Bill C-42 (Historical)

Ending Conditional Sentences for Property and Other Serious Crimes Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to eliminate the reference, in section 742.1, to serious personal injury offences and to restrict the availability of conditional sentences for all offences for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 14 years or life and for specified offences, prosecuted by way of indictment, for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 10 years.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.

Mr. Auger, you talked about conditional sentences somewhat critically.

Mr. Lévesque, if I wrote this down correctly, you said that the gangsters do not get reintegrated into society after two-thirds or one-third of their sentence. That's a premise I would certainly agree with.

There is currently a bill before the House of Commons, Bill C-42. I don't know if either of you are familiar with it. It purports to end conditional sentences for a whole range of criminal activity that is currently eligible for a conditional sentence, colloquially often known as house arrest. Some of those offences are criminal harassment, kidnapping, human trafficking—which we just talked about—abduction, theft over $5,000, and arson. I'm sure you'll agree that many of those activities are ones that are pursued by organized criminals from time to time.

So I wonder whether either of you have any comment regarding this bill, if you've had a chance to study it; and if not, perhaps you might have some comment based on its purported purpose as I've just outlined to you.

Ending Conditional Sentences for Property and other Serious Crimes Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I also rise to speak to this legislation from the perspective of the context in which we have to address it and the attempt by the government, in a very undemocratic fashion, to do an end run around a vote that took place in the House approximately three years ago on the precursor bill, Bill C-9, which the government brought in shortly after it was elected in 2006. It was the first crime bill that the Conservatives brought in.

In the 2006 election, both the Conservatives and the NDP ran their platform around the issue of eliminating the use of conditional sentences for serious violent crimes. That was the terminology, and it was almost identical in both party platforms.

Bill C-9 came forward, but that was not what it attempted to do. As so often happens with the Conservative Party, it was a huge over-reach.

Bill C-9 would have eliminated the use of conditional sentences for 40 or 45 sections of the Criminal Code. Were these sections all dealing with serious violent crime? We have to remember that the Conservatives promised Canadians in their platform to eliminate conditional sentences.

There were sections in there about altering data in a computer. That was an offence and the conditional sentence would no longer be used after that kind of conviction. There were sections about forging a testamentary document. It was the same thing. That is not a violent crime. There was a whole list of these.

Accurately, as was described by some members who spoke earlier, the combined opposition parties moved to bring the bill to committee. We in the NDP told Canadians that we would remove the use of conditional sentences for serious violent crimes, and we did that, and then we eliminated the other sections. We complied with what we had said to Canadians. We were quite happy to do that because it was what we had promised. We accomplished one of the promises we had made to the electorate.

Bill C-9 came back to the House and a substantial majority voted for it. I think the Conservatives might even have voted for it, but I cannot remember. I should have checked that. The bill went on to the Senate where it was approved and became law and is law to this day. That was a promise made and a promise kept, as opposed to what the Conservatives would have wanted to do.

Following the way of their straight partisan politics, the Conservatives have now decided to bring Bill C-42 forward, along with many other bills, and are attempting to convince the Canadian people that they are tough on crime. I would like to emphasize toughness not smartness.

It was interesting to note the evidence that came out in the course of the debate in committee on Bill C-9 and to a lesser degree when it came back to the House. I remember both the justice minister and the minister for public safety and national security appeared before committee. In both cases they were asked if they knew how many more people were going to be incarcerated and if they knew how much that was going to cost.

Let me digress on this point and explain how conditional sentences work. A judge has to determine that he or she would not sentence a person eligible for a conditional sentence to incarceration in an institution for more than two years. In effect, they would be sentenced, if they were going to be incarcerated, to a period of time of two years less a day. If anybody understands the system in this country, all of those sentences of two years less a day are served in provincial prisons.

Let me go back to the two questions of whether they knew how much it was going to cost and did they know how many were going to be put in? In both cases, the ministers did not know.

I and some of my colleagues from the other parties dug out that information regarding that long list of 45 offences that may no longer be eligible for conditional sentences. All those people would then go to jail for two years less a day. I want to be clear on this. This was information that came from within the Department of Justice. Let me repeat that. The source of this information in writing was the Department of Justice. It turns out that 5,000 more people would be put in provincial jails. Of course, the ministers did not have to worry about that, did they? Not a dime of that was coming out of the federal coffers. They were just dumping this problem of 5,000 more inmates on the provincial system.

Knowing how much it costs per year for an inmate, we estimated that those 5,000 additional inmates in our prisons at the provincial level would cost the provinces in the range of $250 million to $500 million a year. There are many provinces that would like to be able to spend that money.

Because there was no way that the provincial systems could accommodate 5,000 additional inmates with their existing number of beds, there would have to be additions built on to the existing provincial institutions or new ones built. The estimate of what it would cost for capital was in the order of $1.5 billion to $2 billion. Is the federal government going to contribute any of that? Were those two ministers going to have to take it out of their budgets? Absolutely not.

It is important to understand that context because we are faced with the same situation with this bill. If I asked the Minister of Justice or the Minister of Public Safety, who is responsible for corrections, they would not be able to tell me. They would not be able to give me an answer. I am absolutely convinced of that. In fact, last week in the Globe and Mail we saw the article and the editorial attacking the government for refusing to disclose what information it has and what analysis it has done.

I want to be very clear. The analysis that the Minister of Public Safety has done has not taken into account the drug bill that has gone through the House and is sitting in the other place waiting for passage. If that bill and this one pass, he has not done an analysis of how many more inmates there would be. He has not done that.

In spite of the fact that we hear constantly from the Minister of Justice that he keeps being reassured by the Minister of Public Safety that we have lots of space in our federal prisons, it does not matter. He is wrong, by the way, and I am going to come back to that in a second. It does not matter because these people, under Bill C-42, are all going to go into the provincial system.

It was interesting to hear two of my colleagues, one from my party in Quebec and one from the Liberal Party in New Brunswick in the last couple of days tell me that the judges at the provincial level have been told not to send people to jail for weekends because the provincial institutions no longer have space for any of them. They have to put them on probation. That is the reality of what we are faced with at the provincial level and it is true in every single province and territory in this country.

We have signed international protocols that require us to have one inmate per cell. We are breaching that international protocol as much as 50% of the time, particularly at the provincial level but also at the federal level.

Let us go back to the federal system and the assurances—I wanted to use a term that is unparliamentary and I am looking for a synonym—that lack credibility from the Minister of Public Safety.

