Bill C-2 (Historical)

Tackling Violent Crime Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Criminal Code by
(a) creating two new firearm offences and providing escalating mandatory sentences of imprisonment for serious firearm offences;
(b) strengthening the bail provisions for those accused of serious offences involving firearms and other regulated weapons;
(c) providing for more effective sentencing and monitoring of dangerous and high-risk offenders;
(d) introducing a new regime for the detection and investigation of drug impaired driving and strengthening the penalties for impaired driving; and
(e) raising the age of consent for sexual activity from 14 to 16 years.

Tackling Violent Crime Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I am, quite frankly, embarrassed about that award, in part because I think I am now expected to live up to it for the rest of the year until we have another one next year and someone else will take over responsibility for that.

I have two answers for my colleague from Hamilton. I practised law for 27 years and I practised a fair amount of criminal law at the start of my career, a lot of matrimonial law in the middle part and then personal injury law. Throughout my career I had clients who were charged and convicted so they were criminals. I had a lot of clients as well who were victims of crime, many clients who were victims of spousal and parental abuse. In my personal injury practice I had a number of clients who were assaulted or in other ways and suffered as victims of criminal conduct.

Throughout my entire career I can honestly say that I never had anyone say to me, “I am really happy this person is going to get 10 or 20 years in jail, if the alternative was that I wasn't a victim at all”. I never had a victim say to me, “I'm really more concerned about the penalty this person is going to suffer than I am about the impact it's had on me and my desire never to have been victimized”.

That thinking by victims of crime should give us some guidance.

With regard to the specific provisions of the reverse onus, there is another part of the bill that has a very good part. It is actually about 95% of the bill that we support. There are provisions for recognizance changes. We have needed those since I was practising criminal law back in the mid-seventies. We finally got around to doing it. It gives judges greater authority to control people when they are not incarcerated in an institution and it provides for significant additional protection to society. Therefore, that part of it is good and I think the member should feel comfortable in supporting the bill for that.

Ultimately, yes, on the reverse onus we will need to rely on the courts to strike it down.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my hon. colleague explain the delays and the interference from the government on its crime agenda. We know that the government members are sitting in the backroom cranking out their Gestetner machines to say how all members in this House are soft on crime unless they wear blue Conservative and how their 10 percenters will be rolling across our ridings saying that the members of the House are delaying action on crime.

However, what we have seen is that they were the ones who prorogued the House. They held up the business of Parliament for a month and when the bill on age of sexual consent came back, they did not revive it. It would have been law now. It is the same with the gun crime bill. It would be law now. We will most likely be in a situation where we could go to an election and nothing will be settled.

Most of us come here to Parliament in order to create good policy, to create a stronger fabric for our country, but we are seeing the petty partisanship of the government. Do the government members really want to have this solved or would they rather have the gaping wounds so that they can continually beat their chests, point to their base and say that no one else is tough enough on crime? I think there is actually a desire on their part not to have these issues dealt with so they can tell Canadians that nothing is being done. They can then tell Canadians to elect more Conservatives so that they can go back and obfuscate issues of crime even more.

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

Mr. Speaker, at some point the Conservatives will run out of sections of the Criminal Code to amend. Maybe they thought they were getting close to that and in order to slow the process down they thought they would bundle these all together. They probably thought there would be an election before the bill would pass and then they could go out and tell Canadians that they needed more seats because they need to get a majority government in order to get the bill through. Obviously, if it had gotten through before that, they would not have that argument.

I think there is some logic behind that. However, it is quite cynical logic and it does not bode well for the moral compass of the Conservative Party. Unfortunately, I think it is very close to reality.

[John Baird, Conservative, Minister of the Environment]

Mr. Speaker, I may, from time to time, not agree with the hon. member but I certainly have respect for his experience in this regard. He is a member who passionately believes what he says and I have nothing but respect for that.

