, and I accuse it of doing this for straight partisan purposes, to try to highlight that it is tough on crime, that will do this, then it will do that and it will do the other thing.

The reality is it could have been done all at once. If there were one all encompassing bill, we could have done that. With those 10, 12 or 15 bills, we could have done all of that and we could have added in a whole bunch of the private members' bills on crime. I cannot even remember all the numbers of the bills that I am supposed to deal with as the justice critic for my party, and I am sure the justice critics of the other parties are in the same boat. There have been that many, if we combine both the government bills and the ones coming as private members' bills.

There have been well over 20 in the last 15, 16 months. All of them could have been combined in an omnibus bill. A lot more amendments need to be made to the Criminal Code to clear up some of the problems, and to the Evidence Act and other parts of the criminal process.

The justice department, through the work it has been doing over the last number of years, very well qualified, would know what sections we need to encompass in an omnibus piece of criminal law. If we had done that, the government would have been unable to say that it was in favour of mandatory minimums, that it was in favour of this or that. It lost that political flavour, and that is to its eternal shame.

The NDP will support the bill now that it has been amended in line with what members believe is a responsible, focused way to deal with mandatory minimums vis-à-vis crimes that involve guns of a serious violent nature.

I encourage the government, once again, to look at its crime agenda legislation and find ways of bringing the bills together so we can get this done in a much more efficient way and Canadian people overall can be better protected than they are at the present time.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-10 concerning offences involving firearms. This bill is a follow-up to Bill C-9, concerning reduced access to conditional sentences.

I would like to make it clear that the Bloc Québécois is concerned about and condemns all offences involving firearms. Everybody understands that offences involving firearms are serious, and that is why, since 1997, the Bloc Québécois has been steadfast in its demands for a mandatory gun registry, a public registry that police officers consult 6,500 times a day. We believe it is inconsistent to seek to implement a mandatory minimum sentencing strategy for offences involving firearms while attacking the very existence of a gun registry, which is a true public safety tool, as I will demonstrate.

Bill C-10 imposes mandatory minimum sentences. Right off the top, there is a problem with that because when it comes to sentencing, when a court must sentence an individual, the first consideration must be individualization. The judge must consider all of the factors that shape the context of the offence. That is the first consideration.

It is certainly true that the Department of Justice—not the Bloc Québécois, not the NDP, not the Liberals—awarded contracts to carry out studies. It asked professionals, in this case criminologists, to carry out studies. They looked at the experience of countries that had adopted mandatory minimum penalties, in particular for crimes committed with a firearm, to see if that had any deterrent effect. After all, that is the goal. There are certainly some maximum penalties in the Criminal Code. Those penalties must be severe when one is dealing with crimes committed with a firearm because the potential for destruction is extremely high and very real. Usually, we put our trust in the judge and we can say that a judge or a magistrate, whether in a trial court or an appeal court, should be able to give proper weight to the facts and circumstances and determine the appropriate sentence.

Every time there is a mandatory minimum penalty, there is cause for concern. I recall that the Department of Justice called on one of the most renowned criminologists, Professor Julian Roberts, of the University of Ottawa, who testified before the Standing Committee on Justice during the review of Bill C-9 and Bill C-10. What did that criminologist say about a study carried out in 1977 by the Department of Justice? He concluded that mandatory prison sentences had been introduced by many western countries, among them, Australia, New Zealand and others. He emphasized that the studies that reviewed the impact of those laws showed variable results in terms of the prison population and no discernable effect on the crime rate.

Julian Roberts, who was asked to review all the existing studies on this subject, concluded that, in the case of mandatory minimum sentences, in those countries where there are mandatory minimum sentences no positive or negative effect on the crime rate can be seen.

When the Minister of Justice appeared before the committee, he was unable to table any scientific evidence to contradict those words.

The bill provides that, for some 20 offences—of which the most serious are attempted murder, discharge of a firearm with intent, sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, kidnapping, hostage taking, robbery and extortion—where there is a minimum sentence of three years, a minimum sentence of five years should be imposed and that where a five-year minimum sentence is now provided, a sentence of seven years should be imposed.

Initially—and this was defeated in committee—there were even offences for which, in the case of a second offence, the minimum sentence could be up to 10 years. I emphasize that minimum sentences remove any kind of discretionary power a judge may have to consider the circumstances and evaluate the factors related to the incident. That is extremely prejudicial to the administration of justice.

