Bill C-43 (Historical)

Strengthening Canada's Corrections System Act

An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Criminal Code

This enactment amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to
(a) clarify that the protection of society is the paramount consideration for the Correctional Service of Canada in the corrections process and for the National Parole Board and the provincial parole boards in the determination of all cases;
(b) provide that a correctional plan is to include the level of intervention by the Service in respect of the offender’s needs and the objectives for the offender’s behaviour, their participation in programs and the meeting of their court-ordered obligations;
(c) expand the range of disciplinary offences to include intimidation, false claims and throwing a bodily substance;
(d) establish the right of a victim to make a statement at parole hearings;
(e) permit the disclosure to a victim of the name and location of the institution to which the offender is transferred, the reason for a transfer, information about the offender’s participation in programs and convictions for serious disciplinary offences and the reason for a temporary absence or a hearing waiver;
(f) provide consistency as to which offenders are excluded from accelerated parole review;
(g) provide for the automatic suspension of the parole or statutory release of offenders who receive a new custodial sentence and require the National Parole Board to review their case within a prescribed period; and
(h) authorize a peace officer to arrest without warrant an offender for a breach of a condition of their conditional release.
This enactment also makes a consequential amendment to the Criminal Code.

Strengthening Canada's Corrections System Act

[Josée Verner, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

moved that Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Criminal Code, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, this is an important bill. It is important for all Canadians and, certainly, it is important for my riding of Oxford in southwestern Ontario.

I do rise to speak in support of Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Criminal Code. With this bill, the government is proposing several fundamental reforms to corrections and conditional release to ensure our streets and communities remain safe for everyone. That should be the goal for all of us in this House.

The proposed reforms would make the protection of society the paramount principle of corrections and conditional release. They would modernize disciplinary sanctions and increase the responsibility and accountability of offenders for their own actions. At the same time, the reforms would provide victims with access to the kind of information they demand and deserve.

These amendments did not appear out of thin air. Indeed, they build on and reinforce work already underway to strengthen corrections and conditional release. It, therefore, might be useful to understand the context for these amendments and how they are intended to continue the transformation of corrections.

Since coming to office, the government has been committed to ensuring the corrections system achieves two interrelated goals: enabling offenders to get the help they need to rejoin society as law-abiding citizens, and that is an important goal, and ensuring that Canadians feel safe in their own homes and communities.

In 2007, as part of our commitment to protecting Canadian families and communities, the government established an independent panel to review the business plans, priorities and strategies of Correctional Service Canada.

The panel made 109 recommendations under five themes: offender accountability, eliminating drugs from prison, physical infrastructure, employability and employment, as well as eliminating statutory release and moving to earned parole. Its recommendations specifically address the concerns of victims as well as the needs of offenders with mental health problems.

In budget 2008, the government committed $478 million over five years to implement many of the panel's recommendations. We have made tremendous progress in key areas. I will highlight two in particular, drugs and mental health illnesses.

The panel stressed the need to work harder to eliminate drugs from prisons. Our government responded by announcing a new anti-drug strategy last August to help eliminate drugs in federal prisons. This strategy is allowing Correctional Service Canada to significantly expand the drug detector dog program at all federal prisons, increase security intelligence capacity in institutions and their surrounding communities, and purchase security equipment for maximum and medium security federal prisons while also enhancing perimeter security around institutions.

As well, the government is taking action to tackle a problem that significantly contributes to the use of drugs: the presence of gangs in our prisons.

The panel also pointed out the need to address mental health illnesses, which have increased by 71% since 1997 among the offender population. Indeed, nearly 26% of female offenders and 12% of male offenders are suffering from a serious mental illness when they enter the correctional system. That is when they enter the correctional system, and that is an important part of this whole issue that we need to understand. Clearly, sound mental health is a vital issue for the successful transition of offenders to the community.

Through the community mental health initiative, the government has already been working hard to ensure offenders under community supervision can get the help they need. For example, more than 900 community staff have been trained in mental health issues, and Correctional Service Canada has embarked on a pilot project to provide specialized mental health treatment for women offenders in the community.

However, there is more work to be done to combat the use of drugs in our prisons and to address mental health illnesses. That is why the government plans to continue improving tools and techniques to detect drugs. The bill specifically addresses the need to expand mental health programs and services in institutions and communities to help ensure a successful transition for offenders and to keep our communities safe.

The independent panel also stressed that rehabilitation is a shared responsibility between the corrections system and the offender.

To heighten offender accountability, the bill would ensure a correctional plan is completed for each offender that sets out objectives for behaviour, participation and the meeting of court ordered obligations. It would introduce new incentives to help promote offenders' participation in their correctional plans.

The bill before us today would also modernize the system of discipline in federal penitentiaries by, for example, addressing disrespectful, intimidating and assaultive behaviour by inmates, including the throwing of bodily substances. It would also require offenders to respect both other people and property.

What is more, the bill would reinforce the requirement for offenders to obey all penitentiary rules and conditions governing their release. If offenders do not follow rules upon their release, the bill would allow police officers to take action. For example, the police could arrest without warrant any offender who appears to be in violation of parole. These are the kinds of changes that both police and victims groups have been demanding, and we are proud to respond.

I want to dwell on the rights of victims because they are the group that has been too often overlooked.

The bill would enable victims to get information on the reasons for an offender's temporary absence or transfer. Victims would also be able to learn about the participation of an offender in program activities and about any convictions for serious disciplinary offences. In addition, the bill would enable a victim to make statements at National Parole Board hearings.

In the same vein, I want to point out that the government is creating a national victims of crime advisory committee. This committee would bring a victim's perspective to corrections issues. For example, it would keep the government abreast of emerging issues related to victims and it would ensure that victims' concerns are considered in research, laws and policy related to crime.

The government is committed to transforming our corrections system. We have already taken major steps to address the recommendations of the independent panel, and the bill before this House continues that vital work.

I urge all members of the House to give their unconditional support for this bill for the sake of offenders who must take more responsibility for a successful transition to the community, for the sake of crime victims who deserve a greater voice in the corrections system, for the sake of corrections officers who have a right to work in a safe environment and for the sake of all Canadians who deserve to feel safe in their homes and communities.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my mind goes back to the 1990s when, under the guise of budget cuts and so on, a program of de-institutionalization took place where community based organizations, in fact institutes that had long service records with respect to working with those who were involved with the criminal justice and had mental issues, were put out on the street. The kind of community support that was needed was not there.

I think the House would probably agree that we are taking the right steps to ensure that backup is there for inmates inside institutions and for parolees who are part of the community.

I am particularly interested in the statement made by the minister with respect to offenders who do not follow the rules and the whole question of accountability with respect to the actions that are taken to rehabilitate. It is good that victims would be kept abreast of how the person is being rehabilitated, but how can the accountability loop be closed such that society can be sure that the rehabilitation is real and will result in that person becoming a productive member of society?

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do believe my colleague has grasped the essence of where we are and where we need to go. I was actively involved in that whole area back in the 1990s and 1980s and in those days we had systems in place that were provincially operated.

People who suffered from mental illnesses and a variety of things, including addictions, which some would deem a mental illness, received the treatment in the communities and were not part of the criminal justice system. Somehow, the system has failed for many of these people and it has failed society in that the final catch-all seems to be the federal corrections service. These folks need the help long before it gets to the federal corrections service. I think we would concur with that.

What we need to do now is to find out how to fix that system. There have been a lot of experiments over the years, and I suppose experimentation takes place continually, but we on this side have deemed it necessary to put more money into mental health issues. I believe there was a budget item of $110 million to the Canadian Mental Health Association in 2007.

We need to move forward with that and we need to find those solutions so that these people do not end up in our prisons.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me pleasure to rise in the House to speak on this topic.

Perhaps one of the more seminal moments in the last couple of years that really brought public attention to the problems in our prisons, particularly with those who are facing mental health issues, is the story of Ashley Smith. At the time, Ashley was a 17-year-old girl whose crime was to have thrown an apple at a postman and to have stolen a CD.

Ashley entered our penitentiary system where she was kept in solitary confinement for 11 months. She was never properly diagnosed as having mental health issues and yet she was constantly on a suicide watch in solitary confinement in various prisons. She was transferred from facility to facility.

When I was at the Grand Valley Institution in Kingston, I had the opportunity to be in the cell in which Ashley passed away. It is incredibly tragic to think that she died there as prison guards watched, with orders not to enter her cell. She asphyxiated herself, after 11 months of complete failure by our prison system to address Ashley's root problems and after her having gone to jail for a very minor crime in the first place.

This tremendous tragedy on its own is deeply sad not only for the family of Ashley but for all Canadians that it could happen in Canada. What is far more sad is that the Correctional Investigator tells us that this is symptomatic of something that is happening every day in prisons across the country.

The reality is that those faced with mental health concerns are dealing with a system that is utterly failing them. More often than not, they are placed in solitary confinement because the system does not have the ability to provide them the services they need to get them better.

As an example, when I was in St. John's I had the opportunity to visit Her Majesty's Penitentiary and the solitary confinement cells there. In a tiny cell, barely larger than a closet, were two people, one of whom I was told faced a serious mental health issue and was self-flagellating, hitting himself. In that cell was somebody else laying on the ground with a blanket over his head, trying to drown out the noise.

My overwhelming feeling after watching that was to wonder how anybody could possibly get better. How could that person, who clearly had such a serious mental health concern, get better in an environment of being stuck in such a tiny cell, isolated from anyone else? In fact, today in committee, just a little less than half an hour ago, mental health professionals said that the worst thing for somebody facing a mental health issue was to be confined, to be removed from interaction with other individuals.

The reality is that, unfortunately, our prisons are being treated as hospitals without doctors or nurses who know how to treat those patients. In fact, prison guards are given little to no training on how to deal with those who have mental health issues, meaning that they are poorly equipped to help inmates.

This tragedy is obviously terrible when we think of all the suffering that is going on unnecessarily, but we also have to keep in mind that as these individuals are being released directly from solitary confinement into the population at large, the likelihood they are going to reoffend is almost certain. This not only is a terrible tragedy because of what it does to those who have mental illness, but it is a terrible tragedy for the community as a whole. The reality is that this is driving up rates of recidivism and making our communities less safe and more dangerous.

When I left Her Majesty's Penitentiary, one of the corrections officials told me that the reaction of the former Conservative public safety minister, after having toured the facility, said to the media when asked about the conditions in the facility, “Good, it will act as a deterrent. People won't want to go in there”.

The idea that somebody who is facing a mental health issue will stop and think about the abysmal, horrid conditions in a prison before committing a crime, is to so fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the problem as to ensure that person will enter that environment and offend and offend and offend and offend.

We look at other jurisdictions like California where the recidivism rate now is over 70%. We should think about that for a second. More than seven out of ten individuals who enter prisons in California will reoffend. The rate here in Canada is 36%. Why is that the case in California? It is because those who are facing mental health issues or addictions, which I will come to later in my speech, are given no programs and no services and are entering into environments that are overcrowded and exacerbate existing problems. It means that they enter as minor criminals but they come out as hardened criminals ready to offend and offend again.

We often forget that prisoners get out of prison, even if we increase their sentences. In fact, over 90% of prisoners will come back into society. The question is, how do we want them to come out?

In a recent report by Mr. Stewart and Mr. Jackson they talked about a broken compass and that the government's direction with respect to corrections is leading us on a catastrophic path that has been done before. What we have learned from them is that we are walking the very same road that the Americans walked in the early 1980s when the Republicans in the United States thought the only way to solve crime was to put more and more people into prisons. What resulted in the United States is what will result here in Canada: an ever increasing permanent prison population that churns out more and more criminals, costs billions more dollars and at the end of the day makes our communities far less safe.

Already in Canada we know that somewhere between 12% to 20% of the male population in our prisons are facing serious mental health issues. For women the statistics are even more grave and more severe. A full one-quarter or more of female inmates face serious mental health issues.

This brings me to the question of addictions. We do not often think about what the root cause of crime is, but more often than not, what begins that path down a dark road toward crime and toward problems is addictions. Don Head, who is the head of our corrections facilities, has said that some 80% or more of criminals in our prisons right now are facing addiction issues. Problems with addictions are at the root of most of our prison population, yet the reality for those inmates is that we are not providing the services they need to break the deadly cycle of addiction, crime and violence.

For people who are addicted to drugs, more often than not they have to feed that habit, so they commit at first smaller crimes, crimes that have major detrimental impacts on communities but are really the start of a more dark path that they are beginning in their life. They do break and enters to pay for whatever drugs they have. We see particularly in Vancouver where the rates of drug use are much higher, the problem of property crimes continually on the rise.

We do not ask what happens to that person who commits a break and enter. Perhaps it is a young person 18 or 19 years old who breaks into a house and steals some things so that he or she might be able to pay for that next hit of drugs. The person goes into remand more often than not. The sentence is served in overcrowded, deplorable conditions where no program and no services are offered whatsoever.

I agreed when the House passed measures to end the two for one and sometimes even three for one credits of remand. However, let us not kid ourselves that if we are getting rid of that, we also need to get rid of the conditions in remand, period. When there is someone who goes into those conditions who is facing addiction problems and his or her only environment is an overcrowded place with other addicts and other criminals, what happens is that person comes out even worse than the person was before. We are turning our prisons into crime factories.

Dr. Jones, the executive director of the John Howard Society, quoted somebody the other day who said that our prisons are like gladiator schools where young men--more often than not it is young men--go in and learn how to be hard criminals, learn how to commit ever more serious crimes. In fact when commenting on the direction the government was heading, Dr. Jones stated that the government's agenda on crime, particularly as it relates to prisons but its agenda more generally “contradicts evidence, logic, effectiveness, history, justice and humanity”.

Those are very strong comments from someone who has to deal with inmates day in and day out. He is saying that the government's agenda flies in the face of all logic, all evidence and all history. It makes the point that this has all been tried before and it has failed miserably.

What is the answer? What is the right approach to dealing with these issues? The first thing we must do is to invest in local communities. No one understands better how to stop crime in the community than the community itself. I was in Summerside, P.E.I. where its crime prevention committee has pulled together the whole community ranging from police to not-for-profits, such groups as the Boys and Girls Club, Salvation Army, the local chamber of commerce. All of them have been brought together to ask how they can defeat the problems they are facing with crime in their community. They developed a plan.

The problem is that their funding is being cut. Imagine, at a time when we have a government which says it has an agenda on crime and that is its priority, the crime prevention budget in this country has been slashed by more than half since the Conservative government came into power. Groups like the Boys and Girls Club tell me they have less money for programs, not more, that the agenda they have developed locally is not only not receiving any money, but more troubling, what money is left they are being prescribed national directives that do not work for the local communities.

