Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for this additional opportunity to speak to Bill C-42. When I began my remarks yesterday, I was explaining that this bill will eliminate conditional sentences for all serious criminal offences, not just those that result in serious personal injury.
Presently, the courts are able to sentence offenders to a period of confinement, but allow that sentence to be served at home and in the community. I want to be very clear about this. In some cases where minor offences are involved, conditional sentences might be appropriate to allow the offender to reflect on his actions and rehabilitate himself. However, in most cases, conditional sentences or house arrests, as they are often referred to, are quite inappropriate.
The sad fact is that under the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, there are many very serious offences for which house arrest still remains available as a sentencing option.
Let me give some examples. It will shock Canadians that these kinds offences can still draw a sentence served in the comfort of one's home. They include: criminal harassment; sexual assault; kidnapping; human trafficking, including the trafficking of young children; theft over $5,000; breaking and entering with intent; arson for a fraudulent purpose; and of course luring a child.
I want to briefly touch on that last one: luring a child. Yesterday, I talked about arson. An arsonist could burn down a family's home. The family would not be able to go back for many months if ever at all. The arsonist could return to his home and sit in front of his big screen TV.
Today, I would like to talk about the luring offence. Let me explain what that is. The sexual luring of children is when a sexual predator goes on the Internet and establishes contact with a young child. That child may come from a challenged home. That child may be lonely or have other challenges in his or her life.
The predator starts communicating with that child and develops a level of trust with that child. Of course, the predator does not tell the child how old he is. He communicates that he is perhaps 13 or 14 years of age, so the child has no way of knowing that he or she is actually dealing with an adult. As this conversation continues, it becomes sexual in nature and eventually that child is lured out of the home and exploited sexually.
That is something that Canadians clearly understand should not draw a house arrest type of sentence. I had the opportunity in the previous Parliament to introduce a private member's bill, which doubled the maximum sentence that could be levied against someone who attempted to lure children over the Internet for sexual purposes from five to 10 years. That bill was initially opposed by the Bloc, but thankfully the rest of the House did support it. It went to committee and we eventually did get unanimous support for the bill.
The reason the bill was so necessary is that when this offence was compared to other offences in the Criminal Code at that time, the maximum sentence was five years, yet one could steal a neighbour's cow and be liable to a maximum sentence of 10 years. One could defraud a person of more than $5,000 and be sentenced to 10 years in jail. Yet, if one lured a vulnerable child over the Internet, the maximum one could get was five years in prison. Fortunately, the House did deem that bill to be worthy of support. It did pass and it is now the law of Canada.
Should these child molesters who use the Internet to lure children qualify to serve their sentences in the comforts of their home? Canadians would be shocked to hear that they still do at this time. More shockingly, the NDP still supports house arrest for these kinds of serious crimes. In fact, yesterday I had a dialogue in the House with the member for Vancouver Kingsway, who comes from my area of the country. It is an area that has had serious drug-related and violent crime problems.
He should know the challenges that we face trying to get a handle on serious crime. Yet, he suggested that crimes such as luring children over the Internet would not attract a conditional sentence, in other words, a sentence served in the comforts of one's home. In fact, he challenged me specifically to provided him with some cases. That is what I have done.
I want to point out to him a number of cases that have occurred since 2002. The first one is Regina v. Folino. This was a case of luring a child over the Internet. The result was house arrest of 18 months. In other words, the person served the sentence in the comfort of his home.
In Regina v. Pritchard, a 19-year-old man lured a girl he knew to be 13 years of age. What did he get? He got two years less a day to be served in the community, house arrest. In Regina v. Burke, a teacher, who lured a boy over the Internet, received a house arrest sentence and that was in 2007.
Another one was an Edmonton father who got a conditional sentence for Internet luring, Regina v. MacIntyre. That was in June of 2009. An Antigonish man received a conditional sentence for Internet luring. That was this year.
It is true that there are serious crimes that are still qualifying for house arrest and it is something that shocks Canadians. Bill C-42 would eliminate the use of house arrest for virtually all serious crimes, including those I specifically mentioned.
That is what Canadians have asked us to do and our Conservative government is listening and acting. What is more, we are finishing the job that the Liberals and the NDP refused to allow us to do during the previous Parliament. Let me explain.
As I mentioned yesterday, during the 39th Parliament our government tabled a bill which would have eliminated house arrest for all serious crimes, as we have done under Bill C-42. Sadly, the Liberal, NDP and Bloc members of the House gutted the bill and removed serious crimes, such as kidnapping, arson, sexual assault and the luring of children for sexual purposes. Shame on them. That is why this bill is before us again.
I am relieved to see that the Liberal Party has finally indicated that it may support the bill this time around. However, my question to Liberal members is this. What miraculous conversion did they undergo between the last Parliament and this one to finally understand that serious crime deserves serious time in jail? Something happened along the way. They certainly did not get it a year and a half ago.
Crimes such as kidnapping, arson, robbery and luring children, although not always involving direct physical injury, usually result in serious trauma for the victim and often change the victim's life forever. Why should these crimes not be punished with time in jail? Canadians are asking that very question.
These are crimes which very clearly should not qualify for a sentence to be served at home. Yet, the NDP and Bloc continue to fight our efforts to protect Canadians and to denounce criminal conduct appropriately. The opposition parties truly are soft on crime. They try to deny it in the House. They pretend that they are standing up for Canadians, but when we put them to the test, they fail it miserably. Canadians, rightfully, are angry with such a state of affairs.
Need I remind the opposition parties of the extent of the fraud cases reported in the media recently? These are some of Canada's largest financial frauds. They have occurred in Quebec, they have occurred in Alberta recently, and they have occurred in British Columbia. They have occurred in virtually every province of this great country of ours and they have been perpetrated against some of the most vulnerable citizens, especially our seniors.
These are swindlers who know exactly who they are swindling and yet under the current law they could very well be sentenced to, guess what, a time out at home. That is what the NDP is asking for. That is what the Bloc is still asking for.
Bill C-42 would change that. It is time for change. If the opposition parties do not want to help us protect Canadians, they should get out of the way and let us get the job done.
The long and short of it is this. Bill C-42 does exactly what victims across the country have been demanding. It ensures that serious crimes, such as serious fraud, robbery, kidnapping, sexual assault, arson and the sexual luring of children, receive real jail sentences, not time outs at home. No more serious criminals serving their sentences in the comfort of their homes, in front of their big screen TVs and computer sets. If they do serious crime, they will do serious time, not at home but in jail.
Our government is listening to Canadians and we are acting accordingly. I urge my colleagues in the House to put aside the partisanship, put aside the rancour, put aside these ideological straightjackets that confine them to taking positions that are against the interests of Canadians, to do what is right and take notice of some of the challenges we face in our criminal justice system.
Being from the west coast, I know very well some of the recent challenges we have had with violent crime and drug related crime. I want to point out that Bill C-42 will actually also remove conditional sentences for the most serious drug trafficking crimes. Why should a convicted drug dealer, who in most cases is a repeat offender and represents a danger to our communities, serve his or her sentence in the comfort of home? Often that home has been purchased from the proceeds of crime. That is even more shocking.
I encourage my colleagues to put aside the partisanship and give the bill unanimous support in order to speed its passage. I can assure the House that as chair of the justice committee, I will do my part to assure swift passage of this very important bill.
