Bill C-15 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to provide for minimum penalties for serious drug offences, to increase the maximum penalty for cannabis (marihuana) production and to reschedule certain substances from Schedule III to that Act to Schedule I.
As well, it requires that a review of that Act be undertaken and a report submitted to Parliament.
The enactment also makes related and consequential amendments to other Acts.

[Professor Neil Boyd, Professor of Criminology, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual]

Good morning.

Let me begin by saying that gangs and organized crime have been with us for at least 150 years—alienated and disfranchised young men finding a common bond of lawlessness, using crime as a lever for the creation of material wealth. Recall Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York, a reasonably accurate depiction of gang violence in New York City in the late 1860s, and then fast-forward to the streets of Vancouver, where, some 140 years later, there was almost a shooting a day until about three weeks ago.

The late 1960s and early 1970s provided new opportunities for those involved in gangs and organized criminal activity. The drugs of the third world arrived on the doorstep of the first world. The new availability of global travel had brought North Americans into contact with cannabis and hashish in such places as India, Lebanon, and Thailand, cocaine in Colombia and Bolivia, and opium and heroin in Southeast Asia. Some intrepid travellers and entrepreneurs brought these third world drugs into North America and western Europe. Although marijuana, cocaine, and heroin have been illegal since the earlier 20th century, there was little traffic in Canada or the United States until the late 1960s and early 1970s—in fact, about 1,000 convictions per year annually from the 1920s until 1967 for all illegal drugs combined. By 1976 we had 40,000 criminal convictions annually, and these were just for simple possession of cannabis. Something quite dramatic occurred.

For the last 40 years, we have continued to use criminal prohibition as our primary response to distribution and possession of these drugs. Unfortunately, prohibition hands the responsibility for product quality and price over to organized crime, providing these people with lucrative and guaranteed profitability. It is entirely fair to say, given this backdrop, that our policies served to line the pockets of often thuggish drug dealers. It must also be said, however, that each legal or illegal drug is different, carrying its own risks and potential harms. The greatest irony of our current reality is that individuals are now being shot to death over the trade in cannabis but that it is almost impossible to die from consumption of the drug itself.

Ironically, we attach moral condemnation to the consumption and distribution of cannabis, but not to tobacco, a drug with a greater addictive potential, more negative health consequences, and unparalleled morbidity. There is a very real sense, then, in which we go through our lives with cultural blinders, unable to see the arguably bizarre social construction that previous generations have created for us. A good part of a more effective response to organized criminals would be to remove financially rewarding forms of commerce from their control, and cannabis would be a good place to begin if there were any political will to do so. I also recognize that this is a global problem that can really only be solved in a global context.

I might add that the fight against organized crime cannot simply be won by changing our approach to drugs that are currently illegal. There are some drugs—crack and crystal meth—that are difficult to see as commodities that are capable of any form of sensible regulation. And there remain many other potentially viable means of commerce for gangs and organized crime. Identity theft, fraud, human trafficking, and cyber crime are some of the more contemporary prominent possibilities. But definitely, we have to recognize that while the regulation of some currently illegal drugs might put a huge dent into the businesses that organized criminals conduct, that alone cannot solve the problems we face.

Now, this takes us to the present and the federal government's response to the violence of organized criminals, particularly the recent spate of killings in the city of Vancouver, most notably a new category of first degree murder for any killing by a gang member. But put yourself in the position of a gang member on the streets of Vancouver. He's already carrying a handgun and willing to use it on his adversaries. He's already willing to kill and to risk being killed. He's not at all involved in any consideration of the severe penalties for his crime already set out in the Criminal Code.

Bill C-14 will also provide much grist for lawyers and the legal profession. When is an individual properly classified in law as committing a killing in pursuit of a criminal association? What kind of foresight is required for conviction for such a first degree murder charge? These questions will almost certainly occupy the time of crown counsel, defence counsel, and the judiciary, and there is no evidence that this diminution of the role of criminal intent will provide us with greater social safety. This should be, after all, the goal of any action we take.

In this regard, I would urge not a focus on penalties but more efforts with long-term prevention, targeted resources for police involved in the investigation and disruption of organized crime, and as my colleague Robert Gordon will likely suggest, an integrated Lower Mainland police organization.

As the chair noted, what I'd really like to focus on this morning is not Bill C-14, but Bill C-15, an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

I'll begin by making the observation that most individuals arrested and convicted of trafficking offences are not individuals who control the supply of these drugs. In fact, they are, for the most part, low-level user-dealers selling enough to maintain their own habits.

As I'm sure you are aware, two of your own Department of Justice studies take issue with mandatory minimum terms for drug crimes. The commentary prepared for this bill notes this from a 2005 study: “There is some indication that minimum sentences are not an effective sentencing tool: that is, they constrain judicial discretion without offering any increased crime prevention benefits.”

The other study, from 2002, noted that the lack of deterrent effect flows from the barring of judicial discretion. Prosecutors and police are then forced to exercise this discretion, often choosing not to charge people with offences that would lead automatically to a prison term. Additionally, juries may choose to acquit individuals who face an automatic prison term when it seems excessive and unjust.

So what is the case to be made for the mandatory minimum? As the legislative summary prepared for Bill C-15 notes, it is one of denouncing certain egregious kinds of conduct and holding people responsible for such conduct, irrespective of the effectiveness of such legislation. We do that for homicide offences, and it's an entirely appropriate action that we take in doing so. But what of an individual who grows a single marijuana plant or two and shares the efforts of his gardening with his adult friends and neighbours? Do we need to denounce his conduct by placing him in jail for a minimum term of six months? This is what is mandated by Bill C-15 under clause 3 and its revisions to subsection 7(2) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Put simply, the bill does not make a distinction between the cultivation of marijuana and some of the egregious kinds of conduct that some marijuana growers engage in. The bill speaks to these egregious kinds of conduct: the creation of a public safety hazard, the theft of electricity, the exposure of children to toxic residues, the presence of firearms in a grow operation, and the setting of potentially lethal traps in and around the grow operation. While it does make sense to denounce these kinds of conduct, it is grossly disproportionate to denounce all forms of marijuana cultivation with minimum terms of imprisonment. The same points can of course be made with respect to the distribution of cannabis.

I'd also like to comment on Justice Minister Nicholson's recent statement regarding cannabis: “Marijuana is the currency that is used to bring other more serious drugs into the country.” Agreed, we should be concerned about those Canadians who export marijuana to the United States in exchange for cocaine, heroin, or handguns, but what of the tens of thousands of Canadians who grow the drug for themselves or other Canadians? Are they deserving of mandatory imprisonment for six months, particularly when their drug of choice has relatively insignificant health consequences in contrast to the much more lethal and actively promoted legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco?

Finally, let's consider the cost of mandatory minimum terms of imprisonment under Bill C-15. I will focus on marijuana cultivation, thus addressing only a small portion of the taxpayer dollars that will be required to fund passage of this new law, but we have very good data on this point.

An RCMP study in 2005 canvassed all found cases of marijuana cultivation in British Columbia from 1997 to 2003 and noted that there were 14,483 such cases in the province in that seven-year period, with a little over 500 individuals going to jail for an average of five months. The new legislation would urge at least six months in jail for an additional 14,000 British Columbians or, put differently, a further 2,000 British Columbians annually. The cost of this imprisonment would be approximately $57,000 per year for each provincial prisoner, a total of $114 million annually for marijuana cultivators in British Columbia alone.

In sum, Bill C-15 is poorly conceived legislation that is likely to cost a province like B.C. hundreds of millions of dollars annually in new jail cells. I'm not even actually calculating the cost of capital construction, but these jails will be built simply to house marijuana growers, among many others.

I can only hope that the Liberals, the NDP, and the Bloc Québécois will stand up and, if not willing to simply defeat the bill, at least pursue amendments that might stand the test of common sense.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

I call the meeting to order.

This is meeting 17 of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. Today is Thursday, April 30, 2009. Welcome to the members of the public and to the media present today.

As most of you know, some time ago the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights agreed to conduct a comprehensive review of organized crime. Initially, we had looked at doing this in four meetings, and of course we very quickly realized it was going to go well beyond that. We are prepared to spend the time to do it properly.

We have asked witnesses from across Canada to appear before us to help us provide some direction to government in terms of fighting organized crime and to perhaps also identify some of the underlying circumstances that lead people to become engaged in organized crime.

We have with us today quite a number of witnesses who certainly represent a broad range of views on the issues.

First of all, I want to recognize Dr. Neil Boyd, criminologist, and Dr. Robert Gordon, also a criminologist. We have Wai Young. We have Evelyn Humphreys, representing S.U.C.C.E.S.S. We have Michelle Miller, representing Resist Exploitation, Embrace Dignity. We also have two individuals representing the Unincorporated Deuteronomical Society, Mr. Robin Wroe and Chief Justice Bud the Oracle.

Because there has been such a demand on our time--the demand to appear as witnesses was oversubscribed, in a sense--and due to our limitations in terms of time, we are limiting your presentations today to five minutes per organization. I'm going to make one exception, and that is for Dr. Boyd, because he is also going to be asked to appear on Bill C-15.

Dr. Boyd, if you're able to, you can also address the issues arising out of Bill C-15 so that we have that for the record and can use it in our deliberations as we continue our review of that bill.

Each of you has five minutes to present, and that's per organization. There's going to be lots of time for you to get in additional information as you are asked questions by the members of this committee.

Again, thank you for appearing.

We will start with Dr. Boyd. You have 10 minutes.

Opposition Motion—Gun Control

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I am rising in this House, on behalf of the Liberal caucus, to support the motion tabled today by the hon. member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin. That member has a long and distinguished career in the area of public safety. He is one of those people here who really knows what must be done to improve public safety and, for example, to fight organized crime, as he did for so many years during his tenure at the Quebec National Assembly. Today, I salute him and I am telling him that the Liberal caucus will support his motion.

I also want to stress the important work done by many Canadians on the very complex issue of gun control. For example, Suzanne Laplante-Edwards, who is the mother of one of the victims of the tragedy at the École Polytechnique, has done a lot to promote gun control. She is in Ottawa today to remind parliamentarians of the importance of supporting measures that will help control guns and increase public safety, and also to remind us of past tragedies that show the importance of continuing to fight to improve all these measures, which are so critical to ensure public safety. Gun control and the gun registry are undoubtedly two initiatives that help us achieve these goals.

I want to be very clear. Liberals will be supporting this motion tabled by our colleague for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin. We believe gun control and the firearms registry are essential elements in the effort to improve public safety across Canada. However, Liberals also recognize that there are persons across the country and in rural communities such as the ones I represent who legitimately use firearms, non-prohibited weapons, for sporting purposes, hunting and target practice.

We recognize and respect that some Canadians have a legitimate need for firearms, but they must also recognize that the legitimate need to protect public safety and to follow the advice of Canada's front-line police officers and police chiefs across the country requires that all firearms need to be part of an effective firearms registry that serves as an essential element of the police officers' work to protect public safety.

In a question a few moments ago, I think my colleague for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine reminded the House of a very important document that was sent to our leader by the Canadian Police Association, a group that represents 57,000 front-line police officers. The elected president of this association wrote to the leader of the Liberal Party on April 7 and asked the Liberal Party to continue to support the firearms registry. He asked members of our party and members of Parliament in other parties to oppose Bill S-5, currently sitting in the Senate, and to oppose Bill C-301, a very irresponsible private member's bill that sits on the order paper of the House.

I want to quote from the letter from the Canadian Police Association, where the elected president said:

It would be irresponsible to suspend or abandon any element of [Canada's firearms program]

In 2008, police services used the firearms registry, on average, 9,400 times a day. They consulted the firearms registry over 3.4 million times last year alone. In that year, 2008, they conducted an inquiry of the firearms registry on over 2 million individuals and did over 900,000 address checks at the firearms registry.

Another organization that in our view is eminently qualified, more so than government members of Parliament, to speak on the issue of public safety is the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. In a letter sent to our leader on March 9, they also said they were asking members of Parliament to oppose Bill C-301 and to maintain the registration of all firearms.