Why should we not worry about a government that says it wants to get tough on criminals? Committing an offence with a firearm is certainly reprehensible, and we are not being complacent about that. We recognize that there may be cases where the judge will impose a 10 year sentence. There may even be cases, for example if there was an attempted murder or a homicide, where the sentence could be as much as 25 years. It is quite acceptable to have such sentences. But it is never acceptable to rely on an automatic process and to remove the judge's discretion in assessing the events which led to the offence.

Let us take a look at societies. If imprisonment through mandatory minimum sentences really were useful in making societies more secure, reliance on such penalties would necessarily have a visible positive effect. The United States would be a model society. The incarceration rate is 10 times higher in the United States than in Canada. Mandatory minimum sentences are used much more in the United States than in Canada. I have some statistics that show that following the American model with more imprisonment, for longer periods, is a bad strategy. Here are some of the statistics: three times more homicides are committed in the United States than in Canada. Fewer violent crimes are committed in Quebec than anywhere else in Canada.

Look at the Conservatives and their legal activism. They have introduced about 10 bills. When they are good, we support them. For example, we supported the bill on street racing. We supported the bill on DNA data banks. In the 1990s, it was the Bloc Québécois that applied pressure, especially my former colleague from Berthier, Mr. Justice Michel Bellehumeur, who was appointed to the bench because of his merits. Mr. Justice Michel Bellehumeur campaigned, with my support, to create a new law to deal with a new phenomenon: organized crime and criminal motorcycle gangs. There were 35 of them in Canada around 1995. I well remember the former justice minister Allan Rock—who became Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations but has been recalled since, if I am correctly informed—who was kind enough to let me meet some senior public servants. He attended the meeting as well. At the time, criminal biker gangs were fighting among themselves for control of the narcotics trade in our big cities, including Montreal. I well remember discussing this with senior public servants, who felt we could break up organized crime using just the existing conspiracy provisions in the Criminal Code.

I was convinced, as were Michel Bellehumeur and all the hon. Bloc members then, that a new offence was needed. At the Bloc’s initiative and thanks to its resolute leadership—the government and public service did not really see things this way at the time—some new offences were created, such as working on behalf of an organized gang. At the time, we had the three-fives theory: if five people committed five offences for a gang over the previous five years, they would be charged with a new offence established by Bill C-95. However, the police told us that this was not working and we had to go from five to three. This amendment was taken up by the government in Bill C-24.

All of this is to say that the Bloc Québécois is not soft on crime. When we need to clamp down and ensure that our toughest criminals are behind bars, we are ready to do so. We have always brought forward very positive proposals. In just a few days, the Bloc Québécois is going to announce its proposals for improving the criminal justice system. That is our responsibility as parliamentarians and as a party with seats in the House of Commons.

It is extremely contradictory—and I am sure this has not escaped my colleagues—to repeatedly introduce bills to toughen sentences and yet not attack the root of the problem, which is granting early parole to some offenders. We in the Bloc Québécois will have an opportunity to express our views on this in the near future. But I am certain that all my caucus colleagues would agree that the government should have tackled the parole system in January, when this Parliament began. That would have been a wiser course of action.

Moreover, a parliamentary committee had expressed concern about a number of provisions that could raise concerns among members of the public. My colleague Pierrette Venne was sitting on the committee at the time. Instead, the government chose an approach that implied that Canadian communities are safer when mandatory minimum sentences are in place, even though scientific literature does not support this view. Few witnesses aside from the police testified before the committee that our communities would be safer if we had mandatory minimum sentences.

I would like to quote an eminent criminologist, André Normandeau, who has researched and written extensively about the concept of neighbourhood or community policing, which has become a reality. I do not know whether community policing exists in English Canada, but it has become commonplace in Quebec. I will quote him directly so as not to be accused of misrepresenting what he said.

André Normandeau, a criminologist at the Université de Montréal, said:

Minimum sentencing encourages defence lawyers to negotiate plea bargains for their clients in exchange for charges that do not require minimum sentencing.

