Bill C-16 (Historical)

Ending House Arrest for Property and Other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code

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

Motions in Amendment

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak today about Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act, to highlight that this bill is a reflection of our commitment to tackling crime, increasing public safety, and restoring the confidence of Canadians in the justice system.

The people of Canada know they can count on us to deliver on our commitments. Bill C-10 includes nine bills from the previous Parliament. Many critics of the bill argued that the bill was too big and too difficult to understand. I would note that the bill has had a thorough review in the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. There has been no difficulty at all in understanding what these reforms seek to do. While not all members share the government's approach, I think all members of the committee would agree that their voices have been heard and we have had a respectful exchange of views.

As has been noted many times, all of these reforms have been previously introduced in Parliament. Many were previously studied and some even passed by at least one chamber. These bills were at various stages in Parliament in the last session, have been debated and studied in this session, and the public and stakeholders as well as members of Parliament are by now very familiar with these proposals.

Despite this familiarity, it is worth noting the elements and the origins of Bill C-10, in other words, the nine bills that were introduced in the last session of Parliament. As the Minister of Justice indicated at second reading debate, some changes have been made to this bill due primarily to the need to co-ordinate the merger of several bills into one and make consequential amendments to effect these changes. In some cases, other modifications were made, all of which are consistent with the objectives of the bill as originally introduced.

The former bills now included in Bill C-10 are the following.

Bill C-4, which proposed to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act to ensure that violent and repeat young offenders are held accountable through sentences that are proportionate to the severity of their crimes and that the protection of society is given due consideration in applying the act.

Bill C-5, Keeping Canadians Safe (International Transfer of Offenders) Act, which proposed to enhance public safety by modifying the circumstances that would permit an international transfer of an offender.

Bill C-16, which proposed Criminal Code amendments to prevent the use of conditional sentences, or house arrest for serious and violent offences.

Bill C-23B, Eliminating Pardons for Serious Crimes Act, which proposed to amend the Criminal Records Act to expand the period of ineligibility to apply for a record suspension, currently referred to as a pardon, and to make record suspensions unavailable for certain offences and for persons who have been convicted of more than three offences prosecuted by indictment.

Bill C-39, Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act, which proposed amendments to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, to support victims of crime and address inmate accountability and responsibility and the management of offenders.

Bill C-54, Protecting Children from Sexual Predators Act, which proposed Criminal Code amendments to better protect children against sexual abuse, including by increasing the penalties for these offences and creating two new offences aimed at certain conduct that could facilitate or enable the commission of a sexual offence against a child.

Bill C-56, Preventing the Trafficking, Abuse and Exploitation of Vulnerable Immigrants Act, which proposed to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to authorize immigration officers to refuse work permits where it would protect vulnerable foreign nationals against exploitation, including sexual exploitation.

Bill S-7, the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which proposed reforms to allow victims of terrorism to sue terrorists and supporters of terrorism, including listed foreign states.

Bill S-10, Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act, which proposed amendments to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to provide mandatory minimum penalties for serious drug offences, including when offences are carried out for organized crime purposes, or if they involve targeting youth.

The maximum penalty for the production of some drugs would also be increased. These amendments also proposed to allow a sentencing court to delay sentencing while the offender completed an approved treatment program.

Bill C-10 was studied by the justice committee over several weeks and over 90 motions to amend the bill were considered. While very few were passed and many were completely inconsistent with the principles underlying the bill, each motion was given due consideration.

I would also note that over 80 motions have been proposed at report stage. Many of these motions seek to completely undo or gut the proposed amendments.

As I noted at the outset of my remarks, Bill C-10 reflects our government's commitment to restoring public confidence in our justice system. Clearly, the motions proposed at report stage demonstrate that this commitment is not shared by other members of the House.

There has been a great deal of discussion about the elements of the bill that provide for mandatory minimum penalties and that restrict conditional sentences. The reality is that these reforms are carefully tailored and targeted to offenders who commit the most serious offences.

Should offenders convicted of arson receive a conditional sentence allowing them to serve out their sentence at home under certain conditions? Should an offender convicted of an offence with a maximum sentence of 14 years ever be permitted to serve that sentence in the comfort of the offender's home?

Even under the strictest of conditions I think all Canadians would agree that no matter what the conditions of house arrest may be, it is simply not appropriate for serious offences. Bill C-10 reforms will make that crystal clear.

I would note that motions to amend the proposed reforms to the conditional sentencing provisions were made at committee and again at report stage. Without going into detail, those motions sought to permit conditional sentences to be imposed without regard to any criteria to limit their imposition as long as certain other exceptional circumstances existed about the offender. Such sentences are not appropriate for some offences regardless of the offender's particular circumstances.

Conditional sentences were never intended to be used for the most serious or violent offences. Our reforms will clarify this once and for all and will provide the clear parameters for use of conditional sentences or house arrest.

As I noted, part 2 of the safe streets and communities act includes former Bill S-10, Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act. These reforms have been introduced in three previous Parliaments and have been passed by both chambers but never by both in the same session.

Despite our repeated debates and committee study of these reforms, there still remains much misunderstanding about the mandatory minimums for serious drug offences. As noted by other speakers, the minimum mandatory penalties are tailored to serious drug offences where aggravating factors are present.

Importantly, the amendments include an exception that allows courts not to impose the mandatory minimum sentence if an offender successfully completes a drug treatment program or DTC, as it is referred to. The program works with individuals who have been charged with drug-related offences who meet certain eligibility criteria to overcome their drug addictions and avoid future conflict with the law. It involves a blend of judicial supervision, incentives for reduced drug use, social services support and sanctions for non-compliance.

There are currently six drug treatment courts in Canada. They are located in Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton and Vancouver. The same exception applies for other programs, so that a court could delay sentencing to allow the offender to attend another approved treatment program.

This last point seems to have been overlooked by some members and we all share the concern about the need for mental health resources. However, the Criminal Code already permits a court to delay sentencing to permit an offender to attend an approved treatment program. This could be a program for mental health issues, anger management or other similar issues. This already exists in the code.

I will conclude by saying that the government is committed to public safety and improvements to the justice system, and will continue to deliver on the promises that we have made to Canadians.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

I want to address a comment that was made by Mr. Gottardi, who said that there has been little previous review and that this is undemocratic.

Mr. Gottardi, were you aware that former Bill C-4, Bill C-5, Bill C-16, Bill C-39, Bill C-23B, Bill C-54, Bill S-7, Bill S-10, and Bill C-56, which are the primary components of this legislation, had 49 days of debate in the House of Commons, 200 speakers, 45 committee meetings, and 123 hours of committee study with 295 witnesses who appeared?

Can you square that circle for me, to say how there has been very little study of this legislation?

Safe Streets and Communities Act

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased this afternoon to participate in the second reading debate on Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act.

We all know that the safe streets and communities act proposes a wide range of reforms to strengthen the law's response to several things: child sexual abuse and exploitation, serious drug and violent property crimes, terrorism, violent young offenders, offender accountability and management, and the protection of vulnerable foreign workers against abuse and exploitation.

As many hon. members have noted, the bill brings together in one comprehensive package reforms that were included in nine bills that were put before the previous Parliament and that died on the order paper with the dissolution of Parliament for the general election.

I will itemize these. These former bills are: Bill C-4, Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders); Bill C-5, Keeping Canadians Safe (International Transfer of Offenders) Act; Bill C-16, Ending House Arrest for Property and Other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders Act; Bill C-23B, Eliminating Pardons for Serious Crimes Act; Bill C-39, Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act; Bill C-54, Protecting Children from Sexual Predators Act; Bill C-56, Preventing the Trafficking, Abuse and Exploitation of Vulnerable Immigrants Act; Bill C-59, Abolition of Early Parole Act; Bill S-7, Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act; and finally Bill S-10, Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act.

Many hon. members have participated in several hours of debate today and ongoing debate from the last Parliament to now. It is clear that some do not share the same views as the government about the need to address crime in our society, the need to increase public safety, the need to better balance the role of victims in the justice system and the need to make offenders more accountable.

My remarks here today need not repeat what some of my hon. colleagues have already noted about the key features of Bill C-10 and the importance of these reforms. I propose to briefly comment on the important reforms proposed in Bill C-10 as they relate to the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

The Youth Criminal Justice Act came into effect in April 2003. The reforms now proposed in Bill C-10, Safe Streets and Communities Act, have been shaped by consultation with a broad range of stakeholders. After five years of experience with the Youth Criminal Justice Act, a review was launched by the Minister of Justice in 2008. This began with discussions with provincial and territorial attorneys general to identify the issues that they considered most important.

In May 2008, the Minister of Justice began a series of cross-country round tables, often co-chaired by provincial and territorial ministers, in order to hear from youth justice professionals, front-line youth justice stakeholders and others about areas of concern and possible improvements regarding the provisions and principles of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Input from individuals and organizations was also provided through the Department of Justice website, in letters and in in-person meetings. The results showed clearly that most provinces, territories and stakeholders believe the current youth legislation works well in dealing with the majority of youth who commit crimes. However, there were concerns about the small number of youth who commit serious, violent offences or who are repeat offenders who may need a more focused approach to ensure the public is protected.

Clearly, the message was to build upon the good foundation of the law and make much needed improvements and the reforms proposed in Bill C-10 reflect this. Although the Youth Criminal Justice Act is working well for most youth, particular elements of the act need to be strengthened to ensure that youth who commit serious, violent or repeat offences are held accountable with sentences and other measures that are proportionate to the severity of the crime and the degree of the responsibility of the offender.

There have been concerns voiced from many sources and this government has responded. The reforms included in Bill C-10, previously included in Bill C-4, known as Sébastien's law, would enhance our fair and effective youth justice system and result in a system that holds youth accountable for their criminal misconduct and promotes their rehabilitation and re-integration into society in order to promote the protection of the public.