That is precisely the thrust of the motion tabled today in this House. It is important to maintain the integrity of the gun registry and to end the amnesty which, in our opinion, has watered down the integrity of the registry, something which certainly does not help public safety.

The government across the way claims to be interested in public safety. Mr. Speaker, I am sure that you have often seen cabinet ministers and government members wanting to be photographed with police officers. These people make announcement on various bills, or on amendments to the Criminal Code. We often see police officers standing behind the minister announcing such changes to the Criminal Code.

It is obvious that Conservative members view the support of police officers as something symbolic, but also very important for their so-called improvements to the Criminal Code. However, when these same officers, through the duly elected officials representing their associations, ask them to put a stop to a policy which, in their opinion, is irresponsible and goes against the goal shared—I hope—by all members in this House, namely to improve public safety, government members do not agree with the people with whom they had their picture taken just weeks earlier.

There is no doubt, in our view, that extending the amnesty poses a threat to public safety. That is why we will oppose the idea of extending or renewing the amnesty.

If we think about the whole idea of an amnesty with respect to a Criminal Code provision, it is a rather bizarre way to make criminal law in the country. For a government to simply decide that it will suspend the application of a particular section of the Criminal Code or another criminal law is, to me, not a very courageous or legitimate way to make public law in Canada.

If the government had the courage to table a bill in this House that would do what so many government members in their speeches or in their questions and comments claim they want it to do, it knows very well that the bill would be defeated. What does the government do? It signs an order in council or a minister simply directs crown prosecutors that, for this or that reason, for a period of time they should not enforce the criminal legislation.

That is as irresponsible as deciding that the sections of the Criminal Code, for example, that apply to impaired driving would be suspended for two weeks around Christmas. It is the same sort of notion that the government can tell prosecutors or justice officials that we are going to provide an amnesty.

Earlier we heard members claiming that this was only so that firearms owners would come forward and voluntarily choose to register their firearms. If that were the original intention of the one year amnesty when it was announced almost three years ago, why was there a need to continually renew it? The reason the amnesty was renewed is because the Prime Minister has made it very clear that he does not support effective gun control in Canada and he wants to find a way to do what he cannot do legislatively in this House, which is to weaken the firearms registry that is so important for public safety.

The government's true agenda with respect to gun control and public safety is found in two measures. It is found in private member's Bill C-301. The government likes to say that it is a private member's bill but it is the first time I have seen the Prime Minister address a large gathering of persons in front of the media and urge members of Parliament to support a private member's bill, as the Prime Minister did in support of Bill C-301.

However, when the Prime Minister's office realized that it was an irresponsible and appalling piece of legislation, which, for example, as my colleagues have identified, would allow people to transport automatic weapons such as machine guns through neighbourhoods on their way to a target range, it then said that the government would not support the bill on the same day the Prime Minister publicly called upon members of Parliament to vote for it. However, as a way to sort of recoup the embarrassment, the government then presented in the other place Bill S-5.

It is pretty transparent why the government did that. It is because it does not have the courage to move legislation in this House of Commons that would weaken public safety and compromise the safety of police officers and Canadians by weakening gun control measures across the country.

The government likes to use this issue to try to drive a wedge between rural and urban Canada and has done so on many occasions.

I have been fortunate enough to be elected four times in a rural riding in New Brunswick. The largest town in my riding is probably Sackville, which has about 5,000 people. The rest of my riding consists of small towns or unincorporated areas that do not have a municipal government.

So I have been elected four times in a rural riding and I have visited hunting and fishing clubs there. Where I live, in the Grande-Digue area of New Brunswick, the local hunting and fishing club organizes a community lunch once a month on Sunday morning. I have gone to it many times.

It is not true that our position in favour of registering all firearms means we are against the legitimate use of hunting rifles in parts of the country where hunting is a common sport.

The Prime Minister tries to use this issue to divide people. I can assure the House that the Liberal Party fully respects the legitimate use of firearms, whether for sport or by people who simply collect guns. We also value the lives of the people who are responsible for ensuring the safety of Canadians all across the country, including in rural areas, and who want us to keep the firearms registry.

The idea that rural areas are safe from threats to public safety and tragedies involving guns is also not realistic. Just a few months ago in the town in Shediac, where I have my riding office, someone died as a result of a crime. Three people entered a house and killed a young man with a hunting rifle. Criminal charges were laid a few weeks ago and the case is now before the New Brunswick courts.

Public safety definitely matters to people in the town of Shediac, New Brunswick, on the banks of the Northumberland Strait, just as it interests people in such big Canadian cities as Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg or Montreal. We are all affected by measures to improve public safety, but it is in the interests of us all to preserve a balance between the legitimate use of firearms and the need to have a full and complete registry that is used more than 9,400 times a day by Canadian police officers who need to consult the registry for their own protection and to conduct criminal investigations.

The Liberals are interested and will always be interested in ways to improve the registration process for firearms. We acknowledge that over a number of years there have been some improvements but there can continue to be ways to make registration easier and simpler for those who legitimately have firearms that are not prohibited weapons for legitimate purposes.

To have an interest in seeing how we can improve the firearms registry for those who apply to have firearms registered is as legitimate as the desire to want to preserve the integrity of the firearms registry and not allow an amnesty, which is an irresponsible back door measure to do what the government does not have the courage to do legislatively, which is weaken the firearms registry across the country.

We spend a lot of time in the House talking about public safety and about ways improve criminal legislation. We have seen a number of examples where Liberals have worked with other parties in the House and the government to make amendments to the Criminal Code that will improve public safety.

Yesterday, the House passed Bill C-25 at second reading and it will now go before the justice committee. That was important because it would reduce the two for one remand credit which will improve public confidence in the justice system. We also supported Bills C-14 and C-15. Yesterday evening, I, along with my colleague who chairs the justice committee and committee members, passed Bill C-14 without amendment and it will be referred back to the House. That bill attacks some of the difficult problems of organized crime. It would the police increased ability to lay criminal charges to deal with some of the tragedies in some of the difficult situations that we have seen in places like Vancouver.

On this side of the House, the Liberals are very interested in working in ways that are responsible, balanced and recognize the importance of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms but we also recognize that the Criminal Code needs to be modernized and strengthened and to give police officers and prosecutors the tools they need to preserve and improve public safety.

One of those tools is a national system of gun control. Canadians across the country support the idea that there should be effective gun control measures in the country. Much to the chagrin of Conservative members, that includes, in the opinion of police officers and police chiefs, the registration of all firearms in Canada as an essential tool in the pursuit of improved public safety.

Our hon. colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin was right to introduce this motion and we intend to support it.

We will be supporting this motion when it comes before the House for a vote because we will not play the games that the Conservative Party wants to play in pretending that this is a great divide between rural and urban Canada.

I stand before the House, as a member elected in a rural riding, as living proof that the people in my riding support effective gun control measures and understand that when the police officers across the country say to us that this is one of many tools they need to improve public safety, we should be careful before acting in an irresponsible way that would diminish and reduce something that I think we all share as a desire to have safer communities, safer homes and safer streets all across the country.

[Randall Richmond, Deputy Chief Prosecutor of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions, Organized Crime Prosecutions Bureau, Department of Justice (Quebec)]

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the committee, thank you for having invited me to testify before you in the context of your study of Bill C-14.

I share your deep concern with regard to the fight against organized crime and the search for new means of combatting it.

Allow me to begin by stating clearly that I support Bill C-14 without reservation and that I hope that it will be passed without delay. This bill, though not revolutionary, adds a certain number of tools to our tool box to fight organized crime.

Decreeing that a murder is murder in the first degree when committed in connection with a criminal organization remedies what I always considered to be an oversight in the 1997 anti-gang legislation otherwise known as Bill C-95. Parliament had at that time stated that murder was murder in the first degree when it was committed in association with a criminal organization and involved the use of explosives, thus excluding other homicides committed in association with a criminal organization.

The 1997 provision was useless and was never used for two reasons. Firstly, if a murder is committed with explosives it is clear that premeditation was involved. Secondly, shortly after the death of young Daniel Desrochers in 1995, organized crime in Quebec practically abandoned the use of explosives there and turned to firearms.

It is a good thing that Bill C-14 will apply the rule to all homicides committed in connection with a criminal organization, whatever means are used.

The new Criminal Code section 231, proposed subsection (6.1), as proposed by Bill C-14, will turn an unused section of the Criminal Code into one with a much greater likelihood of real applications. Although many gangland murders are obviously planned and premeditated, others are not. A typical example we have seen on many occasions is this: two or more criminal organizations are present in a city or in a geographical area; the territory is divided up between organizations, each one controlling the rackets on its turf. Bars, taverns, and nightclubs are typically divided up between criminal organizations, and on their own turf they have a monopoly on the drug sales, prostitution, and other criminal activities. Occasionally, someone associated with, or perceived to be associated with, a particular organization shows up in the bar or nightclub controlled by another criminal organization. He is not welcome and is told to leave. He refuses, an argument breaks out and turns into a fight, someone pulls out a knife or a gun, and someone gets killed. No one planned for this to happen, so there is no premeditation. The normal charge would be second-degree murder.

But with the amendment proposed by Bill C-14, we could envisage a conviction for first-degree murder. We had a case just like this in Montreal where a completely innocent person was killed by a gang of thugs in a bar. It was a case of mistaken identity, because the victim in reality had no association at all with the opposing criminal gang, but his murder was nonetheless gang-related and gang-motivated.

As for the new offence of recklessly discharging a firearm, as proposed by Bill C-14, it fills the void presently existing between disturbing the peace by discharging a firearm, which is a summary conviction offence and therefore punishable by only six months maximum, or careless use of a firearm punishable by no more than two years, and discharging a firearm with intent to wound or endanger life, punishable by 14 years and a five-year minimum when committed with a handgun.

In the case of drive-by shootings, it can be very difficult to prove the specific intent to wound or endanger life. This can be even harder to prove if no one is hit by the bullets, yet the conduct is much more dangerous than simply disturbing the peace or carelessly firing bullets into the air. Drive-by shootings can and do kill people, including innocent bystanders. So the new offence of recklessly discharging a firearm as proposed by Bill C-14 would allow us to go for more significant sentences up to 14 years and with important minimums when committed with handguns or for a criminal organization.

The two new offences of assault against peace officers don't appear at first view to change anything, because the maximum sentences are no higher than those for similar assaults against any person. However, when viewed in conjunction with the new proposed section 718.02, one can see the significance of these new offences. Proposed section 718.02 will call upon courts to give primary consideration to denunciation and deterrence when sentencing for these offences. This should lead courts to give stiffer sentences and consequently this should lead to greater respect for peace officers. I believe this change is needed, for we're continuously reminded that there's increasingly a lack of respect for police officers and consequently their capacity to keep the peace is impaired.

The new proposed section 718.02 will also call upon courts to give primary consideration to denunciation and deterrence when sentencing for intimidation of justice system participants in general. This too should lead to greater respect for all those working in the interests of justice.

The amendments proposed by Bill C-14 for preventive peace bonds under section 810.01 are good ideas, in my opinion, but I have to admit that in Quebec we have never used this section of the code. That is probably because in our efforts to fight organized crime, we have concentrated our energy on gathering enough evidence to lay criminal charges and get criminal convictions. However, I do know that the organized crime recognizance is used in Ontario as part of their guns and gangs strategy, particularly for what they call “small fry”; in Quebec we call that le menu “frettin”. In Quebec we hope to start using these provisions in the future as a part of our own strategy against street gangs.

The Quebec Bar Association has expressed its opposition to a couple of the suggested conditions in the new legislation. The new legislation proposes certain specific conditions for the preventive peace bonds, and the Quebec Bar Association has expressed its opposition to those conditions, particularly the one involving participation in a treatment program and also the wearing of an electronic monitoring device.

Some lawyers say these are drastic measures for someone who is not even charged with, let alone convicted of, an offence. However, I believe that since these measures are at the discretion of the provincial court judge, we can trust our judges to use their discretion wisely and impose these conditions only where there are reasonable grounds to believe they are necessary, which will probably be quite rare.