This shows the perverse effect of plea bargaining between defence lawyers and lawyers for the crown to drop charges that carry mandatory minimum sentences for charges that do not. Mr. Normandeau added:

Minimum sentencing can also force a judge to acquit an individual rather than be obliged to sentence that individual to a penalty the judge considers excessive under the circumstances, for cases in which an appropriate penalty would be a conditional sentence, community service or a few weeks in jail.

It was evidence like that that prompted all my predecessors, be it Richard Marceau, the former member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, or all my predecessors in the Bloc Québécois, to consistently say the same thing. My position in this matter is not original.

I am part of the long tradition in the Bloc Québécois. Every time we have mandatory minimum sentences and someone is trying to cut into judges' discretion to impose the sentence they consider appropriate, we think that it is not going to be in the interests of the administration of justice.

Some witnesses even took this line of reasoning farther, and gave us an example that much ink was spilled over at the time, and that got a lot of media coverage: the Latimer case. I do not know whether our colleagues will remember the Latimer case. He was a father in western Canada who helped his daughter to put an end to her horrific suffering. It was a case of assisted suicide. However, assisted suicide was not recognized as such by the court, and he was found guilty of homicide.

Consider what the witnesses told us in committee. To demonstrate the rigidity of mandatory minimum sentences, we can cite the case of Robert Latimer, the father who killed his severely disabled 12-year-old daughter. He killed her—and we have to remember this—out of compassion. This man was convicted of second-degree murder. In the Criminal Code, second-degree murder is an automatic sentence, so the judge was automatically forced to sentence him to 25 years in prison, when the jury—because this was a jury trial—wanted a much more lenient sentence.

These are some examples, and I know that if my colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin has an opportunity to speak today he will also point out flaws in Bill C-10 and the extremely pernicious and perverse nature of mandatory minimum sentences. This does not mean that we are lenient when we have to deal harshly with crimes that are committed with a firearm.

I said earlier that the Bloc Québécois would have been extremely happy if, when we began our examination, we had been able to discuss the entire question of parole. That is quite unfortunate. I do not know whether the expression "dishonest" is parliamentary, but I will use it. What is dishonest in the Conservatives' discourse is that it suggests, when we look at what is in their legislative arsenal and the nine bills that have been introduced, that we are living in a society where violence is getting worse, where crime rates are on the rise, a society that is therefore much more disturbing than the one we lived in 10, 15 or 20 years ago.

Statistics show a completely different reality. That does not mean that we must avoid imposing sentences or controlling some individuals. We can all easily understand that imprisonment is the appropriate solution in certain cases. That is obvious. However, let us look a little more closely at the statistics. In the recent past, from 1992 to 2004, the number of violent crimes has been decreasing in Canada. When I say violent crimes, I mean homicide, attempted murder, assault, sexual assault, kidnapping and robbery. There were 1,084 of those crimes per 100,000 inhabitants.

At the beginning of the period, there were 1,084 of those crimes per 100,000 inhabitants. In 2004, that number had fallen to 946 per 100,000 inhabitants. In fact, Quebec, with 725 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants is the place with the fewest violent crimes. The number of homicides also diminished. In short, in general terms, the Conservative logic does not stand statistical analysis.

In concluding, I will say that we are taking all crimes involving firearms very seriously. We remain convinced that the best way to counter such crime is obviously a public firearm registry with compulsory registration. We know that the present registry is consulted 6,500 times daily by police forces across Canada.

We do not believe in the reasoning behind mandatory minimum sentences and that is why we cannot support Bill C-10.

The House resumed from May 17 consideration of the motion that 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, be read the third time and passed.

Committees of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, the opposition is obstructing Parliament.

Let us look at the justice agenda: Bill C-10, the mandatory penalties for gun crimes bill, a very important part of the agenda, was held up for 252 days in committee by the opposition parties, particularly the Liberals and the Bloc members; Bill C-23, the amendments to the Criminal Code, was held up for 214 days at committee by the opposition parties; Bill C-22, the age of protection bill, 175 days; the DNA identification bill, 148 days; and the conditional sentencing bill, 139 days.

Criminal Code

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

It is with regret that I interrupt the hon. member for Scarborough—Guildwood, but it is 5:30 p.m.