In addressing amendments to the Youth Criminal Justice Act, it is important to note that the act's preamble specifically references that Canada is a party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Youth Criminal Justice Act also recognizes that young persons have rights and freedoms, including those stated in the charter and the Canadian Bill of Rights. Nothing in Bill C-10 will impair these rights of young persons.

The Youth Criminal Justice Act provides for a range of responses that relate to the seriousness of the crime. These sentences also address the needs and circumstances of the youth and promote rehabilitation.

Amendments to the Youth Criminal Justice Act will ensure that young people under 18 who are serving a custody sentence will serve it in a youth custody facility. It will no longer be possible to put young people in adult prisons or penitentiaries, where the correctional regime is more suited to adults and where young people could all too easily become vulnerable to older, more hardened criminals. It is in the interests of the protection of society that young people become rehabilitated, and this amendment is aimed to ensure that this takes place.

While a sound legislative base is an essential part of ensuring that Canada has a fair and effective youth justice system, it is also essential to address the conditions that underlie criminal behaviour if we are to achieve any long-term or meaningful solution to the problem. Conditions such as addiction, difficult childhoods, mental health, fetal alcohol syndrome, or longer-term marginalization will continue to pose challenges to solving the problems of youth offending.

Our government has implemented various programs to assist in addressing these issues. The national anti-drug strategy has a significant youth focus. On the prevention front, the government has launched a national public awareness program and campaign to discourage our youth from using illicit drugs. The government has made funding available under the youth justice fund for pilot treatment programs that will assist with the rehabilitation of youth who have drug problems and are in the justice system, and for programs that are working toward preventing youth from becoming involved with guns, gangs and drugs.

Partnering with health, education, employment and other service providers beyond the traditional system, we can all work together. For example, through the youth justice fund the Department of Justice provided funding to a pilot program called Career Path, which offers a comprehensive specialized service for youth in the justice system who are at risk or are involved in gang activities. The program offers youth educational training and employment opportunities by connecting them with an employer who will also act as a mentor to facilitate making smart choices, foster pro-social attitudes, build leadership skills and gain valuable employability skills as a viable option to gang membership.

The reforms to the Youth Criminal Justice Act are essential and responsive and should be supported as a key part of a broader effort on the part of the government to prevent and respond to youth involved in the justice system.

I would like to bring it a little closer to home, if I may.

This is the story of Ann Tavares, of London, who suffered a huge loss in November of 2004 when Stephan Lee stabbed her son 28 times. Steven Tavares was an innocent victim who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. His death irreparably scarred the lives of those who loved him forever. That loss is what happened.

To compound her tragedy, her son's killer was found not criminally responsible due to mental disorder and sent to an Alberta hospital the following year. He was conditionally released in May 2008 and is now living in Alberta. All of this happened without notification to the victim's family or the public at large.

Suffering such a loss might have destroyed an individual. However, this became an impetus for Ann's quest to make others aware of what happened to her son and the lack of justice for this heinous crime. She has lobbied tirelessly against the inequities of the system, a system the government is trying to fix.

Ann strongly felt that there needs to be a connection between mental illness and crime. Specifically, she felt that the insanity defence needs to be banned. She felt that to say a perpetrator is not criminally responsible is too subjective. Mental impairment is a defence that anyone can claim. If someone commits a crime, that person should be punished.

She believes mental illness should not absolve someone from the crime they committed. The punishment needs to be based on the severity of the crime, and a fixed minimum time needs to be served before they are put back into the community. However, Ann did want good to come of her tragic situation. In addition to the punishment, she felt that the perpetrator should get mental health treatment, and that to protect innocent victims like her son and the community at large, such criminals should not be released into the community until they have been certified as not a risk to others.

I would like to expand on that through the questions and answers, if I might, Madam Speaker.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the second reading debate on Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act

Bill C-10 is a comprehensive bill that brings together reforms proposed from nine bills that were before the previous Parliament. The short title of the bill, the Safe Streets and Communities Act, reflects the overall intent of this comprehensive legislation. It seeks to safeguard Canadians and Canadian communities from coast to coast to coast. This is such a fundamental principle and objective. To my mind, this objective should be unanimously supported by all parliamentarians in all instances and in all cases. While I appreciate there are many issues on which we as lawmakers may reasonably disagree the safety and security of Canadians, including that of vulnerable children, should never be one such issue.

Let us consider this comprehensive bill is. It proposes amendments that generally seek to do the following:

First, Bill C-10, through part 2, proposes to better protect children and youth from sexual predators. These reforms were previously proposed in former Bill C-54 in the last Parliament, the Protecting Children from Sexual Predators Act.

Specifically, these amendments would propose new and higher mandatory minimum penalties to ensure that all sexual offences involving child victims are consistently and strongly condemned. They would create two new offences to target preparatory conduct to the commission of a sexual offence against a child. They would also enable courts to impose conditions on suspected or convicted child sex offenders to prevent them from engaging in conduct that could lead to their committing another sexual offence against a child.

Second, through part 2, Bill C-10 proposes to increase penalties by imposing mandatory minimum penalties when specified aggravated factors are present for serious drug offences. Those offences would be the production, trafficking, possession for the purpose of trafficking, importing and exporting, possession for the purpose of exporting of schedule 1 drugs such as heroine, cocaine, methamphetamine, and schedule 2 drugs such as marijuana.

These offences often involve organized crime, including gang warfare over turf, which in turn brings its own disastrous impact on Canadian communities. They also enable and feed drug abuse, the negative impact of which is not only felt by the addicted individual but also by the family of that addict, as well as by the Canadian health system and the economy.

These reforms were previously proposed and passed by the Senate in former Bill S-10, the Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act.

Third, part 2 of the bill includes what was previously proposed in former Bill C-16, the Ending House Arrest for Property and Other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders Act to end house arrest for serious crimes.

Under these reforms offences carrying a maximum penalty of 14 years, as well as serious offences that are punishable by 10 years or more and prosecuted by indictment, that result in bodily harm, or the import or export, trafficking and production of drugs, or that involve the use of a weapon, or that is specifically identified, would never be eligible to receive a conditional sentence of imprisonment.

Fourth, Bill C-10, through part 4, proposes to protect the public from violent and repeat young offenders. These amendments include: recognizing the protection of society as a principle in the Youth Criminal Justice Act; making it easier to detain youths charged with serious offences pending trial; requiring the courts to consider adult sentences for the most serious and violent cases; and, requiring the police to keep records of extrajudicial measures.

These reforms were previously proposed in former Bill C-4, Sébastien's law and respond to the Supreme Court of Canada 2008 judgment in Regina v. D.B., and the 2006 Nova Scotia report of the Nunn commission of inquiry “Spiralling Out of Control, Lessons Learned From a Boy in Trouble”.

Fifth, Bill C-10, through part 3, includes proposals to replace the word "pardons" with "record suspensions". It would expand the period of ineligibility to apply for a record suspension and proposes to make record suspensions unavailable for certain offences, including child sexual offences, and for persons who have been convicted of more than three offences prosecuted by indictment and for each of which the individual received a sentence of two years or more.

These reforms were previously proposed in former Bill C-23B, the Eliminating Pardons for Serious Crimes Act.

Sixth, Bill C-10, also through part 3, proposes to codify some additional key factors in deciding whether a Canadian who has been convicted abroad would be granted a transfer back to Canada. These reforms were previously proposed in former Bill C-5, the Keeping Canadians Safe (International Transfer of Offenders) Act.

Seventh, Bill C-10, through part 3, proposes to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to recognize the rights of victims, increase offender accountability and responsibility, and modernize the disciplinary system for inmates. These proposals were previously proposed in former Bill C-39, the Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act.

Eighth, Bill C-10, through part 1, seeks to deter terrorism by supporting victims of terrorism. Specifically, these reforms would enable victims of terrorism to sue perpetrators and supporters of terrorism, including listed foreign states, for loss or damage that is incurred as a result of an act of terrorism committed anywhere in the world on or after January 1, 1985. These amendments were previously proposed and passed by the Senate in former Bill S-7, the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act.

Last, Bill C-10, through part 5, proposes amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to protect vulnerable foreign nationals against abuse and exploitation. These amendments were previously proposed in former Bill C-56, the Preventing the Trafficking, Abuse and Exploitation of Vulnerable Immigrants Act.

I have briefly summarized the nine core elements of Bill C-10. All of these proposed amendments seek to better protect Canadians. That is something on which we should all be able to agree. Certainly, we know it is something on which Canadians agree. I call on all members to support the bill at second reading so it can be quickly referred to and studied by the justice committee.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the second reading debate on Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act.

The bill would fulfill the government's commitment in the June 2011 Speech from the Throne to bundle and quickly reintroduce crime bills that died on the order paper when Parliament was dissolved for the general election.

Integral to this commitment, as articulated in the Speech from the Throne, are two key statements that I want to quote because I think they give voice to what all Canadians firmly believe.

First:

The Government of Canada has no more fundamental duty than to protect the personal safety of our citizens and defend against threats to our national security.

Second:

Our government has always believed the interests of law-abiding citizens should be placed ahead of those of criminals. Canadians who are victimized or threatened by crime deserve their government's support and protection--

In my view, this precisely characterizes Bill C-10. It packages nine former bills that, collectively, recognize and seek to protect our vulnerabilities; for example, children's vulnerability to being preyed upon by adult sexual predators, foreign workers' vulnerability to being exploited by unscrupulous Canadian employers, and our collective vulnerability to suffering the harms that go hand in hand with serious drug crimes, such as drug trafficking, production and acts of terrorism.