The head of Correctional Service of Canada, Mr. Don Head, has made it very clear at committee hearings and in the public press in the last month that we do not have the capacity at the federal level, that we are regularly double-bunking, and triple-bunking in some cases, per cell. We are not meeting our international requirements and promises we have made. We do not have that capacity.

Last week the Globe and Mail attacked the minister and the government, because the minister is refusing to disclose the analysis he had done and how much it will cost. That does not take into account these two bills, the one that is before us today and the drug bill that is before the other place right now.

Because of the information we do have up to this point and we will get more, and with the support of the Liberals the bill will obviously go to committee, we will be voting against it. I am quite comfortable in saying that we will see similar numbers, 5,000-plus inmates being incarcerated in our prisons, if this legislation and the drug bill go through. Let me repeat that it will cost the provinces hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It will cost the provinces a huge amount of capital dollars.

It will depend on what our judges do with it. They may say that they cannot send convicts to provincial jails any more, so they may move the sentence up to two years plus a day, or two and a half years or three years and they would then go into the federal system. That would severely impact on the number of inmates at the federal level. It is a realistic possibility, if not a probability, that our judges will start to do that.

I want to make one more point about the cost issue. We always hear from the Conservatives, which is partly why the Liberals run scared on it, that we are soft on crime. I want to use an example in the United States. I think we could argue that most of the states, and Texas and a couple of other southern states in the U.S. may be ahead of them, but California has led the way in throwing people into prison in huge numbers.

Just so we are clear on that, our incarceration rate in Canada is about one-seventh of what it is in the United States. However, it is also the highest of the western democracies after the United States. Japan has an incarceration rate of roughly 60 per 100,000 population. Ours right now is running at about 110 to 120, in those ratios, which is almost double that of Japan. Western democracies in Europe, Australia and New Zealand are running 80 to 90 per 100,000. The United States is running 700-plus per 100,000.

California was one of the states that led the way in getting tough on crime, with the right-wing Reagan-Bush type of agenda, followed very closely by the Conservative Party in this country. In the last few months, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, that person who is really soft on crime, has been compelled to begin to release--he is doing it himself; he has to sign each one of them--thousands of inmates on early parole, including a large number who had been convicted and were serving time for serious violent crime, because the state can no longer afford to pay for it. The prison costs in California exceed what the state spends on post-secondary education. It is part of the bankruptcy with which that state is confronted right now. In order to deal with that, he is having to release thousands of inmates on early parole.

That is a very clear model of what would happen if we follow the agenda followed by the United States and the State of California, which the governing party wants us to follow. I want to juxtapose that with the use of conditional sentences. What came out very clearly in the review of Bill C-9 two and a half years ago was that it is working.

The Conservatives come up with these individual cases where our courts clearly can be said to have overused the conditional sentence. We can always find those cases.

I am a great defender of our judiciary. Having practised law all those years, having analyzed our judges and having analyzed judges in a whole bunch of other countries, I firmly believe that we have the best judges in the world. However, they are human. They make mistakes. We should not be deriving from those mistakes principles that guide us on how we are going to pass legislation around convictions, around sentencing. That should not be the way we do it.

What we should do is look at what has happened since we brought in conditional sentences. It was very clear from the evidence that we took in the review of Bill C-9 that it is working. The recidivism rate is about one-third what it is versus those we incarcerate, 30-plus per cent of those we incarcerate, down around 10% and in some cases, depending on what the charges are and what the convictions are for, as low as 8% and up to 12%, but on average, around 10% or 11% is the recidivism rate.

We hear the anecdotal stories and we hear people say that they are standing up for the victims. What they are standing up for is a system that is going to victimize more people down the road because 30% of the inmates are going to become recidivists and are going to go back and commit oftentimes more serious crimes than the ones they first went in for. We know that prisons train people to do that. Where are they in terms of defending those victims, the future ones who inevitably are going to be a result of these types of policies?

We are going to be voting against this bill at second reading. If the bill gets through the committee and comes back to the House, we are going to be voting against it at third reading. This legislation is the wrong approach. It is going to victimize a large number of additional Canadians as opposed to the alternative of what we have now. It is very clear that as our violent crime rate continues to drop, a good deal of that is because we began using a number of principles around restorative justice, including conditional sentences. Our system is working.

It is interesting. I sat for a number of years on the public safety and national security committee. People from all over the world came to look at what we were doing because our system was working. They were seeing us drop our violent crime rate. They were seeing that we were moving quite dramatically away from the U.S. experience and that it was working. Conditional sentencing was one of the things they would come to take a close look at to see how it worked. In many cases, I understand, they are beginning to look at implementing it in other countries that were not using it before they saw ours.

It is a system that works. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Are our judges human? Yes, they are. Do they make mistakes? Absolutely, they make mistakes. However, it is still the best system, and it is far superior to what is being proposed under this legislation.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for such kind words. It is a pleasure and a privilege for me to be working with this party on the government side. I hope to be here for a long time to see justice come about through legislation such as we are talking about here today.

I want to echo my appreciation of our Attorney General in the province of Manitoba, an NDP Attorney General who is very much on the same page with regard to our attempts to see that justice issues are dealt with as we are trying to do here today with Bill C-42.

I am pleased to talk about victims because I have dealt with, as I said before, thousands of victims who have been asking for changes so that they feel that justice is being done. I believe that Bill C-42 will help to address the concerns of our victims.

I will give an example of a couple of cases that were absolutely atrocious to the victims, which dealt with conditional sentences. We had a situation in the city of Winnipeg where a babysitter became enraged with a two-year-old child and did not have the ability to deal with this child. As a result, the babysitter decided to punish the child, took this small baby's hands, went to a pot of boiling water and inserted the baby's hands into this boiling water and inflicted severe burns on this child's hands.

This child will never, ever be the same. What did this offender receive as a sentence? It was an 18-month conditional sentence in the comfort of her home, watching her television, and the victims felt betrayed. They felt as if they had done nothing to help prevent this from happening to another child.

I side with the victims here who want to make sure that this is prevented, that no more children are harmed and that we as a society are doing the right thing in the interest and the administration of justice.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member's party for recently taking the step of suggesting that they plan to vote with us on the approval of Bill C-42. I understand the member has asked two questions. I am going to deal with the second question first which is about judges. I must say very clearly I have a tremendous amount of respect for judges across this country. I have personally testified in thousands of cases before our judges at different levels, at different courts, and I have the utmost faith in what our judges are attempting to do.

