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.

Ending Conditional Sentences for Property and other Serious Crimes Act

[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.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, assuming that there are some very serious crimes for which conditional sentences may not appropriately be considered, let us put that aside for a moment. My mind is focused on the broad-brush approach whereby the bill lumps together every single crime for which a maximum sentence of 14 years to life exists. Here are some of those crimes: drawing a document without authority, forging a passport, making a false testamentary instrument, public servants refusing to deliver property, stopping the mail with intent, and possession of counterfeit money. The hon. colleague's grandmother might be in possession of counterfeit money for all we know.

I am asking my friend whether or not she thinks there are any circumstances under which a conviction under one of those offences that I read out would properly qualify for a conditional sentence. I would like her to specifically address those offences.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Speaker, first I ask indulgence to answer my Liberal colleague's second question. He asked about the effectiveness of minimum sentences.

I would say that I believe they are effective. The reason I believe not only that minimum sentences are effective but also that conditional sentences need to be restricted is that we have to take into consideration the victims. We have to start balancing this process. We have gotten to the point where offenders are receiving much more consideration than are victims and the impacts on victims.

That is why I believe that minimum sentences are effective, and I believe that restricting conditional sentences is also effective.

I will go back to the question from my hon. colleague from the NDP with regard to offences that have a maximum sentence of 14 years or life. Many of these are very serious offences. He has touched on a few of them. Without knowing the history or the details of an offence, and having only a simple statement of what the offence is, I do not have enough to make a determination, nor would I take the position that I am the judge or jury.

It is not my job to decide what sentence is to be given. My job is to say that I believe conditional sentences should be restricted for those crimes that have maximum sentences of 14 years or life.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Saint Boniface for her great intervention today. We are really lucky to have a woman of her calibre here, with her experience in the field, working with the police forces, working with victims and having an understanding of why we need to have tougher sentencing in this country.

In my riding people are always appalled at the idea that somebody could break into and enter a person's house, violate that person's home and then get a condition whereby they can go and return to their own home to live out their sentence in the comfort of their home while the other person's place has been violated and gutted.

We just went through an experience in my riding where one person went out and committed a whole series of acts of arson, burned down about three houses, attempted to burn down a couple of others and then got to spend time in conditional sentencing.

The victims of those crimes are saying that they do not have a house anymore but that individual gets to go back and serve out their sentence in the comfort of their own home. That is so wrong on so many levels.

I am asking the hon. member for Saint Boniface to talk about how she sees this coming into effect and actually providing the victims with some retribution and feeling that they have that ability.

We are getting a lot of questions from the NDP, and yet in Manitoba the NDP provincial government supports this type of legislation. The Minister of Justice there is very much in support of being tougher on crime. I wonder why his federal cousins are not on the same page.

[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.

[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.

The House resumed from October 21 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

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on this bill to amend the Criminal Code.

We have been dealing with a number of bills, but coincidentally I have seen all the bills before. About 120 days ago I saw them. In the last Parliament I saw them. Now we see that the government, which had the support of three opposition parties to pass the last bill and get it moving, has voted against its own bill so that it can force a vote, at which the government will be voting for it. This is yet another example of trying to drag out legislation on criminal justice issues that the House is prepared to deal with.

If you look at the record, Madam Speaker, you will see that the government has blamed everybody else for delaying this legislation. That is the problem. It is extremely important to understand where the backlog is.

Last night, as a matter of fact, in the debate on the private member's bill to put suicide bombings in the definition of terrorist attacks, the government did not allow the mover of the bill to collapse the debate and pass it yesterday for Senator Jerry Grafstein. It is not—

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

I regret to interrupt the hon. member on his highly relevant speech, but he will be able to continue his comments the next time this bill is before the House.

It being 1.30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business according to the order indicated in today's order paper.

The House resumed from October 23 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.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-42 is an important bill which should engage Canadians.

There are a number of questions that I want to raise. I will be talking briefly about sentencing. I want to talk about judicial discretion. I would like to talk about some of the implications of this legislation vis-à-vis certain offences and the serious questions that Canadians will want to have answered. As a consequence, the Liberal Party is going to be supporting Bill C-42 at second reading, to go to committee in order to hear from experts.

One of those implications will definitely be the cost of implementing changes to the Criminal Code. As members know, although the Parliament of Canada, the Government of Canada, passes legislation amending the Criminal Code, the responsibility to enforce that legislation in most cases falls to the provinces. There is an important element that has to be addressed, and that is that if we pass a law, there must be reasonable certitude that it will be respected and enforced across the land. However, if there is an impediment to that happening, then Parliament has to address that. It is not good enough to pass a law just because the law makes sense. We have to be able to enforce that law.

Today in the media, members will know, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has been asked specifically to start costing out the provisions in a number of pieces of legislation that have been proposed by the government which will have an impact on our ability to enforce the changes proposed in the legislation.

There are some very serious issues and it is going to be very important that this bill go to committee so that we hear from the experts. We all have an opinion here in this place but we need to go to committee. That is where the resources of outside experts from across the land will be available to inform parliamentarians, and that is why we do this.