So I support Bill C-14; however, I would like to point out that many of the legislative changes found in Bill C-14, as well as in Bill C-15, are dependent upon a determination by the court of the existence of a criminal organization. If you really want to give us a boost in our fight against organized crime, I would ask you to stop for a moment and consider why Parliament continues to treat criminal organizations so differently from terrorist organizations.

As of 2001, Parliament simply decreed that dozens of organizations set out in a list were terrorist organizations. Prosecutors don't have to prove that they are terrorist organizations; they are declared to be terrorist organizations by the Governor in Council. Most of these groups have never been convicted of terrorism in Canada. In fact, most of these groups do not even exist in Canada, let alone carry on terrorist activities here.

On the other hand, ever since the adoption of the first anti-gang act in 1997, Parliament has required that prosecutors prove that an organization is criminal in each and every case, even if it is the same organization. Consequently, each time we charge someone in the Hells Angels on anti-gang charges, we have to start from scratch and prove that the Hells Angels motorcycle club is a criminal organization.

In the past 12 years, there have been dozens of convictions establishing that the Hells Angels motorcycle club is a criminal organization. In Quebec, there were even full-patch members who admitted that they belonged to a criminal organization. On at least three occasions, courts in Ontario have decided that the Hells Angels motorcycle club is a criminal organization across Canada. These were decisions by the superior court of Ontario.

Yet courts in British Columbia, Ontario, and Manitoba have also decided that because of the present state of our law, those findings apply only to the particular accused in those particular cases. As prosecutors, we haven't complained, and we have gone about our duty diligently and successfully, but this constant requirement that we prove the same thing over and over again is monopolizing valuable resources that could be used elsewhere in the fight against organized crime.

Proving that a group is criminal organization is usually one of the most time-consuming parts of an organized crime prosecution. It can take literally months to make this evidence before the court. I'll give you some examples.

On March 28, 2001, in Quebec, police carried out a massive round-up of Hells Angels, called Operation Springtime 2001. There were 119 members and associates charged by the organized crime prosecutions bureau, in which I work, in three different files. Project Rush alone--which was part of these people being arrested--united 42 accused in one file, of which 36 were arrested, and 35 were denied bail.

A new courthouse had to be built just to allow a trial this big to take place. However, the justices of the superior court decided to break up the co-accused into smaller, more manageable groups. One trial involved 14 accused, lasted eight months before a jury, and heard 73 witnesses before a guilty plea was worked out.

A second group of 17 co-accused began another trial, which lasted three months before one jury and then had to start all over again before a new judge and jury when the first judge quit. The new trial lasted 13 months before a jury, saw 1,383 exhibits filed, and heard 151 witnesses. Some of the accused threw in the towel along the way and pleaded guilty. In the end, the jury rendered verdicts on the nine remaining accused and declared them all guilty.

The third trial, in English, united two accused, took three and a half months before a justice of the superior court, sitting without a jury, and also resulted in convictions. But in that case, it only took three and a half months because they admitted that Hells Angels was a criminal organization.

While the Hells Angels trials were getting under way, Montreal police were completing another investigation, called Amigos, which focused on the Bandidos Motorcycle Club. It culminated in another massive roundup that effectively put an end to the Bandidos club in Quebec. A trial was held for five of the accused in 2004. It lasted eight months before a jury; 68 witnesses were heard, and all of the accused were convicted.

Last week, we broke all our previous records when we charged 156 Hells Angels and their associates in one single file. This is considerably larger than in the spring of 2001. There will almost definitely be more than one trial, and each trial that is held will be very lengthy. We can predict this already. We will have to start all over again and prove that the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club is a criminal organization. Although we are confident of our capacity to be successful, the fact is that the longer the trial lasts, the greater the danger that something might go wrong along the way. For example, for the trial to abort, all you have to do is have somebody very important get sick. If the judge, the lead prosecutor, or more than two members of the jury get sick along the way and have to quit, it can cause the whole trial to abort, and you have to start all over again. The longer the trial, the more the chances that something will go wrong.

Consequently, I urge you to seriously consider legislation that will declare the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club to be a criminal organization once and for all.

Thank you for your attention.

Truth in Sentencing Act

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for St. Catharines.

It is a privilege for me to speak to Bill C-25, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (limiting credit for time spent in pre-sentencing custody).

As members may know, my riding of South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale has been directly affected by the shootings and gang war that has erupted in the Lower Mainland. My constituents are extremely concerned about the ongoing violence and complete disregard gang members have in our community. As the police have clearly indicated, much of this gang warfare is directly related to the drug trade. The guns being used are often smuggled across the border and purchased with the profits from the drug trade, or traded for drugs. Ensuring truth in sentencing, as Bill C-25 would help do, is an important step in ending British Columbia's gang war.

Every member of Parliament brings some experience in other professions and trades to his or her job here. Before I was elected, I served as an attorney for the B.C. legal services. I saw firsthand the impact drugs are having on our young people. I saw firsthand how many young people would turn to a life of crime to feed their drug habits and addictions. Drugs are often the gateway to crime for many career criminals. That is why I feel so strongly that we need to crack down on those who attempt to profit at the expense of our young people. Ensuring that drug pushers and gangsters serve a sentence that matches the seriousness of their crime is an important part of combatting the drug trade.

Upon taking office, our government committed itself to tackling crime and making our streets safer. Our commitment included preventing courts from giving extra credit for pretrial custody for persons denied bail because of their criminal record or for having violated bail.

Under the current system, courts typically take into account certain factors, such as overcrowding in remand centres, lack of rehabilitative programs commonly available in sentence custody, and the fact that time spent in remand does not count toward parole eligibility. This has resulted in courts traditionally awarding a two-for-one credit for time served in pretrial custody.

Now, on rare occasions, the credit awarded has been as high as three for one, especially where the conditions of detention were poor, for example, because of extreme crowding. Although also rare, credit has sometimes been less than two for one where offenders were unlikely to obtain early parole because of their criminal record or because of time spent in remand as a result of a breach of bail conditions.

The general practice of awarding generous credit for time spent in pre-sentencing has resulted in correctional authorities straining to cope with the growing number of people who are held in remand. In many cases, the population in remand centres now exceeds the population found in sentence custody in Canada's provincial and territorial jails.

Provincial attorneys general and correctional ministers have expressed concerns about the growing number of people being held in custody prior to sentencing. They strongly support limiting credit for time served as a way to help reduce the growing size of their remand population. Concerns have also been expressed that this practice has been abused by some accused who delay their trials and sentencing to earn double credit for the time spent in pretrial custody, thereby reducing their sentence.

Canadians have told us loud and clear that they would like to see more truth in sentencing.

I want to refer to a case that happened just last month in Toronto. A man convicted of manslaughter in the death of a nearly one-year-old baby found with 38 wounds was sentenced to six and a half years in prison. However, given that he has already served three years in pretrial detention since he was arrested for this killing, the two-for-one credit will guarantee that he is out on the streets within six months of his conviction.

One way of achieving truth in sentencing is to bring the practice of giving double time credit for pretrial custody to an end.

We are listening to the Canadian public in proposing this legislation. It would provide the courts with greater guidance in sentencing by limiting the amount of credit that courts may grant to convicted criminals for the time they served in custody prior to their sentencing. Bill C-25 would limit the credit ratio to two for one in all cases. However, where circumstances justify it, courts would be able to award a credit of up to one and a half days for every day spent in pre-sentencing custody. In such cases, the court would be required to provide an explanation for those circumstances. These circumstances are not defined in the bill. This is so the courts would have the discretion to consider on a case-by-case basis whether the credit to be awarded for the time spent in pre-sentencing custody should be more than one for one.

For example, we would expect a credit ratio of up to 1.5 to one would be considered where the conditions of detention and remand are extremely poor, or there is a complete absence of programming, or when the trial is unduly delayed by factors not attributable to the accused. However, where accused are remanded for having violated bail or because of their criminal record, the credit would be limited to one day for every day spent in pre-sentencing custody no matter what the remand conditions are.

As a result of this initiative, more offenders would now have a federal sentence of two years or more, and an increased number of offenders who would likely have been sentenced to a federal penitentiary would be spending longer time in federal custody. From a rehabilitation perspective, this time in the federal system would present the opportunity for longer term programming that may have a positive impact on the offender.

Bill C-25 also proposes to require courts to note the sentence that would have been imposed without the credit, the amount of credit awarded and the actual sentence imposed. This requirement would result in greater transparency and consistency and would improve public confidence in the administration of justice.

The proposed legislation is part of a series of criminal justice bills that has been introduced since we took office to help ensure the safety of Canadians. To make Canada safer, we have enacted legislation to get violent and dangerous criminals off our streets. We have cracked down on sexual predators, dangerous offenders and those who use guns to commit crimes. We have given the police more tools and resources to combat crime and to deal with those who drive while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

In the current session we have introduced Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (organized crime and protection of justice system participants), which will provide law enforcement officials and the justice system a better means to address organized crime related activities, in particular, gang members and drive-by shootings.

Bill C-15, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts, was introduced on February 27. It would provide for mandatory jail time for those who produce and sell illegal drugs. The reforms would, however, allow a drug treatment court to suspend a sentence while an addicted accused took an approved treatment program.

We have also introduced legislation in Bill S-4 to provide law enforcement officials with the tools they need to protect Canadian families and businesses from identity theft.

We will continue to introduce legislation to strengthen the justice system. Bill C-25 is an important contribution to this objective.

I appreciate the support of our provincial and territorial partners for this legislative amendment to provide greater truth in sentencing. I can only hope that we can also count on the support of the opposition parties, who have so often stood in the way of any bill that would actually reflect truth in sentencing.

I note the Liberal member for Vancouver South, who has been a loud critic of this government on law and order issues, recently criticized our approach to the issue of sentencing. In the Vancouver Sun on March 26 he is quoted as saying:

If they were genuinely concerned about public safety, they would have actually gone through the system, including corrections and parole board, and attempted to deal with the issue of organized crime. I believe they have not done their job in that regard.

I have three things to say in response to the member, who is a lawyer and a former attorney general of British Columbia.

First, we have introduced four separate bills in the past two months that will help police and prosecutors to crack down on organized crime, and gang and gun war is being waged in the Lower Mainland right now. Will he and his party support those bills?

Second, since forming government in 2006, we have continually introduced legislation to better achieve truth in sentencing. His party opposed these bills in the House and in the Senate. It was not until the Prime Minister threatened an election that the Liberals finally agreed to allow this measure to pass. Why did his party oppose truth in sentencing for so long?

Finally, let us remember that the member for Vancouver South was elected in 2004 and appointed to cabinet. He said that he is concerned about organized crime. He said that he is serious about stopping gun and gang violence. Why was the legislation we are debating today not passed while he was still in power?

I would call on the member and all parties in Parliament to put aside the partisan rhetoric and join us in supporting this common sense legislation.

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

moved that Bill C-25, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (limiting credit for time spent in pre-sentencing custody), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the government House leader for seconding this bill. It is very important legislation and is an important part of this government's agenda. We are opening debate on the truth in sentencing act. The amendments to the Criminal Code proposed in this bill will limit the credit that a court may grant a convicted criminal for time served in pre-sentence custody.

As some in the House may be aware, section 719(3) of the Criminal Code allows a court to take account of the time a convicted criminal has spent in pre-sentencing custody in determining the sentence to be imposed. The code does not set out any formula for calculating this credit, but the courts routinely give credit on a two-for-one basis. In many cases the courts give credit on a three-to-one basis. In other words, for every day a convicted offender has spent in remand, the court will deduct from the sentence it otherwise would impose, two or three days.

Explanations for the length of a sentence are usually provided in open court at the time of sentencing. However, judges are not required to explain the basis for their decision to award pre-sentence credit. As a result, they do not always do so and this deprives the public of information about the extent of the pre-sentence detention. It leaves people in the dark about why the detention should allow a convicted criminal to receive what is most often considered to be a discounted sentence. This creates the impression that offenders are getting more lenient sentences than they deserve.