Knowing this, and knowing as well that many of these reforms have been previously debated, studied and passed by at least one chamber, there is no reason not to support Bill C-10 in this Parliament.

Bill C-10 is divided into five parts.

Part 1 proposes to deter terrorism by supporting victims. It would create a new cause of action for victims of terrorism to enable them to sue not only the perpetrators of terrorism but all those who support terrorism, including listed foreign states, for loss or damage that occurred as a result of an act of terrorism or omission committed anywhere in the world on or after January 1, 1985.

The State Immunity Act would be amended to remove immunity from those states that the government has listed as supporters of terrorism. These amendments were previously proposed and passed by the Senate in the form of Bill S-7, justice for victims of terrorism act, in the previous session of Parliament. They are reintroduced in Bill C-10, with technical changes to correct grammatical and cross-reference errors.

Part 2 proposes to strengthen our existing responses to child exploitation and serious drug crimes, as well as serious violent and property crimes. It would better protect children against sexual abuse in several ways, including by uniformly and strongly condemning all forms of child sex abuse through the imposition of newer and higher mandatory minimum penalties, as well as creating new core powers to impose conditions to prevent suspected or convicted child sex offenders from engaging in conduct that could facilitate or further their sexual offences against children.

These reforms are the same as they were in former Bill C-54, protecting children from sexual predators act, with the addition of proposed increases to the maximum penalty for four offences and corresponding increases in their mandatory minimum penalities to better reflect the particularly heinous nature of these offences.

Part 2 also proposes to specify that conditional sentences of imprisonment, often referred to as house arrest, are never available for offences punishable by a maximum of 14 years or life, for offences prosecuted by indictment and punishable by a maximum penalty of 10 years that result in bodily harm, trafficking and production of drugs or that involve the use of a weapon, or for listed serious property and violent offences punishable by a maximum penalty of 10 years that are prosecuted by indictment.

These reforms were previously proposed in former Bill C-16, ending house arrest for property and other serious crimes by serious violent offenders act which had received second reading in this House and was referred to the justice committee when it died on the order paper.

It is in the same form as before with, again, a few technical changes that are consistent with the objectives of the bill as was originally introduced.

Part 2 also proposes to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to impose mandatory minimum sentences for serious offences involving production and/or possession for the purposes of trafficking and/or importing and exporting and/or possession for the purpose of exporting Schedule I drugs, such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, and Schedule II drugs, such as marijuana.

These mandatory minimum penalties would be imposed where there is an aggravating factor, including where the production of the drug constituted a potential security, health or safety hazard, or the offence was committed in or near a school.

This is the fourth time that these amendments have been introduced. They are in the same form as they were the last time when they were passed by the Senate as former Bill S-10, Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act, in the previous Parliament.

Part 3 proposes numerous post-sentencing reforms to better support victims and to increase offender accountability and management. Specifically, it reintroduces reforms previously contained in three bills from the previous Parliament: Bill C-39, Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act; Bill C-5, Keeping Canadians Safe (International Transfer of Offenders) Act; and Bill C-23B, An Act to amend the Criminal Records Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

Bill C-10 reintroduces these reforms with some technical changes.

Part 4 reintroduces much needed reforms to the Youth Criminal Justice Act to better deal with violent and repeat young offenders. Part 4 includes reforms that would ensure the protection of the public is always considered a principle in dealing with young offenders and that will make it easier to detain youth charged with serious offences pending trial.

These reforms were also previously proposed in former Bill C-4, Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders).

Part 5 proposes amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to better protect foreign workers against abuse and exploitation. Their reintroduction in Bill C-10 reflects the fifth time that these reforms have been before Parliament, with the last version being former Bill C-56, Preventing the Trafficking, Abuse and Exploitation of Vulnerable Immigrants Act.

In short, Bill C-10 proposes many needed and welcome reforms to safeguard Canadians. Many have already been supported in the previous Parliament and Canadians are again expecting us to support them in this Parliament.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the second reading debate on Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act.

Bill C-10 is comprehensive legislation that addresses a number of serious issues that are in front of mind for this government and for all Canadians.

It proposes legislative reforms to strengthen our existing responses to: child sexual abuse and exploitation as well as serious drug, violent and property crimes found in part 2, clauses 10 to 51; terrorism, found in part 1, clauses 2 to 9; violent young offenders, part 4, clauses 167 to 204; offender accountability and management, part 3, clauses 52 to 166; and the protection of vulnerable foreign workers against abuse and exploitation, part 5, clauses 205 to 207.

There can be no question that this is an important package of reforms. That is why we must take our task as lawmakers seriously, and study and pass these proposals to ensure the safety of all Canadians.

Bill C-10 compiles the reforms that were included in nine bills that were before the previous Parliament which died on the order paper with the dissolution of that Parliament for the general election. Former Bill C-4, Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders) is now in part 4 of Bill C-10. Former Bill C-5, Keeping Canadians Safe (International Transfer of Offenders) Act is now in part 3. Former Bill C-16, Ending House Arrest for Property and Other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders Act is now in part 2. Former Bill C-23B, Eliminating Pardons for Serious Crimes Act is now in part 3. Former Bill C-39, Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act is now in part 3. Former Bill C-54, Protecting Children from Sexual Predators Act is now in part 2. Bill C-56, Preventing the Trafficking, Abuse and Exploitation of Vulnerable Immigrants Act is now in part 5. Former Bill C-59, Abolition of Early Parole Act is now in part 3. Former Bill S-7, Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act is now in part 1. Former Bill S-10, Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act is now in part 2.

Many of these former bills were previously debated, studied and some were even passed by the House of Commons. Therefore, they should easily be supported again in this Parliament.

I would like to focus the balance of my remarks on the proposals in Bill C-10 to better protect children against sexual exploitation, that being those reforms now in part 2 of this legislation that were previously in Bill C-54 in the last session of Parliament.

The reforms build on the government's well-established commitment and track record in delivering concrete measures tackling violent crime, and in particular to safeguard children against violent sexual offenders. For example, the Tackling Violent Crime Act, 2008 raised the age of consent of sexual activity from 14 to 16 years to better protect Canadian youth against adult sexual predators. It also better protected all Canadians against dangerous offenders by providing police, crown prosecutors and the courts with much needed tools to more effectively manage the threat posed by individuals who were at high risk of reoffending sexually and violently.

While it is true that our existing criminal laws addressing child sexual abuse and exploitation are already comprehensive and robust, there is always room for improvement. We should never be complacent in ensuring that we are doing all we can to safeguard such a vulnerable segment of the Canadian population.

This point is underscored by Statistics Canada's Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics Juristat article “Police-reported crime statistics in Canada, 2010”, released on July 21, 2011, which reported increases in the rates of child pornography offences as up 36% and sexual assault as up 5%.

The proposed reforms in Bill C-10 are both timely and welcome. They address clear gaps in our existing laws. The address the gap created by inconsistent penalties for sexual assault offences where the victim is a child and the gap that now exists because some of the preparatory conduct engaged in by child sex offenders is not criminalized. They fill a gap in our existing measures to help prevent known or suspected child sex offenders from engaging in conduct that could facilitate their sexual offences.

The proposals in Bill C-10 seek to ensure that all sexual offences involving a child are treated equally, seriously and consistently. They do so by: proposing to impose new mandatory minimum penalties for offences involving child victims that currently do not carry minimum penalties; increasing the mandatory minimum penalties for some child sex offences that are already imposed; and, by increasing the maximum penalties on some other offences. Once these reforms are enacted, there would be a consistent approach to sentencing in all sexual assault cases involving child victims.

Child sexual assault could be charged under any of the child-specific sexual offences or under the general sexual assault offences that also apply to adult victims. Currently, 12 but not all child-specific sexual offences impose mandatory minimum penalties and none of the general sexual assault offences impose mandatory minimum penalties.

In practice, this means that the overwhelming majority of child sexual assault cases do not carry mandatory minimum sentences. This is because the majority of child sexual offences are charged under the general sexual assault offence in section 271, which does not currently impose a mandatory minimum sentence of imprisonment. That is 80% of all child sex offences charged in 2008. The source of this information is Statistics Canada's Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics Uniform Crime Reporting Survey, UCR2. It is very current data.

If we take as our starting point the universally shared view that all child sexual abuse must be strongly condemned and that mandatory minimum penalties are exceptional in the Criminal Code and are reserved for those crimes that Parliament determines must be strongly denounced and deterred, it should be obvious to all that the current use of mandatory minimum sentences for some but not all sexual offences involving child victims is just wrong. That sends a message to some victims that their experience of sexual assault is less serious than that of other child victims. It also sends a message to child sex offenders that they should try to plea bargain for charges under offences that do not impose mandatory minimum penalties.

Bill C-10 contains fundamental legislative safeguards for all Canadians. I call upon the opposition members to put an end to their attempts to obstruct the bill and to support our efforts to keep Canadians safe.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the second reading debate on Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act. It is a bill that is very important to residents in my riding of Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound and certainly across Canada.

The June 2011 Speech from the Throne recognized the government's fundamental duty to protect the personal safety of all Canadians. Toward this end we have committed to reintroduce law and order legislation to combat crime, including protecting children from sex offenders, eliminating house arrest and pardons for serious crimes, and protecting the most vulnerable in society, our children.

Bill C-10 supports this commitment. It is a comprehensive package of law reforms that had been proposed in nine bills before the previous Parliament, but which died with the dissolution of that Parliament for the general election.

Part 1, clauses 2 to 9, of Bill C-10 includes reforms to support victims of terrorism. These were proposed in former Bill S-7, the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act.

Part 2, clauses 10 to 51, proposes sentencing reforms to address child sexual exploitation, serious drug offences, and to eliminate the use of conditional sentences for serious, violent and property crimes. It incorporates reforms that were proposed in former Bills C-54, the Protecting Children from Sexual Predators Act, S-10, the Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act and C-16, the Ending House Arrest for Property and Other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders Act.