I heard the same thing from members of the crime prevention council in Kitchener when I was there and had the opportunity to talk to them about their incredibly well considered, intelligent plan to combat crime in their community. Their greatest frustration is that for the very things that are the cheapest way of dealing with crime, which is prevention, they are seeing their funding being slashed. Where there is still money in Kitchener as in other crime prevention efforts across the country, they are being prescribed edicts from Ottawa that do not work for their communities. They are being told that if they are a round peg, they have to fit into a square hole. It does not make sense. Communities have to be allowed to develop their own solutions.

If anyone is wondering how serious the slashing of funding is to local crime prevention efforts, in the last full year of the Liberal government, the National Crime Prevention Council supported more than 509 projects in 261 communities for a total of nearly $60 million. Today that funding has been slashed by more than half. There have been cuts every single year the Conservative government has been in power to the point where there are 285 fewer projects now being funded and actual spending has now been reduced to just $19 million. We can talk about having a prison strategy, but imagine at the same time that Conservatives are following a failed Republican model on prisons, that they are slashing the very things that stop people from going into prisons in the first place. It is a policy that is backward in the extreme.

It is worthwhile to consider what did happen in specific statistical terms in the United States in the late 1970s and particularly in the very early 1980s. In 1981, the incarceration rates in Canada and the U.S. were very similar. Canada incarcerated 91 individuals for every 100,000 people. In the United States that figure was 243. It was higher, but it was relatively similar. By 2001, in Canada that rate had only grown slightly, to 101 individuals incarcerated for every 100,000. In the United States it had soared to nearly 700 people for every 100,000, a rate 700% higher than that for Canada. In that same period of time, between 1981 and 2001, the United States had grown its incarceration rate relative to Canada's by 500%.

What did the United States get for that? What happened to the violent crime rates or overall crime rates during that same period? Remarkably, or perhaps not so remarkably, if we understand the full story of crime, the reduction in crime rates in Canada and the U.S. were almost identical. All of that additional incarceration, a rate 700% higher than Canada's, meant that the U.S. had no safer communities.

In fact the argument has been made that because of the conditions and stresses of prison, having a large, permanent prison population actually increases recidivism and increases the rate of crime. To me, perhaps the least logical thing we could do is spend billions and billions of dollars on something that has been proven to make the situation worse, not better.

What we should be doing in our prisons seems self-evident. When I visited with the chiefs of police in all different parts of the country, in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Toronto and Cape Breton, what they said again and again was that we have to have a way to break the cycle of addictions. One of the things that were recommended specifically in Calgary was that we need prison facilities where people go and serve their time but where they can actually get treatment.

I have had parents of children who have committed crimes who have said that they would turn their own children in, that they would go and grab their children and take them to the door of the prison and ask that they be incarcerated if they knew that those kids would actually get the help they needed to get better. Instead what they know is that when they are sent to these facilities, they get much worse.

We also know that we need to train those who are on the front lines, such as the prison guards, to identify and deal with mental health issues. We have to make sure that those who are brought into our prison facilities are identified on entrance as having the mental health conditions they have and make sure that they get proper treatment, so that when they are released, they can actually get better.

In all of this, I point out that we have consistently supported tough sentences for serious crimes. Of course if people commit serious crimes, they should face serious sentences. The problem with the Conservative approach to this is that they wait for victims. They wait for the serious crime before they do anything. It is only once the victimization has occurred that they talk about the solutions.

We are saying that of course once that has happened, once the situation has gotten to that horrible stage, then yes, tough sentences must be implemented, and we have supported them. However, in the lead-up to that, whether in prisons or through prevention or other actions that are taken, there are far better ways of addressing crime.

The last point I will make deals directly with our police, the men and women whom we count on to keep our communities safe. We know that particularly when policing is proactive and community-based, it plays a huge role in reducing crime. What is so disturbing about the actions of the government is that they have really betrayed police. Those are the words of police themselves. In fact the Canadian Police Association called the broken promise to put 2,500 new officers on the streets a betrayal.

In his speech in Vancouver, the Prime Minister promised to give the RCMP wage parity with other police. The Prime Minister even signed a contract with the RCMP, which he then ripped up and threw out. The government was not even able to give the RCMP wage parity with other police forces, something which is going to have a huge, detrimental impact on their recruitment.

The other thing the government did to the RCMP, which I thought was extremely offensive, was to challenge their right to collective bargaining. They are actually going to court on that while it is a right enjoyed by every single other police force in every other part of the country.

Four years ago, the Liberal government introduced a bill to modernize policing techniques, to give them the tools they need to go after criminals in cyberfraud and child pornography. We introduced that in 2005. This government sat on it for four long years and when it finally did introduce it, it was at the end of a session at the 11th hour, so we could not even debate it until the fall. So four years later, it failed the police.

In conclusion, the government's approach to corrections and crime is wrong. It is wrong on crime and tough on cops, and it is time for us to have an approach that is intelligent and balanced and that actually addresses the root causes of crime to ensure the safety of our communities.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the bill is entitled the Strengthening Canada's Corrections System Act. In his comments, the minister has addressed the necessity and requirement for rehabilitation within the prison system.

He has also spoken with respect to the rights of victims on parole and with respect to treatment that is designed under specific, almost contractual circumstances. The bill presupposes that the resources are going to be available in the community to make that person less vulnerable to addiction and make them more likely to become successful citizens in a very important and civil way.

The member has spoken with respect to the shortcomings of the criminal justice system. However, on the evidence of what occurred with respect to deinstitutionalization, is he satisfied that the government has put the resources back into the community to deal with the kind of recidivism that he has spoken about at great length? I think that is what everybody wants to hear. Will what the government is suggesting work? If it will not, what do we need to do?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we just heard this from the provinces yesterday. The provinces issued statements jointly that the government's agenda on crime is not being adequately financed when it comes to the types of tools and programs that are needed to reduce rates of recidivism.

A lot of this does fall on the provinces. On the one hand, the government is putting more and more people into these facilities, yet it is not giving the corresponding resources to the communities or provinces to be able to deal with these problems. In fact, the reality is that it has been slashing money to not-for-profits through crime prevention programs and support services for those who are coming out of facilities. It is actually removing resources.

That brings me to a point I did not get to in my speech. The cost of this is staggering. What we know from the Correctional Investigator and from others who have been reporting independently on the state of the corrections system is that it is already at the breaking point. It is really at the point of overflowing as it is. People are not getting the programs and services that they need.

The cost of building these new super prisons and facilities that the government is considering building is going to be enormous. The infrastructure costs are huge, but the government has put nothing at all on paper to demonstrate that it is willing to invest in the programs and services that actually reduce recidivism, ensure that crime rates go down and ensure that communities keep safe.

I think that if it were to put the cumulative cost of all of this on the table, and this is what I have asked of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, we would see that the costs are staggering.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Ajax—Pickering for yet another very good speech. I know that he was up the other day and made a very good presentation on the previous bill.

I was really impressed with some of his information regarding recidivism rates in the United States. Clearly, this bill adopts a U.S.-style approach to prisons that is very expensive and ineffective. We have proven that. Over and over again, we see that the government is 20 years behind the times as it is using a system that was developed in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan in the United States, which involved building big private prisons and warehousing people.

In the United States, I believe that 700 people per 100,000 are in prison. In Canada, the number is only a fraction of that. In Sweden, it is only maybe about 70 or 80 per 100,000. Clearly, we should be looking at what Sweden is doing versus what is happening in the United States where the system does not work at all.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member raises a very important point in his very good question, in asking what our objective is. If our endgame is to hope to have safer communities with less crime, to reduce the rate recidivism and to reduce victimization, then clearly the answer is not a larger, permanent prison population.

We have been shown, not only in the United States, but also in England and other places, terrible failures. They are running from these disasters at 100 miles an hour. Even Texas, which was known for having the longest, toughest sentences anywhere, is now acknowledging that this experiment was a total disaster, and it is running the opposite way.

We know that having a large, permanent prison population is enormously expensive, creates more crime and creates more problems. Our objectives should be, wherever possible, to use the best techniques that we can see have been succeeding, not only here in Canada, but in other parts of the world; to stop victimization before it occurs; to make sure that when a young person begins to turn down that dark path we intervene and make sure they do not continue on it.

I mentioned something the other day, and it bears mentioning again because it was something that was most telling to me. I went through some of the worst neighbourhoods in this country in Regina with the former Chief of Police, Cal Johnston. Cal pointed out the different points at which there were young people who were beginning to head down dark paths. We could see the shambles they were living in: homes without heat, homes without sewage systems, and homes in which, in the wintertime, they would have to put tarps around an oven in order to stay warm as they slept. The children would then go to school with no food, from a single parent-home in which the parent did not have the tools to give a child the education they needed. We see that and yet we are surprised when those children begin to turn toward a life of crime.

There is a way to stop crime. It requires balance and intelligence. We have to look at what really works and what really does not.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the bill that has been submitted for the consideration of the House is a very important one. In it, I will start by saying, we find proposals that I completely agree with, but others on which we have some doubts. One thing is certain, it has to be examined in committee. If this bill had not been introduced, I think that would have been a serious failing on the part of the government.

Overall, Bill C-43 gives victims a voice, seeks to hold inmates more accountable and makes the parole system less automatic. These three points have been part of Bloc Québécois policy for a long time. We even developed and released an action plan in this regard over two years ago.

The Bloc Québécois believes that involving victims in the parole process will assist in their “healing” process and at the same time strengthen their confidence in the justice system as a whole. If it can restore the relationship between repentant offenders and victims of crime, I think we will have made very definite progress toward rehabilitation.

As well, promoting accountability, or instilling it in an offender, seems to us to be an important way of facilitating the offender’s reintegration into civil society. Without a feeling of accountability, how will they be able to hold a job or meet their obligations to their family, or honour their financial commitments, for instance to their landlord or public utilities companies?

While the Bloc is opposed to automatic prison sentences, minimum sentences or the elimination of alternative sentences, it is equally opposed to the principle of automatic release. In fact we have been calling for release to be based on merit for a long time.

I know, however, that criticism has been voiced, in particular in a report from the University of British Columbia. So we will make sure that the bill will in fact solve the problems it is intended to solve and not create new ones.

In a nutshell, that is why the Bloc Québécois supports Bill C-43 in principle. However, we have serious objections to make regarding some of the measures it contains.

On June 16, 2009, the Minister of Public Safety introduced Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Criminal Code, in the House of Commons. The short title is the Strengthening Canada’s Corrections System Act.

Bill C-43 amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to achieve a number of objectives: first, to clarify that the protection of society is the paramount consideration for the Correctional Service of Canada in the corrections process and for the National Parole board and the provincial parole boards in the determination of all cases.

I would note that the paramount objective of all of the reforms made in the past was the protection of society. We are all in agreement on that. However, we have to agree on what method to use. We believe that when rehabilitation of offenders is possible it must in fact be pursued, and that this is the best way to protect society.

The bill also establishes the right of a victim to make a statement at parole hearings, a principle with which we also agree, and permits the Correctional Service and the National Parole Board to disclose to a victim the name and location of the institution to which the offender is transferred, the reason for a transfer, information about the offender’s participation in programs and convictions for serious disciplinary offences, and the reason for a temporary absence or hearing waiver.

Personally, I believe that this is also a good measure for several reasons. If a certain empathy for the victims can be elicited from the offender and if the offender knows that his victims will be informed of his progress or failures while incarcerated, I think it can have an impact on the offender.

Quite often, offenders committed crimes because they did not see the victims. Of course, there are exceptional cases where the offender has absolutely no empathy for others. They are considered psychopaths. However, experience has shown that the majority of those incarcerated are social misfits. The fact that they come to realize that they victimized someone, that they have to do something in an attempt to make restitution for their actions, when possible, and that the victims on occasion see them or are informed of their progress, could have an impact on the rehabilitation of those so inclined.

The bill states:

(b) provide that a correctional plan is to include the level of intervention by the Service in respect of the offender’s needs and the objectives for the offender’s behaviour, their participation in programs and the meeting of their court-ordered obligations;

(c) expand the range of disciplinary offences to include intimidation, false claims and throwing a bodily substance;

At one time, this would consist of spitting. But now inmates who know they have HIV or AIDS have even tried to throw blood on guards. Of course, this is unacceptable and requires swift action. It does not, however, preclude the resumption of the rehabilitation process.

Other objectives include:

(f) provide consistency as to which offenders are excluded from accelerated parole review [I will come back to this];

(g) provide for the automatic suspension of the parole or statutory release of offenders who receive a new custodial sentence and require the National Parole Board to review their case within a prescribed period; and

(h) authorize a peace officer to arrest without warrant an offender for a breach of a condition of their conditional release.

We will discuss this further when we study the bill in detail. Thus far, it has been up to parole officers monitoring offenders in the community to issue warrants, which sometimes enables them, in the case of minor offences, to issue a severe warning rather than immediately interrupt parole.

Consider the fact that these things can happen in communities where there is a lot of crime. In many cases, offenders resent the police for monitoring them too closely. We heard that a lot in Saint-Michel over the past year. We are more aware of it. This also sounds like what we were hearing in the United States in high-crime areas where there are serious street gang problems and where communities have taken action against their activity. Excessive police intervention for minor infractions may not be the best way to foster an environment that preserves the public peace and conditions that deter the spread of crime.

The Corrections and Conditional Release Act provides the legal framework for the correctional system. It was enacted in 1992, replacing a previous act. In December 2007, the Correctional Service Canada Independent Review Panel released its final report containing recommendations for the government, but a University of British Columbia study questioned the committee's objectivity. The committee was ask to review the CSC's operational priorities, strategies and business plans. It produced 109 recommendations in five key areas that basically correspond to the objectives I discussed earlier.

The government officially followed up on the recommendations in the 2008 budget, by investing $478.8 million over five years to implement the new vision for the federal corrections system and some key recommendations made in the report.

I think that was money well spent. It is much better than increasing reliance upon incarceration, which is extremely expensive. That $478 million is worth five times as much—$2.5 billion—if it is put towards reducing crime.

The government committed to taking a new approach to the corrections system, making protecting society the main priority when it comes to the corrections system and conditional release.

Everyone is in favour of what is right, but we must understand that rehabilitating criminals is one of the best ways to protect society. If incarceration teaches criminals how to commit more crimes without being caught, or teaches them that the community is unfair, there will be no way to achieve those objectives. Members on both sides of this House must do more than give the benefit of the doubt; they must make it clear that, even if we have different opinions, we all want to reduce crime and protect society.