There is a concern that the current practice of awarding generous credit for pre-sentence custody may be encouraging some of those accused to abuse the court process by deliberately choosing to stay in remand in the hope of getting a shorter term of imprisonment once they have been awarded credit for time served.

For ordinary Canadians, it is hard to understand how such sentences comply with the fundamental purposes of sentencing, which is to denounce unlawful conduct, deter the offender from committing other offences and protect society by keeping convicted criminals off the streets.

The practice of awarding generous credit erodes public confidence in the integrity of the justice system. It also undermines the commitment of the government to enhance the safety and security of Canadians by keeping violent or repeat offenders in custody for longer periods.

Those who defend the current practice note that credit for pre-sentence custody compensates for the fact that the time a convicted criminal has spent in remand does not count toward eligibility for full parole or statutory release.

At present, a prison inmate is eligible for full parole after one-third of the sentence has been served. If parole is not granted, that same inmate will likely be set free on statutory release at the two-thirds point in the sentence. What this means in practice is that if someone is released on full parole at the one-third point in the sentence, every day he or she has served in prison will have counted, in effect, for three days.

If parole is denied and at the same time a person is set free on statutory release at the two-thirds point in the sentence, every day he or she has served in prison will have counted, in effect, as a day and a half.

The current system of presumptive release that currently underpins Canada's approach to corrections has recently been the subject of an exhaustive review by an independent panel. This panel's report entitled “A Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety” was delivered by my colleague, the former minister of public safety, in October 2007.

Among other things, the independent review panel recommended that statutory release be entirely eliminated and that Canada move toward a system of earned parole. The goal is to encourage prison inmates to sincerely apply themselves to the rehabilitative programs available to them in prison.

The practice of awarding generous credit for pre-sentence custody cannot rest on the foundation of a statutory release and parole system that has itself been subject to strong and impartial criticism and that may therefore be significantly changed in the future. However, those who defend the current practice note that the generous credit for pre-sentencing custody is also designed to take into account such factors as overcrowding and lack of rehabilitative programming for inmates in remand centres.

I have received many letters and representations from concerned Canadians on the issue of pre-sentencing custody credit. All too often they cite situations where violent offenders are set free after having served a relatively short prison term because a court has awarded them two or three to one credit for pre-sentence custody. One writer commented that if one of the purposes of incarceration is to reform criminals, then the current practice of awarding two for one is a dismal failure. He writes:

The rationale is that the criminal has been deprived of the benefits of programs that would be made available to him in a regular penitentiary. So, in addition to releasing him back into society without these rehabilitating programs, we send him out twice as fast.

It is hard to disagree with that.

Not only does the current practice deprive offenders of the prison programs that might help to keep them out of jail in the future, it also fails to punish them adequately for the deeds that led to their convictions in the first place. This is especially the case of those offenders who have been denied bail and sent to a remand centre because of their past criminal records or because they have violated their bail conditions.

Bad behaviour should not be rewarded.

This government is on record as having pledged to address this issue, something that the bill would do. We have tabled Bill C-25 to strictly limit the amount of credit the courts may grant to convicted criminals for the time they have served in custody prior to their sentencing.

Our government is following through on its commitment to ensure that individuals found guilty of crimes serve a sentence that reflects the severity of those crimes.

This bill would accomplish a number of important objectives. It would deliver on our promise to provide truth in sentencing. It would help to unclog our court system and avoid costly delays and would do this by providing the courts with clear guidance and limits for granting credit for time served.

The Criminal Code amendments tabled on March 27 clearly stipulate that the general rule should be one day credit for each day served in pre-sentence custody. If circumstances justify it, credit may be given at a ratio of up to one and a half days for each day served. In such cases, however, the courts would be required to explain the circumstances that warrant departing from the general rule of one to one credit. This would allow the judge the discretion to award credit of up to one and half to one in appropriate cases. That being said, when it comes to offenders who have violated bail or who have been denied bail because of their criminal record, credit for time served would be strictly limited to a one to one ratio without exception.

I want to repeat that no extra credit would be granted under any circumstances for repeat offenders or those who have violated their bail conditions.

The proposed amendments would provide greater certainty and clarity in sentencing. It would require the courts to provide written justification for any credit granted beyond the one to one ratio. The courts would also be required to state in the record the amount of time spent in custody, the term of imprisonment that would be imposed before any credit is granted, the amount of time credited and the sentence imposed. Canadians would no longer be left wondering about how a particular sentence has been arrived at in a particular case.

Although sentencing issues are complex, they are issues of utmost importance to this government. We need to work closely with our provincial and territorial partners to deal with the many issues associated with sentencing reform.

Extra credit for time spent in pre-sentence custody is widely seen as one of several factors that have contributed to significant increases in the remand population in the last few years. This significant growth has put provincial and territorial institutions under considerable pressure.

Since 2007, more people have been held in provincial and territorial remand centres than were serving sentences in provincial and territorial jails. Overall, remanded accused now represent about 60% of admissions to provincial and territorial jails.

Several factors are at work that may contribute to the fact that the remand population is rising. Across Canada, court cases are becoming more complex due partly to the rise in the number of complex drug and organized crime related prosecutions. Many cases now involve 10 and 20 appearances before the courts. Longer processing times mean longer stays in remand.

For example, in 1994-95 about one-third of those in remand were being held for more than a week. Ten years later, however, those held for more than a week had grown to almost half of the remand population. This is a significant drain on resources at a time when the justice system is already under strain with an increasingly heavy workload.

Trials are becoming longer which also increases the amount of time an accused is remanded. All of this adds up to an increase in the remand population. The result is that offenders spend less time in sentenced custody because they spend too long in remand, which is why the provinces and territories welcome the reforms contained in Bill C-25.

Many of my colleagues and I stood with provincial attorneys general and solicitors general when our government announced the introduction of Bill C-25 on March 25. I was in British Columbia with the attorney general, Wally Oppal; the mayor of Surrey, Dianne Watts; the Vancouver police chief, Jim Chu; and other police representatives, including a member of the Canadian Police Association. This all took place at the Surrey remand centre. I was so pleased to be joined by a number of my colleagues who have been very supportive of this initiative and all of the initiatives that this government has taken to combat crime.

I hope I am not embarrassing him when I say that I was pleased to be there with the member for North Vancouver, and I thank him for his support. I thank the chairman of the justice committee, the member for Abbotsford, and one of the women who has been pushing this issue for quite some time, the member for Fleetwood—Port Kells. Mr. Speaker, you know of her commitment.

I was also pleased to be joined on that date by the member for Surrey North who has been very supportive of our criminal law agenda. Members will remember a number of occasions when she has posed questions to me during question period all related to getting tough on crime and sending out the right message. I thanked her on that day and I am pleased that she has joined with me again today. I know of her commitment in this area.

Since the day we made that announcement, we have had overwhelming support from attorneys general and solicitors general because they believe that Bill C-25 will help them cope with the growing number of accused who are awaiting sentencing while housed in their jails. They believe it will help them stem the tide of increased costs due to a growing demand, which is why the truth in sentencing bill is very important to them.

At a meeting of federal, provincial and territorial ministers held last September, my counterparts unanimously encouraged us to proceed with amendments similar to those seen in the truth and sentencing bill and they indicated that this was a top priority for them.

These are important reforms. Canadians have been waiting for a long time. Many say that offenders too often slip through the fingers of out justice system without serving adequate time. As a result, Canadians have been demanding change. They believe there must be more truth in sentencing and that the sentence one gets is the sentence one should serve. This approach set out in Bill C-25 would help restore the people's confidence in the criminal justice system. In the oft-repeated phrase, justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.

This approach is also more consistent with the situation found in other common-law countries where awarding a credit for pre-sentence custody is far less generous than in Canada. One concern expressed by some critics is that Bill C-25 is unfair because it does not adequately recognize the pre-sentence custody that often occurs in overcrowded institutions that lack opportunities for education and treatment. It is not our intention that accused persons be encouraged to remain in remand any longer than is absolutely necessary. Rather, it is our intention that accused persons proceed to trial with as little delay as possible and, if convicted and given a custodial sentence, that they may be sent to prisons that are not overcrowded and offer more opportunities for education and treatment.

In that regard, my department has been working closely with provinces, territories and members of the bench and the bar to identify practical and effective ways to improve the efficiency of the courts to ensure they are able to meet the challenges now confronting them.

The approach taken in the truth in sentencing bill should encourage good conduct by accused persons while on bail and should encourage them to seek an early trial where possible and where appropriate to enter an early guilty plea. Above all, it would lead to greater clarity across Canada regarding the relationship between the sentencing posed on an offender and the credit for pre-sentence custody.

These changes are long overdue but late is better than never. Time and time again, Canadians have said that they want a strong criminal justice system. They want us to move quickly and decisively to tackle violent crime.

Our government is committed to protecting Canada's citizens and making those streets safer. We will continue doing what Canadians expect and deserve and that is making laws that will keep our communities and streets safer. We promised to tackle crime and strengthen security when we formed the government and we have kept our word.

Since we took office, we have brought forward several key pieces of legislation, including the Tackling Violent Crime Act, which, among other things, signals an end to lenient penalties for those who commit serious or violent gun crimes. Our government has a long list of accomplishments in tackling crime over the last two years. We passed legislation to increase penalties for those convicted of street racing. We passed legislation that ends house arrest for serious personal injury and violent offences, including sexual assault.

As members know, we recently brought in reforms to address the problems of organized crime, Bill C-14, and introduced Bill C-15 to provide mandatory sentencing for serious drug offences. On March 31, we introduced in the Senate Bill S-4, the bill to protect Canadians against the rapidly increasing crime of identity theft.

We are proud of those changes. We are standing up for Canadians who have urged us to get tough on crime. Canadians across the country have told us that they want us to take action on crime and, with this legislation, we are delivering. We cannot do this job alone. I greatly appreciate the support I have received from my provincial and territorial counterparts but more is needed. I call on all members of the House of Commons and members of the Senate to expedite the passage of this bill, indeed all the bills that are part of our ambitious justice agenda. Canadians are watching this and this is what they expect. I hope all members will agree that this is what Canadians deserve.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Minister, and to your officials, for your appearance here today. I'd certainly like to congratulate you on not only Bill C-14, but also Bill C-15, and I think Bill C-25, which are the two-for-one provisions that were introduced last week. As you know, I'm a strong proponent of all of these measures.

I'll follow up on a question that my friend Mr. Comartin asked with respect to the recognizances. I'm certainly familiar, and it's certainly been my experience in domestic violence situations that peace bonds and recognizances have been quite successful in protecting victims. I was wondering if you might be able to illustrate some examples, anecdotal or otherwise, of how the proposed changes will provide better protection for the public.

Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Madam Speaker, we are debating Bill C-15 and I want to assure colleagues that it is my intention to wrap up my remarks before the end of the period for debate today.

As one member of the House, I am personally very disappointed in the recent evolution of the criminal sentencing policy as put forward by the government. Some of the policy changes have been harmless. I do not think they will be effective. Much of it has to do with posturing, pretense and political stage play that I do not think will bring about many results at all.

However, in terms of dealing with crime across the country, I am absolutely and totally a firm believer in strong and improved enforcement. Regrettably, for most of us in the House, the costs of enforcement measures are usually borne by the provinces and the municipalities It is really easy for us in the House to talk about getting tough on crime and better enforcement but we do not have to authorize the tax dollars to do it. We should always keep that in mind.

I know how much good work is done at the provincial and municipal levels not only in crime enforcement but also in prosecution, almost all of which is done at the provincial level by provincial prosecutors not by federal prosecutors. Therefore, it is easy for us to talk the talk here and there has been a lot of talking the talk.

In my home constituency, it is mostly represented by a police division called 42 Division. A few years ago, I know for some reason that I never really understood, although I think I understood it at the time, the area I represent had a bit of a reputation for having some kind of crime problem. There were some high profile incidents but, as a result of looking at the thing in the cool light of day and of excellent police enforcement, which focused on a gang problem, this particular 42 Division in Toronto now has the lowest crime rates in the city .