Part 3, clauses 52 to 166, includes post-sentencing reforms to increase offender accountability, eliminate pardons for serious crimes, and revise the criteria for determining international transfers of Canadian offenders. These reforms were proposed in former Bills C-39, the Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act, C-23, the Eliminating Pardons for Serious Crimes Act, C-59, the Abolition of Early Parole Act and C-5, the Keeping Canadians Safe (International Transfer of Offenders) Act.

Part 4, clauses 167 to 204, proposes reforms to the Youth Criminal Justice Act to better protect Canadians from violent young offenders. These had been proposed in former Bill C-4, Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders).

Part 5 of Bill C-10 proposes amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to protect foreign workers against abuse and exploitation, including sexual exploitation and human trafficking. These amendments had been proposed in former Bill C-56, the Preventing the Trafficking, Abuse and Exploitation of Vulnerable Immigrants Act.

Many of these proposed reforms were debated and studied in the previous Parliament. I welcome their reintroduction in this new Parliament.

I will focus my remaining time on Bill C-10's proposal to better protect children against sexual exploitation.

As with its predecessor Bill C-54, the objectives of Bill C-10's child sexual exploitation reforms are twofold. First, they seek to ensure that for sentencing purposes all child sexual offences are treated severely and consistently. Second, they seek to protect children by preventing the commission of these offences. Bill C-10 does this by imposing stiffer and stronger penalties.

Bill C-10 proposes numerous amendments to enhance the penalties or sentences of imprisonment that are currently imposed for sexual offences involving child victims. It imposes new or higher mandatory minimum sentences of imprisonment as well as higher maximum penalties for certain offences.

Currently, the Criminal Code has an inconsistent approach regarding penalties for sexual offences involving a child victim. For instance, there are 12 child-specific sexual offences that impose a mandatory minimum sentence of imprisonment, yet there are other child-specific offences that do not impose a minimum penalty.

Similarly, the general sexual offences that apply to both adult and child victims alike do not impose any mandatory minimum penalty where the victim is a child.

As the grandfather of two granddaughters, one six years old and the other three years old, this means a lot to me. The bill serves to strengthen the laws that protect our children and the vulnerable. There should be no question about supporting this bill.

Mandatory minimum penalties are exception In the Criminal Code of Canada. Generally, they have been imposed because Parliament has determined that the nature of a particular offence is sufficiently serious to include a sentence of imprisonment. That sentence was devised to best reflect the facts and circumstances of the case and does not get lost between the mandatory minimum period of time to the prescribed maximum penalty. Where mandatory minimum sentences are imposed, a conditional sentence of imprisonment is never appropriate for the offence.

Given this understanding of mandatory minimum sentences of imprisonment, the effect of imposing these in only some but not all sexual offences where the victim is a child suggests that some child sexual offences are more serious than others. It is ludicrous to suggest that some child victims have been less victimized than others. I cannot understand that thought process.

In my view, this contradicts a fundamental value of Canadian society, namely that all children are among our most vulnerable and that all are deserving of equal protection against all forms of child sexual abuse and exploitation. Therefore, I welcome the proposals of Bill C-10 to impose mandatory minimum sentences for seven sexual offences wherein the victim is a child and where currently mandatory minimum sentences are not imposed.

Bill C-10 also proposes to impose higher mandatory minimum sentences for nine offences that already carry a minimum sentence. These increases would ensure that the minimum sentence is not only in line with the offence in question but also is coherent with the minimum sentences imposed for other offences.

As well, Bill C-10 proposes to create two new offences to prevent the commission of a contact sexual offence against a child. Both of these offences would also impose mandatory minimum sentences.

I would also note that Bill C-10 proposes a few sentencing reforms that were not included in Bill C-54. These changes are entirely consistent with the overall sentencing objectives of former Bill C-54 and seek to better reflect the particularly heinous nature of these offences.

Finally, these changes would increase the maximum penalty and corresponding mandatory minimum sentences for four child sex offences. When proceeded on summary conviction, subsections 163.1(2), making child pornography, and 163.1(3), distribution, et cetera, of child pornography, propose to increase the maximum penalty from 18 months to 2 years less a day as well as increase the current minimum sentence from 90 days to 6 months.

In section 170, parent or guardian procuring sexual activity, the bill proposes to increase the minimum penalty from 6 months to 1 year and the maximum penalty from 5 years to 10 years where the victim is under the age of 16 years, and the minimum from 45 days to 6 months and the maximum from 2 years to 5 years respectively where the victim is 16 to 17 years old.

I hope that all hon. members will work with us to support the expeditious enactment of these much needed reforms.

In closing, as members of Parliament we all have a number of issues that come before us. In my seven years in this great place the one thing that I consistently hear from my constituents, especially those with children, young children and grandchildren, is the lack of rights for victims in this country. We worry more about the rights of criminals than victims, which is a sad case. The pendulum has swung too far one way. I am proud to be part of a government that would straighten that out.

I look forward to all hon. members in the House supporting Bill C-10.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today at the second reading debate on Bill C-10, An Act to enact the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act and to amend the State Immunity Act, the Criminal Code, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other Acts.

Part 2 of the bill proposes sentencing amendments to the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Clause 34 of the bill, within part 2, proposes to restrict the availability of conditional sentences in the same manner as was advanced in former Bill C-16, which had received second reading and had been referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights but had not yet been studied when it died on the order paper at the dissolution of the 40th Parliament.

Conditional sentences are an appropriate sentencing tool in many cases, but not when it comes to serious property crimes and violent offences. Conditional sentences became a sentencing option with the proclamation in September 1996 of Bill C-41, chapter 22 of the Statutes of Canada, 1995. They were created in recognition that many less serious offenders who would otherwise be sentenced to custody could remain among other members of society as long as they adhered to strict and appropriate conditions.

When first introduced, conditional sentences were available if the sentence imposed was less than two years of imprisonment, the offence for which the offender was sentenced was not punishable by a mandatory minimum penalty and the court was satisfied that allowing the offender to serve the sentence of imprisonment in the community would not endanger the safety of that community.

Shortly thereafter, a requirement was added to require the court to be satisfied that sentencing the offender to a conditional sentence of imprisonment would be consistent with the fundamental purpose and principles of sentencing set out in section 718 to 718.2 of the Criminal Code.

Where a conditional sentence is imposed, the effect is that the offender serves his or her sentence in the community with conditions, and sometimes with a condition of house arrest. This new sentencing option generated considerable debate following its creation because it was available at sentencing for any offences not punishable by a minimum sentence, including serious and violent offences, provided that the accused met all the above-mentioned prerequisites. Parliament intended that conditional sentences would be available to non-dangerous offenders who would have been, before the creation of conditional sentences, sentenced to a term of incarceration of less than two years for offences with no minimum term of imprisonment.

In 2000 this debate on certain controversial cases led the Supreme Court of Canada to examine the conditional sentence regime in R. v. Proulx. The court explained that a sentencing court must first find that a sentence of imprisonment of less than two years is appropriate before examining the other prerequisites to the availability of conditional sentences.

In other words, a conditional sentence is not on an equal footing with the rest of the sentencing options available at sentencing, because the court must be of the opinion that other non-carceral sentencing options, such as a probation order or a fine, would not adequately address the seriousness of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender. It is only in situations in which the court is of the opinion that the term of imprisonment should not be more than two years that a conditional sentence order may be considered, if the court is also satisfied that allowing the offender to serve the sentence in a community would not endanger public safety.

Over the years there has been a loss of public confidence in the appropriateness of conditional sentence orders because of the wide array of offences that received conditional sentences of imprisonment, including offences punishable by the highest maximum in the Criminal Code.

Our government responded to these concerns by tabling Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (conditional sentence of imprisonment) on May 4, 2006.

Bill C-9, in its original form, proposed to eliminate conditional sentences for offences prosecuted on indictment and punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years or more. It was, and still is, the opinion of this government that offences prosecuted on indictment and punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment of 10 years, 14 years, or life are serious offences that should never, ever, result in a conditional sentence order.

However, the scope of Bill C-9 was amended in committee to only capture offences that are punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years or more and prosecuted on indictment, that are terrorism offences, organized crime offences, and serious personal injury offences as defined in section 752 of the Criminal Code.

The use of the term “serious personal injury offence” to restrict the availability of conditional sentences has not accomplished the objective of ensuring that conditional sentences are not available for serious crimes. In fact, this approach allows certain serious offences, punishable by a maximum of 10 years' imprisonment or more, such as robbery, to be eligible for a conditional sentence or house arrest.

As defined in section 752 of the Criminal Code, a serious personal injury offence has two components. First, it specifically includes the three general sexual assault offences in sections 271, 272 and 273 of the code. This is pretty straightforward. The second component of the serious personal injury offence does not provide the same certainty because it includes indictable offences involving the use or attempted use of violence against another person, or conduct endangering or likely to endanger the life or safety of another person, or inflicting or likely to inflict severe psychological damage on another person, and for which the offender may be sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years or more. This calls for interpretation of whether an offence endangered the life or safety of another person or was likely to do so. For some offences this will be clear, but for others it will not be clear.

This government wants to clearly indicate the offences for which a conditional sentence is never an option. This is what the relevant amendments contained in the bill before us address. Rather than leaving it to individual courts to determine whether a particular offence qualifies as a serious personal injury offence, it clearly identifies all offences which should never be eligible for a conditional sentence. It removes all of that uncertainty.