This bill includes reforms in four main areas: enhancing sharing of information with victims—we completely agree with this; enhancing offender responsibility and accountability—we agree with this as well, because taking responsibility is an important part of rehabilitation; strengthening the management of offenders and their reintegration—we must think about this, but we must see if this aspect is properly addressed by the bill before us; and, modernizing disciplinary actions—I believe these must be updated.

With respect to enhancing sharing of information with victims, the bill would clearly recognize the interests of victims of crime and the role they play in the correctional and conditional release process. Victims and victims’ advocates have voiced dissatisfaction with the current provisions and have called for enhancements.

Therefore, a victim’s right to attend National Parole Board hearings will be enshrined in law. I agree completely with this, and for reasons that the Conservatives did not even think of. It would be good for the person applying for parole to know that the victims will be present. It is good for that individual to know that he or she hurt someone. Unless that person is a psychopath who has absolutely no empathy for others, this recognition plays an important role in the rehabilitation process.

So the legislation will be amended to expand the information that may be disclosed to victims by CSC and the National Parole Board. This will include: providing information on the reasons for offender transfers with, whenever possible, advance notice of transfers to minimum security institutions; disclosing information on offender program participation and any convictions for serious disciplinary offences; sharing the reasons for a temporary absence from a correctional facility; and, providing guardians and caregivers of dependents of victims who are deceased, ill or otherwise incapacitated with the same information that victims themselves can receive.

When offenders withdraw their participation 14 days or less before a hearing date, the Board may proceed with a review and decisions of their case. Victims will also be able to request information on the reasons for a waiver of a parole hearing.

I think it is good that offenders will be notified that victims will know all of this. If offenders think this might have an influence on their NPB hearing, perhaps it will help them take a step in the right direction, to demonstrate that they have changed their behaviour and that they understand how their crimes affected their victims.

We must not think just about repression, but also about offender accountability. Our main objective in the correctional system, knowing that these people are going to be released, is to make reasonable efforts to get them to change their behaviour. The best way to protect public safety is to ensure that when offenders leave prison, they are rehabilitated and less likely to reoffend.

The other important measure is designed to increase offender accountability. This is the start of rehabilitation. The offender and the correctional services share responsibility for rehabilitating the offender and reintegrating him into society as a law-abiding citizen. The Corrections and Conditional Release Act will be amended to include the responsibilities of offenders, who will have more incentive to behave in a way that shows respect for people and property.

I will perhaps talk a bit later about section 38, which I myself wrote when I reformed the correctional system in Quebec. It is a very difficult thing to do if one is not a legislative drafter and cannot spend all one's time drafting laws. I found that out pretty quickly when I was a minister, and here as well. But I was determined to write section 38 of the Act respecting the Québec correctional system.

I would like to talk about Quebec's crime reduction model, whereby an offender can earn remission time by showing respect. I wanted section 38 to be posted in every cell. I can still remember the circumstances under which I wrote it. I was with my driver, who was a former prison guard, and I wanted that section to be written so that inmates would understand. What it said essentially was that inmates could be released before the end of their sentence by showing respect to prison staff and other inmates. The section also said that inmates could earn remission by participating in the rehabilitation program proposed for them and complying with prison rules.

The idea of respect is fundamental, and I am very glad that the government included it in this bill.

We could go on at length about this bill. In general, we agree with the objectives set out. We agree with the methods chosen in many areas. However, there are some we could talk about more when we examine the bill in committee. I hope that the government will understand that our proposals will be for the purpose of improving the bill and finding the best way to achieve what we all want and that is to protect society by rehabilitating offenders.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his input. He is a long-serving member of Parliament and brings a lot of expertise in justice matters and legal matters to this place. I appreciate his input and his comments.

It appears that every time the temperature of the water gets a little hot in Ottawa on other issues, we revert to a week of justice bills. They seem to be coming back in some regular fashion.

However, I note that this one would make amendments not only to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act but also to the Criminal Code. We have also dealt with a couple of other bills that deal directly with the Criminal Code, and some are hybrid and some are not.

I note that some of the provisions of this bill seem to be items which I would have thought, being a longstanding member of the scrutiny and regulations committee, would be probably better served and better amended by dealing with them through regulations rather than through legislation itself.

It is a very long bill, but the substantive points are not very long.

I want to ask the member whether or not he is seeing, also, a change in the terms of the manner in which justice legislation is being drafted and the reluctance to use regulations, so that we can get even quicker changes to the processes in our correctional system.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I admit that I have not given that much thought. To me it is important that the changes be made. It is one thing to draft legislation but quite another to enforce it.

We are currently examining correctional services in the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. I asked the board members who appeared before the committee to ensure that early releases were earned. I asked them if they were able to verify whether such releases are earned. I think they acknowledged that they in fact could not.

By including these objectives in the legislation, I believe that we are making them clear. The hon. member is absolutely right, however, we do need proper regulations.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as a former minister of justice and someone who has extensive experience in this area, I want to focus on the people whom we incarcerate.

The figures vary somewhat, but essentially some of the statistics say that as many as 30% of those incarcerated in our federal and provincial jails are suffering from mental illness. There is a disproportionate number of first nations youth, men and women who have experienced high levels of poverty, abuse, and the lack of educational opportunity. Some 80% of the women in federal and provincial jails have been the victims of sexual abuse.

In that light, in looking at this bill it is clear that there is very little that would help to rehabilitate these people. In fact, Bill C-43 creates a paper obligation for prisoners to participate in nonexistent rehabilitation programs.

I would like the member to comment on that.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is absolutely right.

That is a fine objective. We could judge the government on how it plans to carry this through. It is true that we often rely too heavily on incarceration. It is difficult to prove that it is used too much or too little. Nonetheless, one thing is clear and that is that we are using it more. I believe we rank 85th on a list of 155 countries with respect to the incarceration rate worldwide. Our rate is quite similar to that of comparable societies such as Australia. However, we are far from being like the United States, which is the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world. Nonetheless, we incarcerate more than practically all the western European countries. We fill our prisons and make it more difficult to work with the offenders who need it the most.

A striking example of a major mistake the government wants us to make is the abolition of conditional sentences. In the sequence of sentences that judges can impose, simple release is the first. Then there are suspended sentences. Suspended sentences are difficult to enforce because when people are re-arrested, the judge is somewhere else. He cannot sentence the offender. When judges want offenders to go back to school, hold down a job, or go through addiction treatment as part of their rehabilitation, and still be afraid of being sent to prison, conditional sentences are perfect. That is what judges do, but they will not be able to any more.

There are other problems as well. Not only are there aboriginals but also people with mental illnesses. There are a lot of them. I know this is not the time to talk about it.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I must admit I do not agree with the member on his stands on sovereignty for Quebec or breaking up our country. However, on the issue of justice I have grown to appreciate his comments and the fact that he has served as justice minister.

I want to comment in regard to what my NDP colleague just asked about mental illness. I chair the foreign affairs committee but replaced someone on the public safety committee, which was dealing with mental illness within the prison system. The testimony of one of the witnesses was that incarceration would actually, in many cases, give individuals the help they would not normally get.

My colleague basically disagreed with conditional sentences because he said they would allow individuals the opportunity to receive help. Many who are diagnosed with mental illness and released into society do not receive help, even if it is a condition of release. Being incarcerated, whether it be a federal penitentiary or some other type of facility, allows inmates to obtain diagnosis, assistance, a sense of being able to work through it with a little more security.

Would he elaborate a little more on what he said about conditional sentences not allowing inmates to obtain the help they need?

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I disagree entirely.

Frankly, we do not put people with mental health problems in prison. Whom will they meet there? They are going to meet criminals. Is that the influence we want to see on people who are especially vulnerable? Prison is not the place to treat mental illness.

Some people have to be sentenced, though, for other reasons, when they commit serious crimes and are not sufficiently mentally ill to be acquitted. People with mental illnesses have to be punished, but we should never think that prison is an appropriate place to treat them. They should certainly be treated, but they will not be rehabilitated by sending them to prison.

There are two different provisions in the Criminal Code providing for suspended sentences and conditional sentences. In the case of suspended sentences, the judge decides to suspend the sentence under certain conditions, and if the accused abides by them, the judge is not entitled to pass sentence. In the case of conditional sentences, the judge says he is giving the offender 18 months but will release him into the community if he abides by the conditions, if he keeps his job, if he takes the addiction treatment he signed up for, and so forth. In these cases, the sentence is not served in prison.

In my view, the more we can avoid imprisoning people while ensuring public safety, the better. Some people are dangerous. Sometimes there are people with mental illnesses who are dangerous, although they are in the minority by the way. That is what we were told just this morning. I agree entirely that prison is not a hospital for the mentally ill. That is not the case and it never will be.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased today to speak to Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Criminal Code.

For a long time, New Democrats have supported getting smart on crime. On a daily basis, the Conservatives talk about tough on crime, but we find that their tough on crime approach at the end of the day does not get the results that even they would want to get out of it.

When we talk about smart on crime, we can look at situations, for example, in the ways we want to keep our communities safe. We only have to look at my home province of Manitoba to see that we had an increasing problem with car theft in our jurisdiction and ended up getting smart on crime, rather than tough on crime, by bringing in an immobilizer program for automobiles, which reduced the rate of car thefts by a substantial amount over the last couple years. We set up a group within the police department to target car thieves, monitor them, chase them and get them off streets and into custody at every possible opportunity. Working together, we have ended up with very good results to the point where on a one day basis this spring we managed to have zero car thefts in Manitoba. To my way of thinking, this is being smart on crime.

We have to take the ideology out of the system. If the Conservatives were being smart on crime, they would look to Manitoba for the auto theft results. They would look to Sweden and western Europe for other types of results.

I encourage the Conservatives to scan the globe and find jurisdictions where certain programs work and try to adopt those, as opposed to looking at, from an ideological basis, the United States and basically adopting its system from the 1980s, from the Ronald Reagan days. Ronald Reagan built private prisons, making many private individuals rich and warehousing prisoners.

That would all be fine if there was some proof that it worked. However, at the end of the day, the incarceration rate in the United States exploded, which I believe is perhaps 700 plus people per 100,000 population. In Canada I think it is 170. I have not seen the statistics for a couple of days now, but I know I am reasonably close. In Sweden the stats are only 80 per 100,000. Those are stark differences between the three jurisdictions. Clearly, if the Conservatives believe, and I think they should, in best practices, they should seek out exactly those best practices.

On that basis, how can the Conservatives possibly conclude that following an American style system is the way to go when the results are exactly the opposite of what they are looking for? In fact, there is a situation in California in which the governor has been releasing people because the state cannot afford to house them. The prisons are overflowing. The crime rate is going up.

The country is not any safer because of it. In fact, the cost to house the prisoners, based on the stats I had the other day, range from anywhere between $50,000 per prisoner per year to $70,000. What do we get for that money? We get a criminal who becomes a better criminal in prison because it is a crime school as opposed to the conditional sentences, which we determine cost only $1,000 versus $50,000 to $70,000. The recurrence rate for reoffenders was almost half. Therefore, people who were on conditional sentences were reoffending at a rate of 11% I believe. People who actually went to prison were reoffending at a rate of 30%.

It does not take a genius to figure it out. If prisoners are supervised for $1,200 or $1,300, per prisoner, and they have only half the chance of reoffending versus spending $50,000 to $70,000 on them and having them reoffend at twice the rate, is really not that hard to figure out.

Clearly the Conservatives have to take another look at this rather than embark on a system that is designed to bump up their polling numbers for a future election. They poll all this information on crime and know what the public likes to hear. When their polling numbers go up 10 points in a certain area, they incorporate that into a bill and fire it before the House. That is why we see all these crime bills coming before the House.

We want to take a smart and a cost-effective approach to crime. If we are to incarcerate people, we want to make certain that there are programs in the prisons to rehabilitate the offenders. What did the government do? It cut the amount of money that it used to put into these programs.

I enjoyed listening to the member for Ajax—Pickering, both today and the other day. He was a little off course on the bill, but he made an excellent presentation as to where we were right now, where we should go and how we should get there. We should not be adopting these ideological George Bush, Ronald Reagan-type approaches similar to the ones that were being looked at in Ontario. They will simply follow the program from an ideological point of view. They will develop private prisons and simply warehouse people with no regard to rehabilitation, basically turning out more dangerous criminals into society to reoffend.

The NDP supports establishing the rights of victims to make statements at parole hearings. Having been in the insurance business for the past 30 years, I have numerous examples of dealing with people who have been victimized, who have had their houses broken into. Then when the thieves are caught, they make an attempt to find out the resolution of their case.

Twenty years ago they would not get very far. They would be rebuffed by police forces and told that it was none of their business, that they should collect their money from the insurance company and not worry about it. They did not recognize that the people were deeply affected the criminals who broke into their property and violated them.

Therefore, over time we have developed more programs and rights for victims. We now have counselling for victims. Increasingly, over successive governments, from the Howard Pawley government in Manitoba in the 1980s through to the Conservative government of Gary Filmon to the government of Gary Doer for the NDP, we have seen a gradual progression of more initiatives to support the rights of victims. We applaud that. We have worked hard for that. We continue to support the rights of victims. What we have do is make certain the victims are not damaged by the events that have occurred to them.

The NDP stands up for marginalized, vulnerable people and certainly for victims in our society. In fact, crime rates are the highest in a lot of the constituencies that the NDP represents. We as MPs, more than any other MPs in the House perhaps, in many cases deal on a first-hand basis with crime in our communities. We have to deal with our constituents who phone us, who come and see us, people whom we know in our community, who are afraid and who are victimized by crime in the community.

The offenders themselves need to hear from the victims. They need to know the impact of their crimes. That is all part of the restorative justice initiatives, which we support in a big way. Victims need to have their voices heard. Otherwise they become victimized for the second time.

The other day one of our members from Halifax related a situation that he had dealt with in his constituency. One of his constituents was victimized by a crime and it was a traumatic experience. It has been a long time coming but we are happy to see that society is getting to the point where victims are getting justice.

We also support the right of victims to access information about the offenders. As I had indicated before, 20 years ago, when people tried to find out the status of a break and entry to their homes, they were left in the dark. They were told to mind their own business, that the justice system would take care of the problem. The victims would be left wondering what happened to the thief who broke in to their homes, while all the time thinking that perhaps the person was out on the street, and maybe he or she was by that point. Maybe the individual was looking to reoffend. The victims must not be left in the dark. They should be able to get every piece of information they can.

Today people are telling me they are getting information relayed to them by the police forces and being kept up to date as to the disposition of their cases. They know the person who had done the break and enter was caught, went to trial on a certain date and the sentence he or she was given.