In terms of the list of Canadian cities and their crime rates, Toronto is number 19. Therefore, while crime is ever present, and it has been since the beginning of time, not just in this country, I think a lot of communities are making progress. Some have challenges but there is no point in mentioning particular communities and maligning them because every one of those communities has or should have the tools available to deal with those challenges of crime.

I have become quite dismayed here at the shameless posturing and pretense of members who shout and talk about being tough on crime and point their fingers. I saw a member today on the Conservative side stand in the House and point his finger aggressively at a member of the New Democratic Party as if she had done anything wrong.

Not one member in the House does not have constituents who have been victimized by crime. All of us have been victimized by crime and that will go on. Our challenge is to minimize it.

I want to give the House a test in relation to Bill C-15. How many members of the House actually know the current sentencing for the offences listed in Bill C-15? How many members know how many years one can get for these particular crimes? I have a loonie or a toonie if anyone does know. The fact is that almost none of us even know what the current sentencing is.

I am going to give the answer. Even before I get to the question of what the new proposed sentencing is, I am going to say what the current sentencing is.

That said, nobody in the House knows now what the sentence would be for a crime outlined in this bill. These are already crimes, but this bill just changes the sentencing. Knowing that nobody knows, how does the government think the average criminal out there would know what the sentence would be when the legislators do not even know?

The point is that ratcheting sentencing up and down does not make a difference on the street. The perception of the would-be criminal out there is binary in logic, binary in the sense that he or she is either going to get caught or not. The would-be criminal does not take a lot of time to do the sentencing mathematics. Why would he or she take the time when members in the House who are passing a bill dealing with sentencing do not even know what the current sentence is?

Now I am going to give the answer. Clause 1 of the bill deals with crimes in relation to trafficking and distribution of illegal drugs. Do we know what the sentence is now for conviction in regard to those? Already in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act the sentence is life in prison. The current sentence envelope is life in prison.

Do we know what big, tough move the government proposes in this bill? The big, tough-on-crime move is to say there will be a minimum sentence of one year. That is the big, tough move.

We have taken a sentence of life in prison, available to a judge in sentencing, and added in a one-year minimum. This is really going to have an impact on the street. All those would-be drug pushers out there are going to be shaking in their boots. The fact is they do not care about these laws. They would not be breaking laws in the first place if they did.

What does clause 2 of the bill do? What is the existing sentence for a crime under the section that is being amended by clause 2? There it is, life in prison. We already have a life in prison sentence. What has the government added in? It wants to add a minimum of one year.

I think I have made my point on that. I could go further.

However, I want to direct members' attention to proposed section 8 of the bill. It is a new section. Here is what it says. If a person is charged and convicted of any of these crimes for which life in prison is a potential sentence—we cannot go beyond that because we do not hang people anymore—essentially proposed section 8 requires the Attorney General to ask permission.

This provision is being proposed by a government that is pretending to be really tough, in a vacuum. The proposed section reads:

The court is not required to impose a minimum punishment unless it is satisfied that the offender, before entering a plea, was notified of the possible imposition of a minimum punishment for the offence in question and of the Attorney General’s intention to prove any factors in relation to the offence that would lead to the imposition of a minimum punishment.

The minimum sentence is one year.

When there is a life sentence available, the whole spectrum of imprisonment available for a conviction, how many of them will take the time to give the required notice and generate all the evidence necessary to address the factors in sentencing that would be necessary to impose the minimum sentence? Very few.

I would agree that there might be a case in the context of enforcement and prosecution where there was a particular offender with a long record, an offender clearly operating within the infrastructure of organized crime, that such a notice could, would or should be given.

The reason this provision is there is that, for better or for worse, there are Charter of Rights and Freedoms constraints on how we apply the criminal law and how we follow through on our due process. I am happy the provision is there. I am really not mocking it, but what I am suggesting is that in the face of this staged drama by the government that somehow there is a great war against crime and it is leading it with stupid sentencing, that somehow no one else in the House cares about it and no one else has a plan, I would love to hear a government member talk about the importance of proposed section 8 of the bill. It is an important section dealing with the application of the sentencing provisions.

Again, I do not think there is a criminal in this country or in the universe who will take one second of his or her busy criminal life to read and study proposed section 8, or clauses 1 or 2 of the bill, or any part of the Criminal Code. Criminals do not get around to reading anything until the day they call their lawyer after they have been busted. That is when they begin to do the sentence math or allow the lawyer to do it for them.

I want my remarks to be clear. I stand with everyone else on both sides of the House who wants to be effective and smart in dealing with and helping our communities to deal with the crime challenges. We realize that they do the enforcement, they do the prosecution and we do not. The big, bold government here knows full well that it does not spend a nickel on enforcement, on policing; it is the provinces and municipalities. They know it is a great drama, a staged political drama.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Madam Speaker, I agree with that. Given the evidence that we have, mainly from the experience of the United States but also from our own evidence, we know that the primary focus of this legislation on mandatory minimum sentences does not work. It does not address the issues that surround drug use, drug abuse and drug crime in Canada or in any of the places where this kind of approach was attempted.

In my speech, I mentioned the Fraser Institute based in Vancouver with its usually fairly Conservative approach to social issues in our country. It has spoken very clearly on the issue of drug prohibition and the kinds of approaches that have been taken similar to mandatory minimum sentences. When it released its report on this in 2001, the first line of the press release stated, “The war on drugs is lost and prohibition has been a complete failure”.

This was the conclusion the Fraser Institute came to as a result of its study. The press release goes on to state:

Canadian governments—federal and provincial—have seldom given serious thought to drug policy, preferring instead to follow whatever variation on failure is being proposed during the latest 'crisis.'

This thinking has only served to enrich organized crime, corrupt governments and law enforcement officials, spread diseases such as HIV, hinder health care, and feed into an ever-growing law enforcement and penal industry.

This was said by Fred McMahon, director of the Fraser Institute's social affairs centre. This is an organization that the Conservatives often look to for ideas and support for some of their plans. However, it has been very critical of drug prohibition and governments that pursue old ideas that have proven to be ineffective. The Fraser Institute went on to say:

Drug prohibition reflects our failure to learn from history; drug prohibition causes crime; drug prohibition corrupts police officers; drug prohibition violates civil liberties and individual rights; drug prohibition throws good money after bad; and drug prohibition weakens at times, even destroys families, neighbourhoods, and communities

Those are incredibly strong words coming from the Fraser Institute about the kinds of solutions that are being proposed in Bill C-15 that is before us today. We really need to come together as a society and learn from our history, from our own experiences and from the experiences of the people we know, care about and love. We need to learn from the experiences of other jurisdictions that this is the wrong way to continue.

We need to ensure we are brave as a nation. Sometimes people say that we cannot do that because the Americans are so invested in this war on drugs. There are opportunities to take a different path from the United States. I think our American friends have often shown that they respect us for our ideas and the solutions that we try to put forward as a society. They do not try to make us back away from ideas that we have and they often admire us for those attempts and the policies we put in place that are different from their own approaches.

The reality is that many jurisdictions in the United States and many Americans know that the war on drugs and drug prohibition has been a failure. We also cannot ignore that our continued support for drug prohibition causes problems in other countries. Many people have talked about the links to the kinds of drug wars that go on in countries like Mexico and South America. They do have links to our own domestic policies here in Canada where this whole drug prohibition regime makes it more difficult for those countries to find solutions that restore peace and harmony in their communities and in their country. We need to examine our complicity in those drug wars that are happening in other countries as well.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in this debate this afternoon on Bill C-15, which is an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

This is similar legislation to legislation that was introduced in the last Parliament, Bill C-26, and as we know, the early call of the election ended the life of that bill. It died on the order paper. If it were as crucial as Conservatives would have us believe, I wonder why we went to that early election. They had a mandate for four years, given their own legislation, but they chose to prorogue that Parliament and go to an election. We could have dealt with this already in Parliament.

This bill, and we have heard a lot about it today, really is about establishing mandatory minimum sentences for a whole range of drug crimes. That is one of the controversial aspects of this legislation. We have heard from many folks in the debate already about the problems associated with establishing mandatory minimum sentences.

We have heard the member for Halifax explain that having one marijuana plant could lead to a mandatory minimum sentence of six months in prison under this legislation. These are the kinds of things that this bill is establishing.

There has been some conversation this afternoon about the aspect of the bill that deals with date rape drugs, and I know that currently, under the Criminal Code, date rape drugs are already treated very seriously. Inducing or administering a stupefying substance to someone is a very serious criminal offence already under the Criminal Code of Canada.

That issue kind of misses the point about this legislation. This is really about establishing mandatory minimum sentences on a whole range of drug crimes.

We know very clearly, from the experiences primarily in the United States but even some of our own, that mandatory minimum sentences do not work. They do not work to reduce drug addiction. They do not work to make our communities safer.

We can look directly to Canadian government reports, to reports from our own justice department, that talk about the efficacy of mandatory minimum sentences. In 2002 the justice department concluded that mandatory minimum sentences were least effective when it comes to drug crimes. Despite that conclusion of the justice department, we have a bill here that is entirely concerned with mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes.

The report specifically said:

Mandatory minimum sentences do not appear to influence drug consumption or drug-related crime in any measurable way. A variety of research methods concludes that treatment-based approaches are more cost effective than lengthy prison terms. MMS are blunt instruments that fail to distinguish between low and high-level, as well as hardcore versus transient drug dealers.

That is from the 2002 report “Mandatory Minimum Penalties: Their Effects on Crime, Sentencing Disparities, and Justice System Expenditures”. That is advice from our own Department of Justice on the issue of mandatory minimum sentences, specifically when it comes to drug crimes. We need to pay attention to that advice.

We have seen what has been done in other jurisdictions, jurisdictions in the United States, some of which got very heavily into mandatory minimum sentences such as Michigan and California, and now they have backed away.

Michigan in particular had harsh anti-drug laws, most of them the harshest in the United States. They included quite a number of mandatory minimum sentences for almost all drug offences. In 2004 Michigan started to back away from that and repeal those provisions because it found it was not working. It was not solving the problems and it was creating other problems for that state. California has repealed mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug offences. In fact, it is also now considering regulating marijuana, moving in a completely different direction from mandatory minimum sentencing.

Delaware and Massachusetts are also reviewing legislation around mandatory minimum sentences because they too have noticed that these kinds of mandatory minimum sentence regimes have not helped those states deal with the social impacts of drug use and addictions. They have not helped with the criminal aspects of the problem either.

One thing contemplated in the legislation is drug courts, and we have concerns about them. One of the problems with drug courts is that coercive treatment or mandatory treatment is often ineffective. We cannot force somebody into treatment unless they have made that personal commitment to go through that process.

Sometimes in drug courts people will agree to a treatment program as a way of avoiding jail time. That is not exactly the most effective way of going into a treatment program. People have to be there because they want to get better. They want to deal with the health implications of their addiction. It is a very difficult issue with which to deal.

We want to be careful about drug courts. There is some value in courts that have particular expertise in dealing with drug and addiction issues and those kinds of things. We want to ensure that our courts have those specialized skills. However, we have to be careful when it comes to coercing or requiring treatment. We know that is not effective.

There is also concern for our court system, for the progress of issues through our court system, clogging our court system as we deal with more mandatory minimum sentences. I want to read a quote from retired British Columbia judge, Jerry Paradis, who is a spokesperson for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which is a group of law enforcement officers, some current, some retired, and some judicial and court officials who oppose drug prohibition regimes. Former Judge Paradis said:

Mandatory minimums are also a great motivator for trials, jamming up the courts. Unless a deal is struck, it is a sure bet that a charge carrying...minimum sentence will be fought tooth and nail.

We know that when people who are charged with a crime face a minimum sentence, they often want to go to trial. It reduces the number of options available to the legal system because people are facing a mandatory minimum sentence if they are convicted of that crime.

Most of our courts are in crisis. The delays are long and there is a growing concern about the course of justice in that system. We need to consider very carefully anything that further jams up our courts. There are concerns the legislation will do that as well.