I would like to underline for the member that the government would be more than thrilled to see the tackling violent crime act become law so we can protect vulnerable people. I represent the constituency of Ottawa West—Nepean where there are a lot of seniors who are concerned about this issue. I have friends who have been the victim of home invasions and whose families have been victimized. What they sent me here to do is to be their voice on this issue.

My comment for the member opposite is that the government would like nothing more than for the tackling violent crime act to become part of the Criminal Code.

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the minister's comment but the facts do not back him up. I appreciate the position he has taken. My house has been broken into three times. The last time, my daughter, who was in university at the time, was at home.

People do want their government to protect them. It is always an issue as to whether this does it. I have problems with some of the approaches the Conservatives have taken as to whether they would be effective. I would have been much happier, quite frankly, if the government had spent more time on making sure those 2,500 police officers that were promised in the last election were out on the street. Not one of them has been delivered up to this point.

The government says that it wants to go ahead with the bill but when it prorogued Parliament that legislation died in the Senate. We had to start all over again. Rather than bringing it back at the stage it was, the government brought it back and started all over again in this House. I think, to some degree, that puts into doubt the credibility of how serious the government is in wanting to get these bills passed and the laws into place soon.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the previous speaker for his speech and his understanding when it comes to dealing with crime and how to actually lower the crime rates.

I dare say that the scope of the bill is problematic. It troubles me, because instead of dealing with legislation one piece at a time, it puts a number of them together, some of which are good, but some of which are very offensive. Certainly that is not the way a minority Parliament should function, nor is it the way the Prime Minister when he was the leader of the official opposition said that a minority Parliament should function.

The member mentioned the study “Unlocking America”. I used to be involved with an organization called, Youth In Conflict With The Law. It was named after the proposed youth in conflict with the law act which ended up being the Young Offenders Act. I started working with that organization in 1976 after I left university. One of the focuses we had was to try to deal with offenders within the context of the community and to do as much as we could at the community level to create a safe and secure community. One of our mottos was that crime and justice is a community responsibility.

For all the reasons mentioned by the previous speaker and documented in “Unlocking America”, getting tough on crime does not work. In “Unlocking America” nine leading U.S. criminologists and sociologists who have spent their careers studying crime and punishment did an exhaustive study. They pointed out that the approach of getting tough on crime, building more jails and incarcerating more people, just does not work. It might make great television and it might make great news in the tabloids, but it is an approach that just does not work. It ends up being very expensive. Beyond being very expensive, it ends up being very destructive.

Bill C-2 is one bill, but another one which will be coming forward is Bill C-25 which deals with young offender legislation. I find it very frightening that under this particular bill, unfortunately, people who go into the system as young offenders can end up in the penitentiary system, not for committing a great deal of crime in the community, but for reasons such as committing a crime within the institution itself.

Numerous people came forward at the committee hearings on this bill. One of them was Dr. Anthony Doob, a criminologist from the University of Toronto, who very clearly showed that the perception of crime in many ways is driven by the media and by politicians who want to exploit the fear of crime and does not truly have that great a basis in reality.

In his studies, Dr. Doob asked the people in one control group for their reaction to headlines from tabloids. Dr. Doob gave another control group transcripts of the trial. Dr. Doob found that in cases where people had the information, they had read the transcripts and understood the judge's reasoning, they either agreed with the judicial sentence, or thought that the judicial sentence was too harsh. This was in total contrast to those in the group that received their reports on crime from the media, from the tabloids, or from television programs.

The media love to tell about the goriest crimes that have occurred in the local community, or in the country. But if there is nothing in Canada, then they will look to the United States, and if there is nothing there, then they will look to any continent on the planet for their special diet of criminal activity. These reports frighten people. Usually they hear these reports just before they go to bed at night.

It has often occurred to me that those folks and politicians who engage in that kind of fearmongering are victimizing a large number of people. People begin to believe that the relatively safe community they live in is much more dangerous than it is. That is not right. Parliamentarians and political parties should not be engaged in that kind of fearmongering.