Whether it is jail time or community service, we know victims are interested in seeing the offender improve. The victim has no interest in seeing the offender go to jail and come out a better criminal. Victims want to know the offenders are being rehabilitated. That is why they would be very disappointed if they knew the government was not properly funding the programs to rehabilitate the prisoners.

We also know that if an offender is rehabilitated, it is a very important step on the victim's road to healing and recovery. As long as the victim feels comfortable that at least honest efforts have been made to rehabilitate the person, he or she will feel better and have a healthy attitude toward the system.

What this boils down to is confidence in the system. We need to have a system that not only works and that not only is smart on crime, we also need to have a system in which the public has confidence.

What will happen if the Conservatives bring in their brave new world of private prisons, of locking up people and not providing rehabilitation services to the people? At the end of the day, these criminals will keep coming out of prison and committing more crimes and then the Conservatives will need to build more prisons. At the end of 20 years, we basically have déjà vu as it relates to California. We will have people in prison, the crime rate will be soaring, we will not be any safer, we will not be any better off and we will be doing what California is doing. The state is bankrupt and it is doing wholesale releasing. It is releasing people from prison because it cannot afford the cost of keeping prisons running.

The bill flows from the road map for corrections, which was released in 2007. The road map flowed from the work of Canada review panel of Correctional Services. The chair of the panel was Robert Sampson who, by the way, was the minister of privatization under Mike Harris, and, as minister of corrections, he advocated for the privatization of Ontario's prison system. That really is like putting a fox in charge of a henhouse.

We would feel a little more relieved and happy over here if we could get those images of Mike Harris out of our minds once and for all. I hate to say that the process is tainted when the spectre of Mike Harris is brought into the equation but, unfortunately, that would be the case.

The road map does not engage in a careful evidence based review of Canada's correctional system. In fact, it cherry-picks statistics to give a distorted view of crime trends, it ignores the history of our prison system, it ignores the lessons that have been learned and it is designed to tell the government exactly what it wants to hear. That is a sad reflection and commentary on our system, and it is not peculiar to a Conservative government. It can happen in any government, whether it is a Liberal government or an NDP government. We see that happen so often with the civil service telling us what we want to hear. The private consultants we hire simply tailor their message back to us. After they find out what we want to hear, they come and tell us, for a big inflated price, what we want to here.

I want to point out that Correctional Service experts have challenged this road map. We do not really think this is a way to go.

I have one final point to make before we go to questions and answers. This is great politics from the Conservative point of view but I would point out some of the privileges the Conservatives are removing from the prisoners. They are removing mental health treatment, which we all say is vital for prisoners. They are removing literacy program and work programs. How does that in any way point to a positive development in our system?

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Elmwood—Transcona for his interesting speech regarding a bill that would limit the use of conditional release.

If I heard him correctly, he cited a statistic stating that recidivism would double if we were to restrict access to conditional release. I was wondering, first, if he could source that statistic or that study or if he just made it up on the spot, and he used the word “”deterring”.

Second, he represents a part of Winnipeg, a city that has had some serious crime issues as of late. I am wondering what his constituents are telling him about the Conservatives' tough on crime safe street and safe community agenda.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the statistics I used were used in a speech that is part of Hansard, which he can check to get the actual statistics, but I certainly did quote a reliable source. As a matter of fact, the source may have been Statistics Canada.

I am sure I will stand on another speech very soon and I will source that information for the member. However, he can simply check Hansard for those statistics. They are part of the Library of Parliament information regarding the bill. There is nothing improper with the statistics and he knows very well that is the case.

As far as the crime rate in Winnipeg is concerned, I have already explained for him how we are dealing with the auto theft problem in Winnipeg with the provision of immobilizers on cars and working with the police to develop a squad that chases the most serious car theft offenders. These are things that work and things that we have made work in Manitoba. He should start looking at having similar programs that work rather than chasing American style programs that do not work.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in the summary of the bill it states that one of the objectives is to clarify that protection of society is the paramount consideration, et cetera, and the bill itself shows at clause 3.1 that, “The protection of society is the paramount consideration for the Service in the corrections process”.

It then goes on, under the title, “Purpose and Principles” for the Correctional Services, to lay out the various considerations that might be taken into account with regard to how the Correctional Services will deal with a certain principle. What is not here is the whole aspect of mental health of the offender, because there was a recent report that 39% of the people incarcerated in the province of Ontario suffer from mental health issues.

If the bill, as it exists and will be amended, starts to make a list of things that will be considered, something must be left out, otherwise it would say that it “takes into account all relevant considerations in dealing with offenders”.

Does the member believe the mental health state of an offender is appropriately taken into consideration in discharging the responsibilities at Correctional Service Canada?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member's question is extremely important. I suppose at committee we will need to ask questions to determine what the government's commitment is to mental health treatment. I am not surprised at the statistics the member cites, that 39% of inmates suffer from mental health conditions. Warehousing mental health patients in prisons and expecting they will come out and not reoffend after not giving them the type of treatment they need, is a terrible way to operate a prison sentence.

One of the top considerations of the government should be dealing with the whole area of mental health treatment for people who are incarcerated in the prison system.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, although we are on opposing sides of the House, I absolutely agree with what the member said.

Bill C-43 takes the absolute wrong approach and does not promote public safety. At first glance, the changes proposed by Bill C-43 do not seem too harsh but the bill removes the least restrictive language and changes to the standard in the CCRA to measures that are limited to what is necessary and proportionate to the objective for which they are imposed.

This change opens the door to more severe treatment of offenders in the absence of any evidence that the least restrictive language is hindering the ability of the CSC to fulfill its mandate. I would like to hear the member's opinion on that and talk about how that will change the prison systems for the worse.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I think that has more to do with the Conservatives' tough on crime advertising program than anything else. It shows that they have signaled that they will follow the American system. They are fixated on the American system, a system that all statistics show does not work.

I challenge any of the government members to come up with statistics from California or Texas that prove that what they are doing actually works. I know they cannot do that because the people in Texas and in California are saying that their system does not work, that it is broken. Do they need to tell the Canadian Parliament not to follow their system, or can we not just figure that out for ourselves?

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Criminal Code, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Strengthening Canada’s Corrections System Act

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

When this matter was last before the House, the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona had the floor. There are two minutes remaining in the time allotted for questions and comments consequent upon his remarks. I therefore call for questions and comments.

Resuming debate, the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to sponsor Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Criminal Code.

As the father of five children, public safety is a matter of great importance to me, and that is why I am proud to rise today to show that the government is honouring its promises to improve safety on our streets and in our communities, for all Canadians, and to ensure that victims have a voice in the justice system.

When the people of Glengarry—Prescott—Russell elected me for the first time, I told my constituents that our Conservative Party would do things differently in government, and that the appalling complacency of the former Liberal government would be coming to an end.

We said we were going to be tough on crime; we have kept our promise. We said we were going to make sure that people convicted of using firearms to commit serious crimes would get a sentence that reflected the heinousness of their actions; we have kept our promise. Unlike the opposition parties, which would like to keep claiming to protect Canadians with a useless and expensive firearms registry, we have taken concrete action against criminals who use firearms. We said we were going to give police the tools they need to do their jobs; once again, we have kept our promise.

Over the last three years, the government has honoured the commitments it made to protecting the safety of Canadians in their homes and their communities. We have fulfilled our commitment to help victims.

That is why I am very happy to have the opportunity to support this bill today. In addition to demonstrating our commitment, this initiative is supported by law enforcement representatives, victims’ rights groups and honourable members.

Bill C-43 proposes several fundamental reforms to corrections and conditional release to help ensure they continue to work the way they should in light of the changing nature of the offender population and the needs of victims.

Today, we know that many offenders entering Canada's corrections system arrive with histories of committing violent offences. Many offenders have gang or organized crime affiliations. An increasing number of offenders have serious mental health illnesses and nearly four out of five now arrive at a federal institution with a serious substance abuse problem. Many as well need to learn how to live as law-abiding citizens and might face the need to address their behaviours for the first time ever.

All of this requires a new approach to corrections and conditional release, one that will ensure that offenders get the help they need to rejoin society as law-abiding citizens, so that both our streets and our federal corrections facilities are safer places for everyone.

The amendments proposed in Bill C-43 will achieve this by enhancing offender responsibility and accountability, and by strengthening the management of offenders during their incarceration and parole. It will also achieve this by giving victims access to more information and by modernizing disciplinary actions.

All in all they reinforce and build on the work already underway to strengthen corrections and conditional release while also laying the foundation for a move toward a system of earned parole. They are also long overdue.

Some members of this House may know that as far back as 1998, the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights created a subcommittee to review the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and recommend ways of improving it.

In its report, the subcommittee made 53 recommendations; one of the things it suggested was that the protection of society be the fundamental principle in all decision-making processes relating to the corrections and conditional release system, and that all efforts be made to ensure that offenders participate actively in their rehabilitation and reintegration. These were wise recommendations, that called for immediate action to be taken, and that is what our government is doing.

In 2007, our Conservative government established an independent committee to review the operational priorities, strategies and business plans of the Correctional Service of Canada, as part of our commitment to protecting Canadian families and communities.

The committee made 109 recommendations. Many of them are now being implemented, thanks to the $478 million that the government allocated in its 2008 budget. But we can do more, and that is what we are doing. The government is determined to achieve its objective, and that is why we are moving forward today.

Bill C-43 will allow us to implement a key recommendation in the 1998 report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, and in the 2007 report of the independent review panel. This recommendation proposes to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to clarify that the protection of Canadians is the paramount consideration in the corrections and conditional release process.

Pursuant to the recommendations made in the two reports, Bill C-43 also proposes to ensure that the rehabilitation of offenders is a shared responsibility.

The amendments before us will require offenders to conduct themselves in a way that demonstrates respect for other people and property. As well, they will require all offenders to obey all penitentiary rules and conditions governing their release, while also actively participating in the setting and achieving of objectives in their correctional plans.

Since rehabilitation is a two-way commitment, Bill C-43 proposes amendments to ensure that a correctional plan is completed for each offender that sets out objectives for behaviour, program participation, and the meeting of their court-ordered obligations such as restitution to victims.

Amendments will also introduce new incentive measures to help promote offender participation in their correctional plan. As the 2007 independent panel report notes: “--if rehabilitation is to occur and truly be sustained, it must be shared between CSC and the offender”. That is what the amendments before us today will do.

As well, Bill C-43 will modernize the system of discipline in federal penitentiaries by, for example, addressing disrespectful, intimidating and assaultive behaviour by inmates, including the throwing of bodily substances. Anyone who has been a prison guard will say that the job is not easy. Prison guards will be pleased to learn that our Conservative government is standing up for them.

Bill C-43 also proposes to strengthen the management of offenders and their reintegration into society by allowing police officers to arrest offenders who appears to be in violation of their parole without a warrant and by excluding from accelerated parole offenders who are convicted of crimes such as street racing or luring a child over the Internet.

Police and other criminal justice partners have asked for these changes and our Conservative government is delivering on them. As a husband and father, I cannot emphasize enough how important this is to me and to families all across Canada.

Of course, the victims have been asking for a long time to have better access to information about offenders, and to play a more active role in the Canadian justice system.

Bill C-43 meets the victims' requests in a number of ways. For example, it allows them to obtain information on the reasons for a temporary absence or transfer, and on the offender's participation in programs and convictions for serious disciplinary offences. Families want to feel safe at home. It is unacceptable that they should live in constant fear that their victimizer could come back.

The right of victims to participate in National Parole Board hearings and to make statements will be put into law.

Moreover, in most cases, offenders will not be allowed to withdraw their parole application in the 14 days preceding the hearing date. The government is also setting up a national advisory committee to better inform victims of the policies and procedures that affect them, so that they can have better access to information and services that are of interest to them.

The amendments proposed by Bill C-43 are balanced and fair. They respond to the needs of victims as well as those of offenders who want to rejoin society as law-abiding citizens to lead useful and productive lives. They respond to the needs of staff in correctional facilities, all of whom have a right to expect a safe and secure work environment. They also respond to the needs of all Canadians who have a fundamental right to expect that the corrections system will work the way that it should work and that their safety and security is paramount.

I therefore urge all hon. members to give speedy passage to the bill before us today, so that all of us can continue to transform the corrections system into one that truly meets the needs of the 21st century.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the hon. member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell and I found his remarks somewhat contradictory.

He said that he has five children and wants to protect them. He said that the Minister of Justice has introduced legislation in keeping with the commitments made by the Conservative Party. Something is also in the works to give police the tools they need to do their job and maintain law and order on our streets to keep people safe.

He used very often and repeatedly the word safety in his speech. Is it not somewhat contradictory for the Conservatives to be introducing this kind of bill, which not only does not abolish parole after one-sixth of sentence, but also takes away from police a trump card that allowed them to act? On top of that, they want to abolish the gun registry. Will it not just thrill criminals to bits to be able to carry and use as they please hunting guns or handguns without having to register them?

I would like the member to tell me this: Can we protect people while at the same time allowing criminals to carry unregistered firearms?

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member who just asked the question is confused about firearm registration. It is important to understand that the current registry is completely useless. There are far too many errors in the gun registry; the police does not trust the information it contains.

Also, it cost $2 billion. The fact of the matter is that firearm registration applies to law-abiding Canadian citizens, such as farmers, hunters and the likes. I hope that the member who asked the question does not represent a rural riding. Personally, speaking as the member of Parliament for a rural riding, I can say that most people in my riding are dead against firearm registration.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, mine is more of a comment than a question and deals with the heckler during my speech on Bill C-43. The member for Edmonton—St. Albert was asking me about some statistics I used in the speech on Bill C-43 that we are dealing with right now. By the way, I saw him last night on a show on CPAC, and he did a great job.

My information came from Statistics Canada, as I said to him and his heckling partners.

The Statistics Canada study found that adult offenders who spend their sentence under supervision in the community are far less likely to become reinvolved with correctional authorities within 12 months of their release than those who are in a correctional institution.

The study found that in four provinces, 11% of the people who were under community supervision became reinvolved with correctional authorities within 12 months of their release in 2003-04. Among the study where people were in the community only 30% were involved in crime.

The fact of the matter is that people who were in the correctional institutions and came out were twice as likely to reoffend as people who were under community supervision.

I can certainly provide the member with a copy of this study if he would like.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask the member to table his documentation. It is hard to follow numbers and statistics when they are presented verbally.

One thing I do want to say is that the changes we are proposing in Bill C-43 are the types of changes that Canadians have asked for. Canadians feel unsafe. They feel victimized by criminals. The measures we are proposing in Bill C-43 address some of the very fundamental concerns they have expressed.