However, I must say very clearly that I personally have spoken with judges who have stated that they are also bound by the rules and they are not necessarily happy with the rules. They must always look at previous offences to make a determination in sentencing. They must look to the past. They must look at precedents. When I have spoken with these judges, they have said that sometimes they would like a new starting point. We intend to try to bring about the new starting point for those judges who really want to do the right thing with regard to sentencing and protecting the interests of the public.

It appears my time is almost up. Perhaps I will answer the second part of the member's question in the next round.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary for Official Languages]

Mr. Speaker, I am here today to debate Bill C-42, ending conditional sentences for property and other serious crimes act. As the name of the bill indicates, further reforms are needed to ensure that conditional sentences are not imposed for serious crimes.

Conditional sentences of imprisonment came into force over 13 years ago, with the proclamation in 1996 of Bill C-41, Sentencing Reform, Chapter 22 of the Statutes of Canada, 1995.

Bill C-41 created a new sentencing part of the Criminal Code. Among its key elements were the creation of conditional sentences as a new sentencing option, the first ever parliamentary statement of the purpose and principles of sentencing, referred to as section 718 to section 718.2, and increased emphasis on the interest of crime victims, including the recognition that the harm done to victims should be considered at sentencing.

A conditional sentence of imprisonment is a sentence of imprisonment of less than two years that a court may permit an offender to serve in the community under conditions and supervision. Originally a conditional sentence was available to sentencing courts provided that the following prerequisites were present: the sentence was less than two years; the court was satisfied that allowing the offender to serve the sentence of imprisonment in the community would not endanger the safety of the community; and the offence could not be punishable by a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment.

Shortly after implementation, a requirement was added that the court be satisfied that sentencing the offender to serve a conditional sentence of imprisonment was consistent with the fundamental purpose and principles of sentencing set out in the Criminal Code. This was designed to respond to concerns that courts were awarding conditional sentence orders for quite serious offences.

In 2000 the Supreme Court of Canada held, in Regina v. Proulx, that the conditional sentencing regime did not exclude any category of offences other than those with a minimum period of incarceration. Nor was there a presumption for or against its use for any category of offence. The court stated, however, that it was open to Parliament to introduce such limitations.

Conditional sentences were never intended for very violent or serious crimes, but rather for less serious offences. The problem has been that not all sentencing courts have interpreted the availability of conditional sentences in the same manner, no consistency. Consequently many, including some provinces and territories became increasingly concerned with the wide array of offences that resulted in conditional sentences of imprisonment.

Over the years questionable conditional sentencing decisions have contributed to a loss of public confidence in the sanction and therefore in the administration of justice.

This government responded to these concerns when it tabled Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (conditional sentence of imprisonment) on May 4, 2006. Bill C-9 was referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on June 6, 2006.

Bill C-9 in its original form proposed a new criterion that would have eliminated the availability of conditional sentences for offences punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years or more and prosecuted by indictment. This would have caught serious crimes, including designated violent and sexual offences, weapons offences, offences committed against children and serious property crimes such as fraud and theft over $5,000.

However, opposition members of the justice committee thought that the scope of Bill C-9 was too broad. The opposition voted to amend this legislation to only capture terrorism offences, organized crime offences and serious personal injury offences, as defined in section 752 of the Criminal Code, which are punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years or more and prosecuted by indictment. This was similar to the approach in Bill C-70, which the previous government had tabled in the fall of 2005, but which died on the order paper with the call of the general election. Our government's attempt at report stage to reinstate Bill C-9 to its original form was defeated by the three opposition parties.

As is the case with other sentencing options, a conditional sentence must be considered in the context of the entire sentencing regime and especially the principles of sentencing.

Section 718 of the code states:

The fundamental purpose of sentencing is to contribute, along with crime prevention initiatives, to respect for the law and the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society by imposing just sanctions that have one or more of the following objectives:

(a) to denounce unlawful conduct;

(b) to deter the offender and other persons from committing offences;

(c) to separate offenders from society, where necessary;

(d) to assist in rehabilitating offenders;

(e) to provide reparations for harm done to victims or to the community; and

(f) to promote a sense of responsibility in offenders, and acknowledgment of the harm done to victims and to the community.

The preconditions for a conditional sentence, along with the deemed aggravating factors added to the Criminal Code by Bill C-42, such as evidence that the offender abused a position of trust, for example, were designed to screen out serious offences committed in circumstances for which denunciation, general deterrence and incapacitation should be considered the primary sentencing objectives.

In addition, the fundamental principal of sentencing is that a sentence must be proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender. I find it hard to believe that this fundamental principle is being properly observed when a conditional sentence is imposed for serious violent or serious property offences.

Accordingly it is my view that the current conditional sentencing regime still fails to categorically make conditional sentences ineligible for many serious crimes. In addition to excluding terrorism and criminal organization offences prosecuted by indictment and punishable by 10 years or more, the Criminal Code also excludes serious personal injury offences from the availability of a conditional sentence.

The term “serious personal injury offence” was designed for dangerous and long-term offenders. It was borrowed to serve as a limit to the availability of conditional sentences by the amendments of the opposition parties to Bill C-9. A serious personal injury offence is defined in section 752 of the Criminal Code as:

(a) an indictable offence, other than high treason, treason, first degree murder or second degree murder, involving

(i) the use or attempted use of violence against another person, or

(ii) conduct endangering or likely to endanger the life or safety of another person or inflicting or likely to inflict severe psychological damage on another person,

and for which the offender may be sentenced to imprisonment for ten years or more, or

(b) an offence or attempt to commit an offence mentioned in section 271 (sexual assault), 272 (sexual assault with a weapon, threats to a third party or causing bodily harm) or 273 (aggravated sexual assault).

Only the sexual assault offences referred to in paragraph 752(b) of the Criminal Code are explicitly ineligible for a conditional sentence order if prosecuted by indictment. A finding that other offences fit the definition of serious personal injury offence will depend on the circumstances of each case.

Up until the coming into force of Bill C-9 on December 1, 2007, sentencing courts had only to interpret serious personal injury offence for the purpose of determining whether the threshold for a dangerous or long-term offender application had been met according to part 24 of the Criminal Code, because that term was defined only for the dangerous and long-term offender provisions.

Since Bill C-9 came into force, courts have wrestled with the interpretation of serious personal injury offences in the context of conditional sentences. The Alberta Court of Appeal in Ponticorvo, 2009 reviewed its decision in Neve, 1999, where it had considered the definition of serious personal injury offence in the context of dangerous offender provisions.