The House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

When we return to the study of Bill C-10, there will be 10 minutes left for the hon. member for Scarborough—Guildwood.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is quite right. When Bill C-10 is considered in isolation, there are a number of other elements related to an effective criminal justice system which are not reflected in this bill. There are some other bills, and I mentioned about 10 or 11 other bills that have been presented by the government, some of which could have come together. There could have been a more comprehensive approach. The Liberals absolutely agree with that.

In response to the member's question, here is what a Liberal government would do. We would immediately convene a round table meeting of the federal, provincial and territorial ministers, together with representatives of key organizations representing the police to commence discussions on developing long term, sustainable, cost-sharing arrangements for additional police officers. This is the prevention side of it. In terms of early parole, conditional release, et cetera, these are areas of concern which still continue to be discussed by parliamentarians.

There is no question that we need to continue to re-evaluate things. There has been some success, but the system must be responsive. I would certainly suggest that in a balanced system in which there are appropriate elements of deterrence, of rehabilitation and of prevention, the kinds of issues that the member talks about, whether or not the public sees someone getting out earlier and maybe reoffending, there are reoffenders, but statistically, they are not the majority. By far they are the minority of cases.

Is there a balance to be achieved? Is there more work to be done? Absolutely. The criminal justice system, much like our Constitution, is going to be as dynamic as a growing tree. I expect there will be more discussions, and there should be more discussions, in this place on the propriety of sentencing and release and parole provisions.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to debate Bill C-10 at second reading before it went to committee. Question period today reminded me of the circumstances which existed at the time when the government House leader pointed out that it took some 220 days for Bill C-10 to be dealt with by the justice committee.

It is a perfect example of how in this place selectivity of the facts tend to paint a different picture unless all the facts are put on the table. Indeed, I can recall one member outlining in some glorious detail exactly what the facts were.

We know that at the time that Bill C-10 was referred to the Standing Committee on Justice there were 10 or 11 other bills already in committee for it to work on. I am not sure the public would fully appreciate the due diligence and kind of work that needs to be done by a standing committee when a piece of legislation comes forward, but many of these had to do with the Criminal Code. Some of them did not, but they were all part of the crime-related agenda that the government had spoken about.

The interesting thing is that when we talk about 220 days, it is not 220 sitting days of this place, it is 220 calendar days. I suspect any bill that gets introduced in mid-June is going to be languishing for about 100 calendar days but only because the House will not be in session. It is kind of disingenuous to describe things in terms of calendar days when it comes to Parliament.

There was a lot of criticism of the approach that the government made to the criminal justice bills. Instead of doing what has been done in the past, which is creating a so-called omnibus bill where a number of the areas that a government would like to propose amendments to the Criminal Code would be put together in one bill.

All of the witnesses that would be called for any one of those bills probably would be the same witnesses needed for the other bills and any others that might come along. They are representatives from the legal community, the justice department, stakeholder groups, advocacy groups, et cetera.

Members may not necessarily be lawyers. There are a number of members of Parliament who bring a lot of diversity to some of the committees. Being a lawyer on the justice committee is not necessarily the only prerequisite, so the committee must rely on expert testimony.

It was kind of interesting that the committee found itself bogged down in so much work with so many different bills that it had to deal with, virtually sequentially, simply because the continuity of the witnesses and testimony made it so. Even though Bill C-10 was sent to committee, it did not get dealt with for some time, that is true, but it was not because the committee did not want to deal with it or the opposition was being obstructive. It was because the committee was fully engaged in other legislation.

Members will know that the Standing Committee on Justice along with the finance committee are the two most active committees. They meet several hours each week and have very detailed discussions of important legislation and other related matters.

I wanted to point that out in case someone suggested there was any deliberate delay. As a matter of fact, members may recall that the official opposition made an offer to the government on a number of those bills, I have forgotten at this time whether it was 8 or 10 of them, to deal with them summarily and pass them so they could go through the system.

The government rejected that opportunity to get legislation through this place quickly, to make compromises, which is important in a minority government. There are very few bills that ultimately get through here that have not had the rigours of debate, negotiation and some compromise. That is the nature of a minority Parliament.

We do have Bill C-10 before us. There are some issues. I find it kind of interesting that, depending on where our motivation is, some will say that we need these mandatory minimums and we have to have them a little bit higher because we have to get tough on crime.

