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

[Myron Thompson, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I should be honoured because I felt that the entire speech was dedicated to the member for Wild Rose. Although I appreciate the member's speech and his opinion, I could not disagree with him more. I am encouraged more than ever to support these kinds of legislation and I will continue to do so.

The member constantly insists, as do other members, that poverty is the major cause of crime and that if we did not have poverty there would be no crimes.

I would like to remind the member that in all the crime statistics from the dirty thirties, the poorest time on the North American continent, that was when crime was the lowest in the history of the North American continent.

I will not say that poverty does not contribute to crime because it probably does. However, on my tour throughout the country visiting all the penitentiaries, when I asked the inmates how they ended up in prison, I would say that close to 70% to 75% of the inmates said that it was because they drank alcohol and got drunk a lot. They said that if it had not been for booze they would not be there.

Most of the guards and the wardens agreed that our prisons would be quite empty if it were not for booze. Evidently booze is a major cause of crime. What does the member suggest we do about that?

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

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to say to the member for Wild Rosethat I respect his opinion. I respect what he said because he is talking about real, everyday life. He is a worldly man and I know that he has been in this House since 1993. He is experienced. However, we do not have the same perspective and I respect that.

Yet, I would say to the hon. member that the best sentence—and I can speak about this out of experience—is the one that our client accepts and that he is willing to serve. I know that what I am saying is difficult to accept.

This is what I mean. When we tell a client that he has committed a crime while under the influence of alcohol, we explain that the judge has no choice but to impose a sentence. Let us take, for example, impaired driving causing bodily harm. Until the accused recognizes that he has a problem with alcohol, there is nothing we can do. We could put him away for centuries, but that will not solve the problem. He must come to the realization that he has a problem, he must accept it and take steps to deal with it. Then, rehabilitation can begin.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from the Bloc for his speech. I have a few points to raise.

We, the Liberals, intend to vote against Bill C-10 at third reading stage because we are against the escalating minimum sentences as proposed by the government, with the support of the NDP.

The Bloc sat in the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights throughout all the meetings for consideration at second reading stage, and the experts were all but unanimous that, generally speaking, minimum sentences are not effective. Nonetheless, under very specific circumstances, this could be acceptable, but escalating minimum sentences should never be implemented. Since 2003, some 25 U.S. states have experimented with this type of program and have cancelled it.

I am still rather stunned to see that the NDP, after hearing all these expert witnesses, has decided despite everything to form an alliance with the Conservatives—such a regressive party and government—and support this bill and the amendments the government reinstated at report stage. What does the hon. member think about that?

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

Mr. Speaker, I have a very simple answer. I can understand the Conservatives because this is part of their platform. I respect that. I am trying to get them to change their minds and to explain this to them. However, I cannot understand the NDP. The only explanation I can come up with is that they are quite simply playing politics. Often those who play politics do not ask too many questions. Nonetheless, I am utterly convinced that the NDP members will vote in favour of this bill even though they are fundamentally against it. I highly recommend to them that they call in sick and not come to the House because, with all due respect, I would have a hard time understanding the New Democrats thereafter.

I spoke to them. I did everything I could to make them understand that it does not make any sense to pass such a bill, unless they are getting ready to join the Conservative Party, which I doubt. Either that, or they are playing more politics. In a matter as important as fighting crime, we should avoid playing politics, which only serves a small group and will truly deny many people their rights.

That is all I can say. With all due respect to my NDP colleagues, I would invite them to reconsider their position. That being said, I understand the Conservatives. I tried to explain things to them at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights several times, but I did not succeed.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Mr. Speaker, during the member's speech, thankfully, because I have heard many members from his party speak to this issue, he at least mentioned victims. He talked about victims' impact statements and about victims being involved in this. He said that victims' statements should be part of sentencing, and that would be good, but that only a limited number of victims got involved in the victims' impact statement process.

I might suggest that the reason for that is the limited time they see the person who committed a crime against them getting. They may not want to be involved in sitting across the table with the person who victimized them so that the person could get out early and victimize them again.

He also said, in answer to the question asked by the member for Wild Rose, that the best sentence was the sentence that the client accepts. I love it that we are judging the sentences on how well the criminal likes them and that we should tailor the sentence to fit the individual. Again, we should set sentences based on what the perpetrator should say.