One of the measures is the presence of the victims at parole hearings. Victims have asked to be present at parole hearings and to have a say. They want to be able to tell their story and express their concerns about a decision that is about to be made regarding parole. Bill C-43 would put that into law so that victims would have the right to participate in the parole hearings. This is fundamental.

There are many other excellent changes that we are bringing about. I encourage members from the opposition parties to support Bill C-43.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, hunters on the north shore are well aware that in order to hunt, they have to register their ATV, their boat, their trailer, their truck and also their hunting camp. At the time, they decided to take part in the system, which was not necessarily comprehensive. But in order to use a hunting rifle, a hunter had to register it.

The Conservatives are living in the past. This has been resolved. This is the system in place now. Anyone who wants to use equipment has to register it. The police in Quebec and in Canada support the firearms registry, which has led to a decrease in the crime rate.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, clearly, the member does not understand the firearms registry or what its implications are on Canadians. He is speaking from a position of ignorance.

When a Canadian buys a firearm, of course he registers it. The problem with the firearms registry is that the firearm must be registered year after year, and if it is not registered in time, then the law-abiding gun owner is treated as a criminal. He has just broken a criminal law and he is treated as such.

The member should also know that criminals do not register their weapons. They say that the whole intent of the firearms registry is to better enforce weapons and their use within society, particularly to fight crime. We know that criminals do not line up to register their weapons and they do not maintain the registry.

As I mentioned before, the registry is riddled with errors and there are all sorts of privacy issues. We learned of one where the RCMP released private information concerning gun owners to a consulting firm. That was wrong, and the gun registry facilitates that.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in favour of Bill C-43 and in honour of victims of violent crime across Canada. My riding has felt the full force of such crimes over the past year. Much of what I will share in my remarks today comes from the input I have received from the families of these victims.

I have spoken several times in this House about the terrible events that occurred on October 19, 2007 in the city of Surrey. That fateful evening was marked by the most brutal gangland slaying in British Columbia's history.

Sometime that day, between 3 and 4:30 p.m., members of a criminal gang executed six people with gunshots to their heads. Four were young men with established links to the drug trade, but two of them, 55-year-old Ed Schellenberg, and 22-year-old Chris Mohan, were uninvolved victims. They were innocent bystanders who were at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Although the perpetrators of this terrible crime have been apprehended and are now in the justice system, for the families of the victims, there is little consolation to be had. That is why I believe that any measure that would provide family members with some measure of peace of mind is entirely appropriate.

Bill C-43 makes improvements to the healing process and strengthens the rights of victims and of society in our parole process.

As recognized by a Correctional Services of Canada independent review panel, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act leaves a substantial amount of room to better include victims and their families in the process.

Under the revised act, a victim's right to attend and make statements at National Parole Board hearings will be enshrined in law. This is a sensible idea.

There must be no discretion residing with board members to prevent victims' statements. The only determining factor should be the will of the victims and their families to be heard either in person or by statement.

The movement of convicted criminals by transfers is something which, in the past, has happened in virtual isolation, with little or no notice of such decisions passed on to victims or their families in advance. This isolation is unacceptable as the residual effects of crime never fully disappear.

Therefore, correctional services has an obligation to mitigate the stress caused by such prisoner transfers by providing as much information as possible to prepare those impacted by the crime.

The name and location of the institution to which the offender is transferred, the reason for the transfer, information about the offender's participation in programs, and convictions for serious disciplinary offences should be freely shared.

While I keep referring to victims and their families, everyone in these types of situations are victims. The pain caused to individuals who have had a family member pass away as a result of violent crime is immeasurable. Thus I am very pleased to see that guardians, caregivers or victims who are deceased, ill or otherwise incapacitated are being given an equal level of rights with regard to receiving information.

Perhaps the most significant part of Bill C-43, however, will be the creation of a national advisory committee on victims issues co-chaired by the Department of Justice and the Department of Public Safety. With the intention of giving victims the opportunity to provide input into policies and procedures that impact victims and victims' services, this is a revolution in the way victims' rights are considered.

For many years groups such as Canadian Crime Victims Foundation have advocated from outside the system. They have fought to educate service providers like police officers, justice system personnel, victim service providers and front-line staff on victims' needs, both immediate and long term.

They have tried to provide a clear understanding of protections needed and services required at public and private hearings by those victimized by violent crime. They have created broad public awareness in support of proactive, positive changes for victims of violent crime.

They have conducted research to provide reliable competent data on the status of crime victims, their needs, and the long-term viability of government programs.

While the contributions of such groups will continue to be vital with the creation of the national advisory committee, this newly established body must be considered a huge success and a grand endorsement of their efforts over many years.

Consideration for victims hopefully never again will take the form of tokenism. The changes that I have just described within Bill C-43 represent a new paradigm for our justice system.

Never again do I want to have to face victims or their families and hear about how they have been systematically and institutionally cut out of the process of justice, and as a result have had their healing replaced by anger, frustration, and complete and utter hopelessness.

Every member in this House has constituents and neighbours who have been impacted by violent crime. Regardless of party affiliation or personal viewpoints, this is a bill that we should support in unified confidence in honour of victims.

I encourage all members of the House to step forward, do the right thing and support this important and long-overdue piece of legislation.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to publicly recognize the member for Newton—North Delta for his passionate plea for victims.

It is fair to say that his passionate personal plea is certainly genuine. We certainly welcome his support. We hope that he will work with some of the colleagues on the other side who are perhaps not as interested as he is in passing this legislation.

I know from what he had to say that he has given a great deal of thought to the legislation and research on it. One of the important parts, I think, for all of us is the automatic one-sixth reduction in sentences. I am wondering if he has ever found anyone, a victim or a citizen in his community, who thought that a six-year sentence for a first-time offender meant one year.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety for his kind remarks toward me. It is not about me. It is all about the victims, Canadians and society. We want to create a safe society for all.

When I look at members on this side, I know they carry the hurt. The situations they are going through are similar to those that theparliamentary secretary or I or any other member in the House is going through. This is why we, collectively, have a duty to society to make sure we are living in and our kids are growing up in a safe society.

I am certain members on this side, particularly the Liberal members, are committed to ensuring that we work along with the government to pass legislation that gives victims and Canadians peace of mind.

When it comes to the question that the parliamentary secretary asked, certainly every day we talk to people, and that is their feeling. The only way we can deal with it is by bringing in tougher and minimum mandatory sentences that will address the question that he posed.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have spent the better part of the last four years in the House listening to the Conservatives shout and holler about getting tough on crime. It seems to me most of it is dumbing down the issue of crime and trying to oversimplify it.

We talk about a balance in making our streets safe. One of the ways to deal with recidivism is to ensure that people do not go back to prison. To do that, they need to have supports within the community.

It is all fine and well for the government to legislate what it is going to do to people in prisons. There seems to be no plan for these people for when they come out of prison.

There are issues, such as a national housing strategy. I have dealt with men coming out of prison. If they have no secure lodging or safe environments to start to rehabilitate, they reoffend. There is the same issue with drug addictions. We know how many people are in jail for crimes because of their addictions. Unless we have measures in place, they will reoffend. We see it again and again.

People can talk to police who will say that. People can talk to social workers. Yet we see that the government has no plan or vision in terms of, as we would say, draining the swamps of criminal behaviour by ensuring that the people who are most likely to be a threat are dealt with when they are released so that they can actually begin to become constructive members of society.

I would ask the hon. member what his views are in terms of having a long-term, larger vision with regard to getting smart on crime.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more with him. In fact, if the hon. member goes back to speeches I have made on crime, he will see that I have always supported every piece of tough on crime legislation that has come before the House, whether it has come from the NDP, the Conservatives, the Bloc or the Liberals.

I have always stood for being tough on crime, but at the same time we have to ensure the factors the member mentioned, which are education, prevention and rehabilitation, are part and parcel of society, to make sure that criminals who come out of prison do not come out as bigger criminals.

We can make them productive members of society only by making sure they are given the proper rehabilitation and tools when they are released from prison so that they come out as productive citizens of this great nation.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague as he was speaking and while I appreciate his support for Bill C-43, I hope of course that he is speaking also for his Liberal colleagues.

I am wondering what assurance my colleague can give me that when this passes through the House, it will not be delayed, obstructed or gutted by Liberal senators in the other place. This is a very real concern I have because of what we saw, for example, on Bill C-25, which passed through the House, but which, when it reached the Liberal senators in the other place, was gutted. Actually, they defied their leader in doing so, and they did so without any repercussions.

Fortunately, Bill C-25, due to public pressure, passed ungutted, let us say, in its original form and Canadians were well served, but when the President of the Treasury Board today brought up Bill C-26 on auto theft, we saw it too being obstructed and delayed by the Liberal senators in the other place.

I hear my colleague speaking, but I would like to know what assurance he can give, not just to me and my colleagues in the House, but to all Canadians that this will make it through the Liberal senator blockade in the other place.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, before I talk about the Senate, I would like to talk about this House. It is the Conservative members, the Conservative House leader and the Conservative Prime Minister who have delayed the tough on crime legislation.

I would ask the hon. member to go back in history. The Liberal House leader stood in the House and clearly said to the House leader of the Conservative Party that we were willing to support the tough on crime legislation, and who denied it? The Conservatives did.

When legislation dealing with crime was on the agenda, who prorogued this Parliament? It was the Conservative Prime Minister who delayed the legislation for those victims, and those people who were waiting for the crime agenda to pass three years ago and who are still waiting.

It is not about the Senate; it is about the Conservative Party.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am always fascinated that Conservatives are always going on about Liberal senators. I could go on about Liberal senators all day, but I am wondering if this is an attempt by the Conservatives to divert the attention of the Canadian public from the fact that instead of providing accountability, they have basically started to fill up the Senate with bagmen and friends of the party, so that anybody who flips pancakes and raises money for the Tories will now be our source of sober second thought in the upper chamber.

I ask my hon. colleague, given the rat pack that they put in the Senate, does this not show that despite everything they told the Canadian public about being accountable and bringing in better people to the Senate, they have basically filled it with bagmen, friends and cronies?

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

The hon. member for Newton—North Delta for a short answer, please.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I will give a very short answer, Mr. Speaker.

I would even like to table this document which states that it is not the Liberal senators but the Conservative Senate that has to table the legislation.

First reading was given on June 16, 2009. Second reading was June 22, 2009, and since then they have not even put it up for debate to push it through. I would like to pass this on.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, law-abiding Canadians expect their government to do something to keep their streets safe. For this reason I am proud to rise today and speak on behalf of Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Criminal Code. The bill proposes much-needed reforms to existing legislation that will indeed keep our communities safer.

However, before I address specifics, let me put the bill into a larger context. Since coming into office in 2006, this government has pledged to make the safety and security of Canadians one of its top priorities.

That is why we created an independent panel to review all aspects of Correctional Service of Canada. When the panel released its report in December 2007, which contained 109 recommendations, the government was quick to respond.

Budget 2008 invested over $478 million over the next five years to implement a new vision of federal corrections, which included addressing some of the panel's key recommendations.

This laid the foundation for the amendments to strengthen the federal corrections system that we are proposing today through Bill C-43. The bill proposes reforms in four key areas. It will provide better support for victims of crime, enhance accountability and responsibility of offenders, strengthen the management of offender reintegration, and modernize disciplinary action.

Let me begin with victims of crime, because when it comes to our corrections system they are so often last on everyone's list. The current act clearly recognizes that victims of crime have an interest in the correctional and conditional release process. Yet victims and their advocates have expressed dissatisfaction with the current law. They have called for improvements that would assure them of a stronger voice in the process. This government has heard their concerns. We have listened and we are acting.

As it stands now, victims sometimes travel long distances to attend a parole hearing, but if offenders withdraw their participation, the hearing can be cancelled at the last minute. This creates both a financial and an emotional burden for victims.

The bill proposes that when offenders ask to withdraw 14 days or less before the date of the hearing, the board may still proceed as scheduled unless there are particular circumstances, and victims would have the right to ask why the offender has waived a parole hearing. These measures would go a long way to preserving the peace of mind of victims.

Bill C-43 would also enshrine in law a victim's right to attend and make statements at National Parole Board hearings. In addition, it would enable victims to access relevant information about an offender including reasons for transfer or temporary absence and participation in program activities.

Finally, to ensure that the voice of victims continues to be heard, the government proposes to create a national victims of crime advisory committee. This body would enable victims to share their views and perspectives on corrections issues. In this way the government would keep better informed about the needs of victims.

The second major area of reform relates to the responsibility and accountability of offenders. A successful transition into the community does not happen by accident or through wishful thinking. It takes good planning, targeted interventions and appropriate correctional programs followed by supervision in a supportive community. It demands that offenders play an active role in their rehabilitation.

That is why the bill before the House stresses that rehabilitation is a shared responsibility between offenders and Correctional Service of Canada. Offenders would be expected to respect others, obey the rules and actively participate in fulfilling the goals of their correctional plan. To that end, each correctional plan would set out expectations for behaviour, participation in any programs and the fulfilment of any court-ordered financial obligations.

The third area of reform relates to the management of offenders and their reintegration into the community. We need to do better, so that we better protect law-abiding Canadians in all conditional release decisions. For example, the legislation proposes to give police the power to arrest, without warrant, any offender who appears to be in breach of parole.

In the final area of reform, Bill C-43 would modernize the system of discipline in federal penitentiaries. Specifically, it would impart stronger penalties for breaking rules such as disrespectful, intimidating or assaultive behaviour, including throwing bodily substances.

The four reforms I have outlined are overdue. They are in keeping with recommendations made by an independent review panel and they would go a long way toward keeping Canadians safe.

The protection of society is our first priority. For too long, the rights of offenders have taken priority over law-abiding citizens and even over victims of crime. It is time to swing the pendulum back to where it belongs. Canadians deserve to feel safe in their homes. Victims deserve to be treated with more respect, as do staff and correctional officers in our institutions. Offenders must be prepared to take more responsibility for their conduct and pay the price if they break the rules.

These are the objectives of Bill C-43. It would provide the government with the authority to make changes to the act that would better promote greater safety and security for all Canadians.

I so urge all members of this House to give their unconditional support to this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his very thoughtful speech and for all the hard work that he does, both on the public safety committee and on the justice committee.

I know that prior to entering his career as a parliamentarian, he had a long career as a member of the Ontario Province Police force. I wonder if he might be able to rely on some of that experience to tell this House how this bill would help in the government's overall agenda to provide safe streets and safe communities.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that brings to mind something that occurred about a year ago. I received a communication from some of my former brothers in uniform which related to a specific offence where an officer had been brutally murdered by a criminal. This murder was the subject of great community upheaval. By its very nature, the Ontario Provincial Police force polices smaller more rural communities, in most circumstances. In ordering the accused incarcerated, there was a recommendation by the court and a request by the Crown through the victims, and as a result of the community involvement because this particular officer had been well respected in the community, that the offender in question not be placed in a prison close to the community, as is the custom for Correctional Service Canada. That was complied with.