First, we have to understand, and Canadians will understand, that we are talking about minimums. That does not mean that someone who has, for instance, robbed a bank and had a gun but did not use it did not commit a serious crime. Committing a criminal offence while in possession of a firearm is a serious offence.

The issue here is that minimums are established, but that the judiciary, the judges, have the discretion to set the penalties to fit the crime. We are not talking about the maximums. We are not saying, “Let us get tough on crime”. So, Bill C-10 really does not fit with the explanation or the characterization of being tough on crime. It has to do with deterrents.

A balanced approach to the criminal justice system in any country around the world has three elements. First, there is prevention. In the bills that the government has brought forward, not one of those bills that I can recall is dedicated toward crime prevention.

The second element is deterrence. Deterrence does come from things like mandatory minimums, so that those who might contemplate committing a crime with a firearm, knowing that the offence may get them an automatic two year sentence in addition to whatever the judge may want them to have but it will be at least two years, that represents an element of deterrence.

What happens when we raise that from two to five or from two to seven or maybe two to ten? The expert testimony that came before parliamentarians was very clear. There comes a point at which the amount of time is irrelevant to someone who will be committing a crime, so the mandatory minimum, it does not matter how high it is, will not be a factor on whether or not they are going to do what they are going to do. That is why we have independence of the judiciary. That is why we have judicial discretion and on a case by case basis, the sentencing is dealt with by the court, by the jury, and by the judge to determine an appropriate sentence, given the circumstances of the case.

The final element in a balanced and responsible judicial system is rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is a very important part of our criminal justice system. People commit crimes and are sent to jail. If we did not have a program to promote rehabilitation, if we just put people away in a cell, slammed the door shut, slid the food through the door and that is where they stayed, we would basically be creating a situation where those people would come out of jail when their sentence was finished with a disposition that they would be very likely to be dangerous people in society.

The justice system does provide for every opportunity for rehabilitation for those who have committed crimes. That is important because once people come out, we want them to be able to resume their lives once they have served the time they had to serve.

Even within the system for good behaviour, the system provides for parole situations and early release. It is reflective of those who have shown the remorse for their crime or who have circumstances which would indicate they are not a further danger to society.

However, even under those circumstances, they also continue to have that sentence even though they may be on parole. If they violate any of their parole conditions, they will be immediately be back in jail. The sentence is the sentence. It depends on where one is serving it and in what form it is being served.

We have had some discussion about whether we have come to a point where mandatory minimums have escalated to an extent which brings into concern the issue of constitutionality. Earlier in a question, I advised the House about a note I had received about the supreme court of the United States. It recently found the determinant sentences for mandatory minimum penalties found in American federal sentencing guidelines to be unconstitutional and, therefore, deemed to be advisory only. I am also aware that about 25 states have eliminated the lengthy mandatory minimum sentences since 2003.

Why does the supreme court of the United States now have this problem? Why have a number of states backed off these very high mandatory minimum sentences? There must be a reason. They did not do it just because they thought it might be good thing to do. It is not a matter of handling it on a whim. It is handled on the basis of experience and evidence.

We know that the comparative penal systems between Canada and the United States are quite different. The penalty system within the United States is much more serious than it is in Canada. I think people's first intuition might be that if there are stiffer penalties and stiffer sentences, that will be good to reduce crime. It is not the case, and the United States compared to Canada is in fact the proof.

The sentencing is harsher in the United States, but the rate of criminal offences and incarceration of people is about 30% higher. However, that is not the only jurisdiction. There are others. The justice committee heard from expert witnesses to see what is going on. It had the benefit of this experience of tracking other jurisdictions and of what was happening in Canada.

People want to suggest that somehow Canada is a crime haven and things like that. Sometimes some very bad things happen in our country, but they plot on the graphs the incidents of criminal activity from a broad range. In general, the crime rate has been going steadily down over the last number of years. Canada is doing extremely well in addressing crime, but it is not through the penalties or the deterrents. It is what I talked about earlier. It is through the prevention measures.

I will divert a little to a related matter. It has to do with how to deal with those who are mentally ill, or an example as we debated on Monday, those who have fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. It is a subject matter that I have been working on as a member of Parliament for at least 12 years. The subject matter at the time was referred to as fetal alcohol syndrome or fetal alcohol effects.