Second reading allows us to at least raise some issues that we hope the committee itself will address when committee hearings start, and that is important.

For those who are not aware, the summary of this particular bill reads as follows:

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--

--and that is an important part--

--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.

For most people, that will not make any sense whatsoever, so as I was looking at some of the debates so far, I thought it would be important to remind hon. members and Canadians about what conditional sentencing is. When did it come about and why was it there?

The member for Edmonton—St. Albert had a very concise description, and I would simply like to draw on it.

This aspect of conditional sentencing came into being in June of 1994, under then Bill C-41, and it was described as Canada's first comprehensive reform to modernizing sentencing law and procedures since 1892, so it was breaking new ground. It was introduced in the House of Commons, and among its elements was the creation of the concept of a conditional sentence of imprisonment. This meant that sentences of imprisonment of less than two years, if ordered or mandated by a court, could be served in the community under certain conditions and under supervision. This could be done only under statutory conditions such that the court was satisfied that the offender could serve the sentence in the community without endangering the population at large.

Therefore, our system of justice recognized that there were cases where the people who had broken the law and who were subject to imprisonment were, in some cases, not likely to reoffend or to be a risk to society. Often it is said that if one commits a crime there are consequences. One must be responsible and accountable for one's actions and must take one's punishment.

There are cases where someone who, for instance, is convicted of dangerous driving causing bodily harm to another person and that would prescribe an imprisonment. However, when someone is put in jail, the judges need to look at some other factors. I was looking on the web last night about the various kinds of cases and the conditional sentencing arrangements that were given and this bill would change them.

I want to advise the House of some of these cases. Anything to do with drugs, as far as I am concerned, is very serious and it is something for which I would have a hard time giving a conditional sentence. We must understand that a conditional sentence means not going to jail and living one's life. It is like being on probation. There is a fine line between conditional sentencing and probation. Conditional sentencing usually involves curfews put on people and they cannot leave the house from 6 p.m. until 9 a.m. the next day. It also means that they are only permitted to go to and from work directly, with no stops in between. It also means that they must under prescription check in with someone akin to a probation officer to ensure they are doing all the things under the court order. It is quite restrictive and, in some cases, the length of a conditional sentence may be longer than the period for which they would serve in jail if they were in fact sent to jail for the offence.

There was a case in Alberta recently where 12 men were involved in drug trafficking. One of the persons involved was an 18-year-old with a clean record. He was a bright kid who made a mistake by getting involved with bad people, which happens a lot. He was sentenced to 24 months of conditional sentence and a probation period after that. The court took into account that there may be circumstances under which the person may be less likely to reoffend or get involved in criminal activity if he did not go to jail, which some people have described in this debate as being crime school where one learns how to be a good criminal.

In another case, a 32-year-old New Brunswicker was drinking at a bar and he assaulted a staff member at the bar following an altercation with his girlfriend. He punched the staffer in the bar because the staffer had insulted his girlfriend. Under the law, he should have gone to jail but he was given a conditional sentence.

A Nova Scotia man got one year of conditional sentencing for uttering a death threat but there were other circumstances for justifying giving that conditional sentence.

A Kingston man was given nine months conditional sentence for assault. He has a curfew from 6 p.m. until 9 a.m. the next day, except for going to and from his work.

A woman received a 12 month conditional sentence for punching her husband's girlfriend. She normally would have gone to jail but something happened. She assaulted her husband's girlfriend and she should have gone to jail but the law currently provides that she could get a conditional sentence.

An Edmonton nurse received a 23 month conditional sentence for dangerous driving causing bodily harm. I do not know the details of the case but it was 23 months of house arrest, although I do not think it is sitting around the house having a good time.

A New Brunswick woman was sentenced to a 12 month conditional sentence plus 3 years probation for concealing the body of her newborn baby who had died. Under the Criminal Code, normally she should have gone to jail but she was given a conditional sentence of 12 months.

A Regina man convicted of dangerous driving causing bodily harm was given a two year conditional sentence. Another man, who had no hands, was a courier for a drug group. He was given a 12 month conditional sentence plus 2 years probation mainly because he was at risk of being harmed if he was in jail.

Those are the kinds of things that would be covered in Bill C-42 and, if it were to pass as is, all of those people would go to jail. There would be no conditional sentences and no consideration of whether they have family, are the sole bread winners or have a disabled child who needs a father or mother. Those are the kinds of things the judges need to take into consideration.

When I looked at the legislation and read some of the things that would be changed, it drew to my attention that there needs to be some judicial discretion. I believe this is where the Conservatives and the other parties part on justice bills. It has to do with judicial discretion. It has to do with whether we respect the courts and judges to make informed decisions based on criteria and principles.

With regard to sentencing, the fundamental purpose of sentencing is to contribute, along with crime prevention initiatives, and to show respect for the law and the maintenance of a peaceful and safe society by imposing just sanctions that have one or more of the following objectives: first, to denounce unlawful conduct; second, to deter the offender and other persons from committing serious offences; third, to separate offenders from society, where necessary; fourth, to assist in the rehabilitation of offenders; fifth, to provide reparations for harm done to victims in the community; and sixth, to promote a sense of responsibility in offenders and acknowledgement of the harm done to victims and the community.