We also have to be concerned about the population of our prison system. If we are talking mandatory minimum sentences, we will be putting more people in jail for longer periods of time. We have heard how half of the new mandatory minimum sentences in the legislation are two years or less, which means those who are convicted will serve time in provincial prisons. We have to wonder if the provinces are prepared for the increase in prison population, which the legislation may mean for their jurisdictions.

Getting people into prison has not always been shown as the best way of dealing with reducing crime in our society. Sometimes we have said that prisons are a great place to develop one's criminal network. It is not a great place for rehabilitation. We have to examine very carefully any legislation that will increase the population of our prisons.

A lot of the provisions, mandatory minimum sentences being on of them, are provisions that came out of the U.S.-led war on drugs. The criminal approach to dealing with addiction and drug crime has been shown to be a huge failure. As I have noted already, many jurisdictions in the United States continue to re-examine that.

We need, instead, an approach that deals with drug and addiction issues as a health issue. We need to ensure that people have available to them the medical attention and the treatment they need to deal with their addictions. If we put as many resources into that as we do into enforcement, we would see some very positive results for our society and for people who are our neighbours, friends and family members. We need to pay more attention to that.

We have heard how 73% of federal funding and funding related to the drug issue goes into enforcement work and much lower levels go into treatment, prevention and harm reduction. There is a very clear indication of the bias of the government when it comes to how to deal with issues related to drug use. I agree with others who have said that we need to turn those statistics around and ensure that we value each of those four pillars related to how to more appropriately deal with drugs and drug addiction in our society.

We need to fund the other pillars equally, as we do enforcement. The federal government has chosen to put all of its eggs in the enforcement basket and we have not seen effective returns on that expenditure.

Many people are questioning the drug prohibition regime that we are under. I want to quote from a letter that I found as I was researching this. It was written by the directing attorney of Prisoner Legal Services in the City and County of San Francisco's sheriff's office, a woman named Carol Ruth Silver. It is taken from her letter of resignation, which she tendered back on January 30 of this year. She stated:

—I have found myself having to bite my tongue in talking to some prisoners about their charges -- at least half of them with nonviolent drug charges. I find it difficult to discuss the financial or child custody problems of a prisoner, when I cannot look them in the eye and justify their being in jail. His or her incarceration is as a result of their own actions, but much more so as a result of a mistaken, unfair, and unjust set of laws which criminalize drugs in our society, based on the failed model of Prohibition of alcohol which we enacted and then repealed.

Each of such prisoners is in our jail only because of our bad politics of drug regulation. It is this set of policies which is the most direct cause of the continued excessive incarceration rates in the US.

This is an attorney working in the sheriff's office in a major United States city who could not continue in that position because of the problems that she had recognized stemmed from the regime of drug prohibition. She had to leave that position because she could no longer deal with the contradictions and the difficulties that placed her in as she tried to work in that office.

It is important to remember the history of alcohol prohibition. The United States went very seriously into alcohol prohibition back in the 1920s and 1930s and made it illegal, prohibited it, in exactly the same way that drugs are prohibited today in Canada. If we look at the history of what happened with alcohol prohibition, we will see not a close parallel but an exact parallel to what is happening in our society today with regard to drugs.

I want to give some examples that are in a report called “We Can Do It Again: Repealing Today's Failed Prohibition”, which is presented by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an organization of law enforcement and court officials who are working on ending drug prohibition, and the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation of the United States. They reviewed some of what happened under alcohol prohibition. If we go over these points, we will see the exact parallel to what is happening in our society today.

They note that sociologists who looked it in the United States noticed that alcohol became associated during the period of prohibition with a rebellious, adventurous lifestyle, which increased its desirability, especially among the young. A detrimental effect of prohibition was to increase alcohol's popularity.

They also note that alcohol, even though prohibition had been enacted, remained fully present in daily urban life and that in New York City before prohibition there were 15,000 saloons. Five years into prohibition, those saloons were replaced by as many as 32,000 underground speakeasies. There was a huge trend toward more alcohol consumption and a greater presence of alcohol in urban life after prohibition.

They further noted that when alcohol was prohibited, the alcohol that was available was in its most concentrated and potent form, a natural result of the costs involved in smuggling and concealing it.

They note that beer and wine were largely replaced by liquor in illegal speakeasies because of this trend. We have seen exactly that same trend with regard to drugs in our society. More potent drugs are more available now, directly as a result of these policies.

They note that under prohibition, providing liquor to meet the public demand required industrial scale production and distribution, and it was enormously profitable. The inevitable result was the creation of modern organized crime syndicates.

They also note that the Great Depression made things even worse as people looked for ways to replace lost income and lost jobs. They actually found employment with alcohol smugglers.

They note that under alcohol prohibition, the homicide rate reached unprecedented levels, as gangsters struggled for control of the very lucrative alcohol market by killing each other, police officers and any innocent citizen who stood in the way of their immense untaxed profits.

There could be no greater example or parallel than exactly what is happening in Vancouver today. I think 38 people have been shot as a result of the gang drug wars and approximately 17 people have been killed as a result of that.

The period of alcohol prohibition actually led to increased violence, increased organized crime activity and gang activity. We see exactly that same trend today.

They also note that public health suffered during the period of alcohol prohibition. In New York City, alone, there was a 525% increase in deaths related to alcoholism and alcohol poisonings during the first six years of prohibition because there was no oversight of the manufacture of alcohol. Bathtub gin, for instance, was often very dangerous and often blinded or killed people who imbibed. We have seen exactly the same thing with the bad drugs that are on our streets today during this period of drug prohibition.

They make the point that courts were clogged with alcohol prohibition related offences back during the period of alcohol prohibition in the United States. They also note that public respect for the rule of the law suffered greatly because the court process was slowed down and because there was such widespread disrespect for the law on alcohol prohibition. It had further ramifications about people's respect for the whole legal system. We have seen that in Canada as a result of our drug prohibition policies.

Finally, the report concludes that during the period of alcohol prohibition in the United States, vital services and programs had to be cut because, in addition to the expensive costs of prohibition enforcement, government budgets were deprived of tax revenue from alcohol sales, from alcohol industry workers' salaries, and the properties where alcohol was produced, stored and consumed.

Because the alcohol industry was underground, it was not taxed and it affected government revenues in a serious way, a way that would have assisted in dealing with some of the social problems that can normally be associated with alcohol. We see that today in our society with regard to drug prohibition issues.

Concerns about drug prohibition and ending drug prohibition are not way out there. The Fraser Institute, a fairly conservative think tank in Vancouver, back in 2001 called for an end to drug prohibition. It was said in very strong terms. It did not mince words about how inappropriate and costly this continued approach was to our society.

Also, the Health Officers' Council of British Columbia has called for a major social initiative around coming up with better drug regulation policies. We are not talking about removing all drug regulations. We know there still needs to be a regulatory regime in place, but an appropriate one. The health officers of British Columbia have also raised concerns about drug prohibition as a strict policy and have said that we need to face the health implications and get on with coming with a better regulatory regime in Canada. I do not believe the bill is a step in that direction, which is the way we should go.

I look forward to seeing our society fully engage in that kind of process in the very near future. The time when we should be working on these issues in a very serious way has passed.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Madam Speaker, before oral questions I was presenting proof to this House that drug use continues to rise in Canada. In 1994, 28% of Canadians reported to have used illicit drugs, but by 2004, the number was 45%, almost double. This is what happens when a government is not smart on crime.

I had the pleasure of visiting the Salvation Army's Booth Centre in Halifax last week. The Booth Centre offers addiction and rehabilitation services in both Halifax, Nova Scotia and Saint John, New Brunswick. The centre's services include group therapy, individual counselling and classes in life skills and relapse prevention. The centre includes a homeless shelter for men that offers hot meals and personal supports to the men.

Robert Lundrigan, the assistant executive director, gave me a tour of the centre. During our tour, I saw quite a few familiar faces. One familiar face was a man with whom I had worked to help find housing back at Dalhousie Legal Aid when I was working there. He had been referred to me by the Booth Centre. Since he was in the drug counselling program, he was looking to move out of the shelter and into affordable safe housing of his own. I was so pleased to see him. He was at the Booth Centre, not because he had not gotten through the program, not because he had relapsed, not because he had fallen off the wagon, but in fact he was there as a volunteer. He was clean and he was giving back to his community.

I joined Mr. Lundrigan for lunch with some of his colleagues at the centre. Over lunch, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Rick MacDonald. Rick had come through the rehabilitation program. He had been homeless and addicted. He was now clean and he was employed as an addictions counsellor himself, offering supports and strength to men who are currently in the situation that Rick had managed to get out of.

We talked about the work of the centre. I raised the fact that Bill C-15 would be debated in this hon. House. He was quite interested to hear about it. I started telling him about the changes to the minimum sentences and he cut me off and asked whether there was any money for treatment in this bill. I said no. He asked me whether there was money for supportive housing. I had to say no. He told me that it is not going to work, that they need treatment and housing, that they need supportive housing.

He told me about how he hits the streets as part of his job. He looks for men who are addicted and who are homeless hiding in the nooks and crannies of Halifax that we have forgotten about. He finds men living under bridges and in the bushes. He checks on them to see if they are okay and to see if they are ready to take the first step toward dealing with their addictions, which is getting housed and getting into treatment.

If the government were serious about its war on drugs, it would support us in our call for a national housing strategy.

My colleague from Vancouver East has introduced private member's Bill C-304, An Act to ensure secure, adequate, accessible and affordable housing for Canadians. It is due for second reading on April 2. This bill would legislate the government to develop a national housing strategy, one that would consider investments in not-for-profit housing, housing for the homeless, housing that is sustainable and environmental, and access to housing for those with different needs, including seniors and persons with disabilities. That includes supportive housing, supportive housing that Rick knows is vital to getting the men he works with off drugs and out of the cycle of crime and violence, and the jail they find themselves in.

If passed, Bill C-304 would tie together Canada's current patchwork of homelessness and housing initiatives and it would mandate the government to create a plan that is effective and comprehensive.

I talked about this housing bill at the Booth Centre. People there asked for a copy. They asked me if there was a petition about the bill. These people are staff at an addictions and rehabilitation centre and they are getting excited about a bill about housing because they understand what a positive impact a national housing strategy would have on the work that they do fighting against the stranglehold that drugs have on their friends.

Since my election to this hon. House last October, less than six months ago, I have seen time and time again examples like this, where the community gets the problem, the community gets the solutions, but the government gets neither.

The government thinks that throwing people in jail is the solution, that prison is going to fix everything, that this is great federal leadership, that it is tough on crime. However, it will be the provincial police forces, courts and legal aid and treatment centres that will bear the greatest burden of the cost for the initiatives under this bill. Craig Jones from the John Howard Society has said, “The feds will crack down on crime, but the provinces will be punished”.

With 12 of the 24 proposed mandatory sentences under a two year duration, it will be the provincial prison populations that continue to grow. HIV and AIDS advocates worry about the growing rate of infection in overcrowded prisons already. The B.C. Government and Service Employees' Union has spoken out publicly about this issue, saying that Canada's prisons are overcrowded and “boiling over with violence”.

The costs of this approach are remarkable. The annual average cost of incarcerating an individual male in Canada is about $74,000 at the minimum security level and over $110,000 at the maximum security level. That is $110,000 a year for each person who is scooped up by these mandatory minimums, yet we do not see any money in this bill that would go toward ensuring that people do not end up in jail in the first place.

This is not being smart on crime. It is smoke and mirrors. I feel it necessary to point out that in 2005 the Conservatives promised 1,000 additional RCMP and 2,500 additional municipal police officers, which they have failed to deliver.

If this bill is not smart on crime, what would that bill look like? How about this: an overall coordinated strategy focused on gangs and organized crime; an improved witness protection program; more resources for prosecution and enforcement; toughened proceeds of crime legislation; more officers on the street, as promised by the Conservatives but not yet delivered; and better and more prevention programs to divert youth at risk.