He went on to say that perhaps we should look at the parole system in closing off the end of it so that if people were not getting out early we could probably accomplish what we are trying to accomplish by putting them in for longer

I am not certain how opening or closing either end of this works but I will just quickly get to how we protect the victim. One of the greatest ways is to have the person incarcerated at the time when they might have committed the crime and then the crime would not occur at all. What we are suggesting by mandatory minimums is that people are actually in jail rather than out perpetrating crimes.

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

Mr. Speaker, there might have been a communication problem somewhere. I have a lot of respect for the interpreters, so it cannot have been a bad translation.

I will try to speak slowly. We respect the victims. Anyone who takes the time to listen to me will understand that.

Recently, victim impact statements were introduced. Victims can go to court to explain things in their own words. That is important.

I hope the members will listen carefully to all of what I have to say. I never said, and I will never say, that we have to impose a sentence at the request of a rapist, an individual who committed armed robbery or a murderer. With all due respect to my colleague, that is not what I said.

I am talking about a sentence that will be accepted by the individual. If I tell my client that he will get three years in jail, that that is to be his sentence, he will be prepared for a three-year sentence and will serve out those three years in jail. But if he gets a minimum sentence that he was not expecting, that is dangerous because basically, it means he is going to crime school—

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I am sorry to interrupt the member, but his time is up.

The hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to speak today in this House about 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.

This bill has been brought back to the House with significant changes after being reviewed by the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. But behind the scenes, an unholy alliance has developed between the reactionary minority Conservative government and the NDP. Together, these two parties put back a series of regressive provisions, ruining the good work of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. I think that the newly amended bill is simply not good legislation.

However, I am happy that this bill has shed some light on the debate on mandatory minimum penalties.

So I am proud to speak, and I invite my fellow members to follow the lead of the Liberals and vote against the bill as newly amended.

The bill the government initially introduced proposed heavier minimum sentences for repeat offences, despite the views expressed by experts on the fight against crime. In addition, the bill even went so far as to add offences unrelated to the crime in question to the previous convictions.

It is important to remind this House why the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights so substantially amended the initial bill. The opposition members on the committee were very reluctant to introduce escalating minimum sentences depending on the number of previous convictions.

In undertaking this tack, the committee members were simply agreeing with most of the expert evidence they heard. In the opinion of all the experts, and it is perhaps rather surprising, there is no proof that minimum terms of imprisonment deter offenders who commit serious crimes.

In certain cases, in California, for example, the method seems to have actually been counterproductive. The annual rate of serious crime has risen since this type of sentencing was introduced. This is the conclusion of the recent report by a commission set up to study the California correctional system.

In January 2005, the Little Hoover Commission submitted to the governor of California its report on what it called “California's corrections crisis”. The report highlights the major failure of the Californian “three strikes and you're out” system. It raises serious questions about the Californian model of sentencing, which there is called “determinate sentencing”. Here in Canada, it is called “minimum mandatory penalties”. In other words, its determinate sentence is the U.S. equivalent of the mandatory minimums that the Conservative government wishes to not implement, but to make even harsher and escalating here in Canada.

The report of the Little Hoover Commission of California is clear:

Despite the rhetoric, thirty years of “tough on crime” politics has not made the state safer. Quite the opposite...

California has one of the highest recidivism rates in the nation. Furthermore, Governor Schwarzenegger himself described the California prison system as a powder keg.

Is it not absurd that at the very moment that Americans are trying to fix their flawed system, Canada, under the Conservative minority retrograde government, is trying to copy the American's old and utterly proven to be inefficient model?

The American model of escalating minimum mandatory sentences is a failed model. Why in God's name, for heaven's sake, would Canadians want to follow a failed model? We want to follow models of excellence. The American model of determinate sentencing, and in particular escalating determinate sentencing, which is the equivalent of the Canadian mandatory minimum sentencing or penalties, is a failed model. In fact, since 2003, some 25 American states have eliminated their lengthy minimum mandatory penalties and their escalator penalties.