The need for these things was reinforced in a judgment in the year 2000 from Justice Proulx, who, in his ruling said that the provisions on conditional sentencing:

...were enacted both to reduce reliance on incarceration as a sanction and to increase the use of principles of restorative justice in sentencing.

A conditional sentence should be distinguished from probationary measures. Probation is primarily a rehabilitative sentencing tool. By contrast, Parliament intended conditional sentences to include both punitive and rehabilitative aspects. Therefore, conditional sentences should generally include punitive conditions that are restrictive of the offender's liberty. Conditions such as house arrest should be the norm, not the exception

The Supreme Court of Canada finds that there are circumstances where an offender could have the benefit, first, of some rehabilitation component, but also the punitive component. It is important that we never have any understanding that someone is going to commit a crime and not be responsible for his or her actions.

That issue comes to bear when we look at what is happening in the proposed justice bills that have come before Parliament. We have often heard in this place that if people do the crime, they do the time. It tends to indicate that the philosophy is to treat everybody the same, regardless of the circumstances or conditions.

Members will know that there are some 20 principles and guidelines guiding judges, allowing them the latitude to look at a circumstance and find out what best fits that case. Clearly, for the most serious crimes that is not a problem, but in some of the examples I gave, I found it somewhat problematic.

I also want to point out to members that in a recent survey it was found that 39% of inmates in jail in the province of Ontario suffer from some form of mental illness. Having done a lot of work on fetal alcohol syndrome, I am quite aware that many of the people in our jails suffer from alcohol-related birth defects.

Those are the kinds of things on which judges have some discretion. However, Bill C-42 would make it much more difficult for the justice system to treat people who have problems that are beyond the problems they have.

I certainly hope the committee will look at the costs of implementing these kinds of changes to the law. The estimates that I have already seen and that, hopefully, will be confirmed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, will show that the cost of implementing these changes to Bill C-42 would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Over 5,000 people who are currently on conditional sentencing would be in jail.

The magnitude of this is very significant. The issues are significant and I hope all hon. members will bring those to committee so we can get it right.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is absolutely correct. If the power is taken out of the judgment of the judges, then decisions we make could eventually lead to the debate of why we have judges at all.

There is no question that people who have a crime committed against them feel very angry, upset and despondent about what happened to them. The fact is that many of those crimes are committed by people who started life with a mental or physical challenge. Whatever the challenges are, we are not walking in their shoes.

There are a million reasons why people resort to crime, which is why it is important that judges have the discretion, through a legal system that allows all the facts and bearings of a case to go before a judge or jury of his peers, to make a complete analysis of what the time should be when fitting the crime.

I hear fiscal Conservatives talk about the financial aspects of everything, but when it comes to this, they are very silent on what the actual costs will be. Why does the member believe the Conservative Party is so reluctant to release financial information on what these particular legislations would eventually cost the taxpayers of Canada?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated at the beginning of my speech, it is easy to pass laws but to have them enforced and work within our system is another prerequisite. There is no point in passing laws that will never be enforced. It happens. We have heard time and time again that the provinces are strapped and that the courts and jails are full.

It costs about $300 a day on average for an inmate, which is more than a hotel stay. However, by changing this law, 5,000-plus people would go to jail. It means that certain jails would need to be expanded and new jails built. All kinds of additional people would need to be involved. The costs would be very significant and, beyond the capital cost of prisons, much of the cost would fall on the shoulders of the provincial government.

They have clearly said that they do not have the money to do it. They do not have the people, the probationary officers or the staffing in the system to care for this. Does that not mean that we need to do more in terms of identifying those who will not reoffend? We need to allow them to have conditional sentencing or house arrest with the understanding that it is both punitive as well as rehabilitative, and look for more ways in which we can work on crime prevention.

We need prevention. It has never been in any of these bills and that concerns me because prevention is much cheaper than incarceration.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot let it go by that the Conservatives like to consider themselves the law and order party but the reality is that the people who uphold law and order in this country, the RCMP, had their salary increases rolled back on December 23 from 3.5% to 1.5% without notification.

What a slap in the face to those hon. men and women who serve our country and go after the bad guys every day. I would like the hon. member's comments on how he and the police in his riding felt just before Christmas when their salary increases were rolled back arbitrarily by the government.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there are many people who are involved in the administration and the enforcement of the criminal justice system. Police officers certainly are the front line. We hear year after year how many of them lose their lives in the line of duty, enforcing the laws of Canada. So, I do not disagree with the member. I can, however, enlighten him.

The Department of Justice says that 5,000 more people would be put in jail as a consequence of this and it is estimated that the 5,000 additional inmates would cost the provinces in the range of $250 million to $500 million a year. That is not counting the capital costs. There is no way that the provincial systems currently can accommodate these 5,000 extra inmates. It is also estimated that the capital costs for expanding or building new prisons would be $1.5 billion to $2 billion.

This is the dimension of the problem we have to demonstrate that we will be able to enforce the changes in the law that are currently being presented under Bill C-42.