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.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-15, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts, as reported (with amendment) from the committee.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

There is one motion in amendment standing on the notice paper for the report stage of Bill C-15. Motion No. 1 will be debated and voted upon.

I will now put Motion No. 1 to the House.

Motion in Amendment

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

moved:

That Bill C-15 be amended by deleting Clause 3.

Mr. Speaker, we are back in the House debating Bill C-15, which deals with mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes in Canada.

I have looked at this bill, studied it very carefully, and I heard the witnesses in the committee. I think we had 16 witnesses, 13 of whom were very strongly opposed to this bill and urged us to defeat it. Three witnesses were in favour, and one was quite lukewarm in opposition. I have to say this is one of the worst bills the Conservative government has ever put forward, certainly in terms of its crime agenda.

I think we had some of the best witnesses we have ever heard at committee, but we also had some of the worst. The Minister of Justice himself was a terrible witness. He was pressed to show evidence to Canadians, the committee and members of Parliament that mandatory minimum sentencing will work for drug crimes and that it is an effective public policy initiative. When he was pressed repeatedly to show evidence, not his own opinion, not Conservative ideology, but evidence that this bill was actually a sound public policy, he could not produce any evidence, and he has not to this day produced any evidence, that mandatory minimum sentences work anywhere, and certainly not for drug crimes.

On the other side, we had witnesses, for example, the John Howard Society, that came forward, cited 35 reports, and produced to the committee 17 different studies and reports that show that mandatory minimums do not work, particularly for drug crimes.

We had excellent witnesses who came forward from Canada and also from the United States. One in particular, who I want to focus on, was the former counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, Mr. Eric Sterling. He stated to the committee that his decision to promote mandatory minimum sentences in the U.S. was probably “the biggest mistake of my entire career for over 30 years in the practice of law”.

We heard Mr. Sterling via videoconference, and his testimony was very powerful. We also heard Deborah Small, from the Break the Chains organization in New York, who has also been dealing with mandatory minimum sentences. They told us about the real experience of dealing with these kinds of laws.

Mr. Sterling told us that the goal of reducing drug use under these laws had failed. The goal of promoting safety in local communities had failed. The goal of raising the price of drugs while lowering the purity had failed. The goal of reducing organized crime had failed.

The minister told the committee that the purpose of this bill was not to go after the low-level dealers, the people on the street who are addicts, who are facing significant health issues and who should not be criminalized. We were told this bill was about going after organized crime, about going after the kingpins, about putting the big traffickers, the big dealers in jail.

The minister may clap his hands and delude himself that this what he is doing, but I think the government knows that the reality and the evidence shows this bill will do none of those things. This bill is clearly targeted at the low-level dealers. We heard evidence to that effect, and the experience of what has happened in the United States shows us that as well.

In committee, the NDP put forward 21 amendments. They were amendments that tried to remove some of the mandatory minimums, the worst aspects of the bill, and failing that they tried to mitigate some of the damage of this bill by changing the regime of mandatory minimums, for example, getting an exemption for medical marijuana for compassion clubs.

I am so disappointed that those amendments did not go through. The Liberal members on the committee failed to respond to those amendments and failed to support them, which really surprises me. We are now left with a bill that is going to be destructive in terms of local communities and incarcerating more and more people who are dealing with a health issue, not a criminal justice issue.

I feel we are at this terrible place where we have a bill that looks like it is going through. It is simply really bad public policy. It is going to increase the prison population, particularly the provincial prison population, because most of these mandatory sentences that are two years or less will be under the provincial jurisdiction. Again, the minister could not tell us how much that was going to cost. He could not tell us how many more people are estimated to be imprisoned as a result of this bill.

Our fear, and in fact the information we have, is that this bill will target what VANDU in the downtown eastside called the “low hanging fruit”, people who are easy targets on the street. They are the people who are going to be hit by the mandatory minimums in this bill.

We gave so many examples at the committee of how this bill is going to be abused in terms of who is going to be hit by it and how wide the scope of enforcement is. For example, we know that one of the provisions of an aggravated circumstance is if one rents. We might have the situation of a student, a young person or an adult who is renting, and even by giving one plant to a neighbour they would incur a mandatory minimum sentence of nine months and a maximum, potentially, of 14 years.

In the current Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, there would be no minimum, but the maximum would be seven years. We can begin to see how punitive this regime and this bill are and how the bill can be applied to people who are creating no serious harm. They are not the kingpins. They are people who are maybe dealing with medical marijuana, growing medical marijuana. They may be involved in a compassion club. They may have a couple of plants for recreational use.

I think that most Canadians understand that criminalizing drug users, criminalizing marijuana users, has not produced any change. The real emphasis we need to look at in society is prevention, education and treatment, what we call the four pillar approach. That does include enforcement, but the government has decided to focus all its firepower on enforcement and on a punitive regime that is now going to capture so many people who will have criminal records as a result of this bill.