Criticisms of mandatory minimum sentencing are based on very sound arguments. It has more than its share of drawbacks. Often, and because of the excessively serious consequences it can have, what happens is charges are withdrawn or pleas are modified to get the charges changed and diminished. Equally often, the threat of a mandatory minimum sentence will discourage an accused person from pleading guilty, which obviously results in greater costs and delays for the system.

As well, this type of measure can also make a jury hesitate to convict, not because of the accused's actual guilt or innocence, because the sentence strikes the jury as being unjustly harsh, given the crime committed, given the accused, given the victim and given the real and proven impact on the victim and the community.

Also, it is known that mandatory minimum sentencing seems, as evidenced by the Australian and American experiences, to hit harder at members of certain ethnocultural communities, blacks and aboriginals. That certainly is not an outcome that Canada should be seeking.

Paradoxically, the increase in mandatory minimum sentences suggested in the newly amended bill would have cost Canada's justice system an exorbitant amount of money. Does this government realize that, by proposing to increase the number and length of minimum sentences and decrease the number of conditional sentences, it would have added a huge number of inmates to our already overcrowded penitentiaries, according to its own Minister of Public Safety?

According to Neil Boyd of Simon Fraser University, Canada would have to build no fewer than 23 new prisons to house all these new inmates. At $82,000 a year per inmate, the bill this government initially introduced would have cost Canadian taxpayers an additional $220 million to $245 million over five years.

In addition, this new obsession with sending people to prison systematically will obviously lead to other additional costs, because it is reasonable to assume that, with this attitude, appeals and lengthy trials will become increasingly common. Mandatory minimum sentences are therefore not the best way of dealing with crime in Canada. They restrict judges' discretionary power to look at the particular circumstances of a case. We should use mandatory minimum sentences very sparingly to target specific offences and, above all, we should limit them to first offences. That is what Bill C-82, introduced under the former Liberal government, sought to do.

The whole point of minimum sentencing is its effect on an individual committing a first offence, taking into consideration the impact on the victim of that offence and on the community where the offence took place. It is designed to take the person guilty of serious wrongdoing out of his or her community for awhile in order to prevent that person from committing other crimes, while at the same time ensuring the community is not put at risk again. In such cases, this kind of sentencing serves its purpose very well.

The problem with escalating minimum mandatory sentencing, proposed in the newly amended version of Bill C-10, was that they applied to repeat offenders. What was initially proposed would have forbidden judges, in the case of a recidivist, to tailor an appropriate sentence that took into account the criminal, himself or herself, the particular circumstances and nature of the new crime, the impact on the victim and the community and the background situation and the possibility of rehabilitation.

In the case of a repeat offence, a judge needs to be able to consider all these factors in order to determine an appropriate sentence. With escalating minimum sentences, this is impossible. With this bill, as it has been amended at report stage by the government with the collusion of the NDP, it will now be impossible.

The newly amended bill shows that the government wants to bring its so-called crime fighting strategy into line with the repressive approach favoured in the United States by the very right wing. The Conservative Party is proposing to emulate a model that does not work.

I might add that the NDP's support for this style of justice is baffling, at the very least. Once again the NDP is sacrificing its progressive roots for short term political gain and being the enabler of the right wing agenda of the Prime Minister.

Let us look at a few facts. The difference in rates of serious offences between our two countries is astonishing. For example, according to Statistics Canada, and that is not a left wing organization, the rates for robberies are 59% higher in the United States than in Canada. What about the rates for aggravated assault? They are 85% higher in the United States than in Canada. What about the murder rates? The murder rates are 275% higher south of our border than they are in Canada.

I am sure my hon. colleagues will be interested to learn that a Calgary resident is 840% less likely to be the victim of murder than a resident of Dallas. If we want to compare the degree of safety of our two capital cities, a resident of Washington, D.C. is 2,700% more likely than his or her Ottawa counterpart to be the victim of a serious crime.

I do not know where the government wants to lead us with its copycat, tough on crime strategy, but one thing is certain. These numbers show—

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine will have seven minutes at the end of question period, but now we will move on to statements by members.

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.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

Prior to oral questions, the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine had the floor. She has seven minutes for her remarks. She now has the floor to speak on this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to resume where I had to interrupt my remarks. The Liberal Party of Canada is not against minimum sentences. However, it considers that they do not represent the best way to combat crime in Canada. That is why we believed that Bill C-10, as amended in committee, constituted an excellent compromise because it dealt in a serious and coherent manner with major crime in Canada. As I have explained, this compromise was destroyed by the deplorable union of the Conservatives and NDP.