This approach is smart on crime and this is the approach the NDP is calling for. In 2002 the House Special Committee on the Non-Medical Use of Drugs, the Officer of the Auditor General and the Senate committee made a call for how to deal with the drug situation in Canada. Their recommendations were strengthened leadership, coordination and accountability with dedicated resources, enhanced data collection to set measurable objectives, and increased emphasis on prevention, treatment and rehabilitation. They all seem to get it. All of us seem to get it, except for the government.

In conclusion, Bill C-15 increases the already imbalanced and over-funded enforcement approach to drug use in Canada without reducing crime rates or drug use. It is an oversimplification of drug use in Canada and targets street-level users and small-time traffickers. It does not address the problems of violent or organized crime.

The Conservatives are taking Canada in the wrong direction. It is a direction that is expensive, has no effect on drug use and will only increase the prison population, creating a whole new set of problems with overpopulation, and health, safety and crime problems within the prison system.

Canada must have a balanced approach to drug use. The four pillar approach of prevention, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement has been successful in Europe and it is being adopted by big city mayors right here in Canada. That is what we call being smart on crime.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-15, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Controlled Drugs and Substance Act

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-15, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts.

Some of the proposals in the bill are minimum penalties for the production, possession, trafficking, importing and exporting of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and other drugs. It also moves amphetamines, all its 19 byproducts, and GHB and flunitrazepam, also known as the date rape drugs, from schedule 3 to schedule 1. Tougher penalties will be introduced for trafficking date rape drugs.

The maximum penalty for Canada's production would increase from seven years to fourteen years imprisonment. Mandatory sentences would be introduced for the production of even one marijuana plant, with a minimum sentence of six months. The legislation would impose six months imprisonment for any act of cultivation of cannabis, irrespective of issues of violence and gang involvement. These are some of the provisions in this bill.

Prior to my election, I worked at Dalhousie Legal Aid Service, a legal clinic in Halifax's north end. Dal Legal Aid is a teaching clinic where students, who are in their last year of law school, can come and spend four months with us, working on poverty law cases and developing their skills in a clinical law setting. The mandate of Dal Legal Aid is to provide legal assistance to low-income Nova Scotians, while also working with low-income Nova Scotians to help change the laws that oppress and penalize poor and marginalized Nova Scotians.

Our mandate was to deal with poverty. Inextricably enmeshed with poverty are the issues of race, gender, ability, sexual orientation and identity and age. My clients came to me for help with asserting their rights as tenants and asserting their rights under welfare and their entitlements. They came to me for assistance with their CPP disability applications and for help understanding the law generally.

To ensure that Halifax's most vulnerable people had access to their rights and an understanding of the law, the students and I would staff monthly clinics around the city, ensuring we had a presence at places like Direction 180, Halifax's low-threshold methadone clinic, Stepping Stone, an organization that supports workers in the sex trade, Metro Turning Point and Adsum House, Halifax's men's and women's shelters, as well as food banks and soup kitchens around the municipality.

Many of my clients used drugs and while I never counselled them legally or otherwise on their drug use, many of my clients would share with me the details of their lives as we built a relationship of trust. None of my clients used drugs because they got a thrill from breaking the law. None of them used drugs because they were bad people, criminals or people not worth caring about. All of them talked to me about stopping their drug use. None of them talked to me about getting off crack because the jail time for offences was on the rise. They talked to me about getting off crack because it was destroying their lives.

None of them talked to me about enrolling at Direction 180 because they had heard that Parliament may be rescheduling certain substances from schedule 3 to schedule 1. They wanted to enrol at Direction 180 to deal with their opiate addictions, rebuild their lives and re-establish contact with their children or families.

The Conservatives have manufactured a debate that tells Canadians that if we oppose this bill, then we oppose enforcement and think that drug users should run free, terrorizing children in their schoolyards and corrupting the very fabric of our society. The government has manufactured this debate to make itself look tough on crime and the opponents of this bill soft on crime.

The truth of the matter is that this bill would not do anything to solve the drug problem in Canada. The bill is not smart on crime. We need legislation that is based on best practices. We need legislation that will work.

A four-pillar approach has been developed and has been proven successful in cities in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe. It is based on the four pillars of prevention, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement. Each pillar is equally important and must be integrated and jointly implemented to be effective. This is what the best practices are telling us to do. This is the direction in which we must move. This is the approach that the NDP supports. The NDP is not soft on crime. We are smart on crime.

Mandatory minimums do not deter drug use. A 2002 Justice Department of Canada report concluded that mandatory minimum sentences, or MMS, were least effective in relation to drug offences. It stated:

MMS do not appear to influence drug consumption or drug-related crime in any measurable way. A variety of research methods concludes that treatment-based approaches are more cost effective than lengthy prison terms. MMS are blunt instruments that fail to distinguish between low and high-level, as well as hardcore versus transient drug dealers.

The supposed targets for these mandatory minimums, the kingpins, are in the best position to negotiate lighter sentences or no sentences at all. They have access to resources that enable them to challenge these sentences. Therefore, who gets scooped up by these provisions?

In June 2004, the American Bar Association's Justice Kennedy Commission called on Congress to repeal mandatory minimum sentences stating, “Mandatory minimum sentences tend to be tough on the wrong people”. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, MMS disproportionately targets visible minorities. According to the HIV/AIDS Legal Network, mandatory sentencing policies have produced record incarceration rates of non-violent drug users in the United States.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission also concluded that mandatory minimums failed to deter crime and reported that only 11% of federal drug defendants were high-level drug dealers, and 59% of crack defendants were street-level dealers, compared to 5% who were high-level crack dealers.

The bill is based on a deterrence theory of punishment for which there is no evidence. In their article called “Sentence Severity and Crime: Accepting the Null Hypothesis”, Anthony N. Doob and Cheryl Webster concluded that 25 years worth of research, sometimes in ideal conditions, had shown that there was no support for the idea that harsher sentences reduce crime. They also point out that:

Deterrence-based sentencing makes false promises to the community. As long as the public believes that crime can be deterred by legislatures or judges through harsh sentences, there is no need to consider other approaches to crime reduction.

In other words, adding a harsher sentence is pretending to do something instead of actually doing something. The bill makes a false promise, to use their words. This approach is not smart on crime.

While mandatory minimums do not work, we do know what does work, and that is the four pillars: prevention, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement. Each pillar is equally important and they must be integrated and jointly implemented to be effective.

Sadly, we are not following the four pillars approach in Canada. In fact, we are doing the opposite. Listen to these numbers. Canada spends 73% of its drug policy budget on enforcement, 14% on treatment, 2.6% on prevention and 2.6% on harm reduction. These pillars clearly are not integrated and jointly implemented. They are clearly not even being valued equally by the government. We have a government that is solely focused on enforcement, which is only one piece of the solution. As a result, drug use continues to rise.

In 1994, 28% of Canadians reported to have used illicit drugs, but by 2004, this number was 45%, almost double.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, today I will be speaking to an issue that is relevant to my riding of Etobicoke North and, indeed, to all Canadians, namely, substance abuse and crime.

I will be supporting this act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, part of a package of measures aimed at addressing gang violence as Canada has over 400 gangs with roughly 7,000 members and firearm related injuries annually costing $5.6 billion.

Moreover, gang violence threatens our Etobicoke North community. In 2005, Amon Beckles was shot while attending the Etobicoke funeral for his best friend, Jamal Hemmings. Shots were fired during the memorial service and some 300 mourners ran for cover. Nadia Beckles fled the church only to see the unthinkable; her son lying on the ground. Beckles cried, “I raised him for 18 years and someone just took him away”.

Beckles hopes and prays that the violence will stop and strong drug laws are part of what is needed to fight gang violence. However, so too are crime prevention initiatives which show for every dollar invested there is a four dollar return in reduced counselling and treatment costs, and proper funding of law enforcement agencies, areas where we are currently failing Canadians.

Strong drug laws are needed to fight elicit drugs which remain a significant problem in Toronto and, indeed, across Canada. Marijuana remains the most popular recreational drug among Toronto's students with some 23% of respondents indicating use in the past year. In contrast, only 15% of adults reported use.

At the national level, marijuana is also the most commonly used illegal drug with more than 10 million Canadians aged 15 or older having tried marijuana or hashish at least once.

In Ontario, 3% of grade 7 students try marijuana and, by the time they reach grade 12, nearly half have used the drug. In fact, about one in eight or 33,000 students use marijuana every day.

The consequences of illegal drugs are serious with health effects depending on the drug, the amount and method and frequency of use. Negative health effects range from digestive problems to potentially fatal diseases, such as HIV-AIDS and hepatitis C, and physiological dependence to brain damage.

Apart from the health impacts, illegal drugs generate direct costs to the health and criminal justice systems, as well as indirect costs through absenteeism, lost work productivity and lost human potential. These combined costs total about $1.4 billion annually.

Drug abuse also impacts users, their children, family members and sometimes entire neighbourhoods. Moreover, drug use is associated with crime, from simple possession to organized crime, to fighting for control of the drug trade, to serious addiction problems that may lead users to commit crimes for cash.

In 2000, Canadian police departments reported a total of almost 88,000 drug offences. Three-quarters of the offences involved marijuana, 68% of them possession. The number of police related incidents involving marijuana increased from roughly 47,000 in 1996 to 66,000 incidents in 2000.

Most governments make strong statements about the need to maintain and often increase police activity and penal sanctions for drug users. It is widely held that strong enforcement and widespread incarceration will deter potential users and dealers from becoming involved in the illegal drug market. In fact, very few countries actually follow through on these statements. Arrest and incarceration rates for drug users are relatively low in most countries in relation to the total number of users and maximum sentences are rarely used.

The one country that has used large scale incarceration as a drug prevention measure is the United States where approximately 500,000 drug law offenders are currently in prison.

Research shows that widespread confinement has failed to fundamentally alter the scale and nature of the illegal drug market, although some marginal impacts on drug prices and prevalence rates can be attributed to the policy. Moreover, there are significant financial health and social costs associated with high rates of incarceration.

I believe we need to carefully look at the evidence of what has and has not worked in the United States, as well as other jurisdictions. Perhaps important questions for the committee include whether we want mandatory minimums for drug related offences that would remove a judge's ability to apply discretion for mitigating circumstances, whether we want to want to turn Canadian correctional institutions and penitentiaries into U.S.-style inmate warehouses, whether we know that longer sentences will have the desired deterrent effect, or whether those given longer sentences are likely to go back to crime.

In order to reduce drugs, Canada has always implemented a national strategy that aims to strike a balance between reducing the black market supply of illegal drugs and reducing demand. The first component emphasizes the fight against drug crimes by the criminal justice system, while the second focuses on prevention and public awareness of the negative effects of drug use.

A strength of the bill is the drug treatment courts as part of the solution. These courts aim to stop drug abuse and related criminal activity through court-directed treatment and rehabilitation programs. Each court has a multi-disciplinary justice and health care systems team led by the judge who oversees each participant's progress. Compliance, which is objectively monitored by frequent substance abuse testing, is rewarded and non-compliance sanctioned.

Evaluations consistently show that drug treatment courts effectively reduce recidivism and underlying addiction problems of offenders. The courts provide closer comprehensive supervision and more frequent drug testing and monitoring during the program than other forms of community supervision.

It costs about $8,000 Canadian per year to provide substance abuse treatment to a Toronto drug treatment court participant and $45,000 to incarcerate the same individual for one year.

In the United States, only 16% of 17,000 drug court graduates nationwide had been re-arrested and charged with a felony offence. The U.S. reports a state taxpayer's return on the upfront investment on the drug courts is substantial. They are a more cost effective method of dealing with drug problems than either probation or prison.

In closing I want to draw attention to the fact that youth at risk of joining gangs tend to be from groups that suffer the greatest inequality, who are using drugs and who are already involved in serious crime. Our youth join gangs for belonging, prestige and protection and there is the correlation between gang presence in schools and the availability of both drugs and guns in institutions. Of a total of 900 male school drop-outs and young offenders, 15% report having brought a gun to school.