I was a member of the health committee. I had studied and researched what the health committee had been doing before I became a member of Parliament. I came across a report called “Foetal Alcohol Syndrome: A Preventable Tragedy”. In brief, the consumption of alcohol during pregnancy causes brain damage to the fetus in a prenatal situation and that the child will be born with brain damage, with mental disabilities. Interestingly enough, if we look at the pattern, people who suffer from mental disabilities have a very high predisposition to run afoul of the criminal justice system.

This concerned me and I wanted to know more about it. I learned that because of the brain damage, people did not know the difference between right and wrong all the time. We can tell them a hundred times not to do something because it is wrong and they do anyway because they somehow think it is right.

I raise this because in our criminal justice system we have to deal with people who have, in some cases, mental disabilities. If a person has a mental disability and maybe had a gun when he or she robbed a bank, under certain circumstances in Bill C-10, this person could be put in jail with a mandatory minimum of say five years or maybe even seven year.

We have to ask if prevention, deterrence and rehabilitation are all elements of a responsible criminal justice system. How is it responsible to take people who suffer from a mental illness and who probably do not know the difference between right and wrong and put them away in jail, in a system which is based on delivering rehabilitation? In the case of someone who suffers from mental illness, rehabilitation is not applicable.

It is an interesting case, but I raise it because there are circumstances on a case by case basis where two identical crimes may get different sentences. Some may be lower, some may be higher. Why? Because there are sometimes mitigating circumstances, sometimes exacerbating circumstances. That is why we need judicial discretion. That is why we have the independence of the judiciary.

With regard to judicial appointments, I heard the Prime Minister say in this place that he would like to have judges who were more closely associated with his ideological thinking, people more attuned to the way he saw the world. Does this not attack judicial independence? Does this not affect our court system? It concerned me that the Prime Minister was prepared to say he would start shaping the courts just as is done in the United States. The President of the United States makes appointments to the supreme court because of a person's history on a certain side of an issue.

It is a pattern that we have seen time and time again, not only on justice bills, but on other legislation. Canada seems to be more driven by what is happening in republican America, what is happening with George Bush and how does George feel about these things. We seem to be following blindly.

Canada has a responsible system. The Liberals brought in 45 different instances where mandatory minimums were proscribed. There is no question that we support mandatory minimums, but there comes a point, and I believe that is the issue in this bill, where the escalation has gone so far that it brings into question the constitutionality of it and whether there will be a constitutional challenge here. If there is, Canada will not be the better for it.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member's speech and it was very typical of the Bloc. He was all over the place. He was talking about different types of crime and what the government is doing. What he does not realize is that today we are debating Bill C-10 and what we are talking about are offences involving firearms, in other words, people who pick up a gun and go into a store or somebody's home and have every intention of using it. The only reason people would pick up a gun is because they have the intention of using it.

This is not talking about jaywalking. He mentioned how it may be too harsh for a judge to put these people in jail. Maybe they need community work or a few weeks in prison. We are talking about serious criminals, criminals who would be willing to use a firearm to seriously injure or murder somebody and hopefully we would be able to catch them before that act occurred.

He stated that in the United States violent crime rates are up, but what he did not mention is that states that have minimum sentences, compared to states next door, have fewer violent crimes because criminals are smart. They know that if they commit a crime in the state that has the minimum sentence they are going to go to jail automatically, so hence the state next door has higher violent crime rates.

What does the member suggest we do with violent criminals who cannot be rehabilitated? Should we be hugging them, according to the Bloc member?

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, continuing on the subject of my question, the Bloc Québécois has opposed Bill C-10. In my previous question, I said that one of the aberrations of this bill is that the proposed increase does not apply to hunting rifles. This bill creates two classes of firearms. There are long guns, as they are called in English—hunting rifles—and then there are hand guns. Some clauses in the bill even refer to prohibited weapons.

This seems rather odd at the stage of defining offences in the Criminal Code. As legislators, normally it is our responsibility to establish the relative severity of each of these sentences.

In this bill, however, there are instances where minimal sentences will not be not the same, depending on whether the crime is committed with a long gun or a prohibited or restricted firearm.