Without trivializing crime and the problem of access to weapons, the bill, newly amended by the Conservatives and the NDP, serves to establish and reinforce the neo-conservative ideology that is trying to impose itself in this House. It promotes increases in mandatory minimum sentences, so generously used but really only effective in very specific circumstances. It is important to mention that the Liberal Party in no way opposes minimum sentences but like a majority of the stakeholders in the criminal law community, it considers that they must be limited in use to already existing offences. They cannot constitute a new response to crime management.

Finally, I must remind members that the Liberal Party proposed a multitude of amendments designed to improve the original bill during discussion in committee. We tried the same thing at the report stage. Unfortunately, this government and its loyal allies in the NDP obstinately voted against my party’s initiatives on this issue. That is why the value of their joint bill is so diminished

I therefore invite my fellow members to reject Bill C-10 at third reading, in large part, because of the amendments adopted at the report stage.

“The fight against criminals won't be won with more police officers and bigger jails”. That is not only my view and that of my Liberal colleagues. It is a quote from Ben Anderson, spokesman for the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.

If front line witnesses of crimes, victims of crimes, our police in Canada, consider that crime needs to be tackled through social development in large part, maybe it is time for this government to show leadership in that direction. I suggest that effective justice is more than just a slogan.

I would like to talk about what a new 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 a long term, sustainable, cost-sharing arrangement for additional police officers. This is a step the Conservatives have refused to take despite their campaign promise to hire more police officers.

We, a new Liberal government, would give the RCMP money for 400 additional officers to help local police departments deal with guns and gang activity as well as organized crime and drug trafficking.

We would ensure that more money is made available to the provinces to hire more Crown prosecutors or Crown attorneys. We would continue to support, as we have done, the reverse onus bail hearings for those arrested for gun crimes.

We would establish a fund that would help at-risk communities cover the costs of security of their places of worship and other gathering places, whether it be schools, community centres, for instance, which was started by the previous Liberal government but which has been abandoned by the Conservatives.

We Liberals would strive to set up organized crime secretariats, like Ontario's anti-guns and gangs task force, in every province, ensuring that each of the provincial secretariats would be seamlessly integrated across the country, kind of like organized crime is. But the Conservative government does not seem to realize that.

A Liberal government would also strengthen legislation aimed at preventing Internet luring. While passage of the above-mentioned bill would assist law enforcement in tracking down predators who use new technologies, new offences are needed to address explicit online conversations initiated by adults with children that are intended to groom the child for future attempts at luring the child.

We would also act on the recommendations of the Privacy Commissioner to update and toughen current legislation to deter and prevent identity theft.

There were almost 8,000 reports of identity theft in the past year, resulting in losses greater than $16 million. Too often, the victims have been seniors whose lifetime of hard work and savings can vanish in an instant.

A new Liberal government would also amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, PIPEDA, to make it mandatory for organizations to notify people of data breaches involving their personal information. We would act immediately to implement all 22 recommendations made by the federal task force on spam, which have been completely ignored by that Conservative government.

These recommendations include: introducing legislation that would make it an offence to use false or misleading headers or subject lines, construct false or misleading URLs and websites for the purpose of collecting personal information under false pretenses, and the harvesting of email addresses without consent.

Those are just some of the initiatives that a new Liberal government has made a public commitment that it would implement immediately upon return to power.

However, I want to come back to Bill C-10. The Conservatives use retail politics when it comes to the fight on crime. They are not using effective measures that really would result in effective justice because were they doing so, they would be listening to the experts, and the experts, yes, include our law enforcement.

What does our law enforcement tell us, whether it be the Association of Canadian Chiefs of Police or the Canadian Police Association? They tell us one thing very clearly. They want the government to invest in our children and to invest more money in targeting our at-risk youth, and our communities, which are at risk of either being victims of crime or being perpetrators of crime.

One of the ways to do this is by actually investing in the organizations that deal with our youth in those communities where there is a high level of crime, where there is a high percentage of youth being swept up into street gangs or into organized crime. Investments, funding and opportunities need to be provided for the local law enforcement in the field to be able to work with those communities. We have seen it happen.