Another individual who made a presentation was Kim Pate, who is with the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies. Unfortunately, Kim did not have enough time to talk at committee, but she did talk at length about the challenges faced by inmates who suffer from mental health problems in the federal institutions. She also talked about the over-representation of particular minority groups that are incarcerated. In Canada there is a disproportionate number of aboriginal people incarcerated. This raises some very troubling questions. Miss Pate also talked about the number of institutional charges that will be put on somebody entering the system, to the point that the individual, for whatever he or she has done in the institution, could be declared a dangerous offender.

Today I talked about Ashley Smith, a young woman who was due to be released from prison today. She was sentenced in New Brunswick as a young offender at the age of 15. She took her life on October 19 in an isolated jail cell at the Grand Valley federal institution in Kitchener following an extensive period of solitary confinement. Four correctional staff at Grand Valley were charged with criminal negligence causing death. One correctional staff member at the Saskatoon Regional Psychiatric Centre has also been charged with assault.

Ashley's tragic death has raised a number of troubling questions that must be answered. How did a young girl struggling with mental illness, incarcerated as a young offender, end up, through excessive institutional charges, in federal correctional facilities thousands of kilometres away from home? What can be done to improve the way we deal with offenders so that we minimize the recurrence of such tragedies? When will we learn as a society that it is more feasible to invest in community safety and crime prevention programs than to pursue draconian laws that incarcerate more and more people at the expense of public safety? I underline at the expense of public safety.

The “Unlocking America” report makes the point that over-charging, which has occurred in the United States, has done absolutely nothing to bring down the crime rate. It has done everything to destroy families and communities and to perpetuate discrimination. This has been going on much too long.

In talking about crime prevention, I will come back to my community, the Waterloo region. We have been working on community based crime prevention since 1978. Next year we will be hosting the 30th annual justice dinner. We will bring in speakers on how to improve public safety through social development in our community.

We are not the only community that says this is the way it should be done. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police talks about creating public safety and reducing crime, not through the hiring of more police officers, not through building more jails and not through hiring more jail guards, but through social development that addresses the root causes of crime.

In 1993, following on the excellent work of a Progressive Conservative government, the justice committee, with Mr. Horner as chair, produced what is known as the Horner report. The Horner report called upon the government to fight crime through social development.

My community took up that challenge at that time and we created the Waterloo region's Community Safety and Crime Prevention Council. The very first chair of that council was Larry Gravill, the chief of police.

The membership of the council includes all the social service organizations, local governments, non-governmental organizations involving criminal justice, the crown attorney's office and the police force. We worked collaboratively on how the community could address the root causes of crime.

Over the years many other folks have come forward to chair the council, be they from the school board, local government or the Children's Aid. The last chair we had for the committee was Matt Torigian, and he has been appointed and designated as the new police chief in Baden.

Surely that approach is much more preferable to the approach that is put forward in the bill, particularly on the mandatory minimums and the designation for dangerous offenders.

An interesting thing I did in my questionnaire was to ask whether we should have the traditional Conservative neo-con approach to fighting crime, or whether we should do it through social development. I am happy to say that two to one, the citizens in my community want to fight crime through social development.

I mentioned that the neo-cons like to put out wrong information and try to tell untruths. I will give an example. The member for Kitchener—Conestoga put out a householder where he said, and I will be quite willing to table it--

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

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, it has been a long tradition and part of the rules of this House that members do not speak in a derogatory fashion about other members, and the use of the individual's language with respect to our party is, because of the context in which it is used, derogatory.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask that you demand that he not use those offensive terms when speaking of our party.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

I thank the hon. member for Edmonton--Sherwood Park and I am sure that the hon. member for Kitchener--Waterloo will get back to the essence of the debate, and he will do it in a parliamentary fashion, as he is experienced to do.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am at the very essence of the debate. My point is people are putting out wrong information to serve political purposes that have no basis in fact.