In that context, the court concluded that section 752 required that the offence considered be objectively serious. However, in the context of conditional sentences, the Court of Appeal found that the use or attempted use of violence sufficed and did not require any overlay of objective seriousness. In other words, it ruled that it should be easier for the Crown to establish that an offence was a serious personal injury offence, or SPIO, in the context of a conditional sentence than it was in the context of a dangerous offender.

The Bill C-9 case law only deals with crimes committed after December 1, 2007, when the legislation came into force, so there is really not a large number of reported cases commenting on the serious personal injury offences in the conditional sentencing context.

The decision of the Alberta Court of Appeal should have resulted in a more consistent application of the definition of serious personal injury offence within the conditional sentencing regime, which would have ensured that similar offences be treated as serious personal injury offences and therefore ineligible for house arrest or conditional sentencing.

While this approach has been followed in a majority of cases, unfortunately this has not always been the case. For instance, in both R. v. Becker, 2009, a decision of the Alberta Provincial Court, and in R. v. Thompson, 2009, a decision of the Ontario Court of Justice, courts were asked to determine whether robbery was a serious personal injury offence in the context of the availability of conditional sentences. In both cases, threats were made, yet in only one of the two cases did the court find that robbery met the definition of serious personal injury offences.

I can tell the House from my personal experience, having been involved with victims of robbery, that it is a serious offence every time it occurs to a person who is in the position of victim.

In R. v. Grewal and Grewal, 2009, a decision of the British Columbia Provincial Court, the court sentenced two accused to conditional sentence orders for the offences of assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm. The accused ambushed the victim on his front lawn, hitting him with a shovel and a fireplace poker. The victim required 10 to 20 stitches in his head, suffered broken teeth and neck, arm, thigh and hip pain. What happened? We have already seen in that case how it was not consistent with the rest of the sentencing principles.

In R. v. Prakash, 2009, a decision of the Ontario Court of Justice, the offender was convicted of unlawfully being in a dwelling house, uttering a threat, mischief under $5,000, criminal harassment, impaired driving and breach of a probation order. To me these are serious offences. After taking into account credit for pre-sentencing custody at a two-for-one rate, the offender was sentenced to one day in prison for the offences of impaired driving and breach of a probation order. He then got an additional 12 month conditional sentence on the remaining offences.

I cannot even imagine what the victims were thinking upon hearing those kinds of sentences.

Another concern with only barring serious personal injury offences from the conditional sentence option is that serious property crime such as fraud could still be eligible for a conditional sentence. We are well aware of recent examples of the devastating impact of fraud. Victims who have lost their life savings have called very recently for strengthened sentences for these types of crimes. It is hard to disagree with these concerns, especially considering the fact that fraud, which is punishable by a maximum sentence of 14 years, is still technically eligible for a conditional sentence, despite the amendments brought forward by our government's previous Bill C-9.

Our government intends to address this in Bill C-42 and in future legislation dealing with sentences for fraud.

Another consequence to the opposition's amendments to Bill C-9, our earlier bill to restrict conditional sentences, is that offences contained in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act were not excluded unless committed as part of a criminal organization. Consequently, the production, importation and trafficking of a schedule 1 drug such as heroin would not be caught and would be eligible for a conditional sentence of imprisonment.

However, as hon. members would know, the government has proposed mandatory minimum penalties for serious drug offences in Bill C-15. I therefore expect that when that legislation is passed and enacted into law, as I hope will soon be the case, these offences would be ineligible for a conditional sentence.

It is clear to me, and I suggest to many Canadians, that greater clarity and consistency is needed as to the availability of conditional sentences for serious, violent and serious property offences. For these reasons, Bill C-42 proposes to eliminate the reference to serious personal injury offences in subsection 742.1 and make all offences punishable by 14 years or life ineligible for a conditional sentence. This would make the offence of fraud and many other crimes ineligible for a conditional sentence.

Bill C-42 would also clearly make offences prosecuted by indictment; those punishable by 10 years' imprisonment; those that result in bodily harm; those that involve import, export, trafficking or production of drugs, or those that involve the use of a weapon ineligible for a conditional sentence.

While this element of the legislation will significantly limit the ambit of the conditional sentence regime, the addition of these categories would not capture all serious offences prosecuted by indictment and punishable by a maximum of 10 years. Therefore, Bill C-42 also proposes a list of 11 specific offences prosecuted by indictment and punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years that would be ineligible for a conditional sentence.

These offences are prison breach, luring a child, criminal harassment, sexual assault, kidnapping, trafficking in persons, abduction, theft over $5,000, breaking and entering a place other than a dwelling house, being unlawfully in a dwelling house, and arson for fraudulent purposes.

Conditional sentences are an appropriate sentencing tool in many cases, but they do need to be restricted when it comes to serious property offences and serious violent offences. The prudent use of conditional sentence orders should strengthen confidence in the sanction and in the administration of justice.

I hope that all hon. members in the House will support Bill C-42 in its entirety.

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

Mr. Speaker, my question will be very brief. There are two basic philosophies that clash with one another regarding Bill C-42, and in a few moments I will have the opportunity to explain our philosophy here on this side of the House.

I have a question for my colleague. Has he ever argued cases in which conditional sentences have been requested?

I asked him earlier. Has he ever litigated such cases in his career?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has been a welcome addition to our Conservative government since her election in 2008. She has a policing background and is highly knowledgeable in that area, so she knows of what she speaks. She is absolutely correct. It is the victims of sexual crimes, especially children who have been lured out of their homes and sexually molested. Those are the cries to which that the Conservative government is listening. Those victims are contacting us.

When I was tabling and debating my luring bill in the House, which thankfully received unanimous support, victims groups from across Canada were contacting me and asking how quickly the bill could be passed.

There is another aspect to this. Bill C-42 includes human trafficking. No longer will conditional sentences and house arrest be available for those who traffic in human beings. I am shocked the NDP would oppose tougher sentences for human traffickers. The Bloc, most shockingly, actually voted against a private member's bill introduced by my colleague from Winnipeg, which would impose a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years for those who traffic in children. The Bloc had the gall to vote against protecting the most vulnerable within our society, our precious children. Shame on them.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, first, he has his facts all wrong. I will quote from his testimony yesterday in the House where he suggested that crimes such as luring and other serious crimes, which are listed specifically in Bill C-42, would never draw conditional sentences. He said, “I would challenge him”, referring to me, “to come up with some data that shows that those are the sentences that judges are giving conditional sentences on. I highly doubt it”. He should be doubting it now.