However, what has occurred, without the knowledge of the victims, and at the last moment, was a decision by Correctional Service Canada as a result of a court decision to move the prisoner back into the community. This has created a great upheaval. For my learned friend's edification, this particular case did not just impact the victims. The whole community was victimized.

I believe Bill C-43 would allow that input by the victims into decisions that Correctional Service Canada and others may make, including the courts. It would assist with their voice being heard as to why and where prisoners should be housed.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the hon. member who sits on both the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

These past few week, several bills have been put forward in this House in an effort to strengthen justice and provide tools for that purpose. Besides wanting to build prisons and throwing people in jail, the government is also talking about providing the necessary tools.

The member who just spoke, to whom I am putting my question, was a police officer in Ontario before becoming a member of Parliament. I would like him to tell me whether the gun registry is an essential tool that police use from time to time in Ontario. Did he use the gun registry when he was a police officer? Given that the association supported the government's decision to maintain the gun registry, did he use the registry when he was a police officer?

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

I would like to remind all hon. members that we are debating Bill C-43.

The hon. member for Northumberland—Quinte West.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I retired in the year 2000. I believe that was slightly before the registry was brought in. However, I personally believe that there are better ways to protect the people of Canada from the misuse of firearms.

Some of those ways involve proper education and ensuring that people who are licensed or permitted to possess firearms are properly trained in their use and in the knowledge of the tremendous power they possess. I believe that we should ensure that only the right kind of people are permitted to have firearms. I do believe in the problem, but I do not believe that a long gun registry is the right way to go.

I think that the over $1 billion that has been used so far for that particular enterprise has been woefully wasted. However, I can say this to my hon. friend. We as a government have increased the number of police officers in Canada, increased the number of police officers in the RCMP, and increased the capacity for Depot to train additional police officers.

We have provided the provinces with extra money to hire more police officers in both the municipal and provincial jurisdictions. I worked alongside and was very proud to stand beside my brothers from the Sûreté du Québec, who do a wonderful job in policing that fair province.

This government has done much, but in my view the long gun registry does nothing to protect the average citizen from the misuse of firearms.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Questions and comments. The hon. member for Edmonton—Strathcona, with a question on Bill C-43.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question that I would like to put to the member across the way who spoke on Bill C-43. We are hearing the same repeated comment over and over again that the government cares about the rights of victims.

Could he please comment on the fact that, first and foremost, we should have a criminal law policy that prevents crime? The best thing we could probably do for victims of crime is to avoid victims of crime. A lot of that could be done through more community policing and the many programs that we have raised in the House previously.

There is a second aspect. We are told by criminologists and experts who study this, and they have provided in-depth reports and analysed this CSC road map, that by yanking back all of the programs such as the prison farms, spirit circles and so forth, we are allowing for greater recidivism. The very purpose of having the educational programs in the prisons is to not have repeat crimes and yet more victims of crime.

Could the member speak to this bill and whether or not the government intends to, as a follow-up to the passage of this bill, move forward with its road map?

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this government has put quite a few millions of dollars toward crime prevention and in particular the use of drugs or, in other words, dissuading our youth from using drugs.

She mentioned community policing. As far as I know, all police forces in at least Ontario and I believe Canada provide policing services. I can tell her for her edification that, in my last role as programs manager in the detachment I worked at, I brought in or assisted in bringing in programs with the board of education, such programs as D.A.R.E. and others. The government is not only actively doing that, but so are many police forces across Canada.

The justice committee was recently in Halifax. We talked to the chief of the Halifax police. Again, about 50% of the funding for many of their programs is federal funding. They work with at-risk youth in their communities, so a lot of good is going on.

The member said that criminologists study it. Members such as myself have lived it. Members such as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety lived it for over 30 years as a chief of police in one of the communities in Ontario. We do listen to victims of crime. We do listen to and care about the needs of those who are in our correctional services.

I am the member of Parliament for Northumberland—Quinte West, which has one of Canada's largest medium prisons. We just recently constructed a separate place there for first nations people to go about their rehabilitation in a cultural way with the healing circles, while teaching them some of the traditional methods by which they can earn a living when they leave that institution. We also teach them many other things, such as sandblasting. When I have talked to the instructors there, most of the people in that institution who get their sandblasting papers never return to prison because they have a job, in many cases before they even leave prison.

There are many good stories there. We should not just use blanket statements. Do not forget that some of us in the House have lived it and studied it.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased today to address Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Criminal Code.

The Bloc Québécois will support this bill, so that it can be reviewed in committee. We support its principle, but we have some reservations about this legislation.

I should point out that, throughout my presentation I will use the logo CSC, instead of the Correctional Service of Canada. First, one objective of this bill is to target, perhaps indirectly, the mandate of the Correctional Service of Canada by making the protection of society the paramount consideration. Currently, CSC's mandate is to protect society by assessing the risk posed by inmates, and to encourage inmates to participate in programs, precisely to help protect society.

However, when the Conservatives talk about protecting society, they mean keeping as many people as possible in jail, for as long as possible. Indeed, under the CSC's mandate, “the protection of society” means keeping people in jail.

However, the protection of society really means to keep the most dangerous offenders in jail, to encourage them to participate in programs, and to rehabilitate themselves because, inevitably, the day will come when they will be set free. That is going to be the case for a large majority of them, whether it is at the end of their full sentence, or after serving two thirds of it. Rehabilitation helps protect society, but the government does not seem to understand that.

In the bill's summary, it is mentioned, as I pointed out earlier, that the protection of society is the paramount consideration for the Correctional Service of Canada in the corrections process. However, that is clearly spelled out in section 4(a) of the existing act. This consideration already exists.

So then what is the government's goal? Is this just a smokescreen? Just for show? Let us see about that. Is it a change of philosophy? I cannot tell, because this provision already exists in the act.

However, section 4(a) of the current act is found under the heading “Principles that Guide the Service”. The government is taking this section and transferring it under the heading “Purpose and Principles” in the proposed legislation. I think there is a reason behind this change.

Currently, the purpose of the corrections system reads as follows:

The purpose of the federal correctional system is to contribute to the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society by carrying out sentences imposed by courts through the safe and humane custody and supervision of offenders; and assisting the rehabilitation of offenders and their reintegration into the community as law-abiding citizens through the provision of programs in penitentiaries and in the community.

As it is currently stated, the purpose of the correctional system seems to me to be well balanced. I therefore invite all the members who will be serving on the committee when this bill is studied to consider the impact of this change, given the emphasis placed on protection. We need to ask ourselves why this section is being moved. If the change is of no consequence, why make such a big deal about it? But if the change is significant, then we need to know what the government is trying to do by moving this section to the part of the bill on the purpose of the system.

I believe—and I may be wrong—that under the pretext of protecting society, something everyone in this House supports, this government wants to contribute to making some inmates more serious criminals and, inevitably, to weakening public safety. The longer people remain needlessly incarcerated, they more hardened they become.

Penitentiaries are not holiday camps; they are universities of crime. We must not forget that, like it or not, the vast majority of offenders get out of prison eventually.

To my way of thinking, the way to make communities safer is to see that these people are rehabilitated and take part in programs. Offenders not only have to be rehabilitated, they also have to be less dangerous. We have to be honest enough to tell ourselves that there are some offenders who perhaps cannot be rehabilitated, but unfortunately, their sentence will end eventually.

The purpose of the correctional system, in encouraging them to participate in these programs, is to help them pose the least possible danger to society.

Let us look at other provisions in this bill. The bill would give victims the right to make a statement at parole hearings. It would also allow the Correctional Service of Canada and the National Parole Board to disclose information to victims. I feel that this is crucial.

When I was a parole officer, victims told me about finding themselves face to face with their attacker at the corner store. This is unacceptable. In my opinion, victims must be notified when an inmate is released from jail or penitentiary. They must be informed of the person's address. This is essential if there is a chance the offender is living in the same area as the victim. It is also essential that victims be allowed to make a statement at parole hearings.

By putting more emphasis on the victims, the bill also tries to make the offender take responsibility for what he did. I think it is important for victims to be able to participate because that too can help them heal from the attack on them. We have already discussed all that in the Bloc Québécois. There is nothing new here, it is all warmed over. We even developed a plan to fight crime and tabled it two years ago. There is a lot in this bill, therefore, that is old hat, whether street gangs, bikers, or the role of victims in the correctional system or the justice system in general.

We think that the involvement of the victims in the release procedure is likely to further the healing process and bolster their confidence in the justice system. This is essential because people sometimes tell us loud and clear that they have lost confidence in the justice system. Involving the victims is therefore a key point.

Although the current Corrections and Conditional Release Act clearly recognizes the interests of the victims of criminal acts and the role they can play in the correctional and conditional release process, victims and advocates of victims’ rights have told us that the system does not make much sense and they are dissatisfied with the way it works. In a way, these improvements will do a lot to enhance victim access to this kind of process.

The bill also expands the range of information that the Correctional Service of Canada and the National Parole Board can provide. It includes a whole list of measures, for example: to disclose the transfer of offenders; to inform in advance that the offender is in the region; to inform when the offender is in a minimum security institution; and to inform the victim about the offender’s participation in correctional programs and what has been done in regard to disciplinary offences. There are a number of issues to be examined therefore.

This is interesting, but I think we will have to study it in committee to determine which relevant information should be disclosed to victims from the point of view of both their healing and their safety.

I wonder about this, but I do not know the answer. I think we will have to expand on it in committee. Does knowing that an offender is participating in an addiction program or a program for sexual offenders contribute anything to the life of the victim? I do not really know.

We will have to meet these people to discuss the bill and see how relevant this information is. Personally, though, I do not think it is really very relevant. I think it is much more relevant to know that there will be a hearing and the victim can come and testify or simply that the offender was released on such and such a date and is in the area. But we will have to study these issues.

Holding the offender accountable is another interesting point. The offender and the Correctional Service share responsibility for the rehabilitation of the offender and his reintegration into society as a law-abiding citizen. This has been the case for a long time. There is nothing new here and we do not need to re-invent the wheel. An offender’s correctional plan is developed by a multidisciplinary team, the parole officer and the offender himself to help ensure that the offender participates in the programs. When I look at this, I wonder what is new about it because that is what we already have.

Now, it is important to note a point regarding holding offenders accountable. It is fine to talk about programs and accountability, but there have to be programs. Only 2% of the Correctional Service’s budget goes to programs; the rest is used for the security, maintenance and management of penitentiaries. We might wonder what is going on. Inmates wait for months and months before they can participate in a program, when they have agreed to participate in it. There is enormous work to be done in terms of access to programs. It is fine to talk about programs, but there have to be some. This is an important point that I wanted to make.

As well, in terms of accountability, which is a very good idea, there is talk of introducing incentives. I think that is important. We have to encourage inmates to participate in programs with incentives, not with the threat of penalties. That is a point that might be important and a good idea. That is why the Bloc Québécois has proposed that statutory release at two-thirds be granted on merit and not automatically, as is currently the case. Whether or not an offender has participated in programs, he is going to be released at two-thirds of sentence, unless there is a very high risk of dangerousness and the parole officer can do what is called a detention review. If two-thirds were on merit, that could also be a good idea. Certainly, as the Bloc has proposed, release after one-sixth of sentence would also have to be eliminated.

Another point that I think is also a good idea is modernization of the disciplinary system. I will raise several points. We talk about more punishment for disrespectful, intimidating and assaultive behaviour by inmates toward staff and other persons. That is already done. Inmates who engage in this kind of behaviour are penalized. Now, what does penalizing them more mean? Are we going to hang them, too? What are we going to do? I do not understand. There will be records kept that report infractions. That will have an impact on their correctional plan and their parole. Some will be placed in administrative segregation because they are extremely aggressive. What is being added? I really do not understand. I wonder what more is going to be done.

As well, what does “disrespectful” mean? If an 18-year-old flops down on his parole officer’s chair and says he couldn’t care less about his programs, is that disrespectful? Someone else shouts insults at another guard. What is an insult? How is insult defined? Based on what are we going to punish someone? Based on rudeness, or something else? These things have to be clarified because this could lead to considerable abuse.

In addition, there are to be disciplinary sanctions imposed on inmates who throw bodily substances. In my opinion, from what I have seen in my practice, spitting on someone, ejaculating on someone, cutting one’s self and bleeding on someone, an inmate, an officer or someone else, that is already happening.

CSC does not tolerate that kind of behaviour. Those people are already being punished.

Another point I find most intriguing: restricting visits for inmates in segregation. Most inmates in preventive segregation are there for their own protection. Sometimes, they even request it themselves. Are we going to prevent these people from seeing their family members and other visitors?

We have to take a closer look at this. We have to understand one thing. The prison system is already punishment in and of itself. People commit a crime and end up in prison. They are already being punished. We do not need to punish them further. That is already part of the correctional system. I do not understand what the government is trying to add.

As to disciplinary measures, I would like to raise one point. I would like to talk about people with mental illness. Right now, as part of the committee's study, members are asking a lot of questions about people with mental health issues and those diagnosed with autism or severe disabilities. I have seen people like this in my practice. Should the correctional system be handling them? That is not the answer.

When it comes to discipline, a person with one of these illnesses will not react like a person who does not have mental illness. How are we going to define unruly behaviour when it comes to these people? We cannot focus solely on discipline when dealing with inmates who have serious behavioural disorders, serious or mild intellectual disorders or mental illness. We have to take a closer look at this. It is fine to talk about discipline, but we have to recognize that not everyone is equal when it comes to behaviour. I think we have to take these differences into account.

This government claims that it is working to protect society. It says this is one of its priorities. We hear that a lot.

I would like to highlight some things I find a bit strange. When we talk about protecting society, we are not just talking about building prisons, investing more money in police forces and arresting people, but we are also talking about prevention and rehabilitation. I find it amazing that the Minister of Public Safety refused to finance a program aimed at reducing recidivism among individuals convicted of sexual offences. In fact, those who run that program, called Circles of Support and Accountability, were given no explanation for the rejection of their request. Moreover, it met all criteria and even the National Crime Prevention Centre was in favour of granting them money. The program has been in existence for 15 years and has proved its worth in Britain and in the United States. That is one example of something I find strange.