Let us take the example of section 239 of the Criminal Code, which deals with discharging a firearm with intent, sexual assault with a weapon, aggravated sexual assault, kidnapping, hostage-taking, extortion and robbery. Bill C-10 proposes to impose a minimum five-year sentence for a first offence, seven years for a second, and to leave it at four years if another type of firearm is used, namely, a long gun.

If this bill is passed, the message it sends is that it is considered more serious to commit an offence such as attempted murder or sexual assault with a hand gun than with a long gun. This is, in my opinion, completely ridiculous and totally baseless.

That was what lay behind my question to my NDP colleague as to why the NDP were, as legislators, backing a bill in which committing a murder with a hunting rifle is less serious than committing a murder with a hand gun.

I think this illustrates the approach taken by the Conservative government and its view of how to fight crime, to which the NDP has subscribed for the last few months. Under this approach, they take care of repression after the crime has already been committed but do nothing about prevention. This is not the first time under this government that we have seen this dichotomy between how hand guns and long guns are treated.

We saw it as well with the firearms registry. It was the same thing. To look good, the government says it wants to keep the firearms registry, but just for handguns and restricted weapons. They want to abolish it for long guns. What does that mean? Where did the Conservatives get the idea that long guns were less dangerous than other guns?

Give me a couple of seconds here to find a very interesting statistic showing that a good proportion of crimes are committed with long guns. Unfortunately, I do not remember the exact figure, but it was not negligible.

The differing treatments depending on the type of firearm highlight the inconsistency in the message conveyed by the government and the NDP, which supports it. This inconsistency can be seen again in the supposed intent of the bill, where they say they want to be tough on crime and fight criminality.

As the minister himself admitted when he came to testify before the committee, there are no Canadian studies showing that minimum sentences are effective at fighting crime.

We could obviously debate it from the standpoint of vengeance or punishing people for having committed a crime. If that is the purpose of the government’s bill, it should clearly say so and not try to make people think that the purpose is to make Canadians safer, when that is clearly not the case. Minimum sentences only apply after the crime has been committed. All the studies show, though, that minimum sentences do not have any impact on the commission of crimes. Some other studies have been done in Canada. One very large study showed that the recidivism rate hardly changed on the basis of the length of incarceration or whether the offender was given a prison term or a community-based sentence.

This is very interesting because it shows once again that the sentences criminals receive has no influence on the recidivism rate. Another study followed up on offenders. These authors even concluded that quite the opposite was the case and that increased prison terms led to a slight increase in the recidivism rate. I will provide a reference for this study so that my Conservative colleagues can read it.

I am referring to a study done by Paula Smith, Claire Goggin and Paul Gendreau of the Psychology Department and the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies of the University of New Brunswick entitled The Effects of Prison Sentences and Intermediate Sanctions on Recidivism: General Effects and Individual Differences. The study was delivered in Ottawa in 2002, and was written for the Solicitor General of Canada. The government will have ready access to it. The conclusion that I quoted is on page ii of the introduction.

I wanted to talk about this to show, once again, that there is no connection with the length of time a prisoner is incarcerated and serving a community-based sentence or a prison sentence. As well, there are certainly no automatic deterrent effects.

There are other useful statistics in this regard and the Conservatives would do well to consider them: there are three times more homicides in the United States than in Canada and four times more homicides in the Untied States than in Quebec. In Quebec, in fact, an approach based much more on rehabilitation than punishment has been adopted, and this is the part of Canada where there are the fewest violent crimes and the least crime.

Apart from a particular kind of popular morality or the simplistic discourse that amounts to saying that we must punish criminals severely, that we must be hard on them and impose longer sentences, ultimately reality will catch up to us. Everywhere in the world where a jurisdiction has tried to fight crime with punishment, we see higher crime rates than in jurisdictions that place greater emphasis on rehabilitation.

Obviously a balance has to be struck, and in the Bloc Québécois we believe that punishment is necessary in many case. We must keep that balance, however, so that we do not have to invest extremely large amounts of money in keeping people in prison. I gave the example of the United States, where the homicide rate is much higher, and the prisons are bursting at the seams because the incarceration rate is much higher than ours. The United States is using that money to put all those people in prison for longer times, rather than investing in fighting crime.

Some of our government colleagues rose in the House earlier to give some examples. They asked me what sentence I would like to see given to the guilty person if I were the parent of a person who was killed.