I urge every single member in this House to vote against Bill C-10 at third reading because it is not effective justice. It is simply sloganeering.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Mr. Speaker, if those are all the wonderful things that the Liberals would do if they formed government again, then my question is somewhat rhetorical. How come they did none of those things in the 13 years when they were government, most of the time a majority government where they could have done whatever they wanted? They did not do it.

I have one daughter, a daughter-in-law and five grandchildren. I am thinking of the following situation. Someone assaults or rapes either one of my adult female children or one of my grandchildren and that criminal has a gun and/or a knife. Let us say that when the perpetrator was found, it was discovered that this was not his first, not his second, but his third offence. I do not know the family situation of the member opposite. I have never investigated whether she has a daughter or not. If this were her daughter who was brutally attacked by an individual with a weapon who had three previous offences, I wonder what she would do in order to address the situation.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite said that if a new Liberal government were prepared to do all of these things, why did it not do it when it was in power? Let me talk about some of the things the previous Liberal government members did when we were in office.

The previous Liberal government brought in the national strategy on crime prevention, which directed moneys into local communities that needed to work with their youth at risk and to ensure better levels of security. They were able to coordinate with the local law enforcement, community police officers, the health organizations and the schools to bring down to the grassroots real effective programs to ensure we had lower crime rates. That is an example of what a previous Liberal government did.

The previous Liberal government brought into being the dangerous offenders system. It was not a Progressive Conservative government, it was the Liberal government. It was a Liberal government that brought into existence the long term offender system. It was a Liberal government that recognized minimum mandatory penalties in very targeted areas could send a clear message and could be effective in the sense of removing the offender from the community and ensuring that the victim and the community were not re-victimized.

We are the ones who brought in minimum mandatory penalties for firearm related criminal acts. It was not a Conservative government. It was not a Progressive Conservative government. It was a Liberal government that brought into effect integrated law enforcement teams. Whether it was for the border enforcement, or for financial money laundering, or for whatever, it was a Liberal government that brought those into effect.

It was a Liberal government that brought into effect all the new provisions, which are no longer new, to the Criminal Code to create the ability for law enforcement to seize drug money and to define a criminal organization and organized crime.

The Liberal government did all of that.

I believe the member opposite should go back to the school benches, learn the actual history and cease taking the rhetoric and sloganeering of his party, which has tried to paint Liberals as not being tough on crime. Tough on crime does not do it. The supreme court of the United States of America recently ruled that its determinant sentencing, under the American federal sentencing guidelines, what it calls mandatory minimum penalties, was unconstitutional and should be used as an advisory only. In other words, in the United States federal mandatory minimum sentencing is considered to be unconstitutional and should only be used as a guideline.

I am appalled that the Conservative government would want to take a failed model, which is the escalating minimum mandatory sentence system that existed in virtually all of the states in the United States and for which 25 of the states since 2003 have eliminated or severely reduced, and impose it here in Canada.

Effective justice is not sloganeering. Effective justice is not retail politics. Effective justice means taking the time to educate people. It means putting the taxpayer money where it will reduce crime. It is not pandering. The Conservative government panders and it conducts retail politics. It is not too lofty for the government to stoop to the most base accusations, disinformation, untruths in its quest to try to portray itself as being tough on crime.

Being tough on crime means taking the effective measures that will actually make a difference on the ground. We had expert after expert come before the justice committee, whether it was on Bill C-35, or other bills, which the government has lauded to try to make Canadians believe they will make them safer. The experts have said that they could not really oppose them because it would not make any difference.

The de facto reality is that it already happens. Whether it be reverse onus for bail for gun related crimes, it already happens. If one is accused of a criminal offence and a firearm is involved, judges do not give bail. Therefore, we would simply be codifying an actual de facto practice.

That is one of the reasons why the Liberals are able to support Bill C-35, but we are unable to support Bill C-10. It is not effective justice. It is retail politics, and shame on the NDP for supporting it.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine might like to know that the question lasted two minutes and the answer six minutes, so there are two minutes left. Let us hope the question will take about 45 seconds and so will the answer.

The hon. member for Mississauga South.