I have another example. In my riding, there are a few halfway houses. One of them is special because it takes in people with mental illnesses who have committed sexual offences, such as pedophiles. I have repeatedly asked this government to make sure that Correctional Service Canada does not transfer pedophiles close to schools. The Commission scolaire de Montréal even adopted a resolution to support that request. Not only is there a school close to that halfway house, but there is also a daycare centre with more than 50 children nearby. It is a case of putting the fox among the chickens.

When we talk about safety and protection, we are not talking only about prisons. Plugging the holes is not enough. We must take concrete action. We do not need new legislation. The commissioner needs to be called, given a directive and told that that is enough and that no pedophiles should be put in halfway houses close to schools. That is not a complicated thing to do.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues here today will have noted that my colleague from Ahuntsic gave an excellent speech. With her professionalism, research and excellent speech, my colleague from Ahuntsic could provide further insights to the House, Parliament and the government about the bill before us.

Mr. Speaker, I humbly request the unanimous consent of the House to allow the member for Ahuntsic to continue her excellent speech.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Does the hon. member have unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there must have been some fog down at the end of the hall. I am trying to see what was just going on there.

We have been here day after day, month after month, now year after year and we see the same howling crew on the backbenches of the Conservatives stand up every day and shout that we are not helping them to get tough on crime. They equate a judicious review as support for pedophiles. They use dumbed down tactics. They shout, intimidate people and use attack mailings. They misrepresent what we do and, in fact, they use our tax dollars to misrepresent the work we do in the House of Commons, which is to ensure that legislation that is brought forward is in the public interest and that it is good policy.

However, this is not some dumbed down gang fight. This is about ensuring we have a vision for our country.

My hon. colleague has seen how the Conservatives act. Could she explain to the House what she sees in terms of the lack of vision for a grand strategy for crime, for safety and for building a proper and safe nation?

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

I believe there is a glaring and complete lack of vision in all the bills brought before us. One philosophy permeates all these bills and the more I see of them the more I realize that it is based on coercion, imprisonment, arrest, and punishment. Unfortunately, that is not the way to fight crime. We have to understand that crime stems from poverty, not being able to find a job, discrimination, dropping out of school. Rehabilitation and prevention are needed. As long as we do not reach some sort of balance, we will never achieve long-term security.

The best example is that of the United States. It has the highest rate of incarceration of any country. It is our next door neighbour. The prisons are overflowing and street gangs are everywhere. They have serious problems with street gangs, child kidnapping and production of child pornography. The United States, along with Russia, puts out the greatest amount of child pornography.

This government has no vision; it only believes in punishment.

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the speech by my colleague from Ahuntsic, who explained to the House the many qualifications we would like to see added to this bill. As she explained, we will support the bill so that it can be studied in depth in committee in order to add the qualifications she talked about.

Many members spoke to the bill today, including my colleague from Manicouagan, and I know you were not particularly happy with his contribution, Mr. Speaker. He explained that the government claims to be tough on crime and wants to put people in jail and fight crime while, at the same time, reducing firearms control. The two go hand in hand.

My question for my colleague is as follows. As she made abundantly clear, we are gradually heading towards an American-style justice system that emphasizes repression instead of rehabilitation. Does the member not agree that this American-style justice system is simply based on a right-wing, cowboy ideology?

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

My answer is yes, but I would also like to bring to his attention the whole question of the firearms registry.

I was listening to my colleague from the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security saying that the long gun registry should be abolished. Well, well. But, I would like to bring to your attention the fact that, in Canada, criminal groups use mostly long guns obtained illegally. In some regions, gang members do not use handguns, but long guns, such as in Yukon, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, where street gangs have been identified. Let me give another example. In Quebec, handguns are used more often, but not in some regions, where long guns are used. The situation is the same in Ontario. It is true that criminal groups use handguns, but they also use long guns. They use handguns in cities, but in less populated areas, they use long guns. Long guns are not used only by ordinary people, but also by criminal groups.

So, it is not true that, by abolishing the firearms registry for long guns, the problem of violence in cities will be solved. It is not true.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the speech given by the member for Ahuntsic.

To me, the most important part of her speech was when she alluded to the disconnect between what the Conservatives say and what they do. We now know that they did not keep the promise they made to put 2,500 more police officers on the main roads of Canada. We also saw their cuts to crime prevention programs that existed for the sole purpose of reducing the number of victims.

Would the member say that those cuts clearly show that the Conservative Party's agenda results in more crime and not less? In fact, that kind of program makes a big difference in the results we get in our communities.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague.

In fact, there are two parts to his question. First, we have the prevention aspect, where we see the government cutting, or at least not increasing funding. For example, for the NPB, whose job includes dealing with crimes by young people, there is only $8 million for Quebec. I have met people at the NPB and what they have told me is that they can make no requests between now and 2011-2012. That means that in terms of prevention, this government is lagging behind.

In addition, and this is rather bizarre, there is the fact that this government is taking the easy road. It is much easier to reassure the public by telling them that you are making laws against white collar criminals, you are creating minimum sentences for this and minimum sentences for that. You tell the public that you are making laws to protect them, and then you do not allocate the resources to protect them. It is pointless to make laws if there is no money and there are no resources to support the laws. What we will be doing, at present, with this government, is we will be filling our prisons, but we will not be putting one cent into the prisons. I want to see how much they will invest in penitentiaries or the correctional service to cover the costs of the number of people who will be incarcerated for so long. I want to see that.

So when you make laws, you have to allocate money. But what they are doing is making laws, making people believe they are going to protect them with bogus laws. After that, what will they do? Not one cent is being invested in the real business.

As my colleague put it so well, prevention is important. What is being done in that regard? Drops in the bucket. When we have shootings in Vancouver or Toronto, the government says it is going to put so many million dollars into it. Has the government gone back to Vancouver to see whether the shootings have stopped? No. Has it gone back to Toronto to see whether things have calmed down? In Regent Park, has it gone to see the children who go to school and get bullied? Has it seen the violence, the people living in fear? Has it seen that? No.

Certainly it is much easier to make bogus laws and say you are adding minimum sentences, you are going to lock people up, but not one cent makes it into the real things. That is unacceptable. We are mortgaging the youth of Canada and Quebec. We will be paying for this for years, I can tell you that.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Willowdale, Government Assets; the hon. member for Cape Breton—Canso, Employment Insurance.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to the issue of crime and the Conservative approach to crime that is embodied in Bill C-43. I feel a little bit like Groundhog Day because when the Conservatives came to power they were hoping to use crime issues and the legitimate concerns that Canadians have from coast to coast to coast around the criminal justice system and the fact that it is not functioning to try to get a majority government.

The House will recall at the time that the justice minister was throwing out bills like candy. Bills were being written up on the back of napkins. The justice minister at the time lost his job because, tragically, rather than doing their due diligence and homework, rather than working with opposition parties and putting in place a systematic approach that would actually drive down crime rates, something that would have support from all four corners of the House, the Conservatives chose to throw out a series of sometimes well drafted, but often not well drafted at all, criminal justice legislation, much of which they simply were not able to get through.

In light of a potential election coming in the spring, we are now seeing the same phenomenon. We are seeing bills coming out sometimes after doing the due diligence that only the NDP seems to do so very effectively after reading through the bills. We have the member of Parliament for Windsor—Tecumseh and the member of Parliament for Vancouver Kingsway very diligently going through the bills clause by clause. Sometimes we are able to support the bills. Sometimes they are drafted well enough so that they serve the intent they purport to deliver, but often they do not.

In the case of Bill C-43, we have a similar problem. It does purport a principle that we support, which is to be focused on victims. The NDP supports legislation that is brought forward that is focused on victims, However, we will not support legislation that is brought forward in the House that is focused on producing more victims, and that is often the perverse impact of badly crafted legislation that the Conservatives bring forward.

On victims' rights, my bill on victims' restitution was tabled in the House a year ago. The government could choose to move that bill forward but it has not chosen to do that, victims' restitution being a principle that the NDP has brought forward. Despite the fact that it has been before the House for a year, the Conservatives have chosen not to bring it forward.

What we see is a bill that has a couple of components that we could support. We certainly supporting establishing the right of victims to make a statement at parole hearings. We support the right of victims to access information about offenders. We support those principles, which is why we brought forward bills on victims' restitution. We believe the justice system must serve victims, there is no doubt about that.

However, if we see the direction the government has taken around offenders and some of the key programs that reduce the crime rate after release, some of the aspects of the bill could serve to produce more victims in the long term. That is why, after doing our due diligence, we must say to members of the Conservative government, can they not get it right? Can they not take due diligence, rather than constantly using this as a political tool when they know that Canadians are concerned and want to have a revamped justice system that serves their needs and the needs of victims and that reduces the crime rate? Why can they not get it right on key bills like this?

We need to look at the overall context of what the Conservatives have done. As many previous speakers have pointed out, including my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona, the Conservatives, after taking power, reduced funding for crime prevention. This is absolutely absurd. We know that every dollar invested in crime prevention saves $6 in policing costs, in court costs and in prison costs later on. It also means there is no victim, which means we have actually stopped having a victim in the first place.

What have the Conservatives done? They have gutted crime prevention programs. Many of the crime prevention organizations across the country that are very good, effective, respected organizations have found their funding either delayed or cut.

This is absolutely unacceptable. It begs this question. Is the Conservative agenda the same as the Republican agenda in the United States? The Republicans tried to increase crime rates because they thought they could profit politically from it. When we see Conservatives cutting crime prevention programs, we have to wonder what their agenda is.

What else? The Conservatives made a promise to hire 2,500 police officers. Where are those police officers? That funding, by and large, simply did not come or was handed over without any strings attached. We essentially do not see that key commitment the Conservatives made back in 2006 yet.

Our public safety critic met with the Canadian Association of Police Boards and raised this issue. In fact, representatives of the association came to Ottawa three times to talk about this issue. Did the Conservatives do anything? No. This is another key commitment broken on criminal justice issues. It is absolutely appalling. When we have Canadians who are concerned about these issues, they choose to not keep what they put forward as one of their fundamental promises. It begs also this question. Are they really sincere about taking action to reduce the crime rate? That is the principle.

When we see this series of legislation brought forward, often very poorly crafted, we have to wonder whether the Conservatives are, in any way, committed to taking that kind of smart actions in criminal justice matters that would actually reduce the crime rate.

One way to do that would be to increase the number of police officers and keep their commitment, on which the NDP members have been pressing them. They did not do that. Another would be to expand funding on crime prevention programs. The Conservatives did not do that. In fact, they cut crime prevention.

What else did the Conservatives do? A pay increase was announced by Conservatives for RCMP officers. We know RCMP officers play a key role across the country. In my community of Burnaby, the Burnaby RCMP, the second largest attachments in the country, does key work, working with the local administration of the city of Burnaby and the Burnaby Citizens' Association to put in place innovative crime prevention programs to reduce the crime rate.

The Conservatives told the RCMP officers, who have been undercut in their salaries for years and find it harder and harder to make ends meet, particularly in areas of a high cost of living like the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, on December 12, by email, that the pay increases they had announced in June would be slashed for 2009 and 2010. Shame on them.

They are hard-working RCMP officers dealing with a high cost of living, with all the sacrifices they have to make for their families to serve the community, and the Conservatives again broke their commitment to the RCMP. Shame on them for having, in such a clear way, disrespected the RCMP officers of this country.

What else did the Conservatives do? A little over three years ago a public safety officer compensation fund, which was a bill pushed forward by the NDP, was adopted by the House, with the support of Conservatives who were then in opposition. It was just before the election that brought the Conservatives to power. Years later there is still no public safety officer compensation fund, despite the fact they voted to establish it.

This means if there is no insurance put in place by the local policing organization or the municipality, which impacts on our hard-working firefighters who also work in very dangerous situations, when police officers and firefighters die in the line of duty, their families receive no compensation. They get nothing. We hear every day tragic stories of what has happened to the surviving families of those police officers and firefighters. In many cases they lose their homes or they take a second job. The Conservatives have broken that commitment, as well. This is just another case of the difference between the rhetoric that they bring forward in the House and the reality of their government.

I could talk about the Conservatives broken promise around unionization that has come through the courts, as well.

We see a systematic pattern on criminal justice systems. Rather than standing up for those who advocate for public safety, rather than do the real work to enhance support for victims, rather than put into place crime prevention programs that means there are fewer victims, the Conservatives do exactly the opposite. Which brings us back to Bill C-43.

Canadians I do not think will be surprised to learn this and I know a number of other speakers have addressed this issue as well. Over the past few years, we have seen some of the key programs to ensure offenders do not reoffend have gradually over time, in a very real way, been slashed by the Conservative government. Less funding has been provided each and every year.

What are the programs the Conservatives have been slashing quietly over the past four years since they came to power? I know members would be interested in knowing that they include mental health diagnosis and treatment, work programs, literacy and education programs and drug and alcohol treatment. What the Conservative government has been doing is quietly slashing over time. Each year the have provided less funding, in real terms, for those key programs.

What does that mean? In the bill the Conservatives are proposing to remove what they call privileges, which essentially are the programs we are talking about. These programs are very important for the community to ensure that when offenders get out of prison, they have actually been rehabilitated. We do not want them to offend again. We do not want to see other victims. Yet the legislation serves to cut that important lifeline and increases the likelihood, as we have certainly seen in the United States with similar Republican legislation, of reoffending.

My colleague from Elmwood—Transcona spoke about the difference between reoffending rates when someone comes out of prison as to opposed to the community rehabilitation programs. That is not simply an inconsequential statistic. It means the difference between somebody coming back into the community and somebody offending again.

If we are here to reduce the number of victims, if we are here to reduce the crime rate, if we are here to ensure there are fewer victims next week than there were this week, we have to wonder about the Conservative agenda to cut these vital programs. There is no doubt that it certainly did not work in the United States. It would not work in Canada if we cut these important programs. Bill C-43 purports to do that.

Fundamentally, when we see that, we have to question the legitimacy of the government's move. Essentially, it has said that it wants to provide more support for victims to make statements in parole hearings, which we support, the right of victims to access information about offenders, which we support. Then it puts a bunch of poison pills around that, which makes it difficult for anybody who honestly looks at the criminal justice system and what is needed to provide the kinds of supports to ensure we do not have offenders reoffend.

Those programs, drug and alcohol treatment, literacy and education, mental health diagnosis and treatment and work programs are the kinds of programs that ensure that rehabilitation and reintegration into the community. We simply cannot take an offender and lock him or her up for life.

If we are talking about serious crimes, we would never want to see somebody as reprehensible as a Clifford Robert Olson on the streets ever again. However, when we talk about robberies or crimes that do not dictate a life sentence, at some point we will see offenders back on the streets.