I will table in the House a mailout by the hon. member for Kitchener—Conestoga. In it he says that the 2005 rate of violent youth crime increased by 22%, but in essence, youth crime in 2005 fell by 2%. This is the kind of fearmongering about which I am talking.

I said we end up victimizing a lot of people when untruths are spoken, when facts are misrepresented and when a community is portrayed as being more dangerous than it is. Waterloo region is a relatively safe community and its crime rates are relatively low. It is unconscionable that somebody would try to scare members of that community by putting out false information.

In wrapping up, if we want to create a more peaceful and secure community, the best way to do it is through prevention. Yes, there are some people who have to be locked up, and some for a long period of time, to protect the community. Make no mistake, the government is trying to make us as safe as people are in the United States, the most violent society in the western world. It has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

In putting this together as an omnibus bill, it is unfortunate that the government would put in parts of it that should not pass the House. Over time the Conservatives will be known for the neo-cons that they are and for exploiting people's fear of crime while doing nothing to address public safety.

[John Baird, Conservative, Minister of the Environment]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member's speech.

Could the member tell the House why he voted in favour of the bill if he thinks it is so terrible?

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to tell the member that I did not vote in favour of the bill. If the member had watched, he would have seen that.

The member opposite was a member of the Mike Harris hatchet job to social programs in the province of Ontario. Many of the crimes and gangs we see in the city of Toronto now exist because of his government in Ontario. When it was in office, it slashed the social programs, victimized communities and eliminated crime prevention programs.

If those members were really interested in public safety, they would heed the call of the police chiefs to keep the gun registry instead of trying to destroy it. The member has no lectures to give to anybody on crime prevention. The member, with Mike Harris, did more than anybody else to destroy it .

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Windsor—Tecumseh referred to a study called “Unlocking America”. The study shows that the net result in the United States is an expensive system that relies much too heavily on imprisonment, is increasingly ineffective and diverts large sums of taxpayer money from more effective crime control strategies.

According to the study, much of the burden has fallen on disadvantaged minorities. Blacks and Latinos make up 60% of the U.S. prison population. According to the report, 8% of American black men of working age are now behind bars. In effect, the report says, “The imprisonment binge created our own American apartheid”.

In Canada, although the first nations population makes up 3% of the population, 20% are incarcerated under the dangerous offender category.

If the bill goes through as it is, specifically the dangerous offender provision, in the opinion of the member will this increase incarceration rates for first nations people?

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, everything the member says about who is in jail in the United States is exactly correct, and it is in that report. It is really unfortunate the “Unlocking America” report was just released yesterday. I think the members of the justice committee would have really benefited from studying it.

He spoke about what would happen to the first nations. Ultimately, they will be the ones who will carry the brunt of the changes. I can only hope the Supreme Court, in its wisdom, will strike down the bill as unconstitutional.

Let me point out something else the neo-cons tried to do. They tried to disenfranchise inmates from the right to vote. Given the high prison population in the United States of America, what happens has a real bearing on the outcome of an election because many people are disenfranchised and unable to vote. Those are exactly the people who the neo-cons would have not go to the polls.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have a very curious question. The member proudly announced that he did not vote for the bill. That means he either voted against it or he abstained. He sat in his chair or he was not in the House at the time of the vote.

It is my understanding that most of the Liberals, including their leader, voted for it. Could the member please explain to us why the leader would lead his party to vote for a bill that according to him is unconstitutional and one which he could not support? He must be saying that his leader and his colleagues are all wrong.

Is that what the member is saying?

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first, I will answer for myself. I wanted to ensure that I could give the speech today in the House. The member will have to watch to see how I vote when the bill comes concludes at third reading and how I will vote on Bill C-25 as well.

I have spent too many years of my life working to try to create safer communities than to be in agreement with a bill that does so much to hurt communities, destroy young and older people and not make our communities safer.

Once again, if the Conservatives want to fight crime and really reduce it, listen to the chiefs of police and do it through social development. It comes from that.