Then he goes on to say, “I would challenge my friend to make good law by going back to the drafting table and coming back with a bill that targets certain kinds of offences that he would like to take out of conditional sentencing”. That is exactly what the bill does. He obviously has not read the bill. There is a long list of serious offences that are outlined in the bill for which house arrest and conditional sentence will no longer be available.

The member claims that his party supports making safer and more secure communities in Canada. In fact, the NDP record does not support that statement. When we look at the NDP's record in the House, consistently those members have voted against our criminal justice reforms that have one focus, and that is to make our communities and our neighbourhoods safer for Canadians.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, first, I want to commend the member for his work at the justice committee. He and I both serve on that committee and I have enjoyed his input. We often do not agree on the issues facing Canadians, but I do know he comes there with a wealth of knowledge, being himself a lawyer.

Bill C-42 very clearly is targeted toward serious crimes. There is a general consensus in Canadian society that these kinds of crimes should not call for conditional sentences, time in the safety of one's home.

As members know, I referred to specific cases. He obviously was not listening.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

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.

The House resumed from October 20 consideration of the motion that Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Ending Conditional Sentences for Property and Other Serious Crimes Act

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to participate in this debate on Bill C-42. This is a bill that proposes to eliminate the use of conditional sentencing for virtually all serious crimes.

What is more, this bill allows our Conservative government to finish a job that, sadly, the opposition parties had prevented us from finishing during the previous Parliament. I note that at least one of those parties has now flipped on the issue. It is actually supporting our bill this time around when it opposed it in the previous Parliament.

It would surprise Canadians to know that, under current conditional sentencing practices, serious criminals are allowed to serve their sentences in the comfort of their homes, in front of their big screen TVs and in front of their computers rather than in a prison. That is why these sentences are often referred to as house arrest.

Canada's Criminal Code allows for house arrest to be imposed when a number of conditions are met, including the following: The crime is not punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence; the court sentences the offender to less than two years in prison; the court is convinced that having the criminal serve the sentence in his own home and community would not endanger the safety of that community, and the court is satisfied that the conditional sentence would be consistent with the fundamental purposes and principles of sentencing, one of which, incidentally, is deterrence and denunciation.

There is one additional proviso. The offence must meet the following criteria. It must not be a terrorism offence. It cannot be a crime that is committed on behalf of or as part of a criminal organization or enterprise. Additionally, and I want members to listen very carefully to this, it must not be a serious personal injury offence as defined in the Criminal Code.

That is where the rub lies. The term “serious personal injury offence” is very narrowly defined in the Code. What is more, there are many other crimes that, though not involving direct physical injury to the person, hurt and damage people in very serious and often life-altering ways. These are crimes that are very clearly not legitimate for issuing a sentence that would be served at home, but in fact do qualify for house arrest under our present law. Canadians are rightly angry with such a state of affairs.

Let me give some examples. Although arson does not necessarily involve direct physical injury to another person, it is a very serious offence that most right-thinking Canadians would agree should attract prison time. Imagine a family losing all of their earthly possessions and being unable to return to their home for many months, if ever. Yet, under the current law, the arsonist gets to go back to the comfort of his own home.

Imagine sexual predators attempting to prey on and lure our vulnerable children over the Internet for sexual purposes. Should those offenders not serve some hard time in jail rather than enjoying the comforts of house arrest? Of course they should, yet many of them do in fact spend their sentences at home.

I just responded to a statement made by the member for Vancouver Kingsway and he responded that there is no proof that these offenders are actually serving their time at home. In fact, if he looks at the case law and sentences, those convicted of luring children are actually spending their sentences in the comfort of their homes.

It goes on. What about those drug lords and traffickers who get rich by selling misery, violence and ultimately death to our children? Why should they be able to qualify, as the law presently provides, to serve their punishment back in the comfort of a home often purchased from the proceeds of crime?

Canadians demand more. With Bill C-42, our Conservative government is further restricting the use of conditional sentences and ending the use of house arrests for all indictable offences for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 14 years or more, regardless of whether serious personal injury is involved. The same will apply to indictable offences for which the maximum prison term is 10 years, where these offences involve the use of a weapon, result in bodily harm or involve the importation, exportation, trafficking or production of drugs.

What is more, Canadians will be pleased to hear that Bill C-42 would finally eliminate the use of house arrest for the following crimes: criminal harassment; sexual assault; kidnapping; human trafficking; theft over $5,000; breaking and entering a place other than a dwelling place; being unlawfully in a dwelling house with intent; arson for fraudulent purpose; and, as I mentioned earlier, luring a child over the Internet for sexual purposes.

I am well aware that some of my colleagues in the House might remind me that our government amended the conditional sentencing regime in Canada once before. That was in December 2007. However, the sad truth is that during the last Parliament, the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc used the notion of serious personal injury to water down our Conservative government's efforts to limit conditional sentences. In so doing, the Liberals and the NDP again reinforced the public's perception that they are truly soft on crime.

The opposition parties felt that serious crimes such as robbery should continue to qualify for conditional sentences since they are not defined as a serious personal injury offence. This is all the more surprising to me given that the offence of robbery under section 343 of the Criminal Code includes elements of violence.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-42. This is a bill that I think evokes the kinds of opinions and emotions of Canadians and members of the House that cause us all to really be careful, cautious and thoughtful in how we approach it.

Crime is a serious issue in this country. The victims of crime in this country are an important group of people who have a particular vested interest in seeing that our society moves forward in a positive, progressive manner. Crime is a nuanced issue. It is a complicated issue and it is a simple issue at the same time.

What is simple is what Canadians agree on. We all want crime rates in our country to be reduced as much as humanly possible. We all want people who commit acts of crime and who deviate from the path of acceptable conduct to cease doing so. We all want our cities, our schools and our workplaces to be safe, where women can walk the streets in safety, where our children can play in playgrounds safely, and where all Canadians can be safe and secure at all times.

What is complicated about this issue is that there are no necessarily simple answers. I fear that this bill is one such example of a Conservative approach to crime that on the surface seems superficially appropriate, but when we delve deeper actually is ineffective and will not achieve the goals that we all have.

The bill would remove conditional sentencing in this country from our courtrooms for any person convicted of a crime that has a maximum sentence of 14 years or more or a crime that is proceeded with by way of indictment that has a penalty of at least 10 years.

That does not mean that the people convicted of those offences necessarily get those sentences. What it means is simply, by the definition of that crime, it would remove the ability of judges to impose a conditional sentence, even when they thought that that was the appropriate way to go.