Until the coming into force of Bill C-9 on December 1, 2007, sentencing courts only interpreted “serious personal injury offence” for the purpose of determining whether the threshold for a dangerous or long-term offender application had been met. That is from part XXIV of the Criminal Code. This is because the term had been enacted and defined for the dangerous and long-term offender provisions only.

Since Bill C-9 came into force, courts have had to interpret the definition of “serious personal injury offences” in the context of conditional sentences, a context which is quite different from that for dangerous and long-term offenders. For instance, in the 2009 decision by the Alberta Court of Appeal in R. v. Ponticorvo, the court held that serious personal injury in the conditional sentence context included the use, or attempted use, of any violence and was not restricted to only the use of serious violence. In so doing, the court applied a different interpretation than it had to the same term in the dangerous offender context in R. v. Neve in 1999.

In 2010 in R. v. Lebar, the Ontario Court of Appeal confirmed this approach and concluded that for the purposes of the availability of conditional sentences, Parliament created “a divide between crimes where violence is or is not used, not between crimes of serious violence and less serious violence”. That is in paragraph 69 of the decision.

These cases illustrate there is considerable uncertainty about how the existing conditional sentence regime will be interpreted. This bill will provide the needed clarity and certainty to say which offences are not eligible for a conditional sentence. This will in turn prevent the need to wait for these issues to be finally resolved by the appellate courts, including perhaps the Supreme Court of Canada.

Another concern we have is that the definition of “serious personal injury offences” on its face does not cover most serious property crimes which could still be eligible for a conditional sentence. For instance, fraud, which is an offence punishable by a maximum sentence of 14 years, is a very serious crime that can have a devastating impact on the lives of its victims, yet, according to the definition of “serious personal injury offence”, it is still technically eligible for a conditional sentence.

I should note, however, that a recent amendment to the Criminal Code which is not yet in force provides for a mandatory sentence of two years when the value of the fraud exceeds $1 million. In those cases a conditional sentence would not be available.

In addition, the current prerequisites to the availability of a conditional sentence do not exclude drug offences, such as the production, importation and trafficking of heroin, unless they are committed as part of a criminal organization and provided that they are punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment of 10 years or more and prosecuted on indictment.

However, as hon. members well know, this bill also includes the amendments that were proposed in former Bill S-10, which also died on the order paper at the dissolution of the last Parliament. It is proposed to create mandatory minimum penalties for certain drug offences which would make them ineligible for a conditional sentence.

It is my view that the current conditional sentencing regime fails to categorically make conditional sentences ineligible for many very serious crimes. Permitting the use of conditional sentences for some offences punishable by the highest maximum available in the code sends a message that certain offences punishable by a maximum of 14 years or life are less serious than others punishable by the same maximum. This is not the message this Parliament should be sending to Canadians.

Greater clarity and consistency is needed to limit the availability of conditional sentences and to protect Canadians from serious and violent offenders. In order to address these concerns, the proposed amendments contained in this bill would retain all the existing prerequisites for conditional sentences but would make it crystal clear which offences are ineligible. Specifically, the reforms would eliminate the reference to serious personal injury offences in section 742.1 and would make all offences punishable by 14 years or life ineligible for a conditional sentence.

This would, for instance, make the offences of fraud, robbery and many other crimes clearly ineligible for a conditional sentence. It would also make offences prosecuted on indictment and punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment of 10 years ineligible for a conditional sentence if they: result in bodily harm; involve the import or export, trafficking and production of drugs; or involve the use of a weapon. It is the opinion of the government that where these circumstances are present, there is a need to emphasize the sentencing objectives of denunciation and deterrence and therefore eliminate the possibility of a conditional sentence.

In order to ensure that all serious crimes are caught, this bill also proposes a list of 11 specific offences prosecuted on indictment and punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years that would be ineligible for a conditional sentence. These offences are: prison breach, criminal harassment, sexual assault, kidnapping, trafficking in persons, abduction of persons under the age of 14 years, motor vehicle theft, theft over $5,000, breaking and entering a place other than a dwelling house, being unlawfully in a dwelling house, and arson for fraudulent purposes.

Some hon. members might notice there are three differences from the list that was contained in Bill C-16.

First, the offence of luring a child was taken out of the list of offences punishable by 10 years' imprisonment on indictment because clause 22 of the bill proposes a mandatory minimum penalty of one year on indictment and 90 days on summary conviction. Therefore, this offence would be ineligible for a conditional sentence.

The second change was the addition of a new motor vehicle theft offence described at section 333.1 of the Criminal Code. This addition would ensure consistency with the restriction on the availability of conditional sentences for theft over $5,000.

Last, former Bill C-16 eliminated the possibility of house arrest for the abduction of a person under the age of 14 by a parent, guardian or person having the lawful care or charge of that person. The intention, however, was to target the abduction of a person under the age of 14 by a stranger. This has been rectified in the bill by replacing the reference to section 283 by a reference to section 281 in the list of offences punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years' imprisonment and prosecuted on indictment that are ineligible for a conditional sentence.

This government is committed to ensuring that conditional sentences are used the way they were originally intended to be used, and that is for less serious offences. I am confident the more appropriate use of conditional sentence orders will strengthen public confidence in the sanction and administration of justice.

I am the chair of the Conservative Party's law enforcement officers caucus, which is made up of 11 people from both the House of Commons and the Senate who have previous experience in police investigations, in corrections and in other law enforcement agencies. We stand together to support this bill, because we have seen first hand how detrimental these conditional sentences and many of the other aspects of the bill have been to our communities. We have seen the victims of these offences suffer terribly. We have been at the front line to say that we are sorry the system failed them.

We will not stand by and allow the system to continue to fail them. We are the police officers, the corrections officers and the law enforcement officers in this House. They do not exist in any other party. We stand together to support this bill.

I would ask, in fact on behalf of victims I would beg, members of the opposition to please support this bill to make sure that our streets and communities are safe. This is imperative to continue to live in the most incredible country in the world.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to answer questions from members across the way, and I would implore them to think about the victims as they ask their questions.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise here today to speak at second reading of Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act.

As many of my colleagues know, this government committed to introducing once again—yes, once again—any law and order bills that died on the order paper at the dissolution of the 40th Parliament.

The proposed changes aim, for example, to protect children from sexual crimes, to clarify ineligibility for conditional sentences and pardons, and to protect other vulnerable members of our society.

With all that in mind, the bill before us constitutes a comprehensive bill incorporating all the changes previously proposed in nine separate bills introduced during the previous parliament.

The first part of the bill—clauses 2 to 9—contains the changes suggested in the former Bill S-7, the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act.

Part 2 contains clauses 10 to 51 of the bill, which include the amendments found in former bills C-54, the Protecting Children from Sexual Predators Act, which was designed to protect children from sexual predators and certain sexual offences; C-16 , the Ending House Arrest for Property and Other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders Act, intended to limit the use of conditional sentences; and S-10, the Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act, to increase sentences for serious drug-related offences.

Part 3—clauses 52 to 166—includes measures to increase the accountability of offenders, eliminate pardons for serious crimes and modify the factors considered in the international transfer of Canadian offenders. These amendments were contained in former bills C-39, the Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act; C-23B, the Eliminating Pardons for Serious Crimes Act; C-59, the Abolition of Early Parole Act; and C-5, the Keeping Canadians Safe (International Transfer of Offenders) Act.

Part 4 of the bill—clauses 167 to 204—amends the Youth Criminal Justice Act to better protect Canadians against violent young offenders. These amendments were included in former Bill C-4 , Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders).

The last part of the bill—clauses 205 to 207—proposes amendments contained in former Bill C-56, the Preventing the Trafficking, Abuse and Exploitation of Vulnerable Immigrants Act, that would amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act in order to protect workers who want to work in Canada and are at risk of being subjected to humiliating or degrading treatment, including sexual exploitation.

In particular, I would like to elaborate on clause 34 of Part 2 of the bill, which seeks to curtail the use of conditional sentences for some property crimes and other serious crimes.

As I mentioned earlier, these amendments were contained in a previous bill, Bill C-16, which died on the order paper with the dissolution of the third session of the 40th Parliament. However, there are some technical differences, which I will discuss later.

Currently, under the Criminal Code, conditional sentencing, sometimes referred to as house arrest, can be imposed when an offence is not punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence and the court hands down a prison sentence of less than two years.

In fact, since December 2007, conditional sentences have no longer been available for indictable offences with a maximum prison sentence of 10 years or more in the case of serious personal injury offences, terrorism offences or organized crime offences.

What is more, the court imposing a conditional sentence has to be satisfied that serving the sentence in the community will not jeopardize the safety of the community and that the sentence is consistent with the fundamental purpose and principles of sentencing.

It is important to note that the fundamental purpose of sentencing, as set out in section 718 of the Criminal Code, is to contribute to respect for the law and the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society by imposing just sanctions that have one or more of the following objectives: to denounce unlawful conduct; to deter the offender and other persons from committing offences; to separate offenders from society, where necessary; to assist in rehabilitating offenders; to provide reparations for harm done to victims or the community; and to promote a sense of responsibility in offenders.

The Criminal Code also informs us that a just sanction is a sanction that is proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender. To achieve this, the courts take into consideration aggravating and mitigating factors in each case. Before describing the key aspects of the proposed changes, I want to provide some background on the provisions in the Criminal Code on conditional sentences.

Conditional sentencing came into effect in 1996, when the government wanted, among other things, to reduce excessive use of incarceration for less serious crimes. I repeat: less serious crimes. Moreover, the information document that accompanied these sentencing reforms states that the addition of conditional sentencing as a new form of sentencing means that offenders who have committed a less serious crime and who otherwise would be incarcerated can serve their sentence in the community under close supervision.