Personally, I would prefer that that individual not have committed a crime. It seems to me that it is essential, and more important, to prevent crimes than to console ourselves by saying that the person who committed the crime will go to prison for a long time and will suffer, because he or she will not like it there. That does not cancel out the crime. That does not mean that the families who have had members killed, families in which women have been raped, families of people who have been terrorized by home invasions or the like, are going to be able to turn back the clock.

Minimum sentences raise another problem, and I think that this should prompt us to use them very sparingly.

Minimum sentences have perverse effects. This is documented, and is a known fact. I would like to talk about two of those effects.

First of all, there will be instances in which judges will be forced to impose a minimum sentence that they find unwarranted. In such cases, they might acquit an individual entirely, rather than be forced to sentence that individual to a penalty they consider excessive under the circumstances, for cases in which a more appropriate penalty would be a conditional sentence, community service or a few weeks in jail.

This has happened in the past, and this should be a real concern to those people who wish to get tough on criminals. By trying to force the hand of judges, we would be creating situations in which judges could not sentence certain individuals to a minimum sentence that would be inappropriate. They would therefore acquit the individual instead.

Another problem is likely to arise, André Normandeau, a criminologist at the Université de Montréal, reminded us. With minimum sentences, lawyers often negotiate plea bargains for their clients in exchange for charges that do not require minimum sentencing. This involves some negotiation and ultimately does not lead to an appropriate outcome.

This measure leaves judges with no flexibility and, in certain cases, could lead to situations that are questionable, to say the least, because, when passing legislation, we could not possibly take into consideration all parameters and every case that could make its way to court. Judges are appointed specifically to consider these cases.

I would like to highlight the example of Robert Latimer, the father who killed his 12-year-old daughter, who was severely disabled, in an act of compassionate homicide. This is a subject that concerns us considerably and that many people are talking about. Mr. Latimer was convicted of second degree murder, which automatically forced the judge to sentence him to 25 years in prison, even though the jury that convicted him asked for a much more lenient sentence, given that it was an act of compassionate homicide.

The judge did not even have this option, because, quite simply, the law did not allow it.

In a future case, a jury could be faced with the same dilemma and could go to the other extreme by saying that it makes no sense to send someone to prison for 25 years for a murder committed out of compassion and that, in that situation, it would acquit him completely. In the end, that is what happens when we meddle in the judicial process.

I was astonished, because so often we hear the Conservatives complaining of judicial activism, which is when the judges—those who are close by, at the Supreme Court—use the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, for example, to amend or to strike down laws and influence our judicial and legal system.

The Conservatives repeatedly complained about this state of affairs, whether in the case of same sex marriages, or abortion or other issues. After having said that it is not right for judges to get involved in politics, the Conservatives table a bill that does the opposite and where members of Parliament want to do the work of the judges. I am sorry but it seems to me that as legislators we should be concerned with the issue of the gravity of crimes, establish maximum penalties in the Criminal Code to put into perspective the relative gravity of crimes, compared one to another, and leave to the judges the task of evaluating each situation in detail and determining what sentence is the most appropriate.

Another important point should be emphasized, which is that there is a major issue of perception in this whole debate, with the explosion of the all-present media—especially a certain class of media—which puts out the news as performance. In fact, there really is a perception among the population that crime is increasing and that we are living in a society that is becoming more and more violent. It is unfortunate to see that government members, instead of doing the work of explaining the real facts to the population, will manipulate and use people’s fears to advance their right-wing cause.

In general, I would emphasize that between 1991 and 2000, the rate of crime went down by almost 26% in Canada. That is true in almost every area: the rate of crime is in constant and general decline. To claim that crime is a growing problem and that, therefore, we need tougher penalties does not in any way correspond to reality. The proof is that the place where the fewest violent crimes per 100,000 population are committed in Canada—I referred to this earlier—is Quebec. The government, therefore, should focus on getting results, take inspiration from the Quebec model of combating crime rather than that of the United States, which I spoke about previously and which has met with a resounding failure.

I would like to conclude by saying that there is a little hypocrisy in what the government is proposing. In order to fight crime it should fully reinstate the gun registry and free up all the grants for programs to combat crime in all of our ridings that the minister has blocked and that are languishing on his desk. That would be a real campaign against crime rather than the appearance of a campaign.