We have to ensure an offender can go into a workplace because he or she has had established training through work programs. If the person is suffering from a mental health issue, we have to ensure that individual has been treated for that mental health issue. If person is an addict, drug and alcohol programs will help get the offender over the addiction so he or she can then reintegrate into the community.

If people do not know how to read, how can they possibly cope in society? Yet, tragically, even today many Canadian adults are not literate. This is a fundamental skill. We have to ensure every adult in Canada has access to it. Yet the Conservatives have cut the funding on those kinds of vital programs. It has been slowly, quietly and over time but, nonetheless, they have cut those programs.

The net impact of this is twofold. Either an offender is not rehabilitated, costing the Canadian taxpayer $80,000 to $90,000 for each and every one and extending the time of imprisonment until the courts say that on legal grounds the person cannot be incarcerated any more, or we spend less money than that to ensure programs are in place so when the offender is released safely into the community, the individual can move on with a life that is productive and does not create any more victims. That is a sensible, smart approach on criminal justice issues.

Unfortunately, that is not what we are getting from the Conservatives. With the Conservatives, we have seen cuts to crime prevention programs. We have seen that the Conservatives decided from the very beginning that they would set up a system to cut those types of programs. It is disgusting.

It goes on. They have also broken the promises they made to all Canadians about increasing the number of police officers across the country. They promised an additional 2,500 police officers. We know this because police organizations are telling us that very little funding has come through to create these new positions. In some cases that money did not arrive at all. Sometimes the money was given, but with no obligation to create new positions within the police forces.

We have also seen cuts to RCMP officers' salaries. We think it is inexcusable that in June 2008, the Conservatives promised to finally give an increase to all RCMP officers across the country only to turn around and break that promise. The police work very hard and often live in situations where they just do not have enough to make ends meet. In regions such as the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, the cost of housing is very high and police officers do not earn enough money to take care of their families. On December 12, 2008, the Conservatives broke their promises. It is disgusting.

That is not the approach we want to see. We want to reduce the crime rate. We want to reduce the number of victims. Unfortunately, the Conservatives' approach is not reducing the crime rate. That is what they should be aiming for. Unfortunately, when they introduce bills one after the other, they are often poorly drafted and it takes the work of committees to try to fix everything that is wrong with these bills. That is why we have problems with this bill.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to point out there are components of Bill C-43 that we in the NDP support.

We support establishing the right of victims to make a statement at parole hearings. The NDP stands up for marginalized and vulnerable victims in our society. Offenders need to hear from victims. They need to know the impact of their crimes as restorative justice. Victims need to have their voices heard, otherwise they are victimized a second time.

We also support the right of victims to access to information about offenders. For example, the system must not leave victims in the dark, fighting for every scrap of information. Certainly knowing that an offender is being rehabilitated is important as a step on a victim's road to healing and recovery.

I know the member supports this, but has he any further comment or explanation regarding the role of victims in terms of the bill?

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Elmwood—Transcona knows we brought forward Bill C-372 on victims' restitution because of the principle of having a justice system that serves the victims in this country. That is something on which we have not yet seen any movement from the Conservatives. They have had the bill for a year. They have not acted on it. They have not moved forward on it. I find that regrettable.

There are components of the bill, as the member points out, that we do support: the right of victims to make those statements at parole hearings, for example. Their comments need to be incorporated. There is absolutely no doubt we certainly support that, and we support the right of victims to access information about offenders. That is a fundamental principle as well that we support.

In this corner of the House, we are very clear that our justice system has to serve victims. We are also very clear that there have to be fewer victims. That is why we have been advocating a smart approach to crime, actually advocating a substantial increase in crime prevention programs, asking the Conservatives to keep their promise on police officers, and advocating a smarter court system and prison system so we will have fewer victims. That actually should be the focus of the Conservative government too.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his very cogent comments. Indeed, our party is the first to stand up in the House on behalf of victims, particularly on behalf of preventing further victims of crime.

As he very ably and thoroughly points out, the umbrella of preventing crime is a big one, and simply locking up every offender and throwing away the key is not necessarily the solution to preventing crime.

I would look, for example, to what I saw on CBC television last night, the very sad story of an RCMP officer on the highway between Edmonton and Fort McMurray who is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome because the RCMP do not have enough resources so that they can relieve him, and he is seeing gruesome accident after gruesome accident.

There are many types of crime. There are the crimes on the highway. What about domestic abuse? We do not have enough housing so that women who do not have an extra source of income can leave a scene instead of becoming victims of crime.

Could the hon. member please speak to the bigger umbrella, the tools that we need in our arsenal to address a reduction of crime?

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Edmonton—Strathcona is by far the best MP from Alberta in the House of Commons and has been very effective at putting forward a very articulate view. I know she defends her constituency and Alberta very effectively in the House of Commons, so I always appreciate getting comments from her.

She is absolutely right. There is a much bigger picture that we have been pushing the government to be focused on, and that is reducing the crime rate.

We have seen the Republican approach in the United States. They like to profit from crime. They love to push an agenda. They built a lot of private prisons and a lot of Republican cronies made a whole lot of money, but the crime rate kept going up, because what they were doing was eliminating the kinds of safeguards that our communities need. Those safeguards are ensuring that when offenders get out, they will not reoffend.

We have been making the case very ably in this corner of the House that the kinds of programs that actually reduce the number of victims and reduce the possibility that offenders will reoffend are the kinds of programs that are needed. We need supports, not just for literacy.

The hon. member is absolutely right, those are the kinds of supports and social safety nets that ensure that we bring our crime rate down. She is right, and I agree with her once again.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his intervention and for his incredible representation, both of his constituents and of Canadians, in the House.

He brought up programs that deal with crime prevention. He brought up some really simple programs like literacy programs.

Earlier today I was telling someone about something that happened to me in my riding of Halifax. I was visiting a centre, Leave Out Violence, LOVE. I was visiting with youth who are in conflict with the law. A young man said, “My dad sold rock on the street. My uncle sold rock on the street. Everybody I know does that. How am I supposed to understand what it is to have a job?” He actually said, “We need more programs like this so that I do not have to sell crack to keep my family fed”. What he was talking about was the smallest little program, the tiniest little program about how to show up to work on time, and how to do up a resumé, which are very simple, basic things, but he had never learned them.

My question to the member is, would he agree with me that crime prevention programs do not have to be complicated?They can be quite simple. They can be quite grassroots and still have a profound effect on Canadians.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Halifax is always able and very effective at getting to the heart of the issue.

The issue of literacy is a fundamental one—

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

Is she the best MP from Nova Scotia? Who is the best MP from Nova Scotia?

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry. One of the Albertans is still taking exception to my praise of the member for Edmonton—Strathcona. I am just saying what all members of the House already know. She is the best member of Parliament from Alberta. The member for Halifax is one of the best members in the House from anywhere.

Literacy issues are fundamental. Life skills issues are fundamental. When it costs $80,000 to $90,000 a year to keep offenders in a prison for another year when that money could be put into the kinds of programs that ensure that offenders have the life skills to live a productive, honest life, it is a no-brainer. One has to be smart about these approaches.

Yet, the youth at risk programs within the crime prevention strategy were some of the first programs cut by the Conservative government. The youth at risk programs were slashed first when the Conservatives took power. Whether we are talking about life skills, literacy or work experience, in a crime prevention sense, these are exactly the kinds of programs, which the member refers to, that reduce crime in our communities.

This brings us back to the fundamental points. The Conservatives just do not seem to want to get it right. They seem to want to follow the failed Republican model on pushing up the crime rate and locking people away for a long time. If they have a soft drug or robbery offence, they are locked away for a long time at huge cost to the taxpayers. Then they are let out on the street with absolutely no rehabilitation at all.

That makes no sense. Most Canadians understand that makes no sense. Most Canadians would agree that what we actually need is a strategy on crime that includes crime prevention and reducing the crime rate. Those are the kinds of programs that the member for Halifax was mentioning, and she is right.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-43. I am sorry I have a slightly hoarse voice. I have cold, but my colleagues can rest assured that I do not have the seasonal flu or H1N1. I might have caught this cold from my daughter Chloé or my son Loïc. I take this opportunity to mention my children because, when we talk about a bill on justice, we also talk about our children and the kind of society we want to leave to them.

Do we want to leave them a progressive and modern society whose strategies on crime focus on prevention, or an American type of society, a society like the Republicans and George Bush wanted, with its focus on repression and wanting to put as many people as possible in prison for as long as it can, not caring about the potential outcome?

Ironically, this government which came to power almost four years ago always prides itself on being a law and order government, a government that is tough on crime, and it loves to please the crowds by accusing other parties, one after the other, of opposing this agenda. The NDP, the Bloc Québécois and the Liberal Party have been the targets of these attacks and they have been accused of not caring about crime. Incidentally, it is a bit funny that each time we voice our concerns about security and the fight on crime, the Minister of Justice always answers that he is happy to hear the new-found interest of the Bloc Québécois for justice.

First, it is not possible to keep giving the same answer for four years. A new concern cannot be new for four years. The minister should quit making believe that the Bloc Québécois is just starting to get interested in the fight on crime. He will not be able to keep using the same answer for the next 10 years.

I would like to remind him that Parliament finally passed antigang legislation after the Bloc Québécois fought long and hard to get that done. That fight was led by former member Richard Marceau, who had put forward the principle that was later introduced by the government. More recently, on June 15, 2007, the Bloc Québécois proposed a series of measures—and I am hoping I will have time to come back to that later—to fight crime and, more importantly, to prevent crime.

Again, this government was already at the helm in 2007. When we tabled this plan, the Conservatives said that crime was a new-found concern of the Bloc Québécois. It has been two years and they are still saying the same thing. It just goes to show how phoney and absurd this argument is.

With regard to public safety issues, the Bloc Québécois caucus includes one of the best experts in this field, one of those who are in the best position to talk about these issues. Of course I am talking about the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin. Not only was he public safety minister in Quebec, but it is under his watch that organized crime was dealt a serious blow, that large sections of these criminal organizations were dismantled and that the authorities managed to put an end to the gang war that was raging in Quebec at the time and that even caused the death of an innocent young victim.

I believe that when the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin rises in this House to explain how we should tackle crime, he knows what he is talking about. We are very proud to have him in our caucus.

Recently, at the beginning of the fall session, we tabled our bill that is based on one of our 2007 proposals with regard to the elimination of parole after one-sixth of the sentence has been served for white collar criminals, those who commit economic crimes. We have been proposing that for a long time. The government refused to pass the bill quickly at all stages.

It dragged things out. It included it recently in its proposals, but the tax haven issue is still missing. Back in their day, the Liberals refused to tackle tax havens and now the Conservatives are refusing to take them on.

Tax havens are a key part of the fight against economic crime. Apart from a few cranks with mental problems, the people who commit these crimes do not do so for the pleasure of seeing people suffer but because of the lure of personal gain. When it comes to economic crimes, I think we can agree that people commit them to get rich.

These people can put the money in tax havens and escape justice. If they are caught, they spend a few months or years in prison, get out, and spend the rest of their days in Barbados or Bermuda. This is not being especially tough on crime. It is even being rather lenient toward criminals. Rather than mere gestures, the government should deal seriously with the tax haven issue.

When it comes to Bill C-43, we generally agree with much that is in it. We will at least support it at second reading so that it can go to committee for study. We are pleased that it gives victims a voice, seeks to hold inmates more accountable and makes the parole system less automatic. These steps were already in the action plan I mentioned earlier in my speech.

That being said, we are still very concerned about the government’s basic strategy for fighting crime. Take the firearms issue. Yesterday we were still debating the possibility of backtracking—this is unbelievable—on the issue of firearms and the gun registry. The Conservative government’s arguments are totally absurd. They say that billions of dollars have been spent on the firearms registry, it is too expensive, and they want to get rid of it. But these billions have already been spent. It is as if someone said that since the Laval metro cost more than expected, we are going to demolish it. That does not make sense.

The costs are currently under control. Registering firearms has become normal. There is nothing unusual about it.

I do not know, Mr. Speaker, whether you like to hunt or fish. I see that you do. If someone wants to go hunting in the woods, he sets out in his car. His car is registered. He might take along a boat. That too is registered, probably along with its motor. He will need a hunting permit. That will be registered too. But in order to protect privacy, the Conservatives do not want to register firearms. It is very strange. A lot more people die from firearms than from being struck by a boat. It seems obvious to me that if it is normal to register motor vehicles in a free and democratic society, it is just as normal to register firearms.

In addition, this registry is useful. I have had the opportunity to speak with police chiefs in my riding. They told me that when they would go out on a call, for a hostage taking, for example, they would consult the firearms registry to see whether there were any guns at the location. In terms of prevention, they also want to know, if someone has domestic violence problems, for example, whether they need to confiscate any firearms at the home. It is important to know if there are firearms in the home.

The same goes for minimum sentences, which I could go on about at length. This government always presents minimum sentences as magical solutions that will fix everything. Come on.

No criminal picks up the Criminal Code before committing a crime, flips through it, looks at the offences, and says, “This one has a minimum sentence. I will not do that. That one either. That is too much. Oh, that one is not bad; there is no minimum sentence. I guess I will do that.” Come on. In fact, most honest people do not even know the sentences, and criminals are even less likely to.

That is not how it works. The only thing that truly deters criminals is the fear of being caught. It is better to put money towards capturing criminals and making sure they know that if they commit a crime, they will be caught, than to tell them they will be sentenced to hundreds of years in prison, as we see in the United States. That simply does not work.

I will stop there, because I have covered the whole bill. We do not want to prevent it from being thoroughly examined in committee. I hope that, despite everything, the government will listen to reason and will change its approach to justice.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, some of the things that the Conservatives view as privileges are going to be removed from prisoners, such as mental health treatment, literacy programs and work programs. I would like to ask the member, how does the removal of these programs help rehabilitate criminals and further reduce any crime?

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, indeed, I share my colleague's concerns. These are things that the committee will have to pay close attention to and, eventually, remove from the bill.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that this bill adopts a U.S. style approach to prisons that is very expensive and ineffective. We saw what happened in California in the 1980s with the big expansion there of private prisons. I would like to ask the member, does he see in any way, shape or form shades of that American system reflected in this bill? Perhaps he could reflect on the government's intentions.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in my speech, I explained that the government's desire to borrow from the United States' approach was quite clear. There is a reality, a model, even if we know it is not one anyone should follow. We will pay close attention to this bill. There are some things we agree with and others we have a problem with. We will examine that in committee.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[An hon. member]

On division.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, the bill stands refe:rred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

(Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to a committee)

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I think you will find agreement to see the clock at 5:30 p.m.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

It being 5:30 p.m. the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.