I will give a little history. Conditional sentencing was introduced in September 1996. Essentially it allows for sentences of imprisonment to be served in the community rather than in a correctional facility. It is a midway point between incarceration and sanctions such as probation or fines.

The conditional sentence was not introduced in isolation but as part of a thoughtful renewal sentencing process that reviewed the Criminal Code. These provisions included the fundamental purpose and principles of sentencing.

The fundamental principle of sentencing is that a sentence must be proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the defendant. The renewed sentencing provisions set out sentencing principles including a list of aggravating and mitigating circumstances that should guide sentences imposed.

The primary goal of conditional sentences is to reduce the reliance upon incarceration by providing the courts with an alternate sentencing mechanism. In addition, conditional sentences provide an opportunity to further incorporate restorative justice concepts into the sentencing process by encouraging those who have caused harm to acknowledge this fact and be in a position to make reparation.

At the time of their introduction conditional sentences were generally seen as an appropriate mechanism to divert minor offences and offenders away from the prison system. Overuse of incarceration was recognized by many as problematic while restorative justice concepts were seen as beneficial.

However, in practice, conditional sentences are sometimes viewed in a negative light when used in cases of a very serious crime. Concern has been expressed that some offenders are receiving conditional sentences of imprisonment for crimes that are inappropriate. While it may be beneficial to allow persons who are not dangerous to a community, who otherwise would be incarcerated and who have not committed a serious or violent crime to serve their sentence in the community, certain commentators have argued that sometimes the very nature of the offence and the offender require incarceration.

In this respect an intelligent debate can be had in the House about which particular crimes may not be appropriate for conditional sentences and which ones would be so appropriate.

The problem with the bill before the House is that it eliminates all discretion in this regard. It says that 75 separate offences that are over 14 years are simply taken out of the picture when it comes to being a candidate for conditional sentencing, without any regard to the person being sentenced, to the crime that was committed, to the circumstances of the case. That is the complete opposite of a functioning and well thought out approach to justice.

The present Criminal Code says that these are the kinds of offences that presently do not qualify for conditional sentences. These are offences for which the person has been convicted that must not be a serious personal injury offence. It cannot include high treason, first degree murder or second degree murder. It cannot involve the use or attempted use of violence against another person, or conduct endangering or likely to endanger the life or safety of another person, or inflicting or likely to inflict severe psychological damage to another person.

Conditional sentences are not available to people who have committed sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon, threats to a third party or causing bodily harm or aggravated sexual assault. The offence cannot be a terrorism offence. It cannot be an offence that involves a criminal organization. None of those offences qualify for conditional sentencing.

In a case where a conditional sentence is being considered, a judge must be satisfied that serving the sentence in the community would not endanger the safety of the community. I want to pause there.

When the Conservatives say that everything is about public safety, they do not tell the Canadian public that built right into our Criminal Code is that a conditional sentence cannot be imposed when it would endanger the safety of the community. We should think about that. Obviously a conditional sentence will not endanger the community so eliminating it will not have any appreciable effect on the safety of the community because it will not be imposed when it does so in the first place.

A sentencing judge must also be satisfied that the conditional sentence would be consistent with the fundamental purposes and principles of sentencing. Insofar as this criterion is concerned, I do not hear my friends on the opposite side of the House ever talk about the legal framework of sentencing. They talk about rhetoric and they talk about fear. They do not talk about the real law that is going on

This is what sentencing objectives include: the denunciation of unlawful conduct; the deterrence of the offender and others from committing offences; the separation of the offender from the community where necessary; the rehabilitation of the offender; the provision of reparation to victims and the community; and the promotion of a sense of responsibility in the offender.

These guidelines are guiding our judges and our judicial system, our prosecutors and our defence lawyers when they are deciding an appropriate sentence in the community. This is not a thoughtless process. It is not a process that anybody takes lightly, and conditional sentences are an important tool in the toolbox. I will get into some interesting and important statistics and numbers to show why that is so.

Conditional sentences are not simply a free pass for an offender to have a free vacation in the community. They are, by their very definition, a sentence of incarceration that is simply served in the community as opposed to a penal institution, and they are always attached with conditions, hence the name. The conditions include the following: to keep the peace and be of good behaviour; to appear before the court when required to do so; to report to a supervisor, as required; to remain within the jurisdiction of the court, unless written permission to go outside that jurisdiction is obtained by the court or the person's supervisor; to notify the court or the supervisor in advance of any change of name or address; and to promptly notify the court or the supervisor of any change of employment or occupation.

Furthermore, optional conditions are designed to respond to the conditions of the individual offender. This is something that my friends on the side opposite do not talk about. They think that one size fits all. A person breaks the law and there is one penalty. In a few minutes I will speak to why that is a blunt, an inaccurate and ineffective approach to punishment.

Conditions that are optional include an order that the offender abstain from consumption of alcohol or drugs, that they attend a drug or alcohol treatment program, that they abstain from owning, possessing or carrying a weapon, that they perform up to 240 hours of community service and any other reasonable condition that the court considers desirable for securing the good conduct of the offender and for preventing the offender's repetition of the same offence or commission of another offence. These are conditions that may not be, often are not, and most of the time are not available to an offender in a penal institution.

Unlike probation, a conditional sentence is a tool that is intended to address both punitive and rehabilitation objectives. As I said earlier, safety of the community is one of the paramount criteria considered by a sentencing judge in imposing a conditional sentence.

The gravity of the offence is clearly relevant to determining whether a conditional sentence is appropriate in the circumstances. A conditional sentence can also provide a significant deterrence if significant and sufficient punitive conditions are imposed.

When the objectives of rehabilitation, reparation and promotion of a sense of responsibility may realistically be achieved, a conditional sentence will likely be the appropriate sanction, subject to considerations of denunciation and deterrence.

In sum, conditional sentencing was enacted in our country both to reduce reliance on incarceration as a sanction and to increase the principles of restorative justice and effectiveness in sentence. Has it worked? The sentences have been in place since 1996. Here we are, 13 years later. Let us look at the numbers and the facts, as opposed to the rhetoric.

Statistics Canada reports that conditional sentences still represent a small proportion of all sentences in Canada. Again, it is nice for the Conservatives to look like they are tough on crime, but what do they do? They attack the certain portion of our sentencing that is a minuscule amount of the sentencing in the country. In addition, the tendency in recent years has been to use conditional sentences less frequently.