We, in the NDP, are very disappointed that this bill is at the point where it looks like it will go through because it has the support of the Liberals who are supporting the Conservatives. I am very grateful to the members in the Bloc who understood clearly what this bill was about and from the beginning decided they would not support mandatory minimums.

We tried very hard to get those amendments through the committee. One of the things I was most concerned about were the amendments that would have removed or exempted medical marijuana. In fact that adds insult to injury. The federal government has shown a complete lack of respect and understanding for medical marijuana users, even most recently in the court decision where the federal government tried to appeal a decision that would have opened up access to medical marijuana. Thankfully, the Supreme Court of Canada turned down the federal intervention, but even so, with this bill it will now be cracking down on medical marijuana users with mandatory minimums.

Our amendment today would remove clause 3, which has nine mandatory minimums within it, eight of which are for marijuana. We believe this is a very problematic part of the bill. We think it should be deleted.

I would urge my colleagues, particularly in the Liberal Party, to think twice about what they are doing in terms of supporting a policy and a law that is going to hurt people, put more people in jail and criminalize drug users instead of approaching this as a health issue. I think the Liberals know that mandatory minimums do not work. They have seen the evidence as well.

We urge the House to reject this bill and to deal with the issue of substance use in our society from a comprehensive perspective, not simply by bringing in these wacky laws that criminalize people, put more people in jail and, in the end, do not actually change the situation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I guess it is back to business as usual for NDP members. They completely oppose to a bill that is directed at drug traffickers. We are zeroing in on drug trafficking all the way through the bill, but they now completely oppose it. That is a slightly different message than I received on three trips to British Columbia a couple of months ago. I had reporters say to me that I must be somewhat encouraged because the NDP had said it would keep an open mind about getting tough on some of the problems that B.C. that involved drugs, gangs and guns. I told them that I hoped it continued.

I do not know quite where the dividing line was. I think it was about 10 seconds after the British Columbia election was completed and then it was back to business as usual. The NDP is no longer in the business of getting tough on crime and standing up for victims and law-abiding Canadians, and that is very disappointing. It is a mischaracterization of the bill to say that it is going after users. Users want to be helped and we want to help. We are going after traffickers.

I disagree completely with the member. The last time she spoke, I did not get an opportunity to say this, but she went on to say that the government was targeting people who were trafficking in drugs around schools, that this was somebody who maybe used to go to the school and was back talking to a few friends and that a little drugs and money went back and forth. This is the last kind of individual school boards and schools need, a former student back to sell a few drugs on the playground or in the neighbourhood surrounding it.

School boards, parents, teachers and law-abiding students, who are there to get an education, do not want them. However, the NDP has spoken out against that and all the other things. It says that these poor dealers are selling a bit of drugs for a bit of money.

We are sending out a very clear message to those people and we are standing up for law-abiding Canadians who do not want this problem in their backyard. I am very disappointed that the NDP has completely folded 10 seconds after the last B.C. election.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we are willing to stand and tell the truth. We heard the minister say that the Conservatives were sending a clear message and getting tough on traffickers. The fact is the bill applies to one plant all the way up to over 500. I have given examples where people could be convicted of trafficking for simply giving one plant to a neighbour or for being in a car and transporting a plant.

I will tell the minister what people in B.C. are saying. Ann Livingston, the executive director of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, says:

There's a term that's used for arresting people who use drugs in our neighbourhood and it's the low-hanging fruit. There's a sense of shooting fish in a barrel.

That is what the minister is doing. Those are the easy targets. The bill will not go after the kingpins, otherwise it would not make references to the drug treatment courts.

Philippe Lucas, who is from The Vancouver Island Compassion Society, says that Canadians deserve policies that will actually achieve this goal of dealing with problematic substance use and not ill-considered responses that have been proven to actually increase judicial and incarceration costs, as well as the transmission of HIV-AIDS and hepatitis C.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, my friend has appeared with us at justice committee, arguing her case with respect to this issue. However, she was not with us in British Columbia when the committee travelled there to hear about the scourge that drugs had played on society there.

She pretends that the bill is not about trafficking. Her amendments are largely about trafficking in marijuana. One of the amendments made was to increase the lower threshold to five plants, from zero plants, but still growing for the purposes of trafficking. The Criminal Code has a definition of what trafficking means.

As the father of three young girls in school, trafficking is probably a bad thing. She is saying that higher levels of trafficking are worse. I do not disagree with that. However, the government is only offering us a few tools. Why do we not embrace this, recognize that drug treatment courts are an option to avoid sentencing and get on with pressing the government for more meaningful attacks on the war against crime.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is very unfortunate that the Liberal members have chosen to support the bill for what are purely political purposes. They are so concerned about their image of not being tough on crime. The fact is there is such overwhelming evidence that mandatory minimums not only do not act as a deterrence, but they will actually increase backlog of the court system, they will increase incarceration and the cost of doing that without stopping drug use itself. Therefore, I think the member—

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. I will have to stop the hon. member there.