The limits that I mentioned earlier were established in order to guarantee that conditional sentences could be given only for less serious crimes, in keeping with the fundamental principles and purpose of sentencing. However, in the years following the creation of this type of sentencing, there has been a complete lack of consistency when it comes to determining when conditional sentencing is appropriate.

At the time, many court decisions gave a conditional sentence for serious and violent crimes. This contributed to the public's loss of faith in the justice system. Clearly, many people, and some provinces and territories, wondered whether the limits on conditional sentencing set out in the Criminal Code were sufficient.

In order to deal with this lack of consistency in conditional sentencing, this government introduced Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (conditional sentence of imprisonment) on May 4, 2006. This bill proposed the elimination of conditional sentencing for any indictable offence with a maximum prison sentence of 10 years or more. However, Bill C-9 was amended by the opposition parties to limit the ban on conditional sentencing to indictable offences with a maximum prison sentence of 10 years or more that constitute serious personal injury offences, terrorism offences or criminal organization offences. These amendments took effect on December 1, 2007.

The definition of serious personal injury was developed in the context of dangerous offenders, which is why this definition is found in part 24 of the Criminal Code. According to this definition, serious personal injury offences include any indictable offence, other than high treason, treason, first degree murder or second degree murder—punishable by at least 10 years in prison—involving the use or attempted use of violence against another person, or conduct endangering or likely to endanger the life or safety of another person or inflicting or likely to inflict severe psychological damage on another person.

The second part of this definition is clearer, as it lists sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon and aggravated sexual assault as serious personal injury offences.

It is important to understand that the opposition parties borrowed a term straight from the dangerous offender regime in order to put limits on a sentence that should only be applied to less dangerous offenders. That created two philosophical approaches for interpreting the definition of serious personal injury in the context of conditional sentencing.

Another issue with the definition of serious personal injury is that it only targets violent offences. The definition of serious personal injury cannot ensure that a conditional sentence will not be used in the case of serious fraud or theft over $5,000.

The amendments in this bill will ensure that certain non-violent serious offences will still be treated as serious offences, thus avoiding the use of conditional sentencing. The amendments to the conditional sentencing regime proposed in this bill aim to establish clear benchmarks to allow for consistent use of conditional sentencing in order to respect Parliament's intention when it created this sentence.

That is why the bill proposes eliminating the reference to serious personal injury offences and restricting the availability of conditional sentences for all offences for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 14 years or life.

The same will apply to indictable offences punishable by a maximum of 10 years' imprisonment when they result in bodily harm, involve the import, export, trafficking or production of drugs or involve the use of weapons.

When an offence is committed under these circumstances, it is even more important to deter the offender and denounce the crime. This justifies restricting the availability of conditional sentences in such cases. It is possible however that the limits I just described do not cover all offences prosecuted by way of indictment and punishable by a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Therefore, the bill also proposes limiting the availability of conditional sentences for prison breach, criminal harassment, sexual assault, kidnapping, trafficking in persons, abduction of a person under 14, motor vehicle theft, theft over $5,000, breaking and entering a place other than a dwelling-house, being unlawfully in a dwelling-house, and arson for fraudulent purpose.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, there are technical differences between the changes proposed in this bill and those contained in the former Bill C-16.

For example, Bill C-16 proposed the abolition of conditional sentencing for the offence of luring a child, described in section 172.1. This is no longer on the list of offences that would not be eligible for conditional sentencing, since article 22 of this bill proposes a minimum punishment of imprisonment for a term of one year in the case of an indictable offence, or 90 days in the case of a summary conviction.

Another change from Bill C-16 is that the list of offences that are no longer eligible for conditional sentence includes the new offence of motor vehicle theft, described in section 333.1 of the Criminal Code.

The final change would correct an error that slipped into Bill C-16. That bill did not include the offence of abduction of a person under 14 by a parent or guardian. The intent was, however, to target the offence described in section 281 of the Criminal Code, which has to do with the abduction of a person under 14 by a stranger.

I want to reassure my colleagues that even though the reference in section 742.1 to serious personal injury offences is set to be eliminated, the changes in this bill will ensure that those who are convicted of sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon and aggravated sexual assault will not be eligible if prosecuted by way of indictment.

Note also that conditional sentencing will no longer be available for persons convicted of sexual assault against a person 16 or under since clause 25 of the bill proposes a minimum sentence of one year when the offence is prosecuted by way of indictment, and 90 days on summary conviction.

This government is addressing the concerns of Canadians who no longer want to see conditional sentences used for serious crimes, whether they are violent crimes or property crimes.

For the reasons I have just mentioned, I urge my fellow members of this House to unanimously support the proposed changes to the conditional sentencing system.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

moved that Bill C-10, An Act to enact the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act and to amend the State Immunity Act, the Criminal Code, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to open debate on Bill C-10, An Act to enact the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act and to amend the State Immunity Act, the Criminal Code, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other Acts.

The bill, which is known as the Safe Streets and Communities Act, fulfills the commitment in the June 2011 Speech from the Throne to quickly reintroduce law and order legislation to combat crime and terrorism. This commitment, in turn, reflects the strong mandate that Canadians have given us to protect society and to hold criminals accountable.

We have bundled together crime bills that died on the Order Paper in the last Parliament into a comprehensive piece of legislation and it is our plan to pass it within the first 100 sitting days of Parliament.

As I met with victims of crime and their families yesterday in Brampton, I was once again struck by the importance of having this legislation passed in a timely manner. Both in Brampton and in Montreal yesterday, people such as Joe Wamback, Sharon Rosenfeldt, Sheldon Kennedy, Yvonne Harvey, Gary Lindfield, Maureen Basnicki and Line Lacasse spoke about the need for these changes to our laws.

We have a duty to stand up for these victims, which we are doing by bringing in this legislation.

The objective of our criminal law reform agenda over the past few years has been to build a stronger, safer and better Canada. This comprehensive legislation is another important step in the process to achieve this end.

As I travelled across the country holding round tables or meeting people on the street, the message was clear. People want to ensure their streets and communities are safer and they are relying on us to take the steps needed to achieve this.

There are five parts to Bill C-10.

Part 1 includes reforms to deter terrorism by supporting victims of terrorism and amending the State Immunity Act.

Part 2 includes sentencing reforms that will target sexual offences against children and serious drug offences, as well as prevent the use of conditional sentences for serious violent and property crimes.

Part 3 includes post-sentencing reforms to increase offender accountability, eliminate pardons for serious crimes and strengthen the international transfer of offenders regime.

Part 4 includes reforms to better protect Canadians from violent young offenders.

Lastly, part 5 includes immigration reforms to better protect vulnerable foreign workers against abuse and exploitation, including through human trafficking.

Some may say that this comprehensive bill makes it difficult to understand. In response I would note that these reforms should be very familiar to members of Parliament, indeed all Canadians, given that these reforms were before the previous Parliament when they died on the Order Paper with the dissolution of that Parliament.

Many of these reforms have been previously debated, studied and even passed by at least one of the two chambers of Parliament. For the most part, the comprehensive legislation reintroduces these reforms in the same form they were in previously, with technical changes that were needed to be able to reintroduce them in this Parliament in one bill.

A few additional changes have been made and I will describe them as I provide a summary of the individual areas of reform. However, I want to note that these additional changes remain consistent with the government's objectives when these reforms were originally introduced in the previous Parliament and, therefore, should also be supported today.

I will now take hon. members through some of the elements of Bill C-10.

Part 1 is comprised of clauses 2 through 9. These amendments seek to deter terrorism by enacting the justice for victims of terrorism act.

As reflected in the proposed preamble to the new act, these reforms recognize that, “terrorism is a matter of national concern that affects the security of the nation”, and that it is a “priority to deter and prevent acts of terrorism against Canada and Canadians”.

As Canadians recently marked the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania, it was a stark reminder that the threat of terrorism remains and that we must continue to be vigilant.

Accordingly and with a view to deterring terrorism, part 1 proposes to create a cause of action for victims of terrorism to enable them to sue perpetrators and supporters of terrorism, including listed foreign states, for loss or damage that occurred as a result of an act of terrorism or omission committed anywhere in the world on or after January 1, 1985.

It also would amend the State Immunity Act to lift immunity of those states that the government has listed for support of terrorism.

Part 1's amendments were previously proposed and passed by the Senate in former Bill S-7, Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, in the previous session of Parliament. They include technical changes to correct grammatical and cross-reference errors.

Part 2 is comprised of clauses 10 through 51. It proposes sentencing amendments to the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to ensure that the sentences imposed for child sexual exploitation, serious drug offences, as well as for other serious violent and property crimes, adequately reflect the severity of these crimes.

The exploitation of children is a most serious crime, one that is incomprehensible and must be met with appropriate punishment. Bill C-10 proposals addressing child sexual exploitation were addressed in the previous bill. These reforms seek to consistently and adequately condemn all forms of child sexual abuse through the imposition of new and higher mandatory sentences of imprisonment, as well as some higher maximum penalties.

They also seek to prevent the commission of sexual offences against children through the creation of two new offences and by requiring courts to consider imposing conditions to prevent suspected or convicted child sex offenders from engaging in conduct that could facilitate or further their commission of sexual offences against children.

The bill's proposed reforms addressing child sexual exploitation are essentially the same as the bill we had in the previous Parliament, that was passed by the House of Commons and was before the Senate at third reading debate when it died on the Order Paper. Unfortunately, some members kept on talking so that the bill did not get passed.

The primary difference is that this bill also proposes to increase the maximum penalty for four offences, with a corresponding increase in their proposed mandatory minimum sentence of imprisonment to better reflect the heinous nature of these offences.

The bill proposes to increase the maximum penalty on summary conviction for a number of offences. All of these are consistent with the objectives of the former Bill C-54 as originally introduced.