Instead of attacking some of the major issues that are causing crime in our country, which I will talk about, like poverty, like lack of opportunities for our youth and young people, like cutting down on education and skills training, what do the Conservatives do? They bring in a bill that attacks conditional sentences, which is a tiny amount of the sentences and is being less frequently used every year. It is a good way to look tough without actually doing anything.

In 2003 conditional sentences accounted for 5.3% of all admissions to adult correctional services. By 2008, this figure had declined to 4.7%.

In 2007-08 of the 107,000 offenders being supervised in the community, the vast majority, 75%, were people on probation, that is people who were serving sentences in penal institutions who had been paroled into the community, 16% were on conditional sentences and 9% were on parole or statutory release.

Once again, Canada's incarceration rate, which my friends opposite like to whip up in the Canadian public that it is increasing, which it actually is not, rose only by 2% from the previous year, notwithstanding that the rate of crime had been dropping. The gain was driven by the growing number of adults being held in remand in provincial/territorial jails while awaiting trial or sentence.

Recent increases in the incarceration rate follow a period of relatively steady decline from 1996. On any given day in 2008, an average of 36,000 adults and 2,000 youth aged 12 to 17 years were in custody in Canada.

Canada's incarceration rate tends to be higher than those of most western European countries, yet lower than that of the United States, by a long shot. By contrast, in 2007 Sweden had a rate of 74 people in custody per 100,000. By contrast, the rate in the United States for adults alone was 762, and that does not include youth. Canada's incarceration rate was 117 for every 100,000 people.

The imposition of conditional sentences should not only reduce the rate of incarceration, it should also reduce expenditures in the correctional system. This is due to the fact that the average annual inmate cost for persons in provincial/territorial custody, including remand, in 2005-06 was $52,000 and was over $90,000 for a federal inmate.

An earlier survey found that the successful completion of conditional rate of conditional sentence orders fell from 78% to 63% in 2000-01. This of course marks the fact that we are putting an increasing number of conditions on offenders rather than allegations of fresh offenders.

This is the key point. Statistics Canada has found that adult offenders who spent their sentences under supervision in the community were far less likely to become re-involved with correctional authorities within 12 months of their release than those who had been placed in a correctional institution.

The study found that in four provinces 11% of people who were under community supervision became re-involved with correctional authorities within 12 months and among those in custody 30% became re-involved, more than double the proportion of those under community supervision.

Why is this? This is because in a study that concentrated upon the victims of crime and their attitudes toward conditional sentencing, the benefits of conditional sentencing were viewed by them to include the fact that most rehabilitation programs could be more effectively implemented when the offender was in the community rather than in custody, that prison was no more effective a deterrent than more severe intermediate punishments, such as enhanced conditions on home confinement, that keeping offenders in custody was significantly more expensive than supervising them in the community and that the public had become more supportive of community-based sentencing particularly restorative justice measures, except for serious crimes of violence.

The government is following an out-moded, U.S.-style George Bush approach to prisons that does not work. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, who cannot be accused of being soft on crime in the state of California, is moving in a completely opposite path than the Conservative government. Why? Instead of building more prisons and sending people to prison for longer periods of time in more harsh conditions, many states have realized that this is costing them unbelievable amounts of money. In some cases, state budgets are facing bankruptcy. Most important, it is not even effective.

After some states have spent billions of dollars on increasing incarceration, what have they found? They are out billions of dollars and it is not even effective because crime rates in their communities are not falling. What a double waste. They spend more taxpayer money and do not even have safer communities.

I will talk about some things the government is doing that is the compete opposite of making our communities safe. It is closing single-member RCMP detachments in communities under 5,000 in British Columbia. It is closing the western Canada duty office in the home city of my friend, the hon. member for Edmonton—Strathcona, and concentrating that office in Ottawa.

I visited Kent, a maximum security institution, last week. The CORCAN section of the prison, which is the section that consists of large, open areas where prisoners are supposed to make things, build equipment and learn employment skills, was empty. It was closed. What do we do with inmates when they are in custody? We lock them in their cells and we do not give them the educational or skills training they need that might give them a chance not to reoffend when they come out of prison.

There is a complete shortage of all kinds of programs in our prison system, from programs that would help offenders learn employment skills to getting education, to simply getting the kind of social, emotional and psychological treatment they need. Eighty per cent of prisoners in our prison system suffer from mental illness and most of those people do not get anywhere near the treatment they need to adequately deal with their problems.

Why is this important? Because the New Democrats believe in one thing. The best way to keep our communities safe is to ensure that offenders do not reoffend when they come out of prison. That is an obvious statement. We do not believe that because we are bleeding heart, compassionate people. We believe that because of self-interest.

This means people in prison ought to get the kinds of programs they need. It means that every person coming in contact with our justice system ought to have a judge, a prosecutor and a defence lawyer adequately look at sentencing alternatives that are tailored to the person, to ensure the person does not reoffend. Taking away the tool of conditional sentencing not only does not accomplish that but will make our communities less safe.

The most important people in this whole debate are the victims of crime in our country. Victims of crime in are not served when we adopt policies that make it more likely that offenders will reoffend when they come out of our justice system. It is not good policy. It is not being smart on crime.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin for giving me the opportunity to clarify my remarks.

We support the important notion that judges are in the best position to consider the circumstances of the charges brought before the court and to determine appropriate sentences for those found guilty. In contrast to the Conservatives, we accept the basic principle that the court is best suited to determining an appropriate sentence.

However, we recognize that Parliament's role is to tell courts and judges across the country that under certain circumstances, conditional sentences do not reflect the seriousness of the conviction of the person brought before the court.

For example, if a person is convicted of serious fraud or a serious criminal offence, such as a sexual offence, and is given one of the harshest sentences in our Criminal Code, we believe that Parliament is fully justified in telling the courts that, in certain cases, we will restrict the court's ability to use conditional sentences. For all practical purposes, that is what Bill C-42 seeks to do.

For example, if the bill had completely eliminated the courts' freedom to use conditional sentences, we would have voted against it, just as we voted against Bill C-9 in the last Parliament because we thought that it placed undue restrictions on the courts' ability to impose these sentences.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to participate in the debate today in the House on Bill C-42. It is at second reading. It is the beginning of what I hope will be an expeditious process to study this important change to sentencing provisions of the Criminal Code.

I can say at the outset that the Liberal Party will be supporting the bill at second reading, to send it to the committee. We obviously want to hear from experts and those involved in the criminal justice system as to what the effects of restricting conditional sentences will be.

