Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Northumberland—Quinte West for his speech and his work as a police officer on the front line for many, many years.
Is the debate based on politics; that is, what is best to be elected or what is best for society? No party has the wherewithal to say that it is the party with this issue and no other party can debate or talk about this issue. It is simply not true. Every single member of Parliament has had people come to them over their period of time here to talk about a crime that has been committed against them, what they have read in the paper, or what they have seen on the news. In many cases, unless people have been in a courtroom and understand the procedure from the time the crime has been committed to the sentencing aspect of it, many of us just simply get our information from what we hear. If we have been victims of crime, we understand the process a little better than others.
The previous speaker spoke about people doing time in prison and what happens when they are there? That is the key. It is one thing to say to someone that they are going to jail for six months, six years, 25 years, but what happens to that individual behind bars? What happens to them in the prison system? Are the human resources there to actually try to change this person's opinion? Are they there to say, “All right, buddy, what you've done was seriously wrong. That type of behaviour was against society's rules. Now we are going to ask you to work with us and we are going to try to correct that behaviour”.
The reality is that what we get from the Conservatives is the back end of what we call the justice issues. We do not know if they are acting on a revenge premise or the justice issue. I will give them the benefit of the doubt, because I know a lot of them personally, and I think that they are actually trying to do what they believe is best for their constituents and Canadian society.
When we debate these types of issues, we have to have an honest and thoughtful debate, one that is not pointing fingers at anybody. No riding is exempt from crime. No person in this House is an expert on what to do in this regard. That is why it is important for the House of Commons to have this type of debate and eventually committees can bring in experts.
When we have this type of debate, we would think that the government, with all the research capability at its fingerprints, when it brings legislation forward in terms of increased sentences or whatever it brings, that it would be able to bring up the financial costs as well, not just the cost of what happens when the crime is committed but the actual costs of longer duration of prison time for these perpetrators.
The Conservatives should be able to come up with those answers fairly quickly. They have all the research capability at their fingertips, but we never get that from them until much later. If they are looking for more support, if they are looking for more positive debate on this particular issue, I ask them to bring those financial figures forward. Then we can find out exactly who will pay for this. It is one thing to say to someone, “Buddy, you did something wrong. We are going to tack on an extra 10 years to your sentence”, but there is a financial cost to that, a financial cost to the taxpayers of Canada.
I remember a Conservative Party once in this place called the Reform Party, and its members always said that nothing should be presented to the House until a dollar figure was attached to it, and it did not matter what it was. This particular Conservative Party, if there are any fiscal conservatives left over there, seems to have forgotten that aspect of it. Plus, we are asking the government, where is the evidence that this will actually deter crime? Where is the evidence? That is all we are asking for.
We are not saying what the Conservatives are doing is wrong or right. All we are asking is, where is the evidence that these particular pieces of legislation will indeed do exactly what they say it will do? If they brought that and the cost figures forward, they would probably get a lot more support in the initial stages of this discussion.
I will give the Conservatives credit for bringing forward issues that a lot of people do not like to talk about. However, if we cannot debate these issues in the House of Commons, then where can we debate them?
I agree. There are some people in this country, if I had them in front of me, I do not know what I would do with them after seeing some of the crimes they have committed. But I have asked for over twelve and a half years, through many justice ministers, including two with the Conservative Party, to bring forward a comprehensive child Internet pornography bill, and I am still waiting.
I have had the legislation. A previous member here had the legislation. The former attorney general of Saskatchewan, Mr. Chris Axworthy, brought it forward many times. We are still waiting. From Liberals and Conservatives, we are waiting to stop child pornography in this country. Whether or not we can completely stop it, I do not know, but the reality is that we have to do a lot better to protect our children in this regard.
It does not just necessarily mean putting those perpetrators behind bars. It is trying to get at the root of the problem first.
A priest once told me that when dealing with crime or anything of this nature, crime is like dandelions. We can cut off the tops of the dandelions but if we do not get at the root of the problem, they will just grow back again, and this is what we in the NDP have emphasized for many years. We have to get at the root of the crime to really prevent it from happening again. That is where the real investment and real expenditures should be made.