It also proposes Criminal Code reforms to further restrict the use of a conditional sentence, or house arrest as it is often called.

Originally proposed in Bill C-16, ending house arrest for property and other serious crimes by serious and violent offenders act in the previous Parliament, these proposals seek to make it explicitly clear that a conditional sentence is never available for: offences punishable by a maximum of 14 years or life; offences prosecuted by indictment and punishable by a maximum penalty of 10 years that result in bodily harm, involve the import-export, trafficking and production of drugs or involve the use of a weapon; or listed serious property and violent offences punishable by 10 years and prosecuted by indictment, such as criminal harassment, trafficking in persons and theft over $5,000.

The bill's proposals are in the same form as previously proposed in Bill C-16 which had received second reading and had been referred to the justice committee but not yet studied when it died on the Order Paper.

It includes technical changes to the list of excluded offences punishable by a maximum of 10 years: to include the recently enacted new offence of motor vehicle theft; to coordinate the proposed imposition of a mandatory minimum sentence of imprisonment in section 172.1(1), luring a child; and to change the listed child abduction offence to section 281.

We are also addressing the serious issue of drug crimes in this country, particularly those involving organized crime and those that target youth because we all know the impact that such crimes have on our communities.

Part 2's proposals to address drug crime include amendments to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to impose mandatory minimum sentences of imprisonment for the offences of production, trafficking or possession for the purposes of trafficking or importing, and exporting or possession for the purpose of exporting of schedule I drugs, such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, and schedule II drugs, such as marijuana.

These mandatory minimum sentences would apply where there was an aggravating factor, including where the production of the drug constituted a potential security, health or safety hazard, or the offence was committed in or near a school.

As well, it would double the maximum penalty for the production of schedule II drugs, such as marijuana, from 7 to 14 years and it would reschedule GHB and flunitrazepam, most commonly known as the date rape drugs, from schedule III to schedule I.

As a result, these offences would now carry higher maximum penalties.

The bill would also allow a court to delay sentencing while the addicted offender completed a treatment program approved by the province under the supervision of the court or a drug treatment court approved program and to impose a penalty other than the minimum sentence if the offender successfully completes the treatment program.

These proposals are in the same form they were in when they were passed by the Senate as former Bill S-10

Part 3, which is comprised of clauses 52 through 166, proposes post-sentencing reforms to better support victims and to increase offender accountability.

Canadians have told us they expect their government to ensure that offenders are held accountable for their crimes because only then can they have complete confidence in our justice system.

Part 3 introduces reforms previously contained in bills in the previous Parliament. It includes proposals from the ending early release for criminals and increasing offender accountability act that would amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to recognize the rights of victims, increase offender accountability and responsibility, and modernize the disciplinary system for inmates.

As now proposed in Bill C-10, it includes technical modifications that would delete provisions that were ultimately passed as part of the Abolition of Early Parole Act, as well as clarifications regarding, for example, sentence calculations, adding new offences recently enacted by other legislation, and proposes to change the name of the National Parole Board to the Parole Board of Canada.

It includes proposals previously contained in Bill C-5, the Keeping Canadians Safe (the International Transfer of Offenders) Act and which seek to enhance public safety by enshrining in law a number of additional key factors in deciding whether an offender would be granted a transfer back to Canada. The bill proposes these reforms as originally introduced.

It includes proposals included in the Eliminating Pardons for Serious Crimes Act in the previous Parliament and that propose to expand the period of ineligibility for a record suspension, currently referred to as a “pardon”, and to make record suspensions unavailable for certain offences and for persons who have been convicted of more than three offences, prosecuted by indictment, and for each of which the individual received a sentence of two years or more. This bill corrects inconsistencies that occurred in the former bills before Parliament.

One of the areas of criminal law I received an extensive number of letters, emails and calls about is that dealing with violent and repeat young offenders. I have been particularly interested in correspondence I have received from young students themselves and I am always pleased to hear everyone's views on this subject.

Part 4, which is found at clauses 167 through 204, proposes reforms to the Youth Criminal Justice Act to strengthen its handling of violent and repeat young offenders.

These reforms include: highlighting the protection of the public as a principle, making it easier to detain youth charged with serious offences pending trial; ensuring that prosecutors consider seeking adult sentences for the most serious offences; prohibiting youth under the age of 18 from serving a sentence in an adult facility; and requiring police to keep records of extrajudicial measures. These reforms were previously proposed in Sébastien's law, which had been extensively studied by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights when it died on the order paper in the previous Parliament.

The bill includes changes to address concerns that had been highlighted by the provinces regarding the pretrial adult sentencing and deferred custody provisions in the former bill. A number of the provinces requested a less restrictive regime for the pretrial detention provisions than that of Bill C-4, and therefore the changes found in this bill respond by providing more flexibility to detain youth who are spiralling out of control and who pose a risk to the public and to themselves.

The test for pretrial detention will be self-contained in the act without reference to other sections of the Criminal Code.

Other changes are more technical, if that is possible, and include removing Bill C-4's proposed amendments in two areas: deleting reference to the standard of proof for an adult sentence, and the expanded scope of deferred custody and supervision orders.

Last, part 5, which is found at clauses 205 through 207, proposes amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to authorize immigration officers to refuse work permits to foreign nationals and workers where it would protect them against humiliating and degrading treatment, including sexual exploitation and human trafficking. These proposals are in the same form they were in when they were previously proposed in former Bill C-56, the preventing trafficking, abuse and exploitation of vulnerable immigrants act.

I would point out as well that the proposed reforms would come into force in the same manner as originally proposed by the predecessor bills. Part 1 would come into force upon receiving royal assent, and the balance would come into force on a day to be fixed by the governor in council. This will enable us to consult with the provinces and territories on the time needed to enable them to prepare for the timely and effective implementation of these reforms.

I realize that I have taken some time to go through some of the details of this bill. We were very clear in the last election that this was a priority for this government. We have put these bills together and they better protect victims. As members know, in all the legislation that we have introduced, we always highlight how it better protects victims in this country and stand up for the interests of law-abiding Canadians.

I am pleased and proud to be associated, as are my colleagues, with this important piece of legislation.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

You mentioned Bill C-22, Bill C-16, and a number of bills, and I don't mind explaining in some detail as to why that would be.

The first bill you mentioned, Bill C-22, would require Internet service providers to turn over to the appropriate authority information with respect to child pornography. Again, in terms of what costs there might be to the federal government, we're not able to ascertain any particular cost requiring them to do what they have a moral responsibility to do.

A number of the bills are streamlining the processes that will actually help with the administration of justice. Another example is the bill that we have on megatrials. Streamlining the process and making the system work doesn't mean that millions of dollars in costs are going to be incurred by the federal government. What we say is, no, there are no ascertainable costs to the federal government, but I disagree with the characterization that somehow it's not important to bring them forward. I think they are very important.

This is what I'm asking committee members to do. If you're concerned about the costs, by all means, but for some of them there are no costs attached for the federal government that we can ascertain. Requiring an Internet service provider to turn over that evidence, for the most part, to provincial law enforcement agencies or to a designated authority is appropriate. Again, to be fair, many of them do this already. But in my discussions with them, I've said to them that a moral authority to turn over evidence of child pornography is not enough; they have to have a legal responsibility.

Again, the fact that there are no particular costs to the federal government is not something I would apologize for.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Rather than ask the same question of Mr. Nicholson, because I think I've made the point, I'd like to ask Minister Nicholson a separate question relating to the fact that some of the bills are not costed.

In particular, when I go through it, I see extensive charts that provide excruciatingly detailed costs, such as the one for Bill C-23, I think it is. There are multiple pages for that particular chart. There are numerous other charts that provide similar detailed cost information. But I notice, and I'll use as an example Bill C-16, which amends the Criminal Code to end house arrest for property and other serious crimes by serious and violent offenders, that there's no cost estimate provided for that one, and there are a couple of others that are in the same category. I wonder if he could explain why that's the case.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Again, we don't just say it's the provinces' responsibility; these costs are in fact incurred by the provinces.

I can say with respect to youth justice, as I indicated in response to the Liberals, that approximately $350 million is for the total youth justice system. I mean, these are programs that help prevent youth getting involved with the system and help those who already are. So it cannot be attributable to this particular bill...certainly not; I mean, that's the cost, and it is incurred by the provinces.

With respect to the Bill C-16 that the member just mentioned, that deals with conditional sentences. Now, there have been two changes to that, the Bill C-9 that several years ago....

We have not received any costing from the provinces on that. We've been looking to see if there's any information on that. We have not received that from them. So if we haven't received it from the first time we changed conditional sentencing, then I think you'll believe me when I tell you that we haven't received it for the most recent bill.

I can tell you, Mr. Chairman, that we don't bring forward these bills in a vacuum. On a regular basis I meet with my provincial counterparts, and very often I am encouraged to move forward on these. They are suggested by the provinces. Yes, there is a cost to the provinces, and again, I don't try to....

In answer to the question of the honourable member concerning conditional sentences, I won't speculate on what it costs the provinces. If they give us that information, or if they are able to determine...but again, I appreciate the challenges they have in trying to determine these.

That being said, with respect to federal costing, you have considerable information before you. We've been giving it to you over the last couple of months. As I say, I hope this is of great help to the committee, Mr. Chair, because these are the federal costs. I appreciate that the province has an important role in this--

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, ministers.

We went through the massive pile of documentation last night, and we realized that, overall, the documents and the total amounts were pretty much identical, give or take a few things. There were a few extra details, but a number of questions remained unanswered. Among other things, I had a good look at Bill C-4, which you called Sébastien's Law.

In your document, you said that the bill would likely lead to increased costs for Quebec, the territories and the provinces, but you could not say how much more, because young offenders are usually incarcerated in provincial and territorial institutions.