However, certainly at first blush, we think that there is a lot of merit in restricting the use of conditional sentences, particularly for the most serious crimes. That is why when it comes to a vote at second reading, hopefully expeditiously, we will be supporting the legislation.

Bill C-42 amends section 742.1 of the Criminal Code to eliminate the reference to serious personal injury offences and restricts the availability of conditional sentences, colloquially known as house arrest, for offences for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 14 years or life imprisonment, and for other specific offences prosecuted by way of indictment for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 10 years.

The member for Edmonton—St. Albert, the Minister of Justice and others often refer to conditional sentences as house arrest. There can be a great deal of misleading information about in fact what the imposition of such a sentence represents. Defence lawyers have told me that frequently a conditional sentence or a term of imprisonment in the community, a house arrest as it is colloquially known, may be for a longer period of time than would be a sentence in closed custody, a sentence of incarceration in a correctional facility.

As the House will know, when somebody breaches the terms of a conditional sentence and is brought back before the court, for example for breaching the terms of house arrest, for leaving their property except during certain hours as deemed allowable by the judge, or for a breach of whatever nature, even a minor breach of a conditional sentence, the presumption is then that the person will finish the remainder of that sentence in closed custody.

I accept that as a reasonable presumption. If the court decides to give someone a break on a conditional sentence because, in the opinion of the court, the person does not represent a threat or a risk to the community and because rehabilitation can be better served in the community, then if one chooses to breach the terms of that conditional sentence it seems reasonable one should then face the rest of that sentence term in closed custody. However, as I said, that can often represent a longer period of time.

Therefore the idea that conditional sentences are handed out to serious offenders by courts that then allow people to go home and serve their time on their sofa is a mass simplification of a necessary tool for the justice system.

That being said, I think all members of the House can acknowledge, and other members who have spoken on this issue have correctly pointed out, that the judicial system falls into a loss of public confidence when the imposition of conditional sentences applies in cases that appear to be unreasonable, in cases where for example we have serious white-collar crime, serious fraud involving in many cases millions of dollars or as I said earlier, cases involving violence or personal injury.

I think we all accept that those who commit the most serious crimes should face serious consequences. To restrict the ability of courts to use conditional sentences in those circumstances can in fact be very reasonable.

As I said a moment ago, there is a mass simplification of conditional sentencing, particularly by this government which contends that various types of offenders sentenced to imprisonment are simply sent home, in their communities.

Things are not that simple. I was somewhat surprised to hear the member for Edmonton—St. Albert say that, in the vast majority of cases or at least many cases, judicial discretion had not worked.

We are not as demanding of judges as the Conservative Party seems to be.

The time has come, and I accept responsibility for that, to tell our courts that, as many media have reported recently, those who commit some of the most serious crimes, often economic crimes, and white-collar criminals are not facing severe enough sentences. We believe that it would be appropriate for Parliament to decide to send our courts a very clear message by curtailing or limiting the judges' ability to impose conditional sentences for such crimes.

Limiting judicial discretion is something the government is really fond of. I was amazed to hear about the Minister of Public Safety recognizing that his strategy was to build new prisons and expand existing ones. The vast majority of inmates serve their sentences in prisons under the purview of the provincial governments.

I would like to point out a grave concern I have with respect to Bill C-42. Should the number of offenders facing sentences of imprisonment in correctional establishments rise, then we as a Parliament, and certainly the government, have a duty to make better programs available in these establishments, and I would go as far as to say a duty to share with the provincial governments the costs associated with these changes to the Criminal Code.

The government likes to increase the number of people, convicted persons, who will face prison in closed custody and correctional facilities. At the same time I do not think the government has taken sufficient responsibility with provincial authorities to share the burden that these changes represent to provincial correctional systems.

I can use something from my own province of New Brunswick that happened last week as an example. The Government of New Brunswick had to send a memo to judges in the provinces indicating that they could no longer incarcerate people on intermittent sentences, those serving time for example traditionally on weekends, because the provincial jails were full.

A lot of this has to do with those waiting in correctional facilities pending their trial, those on remand, as it is known, which is also in many cases a situation that needs changes. That is why we have supported changes to restrict the ability to grant double time in remand circumstances. However it is not good enough to simply change the Criminal Code and tell the provinces to deal with it or tell the Correctional Service of Canada to deal with it.

Last week I had the opportunity to talk with people from the Correctional Service of Canada who work at the Dorchester Penitentiary in my constituency, at the Shepody Healing Centre, which is the psychiatric hospital in that medium-security federal institution and which looks after federally incarcerated inmates from all over Atlantic Canada as well as from some provinces such as Quebec. They tell me they do not have sufficient resources now to look after the seriously mentally ill inmates who are incarcerated or even those who are found not criminally responsible but are incarcerated for security reasons at a hospital like the Shepody Centre in Dorchester.

To make changes to sentencing provisions is part of the solution, and the government likes to focus on tougher sentences. Where it falls down and where Bill C-42 in our view does not do enough is in dealing with some of the factors that lead to a criminal activity or to criminal conduct. A government that cuts, as the government has, the crime prevention funding and at the same time talks about building larger prisons I think has missed the important balance that is necessary in an effective criminal justice policy.

My colleague from Ajax—Pickering, our critic on public safety issues, has done a lot of work and has recently published a number of interesting articles that highlight the government's failure to have crime prevention policies and its obsessive focus on punishing offenders once a victim has already been created.

To conclude, on behalf of the Liberal Party, I have to say, as I said already, that we will support Bill C-42. We have concerns about the lack of resources available in the federal prison system, as well as at the provincial level. We believe that the government will have to accept the responsibility of sharing these additional costs with its provincial partners.

We do, however, believe and agree that, in some cases, conditional sentencing has brought some unfair criticism upon the judicial system. For that reason, we recognize the need to further restrict the instances where such sentences are deemed appropriate.

The Liberal Party does not think, as the Conservatives do, that judicial discretion has not worked. We think that Parliament has a role to say to judges that these are the kinds of circumstances that should be eligible for terms of conditional imprisonment, conditional sentences or imprisonment in the community. In many cases for first-time offenders and non-violent offences involving minor crimes, this is precisely the way to improve the chance of rehabilitation and to prevent that person from reoffending once he or she completes his or her sentence.

We believe there is an important role for conditional sentences, but we believe in the case of very serious fraud, in the case of serious repeat property offences, in the case of sexual offences, in the case of offences involving bodily harm, Parliament has a role to say to the judiciary that those are not the kinds of offences for which a convicted person should be eligible for a conditional sentence. That is why we think there is considerable merit in adopting Bill C-42.