I should remind all hon. members that when they are in the chamber they should ensure that cellphones, pagers and laptops volumes are turned off. I do not know whose that was, but I heard a cellphone ringing.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Edmonton—St. Albert.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise and speak in opposition to the NDP's attempt to amend Bill C-15, an amendment which in my view would eviscerate it by taking out all of the minimum mandatory sentences.

The legislation was introduced as part of the government's commitment to tackle crime and to provide safer communities for all Canadians. The bill proposes, among other things, a number of mandatory minimum penalties, or MMPs, for serious drug offences involving schedule 1, which includes heroin and cocaine, and also schedule 2 substances such as cannabis and where there exists certain aggravating factors such as where violence was used to commit the offence or the offence was committed for organized crime.

One of the most important elements of the bill is the MMPs proposed for the offence of production of schedule 1 drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamines and schedule 2 drugs such as cannabis. This motion proposes to remove this very important clause from the bill. As I indicated, it would essentially eviscerate the bill and render the rest of the clauses meaningless.

Clandestine drug labs and marijuana grow operations, or MGOs, have increased significantly in the last few years. They very often constitute a serious threat to the personal safety of persons who are not even involved in the commission of the offence. Meth labs, for example, pose significant risks to public health and security because of their production process. In meth labs there is the risk of explosion, fires and contamination from making methamphetamine.

As the hon. member for Vancouver East will recall, when we were in Vancouver, we heard from the fire chiefs of greater Vancouver. They rightfully pointed out that this was a significant risk to the entire public, not just those involved in the purchase and sale of drugs.

MGOs present other equally serious risks. For example, the bypassing of electricity meters illegally to obtain the power necessary for the MGO constitutes a further fire hazard. Setting traps to protect the grow operation from other criminals put at risk first responders who are called in to extinguish the fires. Use of volatile pesticides and fungicides pose a threat to persons living in or close to such illegal operations. Purely innocent individuals, as innocent third parties, are often caught up in these marijuana grow operations and the organized crime that live off their profits.

Another major concern is the presence of families with young children in the clandestine labs or MGOs. Many clandestine labs and marijuana grow operations install families in their homes where these activities take place so as to give them the aura of normalcy and legitimacy. We can certainly appreciate the clearly apparent risk and harm that is put on children who are put in that very difficult and negative situation.

Finally, innocent homeowners who rent out their houses frequently find that the renters have used their property for grow operations and have caused tens of thousands of dollars in damages to their property. Again, another innocent victim, not a person involved in the drug trade, is victimized by these growing MGOs.

There are very good reasons for wanting to ensure that persons who are involved in the illicit production of such substances are subject to harsher penalties than what is now available in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Clause 3 addresses the serious problems described—

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue is rising on a point of order.

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

Mr. Speaker, we can no longer hear the simultaneous interpretation.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

There is translation now.

The hon. member for Edmonton—St. Albert.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will wrap up by stating that clause 3, which is the subject of this amendment, addresses the very serious issues that these grow operations and other drug operations contribute to society. For that reason, I will be opposing this motion.

I encourage all hon. members of the House to similarly oppose this motion. Bill C-15 is part of the government's agenda to get tough on crime and to put serious drug dealers where they belong, and that is in prison.

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

Mr. Speaker, that is why I wanted to ensure that I could hear the simultaneous interpretation because I was listening carefully to what my colleague was saying.

I have but one question for him. Can he, can he, can he—I am repeating it three times to ensure that it is actually translated—today in the House or in committee, as we have requested several times, present one single study—I want just one—that shows that mandatory minimum prison sentences can solve the problem raised by Bill C-15?

It is a fairly short question and I await the reply.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have learned to respect the opinions of my friend from the Bloc Québécois. We serve together on the public safety committee.

Much has been made, not only by the Bloc but also by the member for Vancouver East, about empirical studies regarding the effectiveness of mandatory minimum sentences. It is a very difficult matter in that we have so few mandatory minimum sentences in the Criminal Code, except for the most serious offences such as murder, which mandates a minimum mandatory sentence of life imprisonment and then mandatory periods one must serve before being eligible for parole. With that and very few exceptions, there are very few minimum mandatory sentences in the Criminal Code.

Therefore, it begs the question as to how an empirical study can show that mandatory minimum sentences are effective when we have so few of them? In fact, one time in committee my friend from Vancouver East referred to, and she will acknowledge this, mandatory minimum sentences as a novel or radical approach. She is right. We do not have them except for homicide and very serious offences to the person.

It is impossible to produce an empirical study to show the effectiveness of mandatory minimum sentences with respect to drugs or with respect to less serious violent crime when those mandatory minimum sentences are absent in the Criminal Code.