If we can create for the families and children of communities right across this country, from coast to coast to coast, a system of ensuring that they all have proper nutrition, proper education, proper housing, proper health care, et cetera, many of them would not fall into the lap of crime, but unfortunately, when they do not see a way out, many of them resort to substance abuse and to criminal activity in order to get through their lives on a day to day basis. In fact, many of them fall into gangs.
This is what happens when we do not invest in families and children right from the very beginning. We can lock them all up but we are never going to prevent it from happening. There is no question that deterrents will have an effect on some people, but if we are truly serious about justice issues in this country, we have to get at the root of the problem to begin with.
Crime has been with us since time immemorial. We have always had some form of thievery in this country, ever since man has been around. Since Adam and Eve we have had some form of crime in this world, and not one person has been able to completely stamp it out. We know that when we look at the Scandinavian countries, when we look at the European countries and what they are doing in prevention, and we see what they are doing when criminals are in jail, we see that many times they will not repeat what they have done before, and also many of them do not commit the crime in the first place.
It begs the question: What do we do with someone who murders three children? What do we do with someone who has had 12 impaired driving charges, and on the 13th time, went and killed someone?
In my own riding, when I first became an MP, I will never forget it. We gave a beautiful 18-year-old girl a grade 12 graduation certificate. Three months later, we sent her family a condolence card on the death of their daughter because of a drunk driver in Nova Scotia who had nine impaired driving charges. On the 10th one he got it right. He finally killed someone. He went to jail for the maximum sentence at that time of eight years.
I can assure members that I and my entire community were very upset with the fact that it was only eight years. I would love to have seen a more personal, longer sentence. But we have to ask ourselves how he got a driver's licence after every single other offence. The fact is that we did not get at the root of that problem. We just slapped him on the wrist. We put him in jail the first time, fined him, and then just let him carry on his way.
Society, in fact politicians at all levels, failed the system because we forgot to go after this guy and teach him from the beginning that drinking and driving was an unacceptable aspect of our society and that thou shalt not do it again, but we just ignored it and passed it on.
Again, if we are going to prevent crime from happening, we have to get at the roots of it. It is critical that we as parliamentarians look at the roots of all of this in society from our aboriginal people to new immigrants, to gangs, to the whole bit. For the Conservative Party to say that it has all the answers is simply not true.
Here is something else that is really quite offensive in many ways. RCMP officers, in many ways, are the front line warriors when it comes to crime in this country. They are the ones who are up all night. They are the ones who go after the bad guys in our communities.
What does the Conservative government do? People who understand agreements with the RCMP know that the RCMP does not have an association or a union. After six months through the RCMP pay council, it turned around and agreed to a 3.5% increase. That is not very much money for our brave men and women who wear the red serge. The government agreed to it and signed the deal that said this is what they were going to receive. What happened on December 23? In an email, just before Christmas, what did the Conservatives do? They told the RCMP that, without debate, without discussion, they were going to rollback that increase they agreed to back to 1.5%.
What is the Conservative Party saying to the RCMP? “Yes, we value your service. We're proud to have you as police officers in this country doing the job that we ask you to do. And when we negotiate in writing and agree to your pay increase, yes, we're going to honour that”. Then, without notice, bang. Gone. Rolled back to 1.5%. I have yet to hear one Conservative stand in this House and apologize for that action. It begs the question: Why did they roll back that salary without debate in the House of Commons, without any previous warning, and just prior to Christmas? I have spoken with many RCMP officers and their families across this country who are very upset and very angry over that.
I will say this to the federal government, and these Conservatives, if they care to listen. They do not have all the answers to crime and punishment in this country. However, by working co-operatively in this House of Commons, we can work together to ensure that those perpetrators of serious crimes do pay the time that they deserve. However, at the same time, for all of those people who are suffering from mental health issues, from social issues, from all other issues, who find no other way in life but to resort to crime, we as a society should be there to invest in those early treatment programs to ensure that they do not fall into crime in the first place.
If we have that ability, as a Parliament, to do that, then I think we can not only reduce crime drastically in this country but we as a society will be able to move forward, as other countries have as well.