Bill C-15 addresses deterrence and punishment. When might we see legislation targeted at prevention? Public Safety Canada recommends targeted, integrated and evidence-based community solutions to reduce and prevent the proliferation of gangs, drugs and gun violence.

As we debate this bill, we need to remember Amon Beckles and all those who have been lost to violence, and honour Nadia Beckles' hopes and prayers.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be up first on this Friday morning to speak to Bill C-15, which deals with mandatory minimum sentencing for drug crimes and amends the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

This is a very important debate on the bill. It is one of the bills that the Conservative government, with the support of the Liberals, had wanted to rush through the House with no debate. We think the bill needs debate because it is really at a juncture where it is telling us what direction Canada will go in terms of its drug policy. From that point of view, it is a very significant bill and it deserves full public debate and input. I hope that will happen at committee as well. We need to hear from witnesses. It is very important that we be on the record in terms of our position around the bill.

I represent the riding of Vancouver East and, as many people know, it is a riding that has been hit very hard with the seriousness of drug issues. For a number of years, when I was first elected, the number of overdoses in the downtown eastside was the leading cause of death. It was horribly alarming. It was the number one public health issue where people were dying needlessly. These were preventable deaths from drug overdoses because of prohibition and because of the illegal drug market, the black market, where people were buying things on the street and they did not know what they were. The level of overdoses was just horrific, causing chaos, pain and suffering in the downtown eastside.

That still goes on today to some extent, but over the last 10 years, because of enormous efforts by the community and indeed right across Canada, particularly by drug users themselves who began to speak out about their own experience, the situation began to change.

It is very easy in our society to vilify and demonize drug users. It is very easy to label people as “criminals” and to label a drug user as a trafficker. In fact, under the law, even passing a joint to someone would be characterized as trafficking.

Not only were we trying to overcome the severe health and safety impacts in terms of drug use in the downtown eastside but also trying to deal with the terrible stigma and stereotyping that surrounds drug users.

The fact is that drug use exists at all levels of society. There are lawyers, professionals, engineers and all kinds of people who use drugs, whether medical or non-medical. If it is a prescription, that might be a substance use problem as well, whether a person gets it from a doctor or gets it on the street. It may be that a person is using drugs for recreational purposes, maybe marijuana.

It exists at all levels of society, but it is very much a class issue, because the enforcement regime that we have in this country, similar to the United States, is very much levelled at visible drug use on the street, basically people who are poor, people who are facing that stigma, and often people facing challenges of mental health.

In Vancouver, for example, with the deinstitutionalization of Riverview, people were literally sent out on the street with no support and ended up in the downtown eastside with very poor housing and no resources. People, in effect, started self-medicating and suddenly found themselves in this terrible environment of being “criminal”, and being harassed and chased by police and maybe arrested.

It is very much an issue that pertains to the poorest in our society who are involved in drug use and the enforcement, primarily in this country, as in the United States, has been levelled at those people.

About 73% of federal dollars on drug policy in Canada go toward enforcement. Only 2.6% goes to prevention, only 2.6% goes to harm reduction and about 14% to treatment. That is a very uneven balance.

For example, when the Auditor General audited drug policy in this country a few years ago, she remarked upon this and posed some questions: What was the impact? What was the value? What were we getting for such a high emphasis on an enforcement and interdiction regime when drug use was actually going up in Canada?

It might interest people to know that in 1994, 28% of Canadians reported having used illicit drugs, but by 2004 that number was at 45%. Certainly, the policies we have had that have been so focused on the criminal regime and the criminalization of drug users have been completely ineffective. We only have to look south of the border, where the so-called war on drugs has unleashed billions and billions of dollars. We see massive numbers of people incarcerated indicating what a failure it is.

I was very interested to read in the paper yesterday Hillary Clinton talking about how the war on drugs in Mexico has been a failure. It is first time the U.S. administration has talked about this. There was a headline saying that it failed. This has been the wrong approach. We are hoping very much that with the new administration in the U.S. things will begin to change. I wanted to give that backdrop.

Bill C-15 was brought in, in an earlier Parliament, as Bill C-26 and died on the order paper. It does raise the question of how urgent this was for the Conservatives when they brought it in so late and just let it go because they wanted to have an election. However, Bill C-15 is completely focused around the premise that mandatory minimum sentencing is going to work for drug crimes. That is what the bill is about. It is not a bill about broader enforcement regimes. It is about mandatory minimum sentencing. It does pose the question and I believe we have a responsibility to answer this question as to whether or not the evidence shows that mandatory minimum sentencing will actually be an effective tool.

I have done a fair amount of research on this as the drug policy critic for our party. Because of my involvement in Vancouver East and the downtown eastside, I have to say I have become very involved in this issue. I have worked very closely with drug users and I have learned a lot from what this experience is about, what happens to people under the current regime, and what it is that we need to change.

I am deeply concerned that the government is embarking on a very significant departure. Canada did have what was called the four-pillar approach, which was enforcement, harm reduction, prevention and treatment. That was adopted under a previous government. There was always an imbalance and an overemphasis on enforcement, but at least that four-pillar approach was there. I have to say that it actually began in Vancouver as a grassroots, bottom-up approach and then spread across the country.

This bill would take a radical departure from that four-pillar approach by emphasizing the enforcement regime even more, taking it to some greater lengths by bringing in a regime of mandatory minimum sentencing. I think this is a huge mistake. There is no question that it is the core of the Conservative government's agenda around crime. It is about the political optics. I have called it the politics of fear. People are concerned about drug use and crime in their communities. They are particularly concerned about young people being involved in using drugs. However, this bill will not deal with that. This bill will not change that situation. In fact, the evidence from both Canada and the United States shows us that the opposite will happen. It will only make the situation worse.

I want to note for the record that a Department of Justice study in 2002 concluded that mandatory minimum sentences were the least effective in relation to drug offences. The report said:

Mandatory minimum sentences do not appear to influence drug consumption or drug-related crime in any measurable way. A variety of research methods concludes that treatment-based approaches are more cost effective than lengthy prison terms. MMS are blunt instruments that fail to distinguish between low and high-level, as well as hardcore versus transient drug dealers.

When one looks at what is going on in the United States, where mandatory minimum sentencing began, there is now a whole movement away from mandatory minimum sentencing. We know that California, in 2000, repealed some of its mandatory minimum sentencing requirements for drug offences. In fact, California is now considering regulating marijuana. In 2004 Michigan repealed some of its MMSs. Delaware and Massachusetts are undergoing similar legislative reviews.

There is a whole history of reports in the U.S. in the American Bar Association and the U.S. sentencing committee. I will not go at length into those reports, but suffice it to say that there has been a huge amount of research done on this. I find it most ironic that the Conservative government, for the last couple of years, when it announced its so-called drug strategy in 2007, was launching on this course of following the United States, when what is actually happening in reality is that the war on drugs in the United States has now been shown to be a colossal failure.

I found it interesting that at the new President's town hall meeting online yesterday, and I am sure people have read today, most of the questions had to do with marijuana, saying to the President that it would be a good idea to regulate, legalize and actually provide a proper source of revenue, instead of allowing this to be so controlled by the black market. This is what happened during prohibition in the 1930s.

Obviously, even in the United States there has been a massive shift in public opinion, and what I find is that it is elected representatives who are the ones who are the most far behind on this. We are actually afraid to take this issue on. In many regards the public is way ahead of us. The public understands that the war on drugs has been a failure. It has been a colossal failure in terms of the human costs, in terms of economic costs, and in terms of public policy. We are the ones who are afraid to admit the reality of what the war on drugs and prohibition has done.

I find it just totally unacceptable that in that context we are now moving in this country to a regime that will bring in mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, when everybody else is saying this does not work, that it is a failure, and we have to take an approach that is focused on public health, that is focused on regulation, that is focused on real and honest education, especially for young people, and is focused on providing treatment. None of those things are happening at an adequate level in this country.

I know what the line will be of the Conservatives who are debating the bill. They are going to get up and say, “This is about getting those terrible gangs, the big crime dealers, the big drug lords and all of that”. Again, the research shows us that is not what happens.

In fact, because in this bill they have included provisions around drug treatment courts, I think it is further evidence that what they will really be doing is focusing on what is called the low-level offenders. This is where mandatory minimums do not work. It is not a deterrence.

What it will do is completely create chaos in our judicial and court system. We know that for any mandatory minimums that are two years or less when people end up in the provincial court system, we are now going to be facing a huge overload in the provincial court system. Do the provinces know that? I kind of wonder if they realize what is coming down the pipe here.

We will also see situations where people are more likely to plead not guilty because they know that they will be facing a mandatory minimum.

This idea that we are going after the kingpins just does not play out because those are the individuals who are in the best position to negotiate with prosecution officials and so on. Again, history has shown us that with enforcement, the easy pickings are basically people who are low-level dealers. They are often users themselves. This bill will be so punitive in terms of individual people, but the worst thing is it will not change the outcome.

If the Conservatives are trying to peddle a line here that this bill is going to solve the problem, it will not. It is actually going to make it worse. I feel I have a responsibility, representing a riding like East Vancouver where I have worked very closely on this issue, to actually speak the truth about this issue.

I know others as well as my colleagues will rise and speak out loud and clear, and will do so today. I know that we put ourselves out there as targets for the propaganda and the machine that comes from the other side that we are soft on crime, that we are advocating for drug use, and that we are advocating for whatever. That is simply not true. I have never supported drug use. I am personally very anti-drug use. I have seen the harm it does. However, I understand that prohibition has driven people to becoming criminals.

We dealt with the marijuana decriminalization bill. There are members in the House who were on the committee. We heard there were 600,000 Canadians who had a record for possession of marijuana. Why are we not at least beginning there with decriminalizing and legalizing marijuana? We would begin at a place where there is strong public support. We should change the regime.

The public attitude is shifting also within the media. Since the crime bills have come in, following the debate in the media has been fascinating. There are lots of media commentators, people writing columns, experts being quoted.

Retired Justice John Gomery in speaking about former Bill C-26, but Bill C-15 is the same bill, said, “This legislation basically shows a mistrust of the judiciary to impose proper sentences when people come before them”.

Thomas Kerr from the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, said:

If Canada wants to fulfill its mission of reducing the most severe harms associated with illicit drug use, steps must now be taken to implement a truly evidence-based national drug strategy rather than shovelling millions of dollars towards these failed programs.

Jerry Paradis, a retired judge from B.C., is a spokesperson for an incredible organization, LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. I went to a conference in New Orleans last year. Members of LEAP include current police officers as well as retired police chiefs and officers, and members of the judiciary. They are working to alert us to how dangerous prohibition is and what its consequences have been. Retired judge Jerry Paradis said, “MMSs are a great motivator for trials, jamming up the courts. Unless a deal is struck, a charge carrying a minimum sentence will be fought tooth and nail”.

Barbara Yaffe from the Vancouver Sun is not seen as a left-wing commentator. She is very much her own person and often comes out with terrific stuff. What does she have to say about it? In February, in writing about gangs, she said:

Because at the root of the mayhem is the drug trade. And while the state can outlaw a substance, it cannot eliminate its use. Prohibition proved that nearly a century ago. As long as drugs are illegal, there will be underground activity of the sort that spawns drug gangsters.

There are many media stories along the same lines. There has been a significant shift.

In speaking to this bill, this is a critical point. Are we going to go down this path where we say that tougher laws and enforcement are going to solve drug issues in local communities? The Conservatives have clearly said that. I am very interested to see what the Liberal caucus does with this bill. I hope that we can defeat it. I hope we can say this is not the right way to go. The NDP does not think the bill should go through. It is not based on good public policy. It is going to be harmful and expensive.

It is time to embark on a common sense approach and accept the overwhelming evidence that the war on drugs has caused more death, pain, harm and crime than we can bear. It is time to stop it. I do not think that is going to happen overnight, but at least let us have the courage to see what has failed and see the alternatives. We could begin with marijuana and real education. We could look to decriminalization, or even legalization, or we could continue on the tragic course of playing on people's fears and trying to convince people that tougher laws will make it all go away. It will not.

Let us say no to this bill. Let us adopt a public health approach and do the right thing.