You are introducing a bill you want us to support, but you have no idea what it will cost. You do not say how much it will cost Quebec. You also say you are going to negotiate an agreement and that if the other governments need funding, you will look into that and perhaps give them some.

What's more, you have absolutely no idea what will be required of your department or the government, especially in terms of how much money the federal government will have to hand over to the provinces. That doesn't look very good, Mr. Minister. You are telling us we have all the documents we need, even though we do not have any of that information for one bill in particular. We do not know what it will cost because, according to you, you do not have that data since it is an area of provincial and territorial jurisdiction.

Frankly, I think that shows contempt. It shows contempt for me, as a parliamentarian, when you ask me to put my confidence in you and you cannot even provide us with a single figure for Bill C-4.

And that comment stands for Bill C-16 as well. There again, you are telling us that the provinces will have to incur increased costs once the bill is passed, but you say you are not responsible for providing an estimate of those costs because it is an area of provincial and territorial responsibility.

It is pretty shocking that you can make legislative changes that have financial repercussions for the provinces and territories, yet you do not provide any information on what those figures will be.

How do you explain that, Mr. Minister? How can we possibly take you seriously? You say that we have everything we need to answer our questions and to make good decisions and that you have complied with the Speaker's ruling, when you are not providing us with any information on what these two bills will end up costing the provinces.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Allow me to continue. With respect to Bill C-16, it says here that detailed information on costs is not available because CSC is expecting the financial repercussions to be minimal. A bill is drafted, we vote on it, and the expectation is that costs will be minimal; then afterwards, we get a big surprise.

[David Greening, Executive Director, Policy Development and Analysis, Department of Justice, Government of Manitoba]

Thank you.

I will address the issue of deferred custody sentences.

By way of background, paragraph 42(5)(a) of the Youth Criminal Justice Act provides that an offender may receive a deferred custody sentence for any offence “that is not a serious violent offence”. Paragraph 42(2)(p) provides that those sentences cannot exceed a maximum of six months. Essentially, the deferred custody sentences are the equivalent of the conditional sentences that are provided for under the Criminal Code for adults and that the media often refer to as house arrest.

The issue we have is that currently the serious personal injury offence definition is one that focuses on the circumstances of the offence, and its application is to an offender who commits an offence during which he or she causes or attempts to cause serious bodily harm. In our view, this makes good sense, as a deferred custody sentence--a deferred custody offence--allows the youth to effectively serve at home what would otherwise be a custodial sentence and limits the sentence to six months. It's not a sentence that's intended for offences that are serious and violent.

In terms of the concern we have, it appears that there may have been an unintended consequence as a result of the change in the definition of “serious violent offence” in relation to the adult sentencing provisions that are contained in the amendments in Bill C-4. By operation of the new definition in subclause 2(2) of Bill C-4, deferred custody sentences will now be available for all offences except murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, and aggravated sexual assault.

This broadens the availability of these sentences to a wide range of offences for which this type of sentence is not available currently. Basically, a youth would now be allowed or be able to serve their sentence at home, and only for a maximum of six months, for such serious offences as aggravated assault, assault causing bodily harm, criminal negligence causing death or bodily harm, and impaired or dangerous driving causing death or bodily harm. The availability of such a short sentence option for these serious offences is a matter of significant concern.

We also, I think, are concerned that this would appear to be directly contrary to the stated policy objectives of the government in terms of trying to strengthen the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act and reduce barriers to custody for violent and repeat young offenders. It would also appear to be contrary to the policy behind Bill C-16, currently before Parliament, which is designed to remove conditional sentences as an option for serious adult offences.

In our view, there is no justification for allowing the YCJA equivalent of conditional sentences to be available for serious violent offences that are now excluded from consideration. Doing so jeopardizes both public safety and public confidence in the justice system. It is our view that Bill C-4 should be changed to ensure that deferred custody sentences remain unavailable for situations in which a young person causes or attempts to cause serious bodily harm.

In terms of the proposed approach that we've suggested, the fix or the change that we're proposing for Bill C-4 is actually very simple and straightforward and reflects our view that this is an unintended consequence. Essentially, all that we're proposing is that the current wording in paragraph 42(5)(a) be changed, so that instead of relying on the definition of serious violent offence that has been proposed in Bill C-4, we instead use the existing wording that is the status quo right now, basically providing that these types of sentences would not be available for a youth who commits an offence during which he or she causes or attempts to cause serious bodily harm.

The proposed change has been outlined in our chart. You can see in comparison what the change would be. It's a very simple change, but again, in our view, it would be something that's important to remedy what would be an unintended consequence that has serious consequences and could undermine public confidence in the justice system.

As a closing note, I'm not aware of and haven't seen any arguments or evidence in support of a need to reduce the scope of the prohibition on the sentences to the very narrow scope that's contained in the proposed definition of “serious violent offence”.

In summary, it appears that this is an unintended consequence. A very simple change to the bill could be made to address the issue. We ask the committee to give serious consideration to this change.

[Carole Morency]

But certainly I think the intention of the coordinating amendment is to be as specific as possible in identifying which other bill in which session. Even if it has a different title, we still know it's Bill C-16 in this session.

[Carole Morency]

I'm sorry. Was your last question about clause 29 with the coordinating amendment with Bill C-16?

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

I'm okay for the next clauses 20 to 30 going as one, but I have two questions of the staff.

First, Ms. Morency, most of these are sections that we're including. Can you explain--I just want this on the record--what we're doing from clause 20 through to clause 27?

Second, in clause 29, we're listing Bill C-16, which is yet to come. If that title changes, what do we then do? Do we have to retroactively amend this legislation?

Opposition Motion--Documents Requested by the Standing Committee on Finance

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my hon. colleague from Lac-Saint-Louis, a great riding which has great representation.

I want to start by talking about the comments that were made by the hon. member who just spoke. He was very passionate about the issue of crime and making our communities safe and secure. I applaud him on his passion. The only thing is, I would like to point out that many years ago a lot of American politicians, congressmen, senators and the like, including Newt Gingrich, I believe, and even state politicians, spoke with the same amount of passion, and now they have come back from that and said that they should have put more emphasis in other areas, which the government is not doing currently.

When it comes to recidivism rates, it should be looked at in a holistic way and not just from the incarceration aspect. I will put that aside for a moment.

We are talking about accountability. It has been a while since we talked about the Federal Accountability Act. After several years of having the Federal Accountability Act in place, it reminds me of back in the 1950s when Ford introduced the Edsel. It went over like a lead balloon. It really just stuck around for no apparent reason and wheedled its way out of existence, but we certainly did not forget.

In this particular case with the Federal Accountability Act, it seems to be one of those issues with which we have become familiar when it comes to the Conservative government, where one has to practise what one used to preach.

There is a certain amount of accountability, to say the least, in all of this, including areas of the east coast, where the Conservatives talked about custodial management of the fisheries, when they talked about the Atlantic accord. These were issues that were put out there in the storefront as to what the Conservatives would do as a government. By the time Newfoundlanders and Labradorians and Nova Scotians picked up the product from the window in 2006, metaphorically speaking, and brought it to the counter in an election, it turned out to be a different product entirely. Members will get the idea of what we are talking about, and it goes to the crux of that issue and several more over the past four or five years, and certainly in 2006.

I would like to congratulate my colleague from Wascana for bringing this motion forward. I think he makes some very good points, even in the wording of the motion itself. He talked about the government complying with reasonable requests for documents, particularly related to the cost of the government's tax cuts for the largest corporations and the cost of the government's justice and public safety agenda, which I have already talked about, and a violation of the rights of Parliament, and that this House hereby order the government to provide every document requested by the finance committee by March 7, 2011.

At about 2 p.m. today, the Conservative government tabled documents in response to our request for information. Kicking and screaming, the Conservatives tabled the documents with the House.

At first blush the documents pertain to corporate profits before taxes, cost estimates of the F-35 stealth fighter purchase, detailed cost estimates of the Conservatives' 18 justice bills, including capital operations and maintenance costs by departments. Once again, that is what was in the title.

After a short little while and some investigation, we realized some of the issues that we must address after that tabling in the House. There was no information provided with regard to the F-35 purchase. The government documents do not provide any detailed costing of its 18 justice bills, just surface material. The Conservatives estimate that the 18 justice bills will cost only $650 million over five years. However, earlier this year the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that one single bill, Bill C-25, would cost federal and provincial governments about $5 billion per year.

The discrepancies are incredibly wide. The logic by which it is brought in is probably about two inches thick. It is time for us to give this some serious, sober second thought. That is why I am glad we are having this debate today and making the demand. I certainly hope, and anticipate, that the opposition parties will vote in favour of bringing the information to the House.

Also, Bill C-16, ending House arrest, would have no cost impact according to the Conservatives. Bill C-21, the white-collar crime bill, would have no cost impact according to them. Bill S-6, serious time for serious crime, would have no cost impact as well, on which we throw a lot of doubt, given the fact that we have seen some of the evidence, both in committee and in the House.

Each and every one of those bills would put more people in jail, would require the construction of new prisons and would require more personnel and operating costs. It is not credible that those bills would not require more expenditure. That certainly is the case. Time and time again the Conservatives bring the cost estimates into this House, yet the members that are debating this motion today state they are no longer a factor. The costs must be racked up in order for our communities to be safe and secure. I have nothing against that. The problem is one can say one thing to one group of people and then turn around and say something else.

I mentioned earlier to an hon. member from Quebec about the situation with search and rescue. We hope that sometime soon there will be a commitment to purchase an aircraft for fixed-wing search and rescue or search and rescue airplanes regarding the five bases.

In this situation, in testimony given at the defence committee, we heard from victims whose family members were lost at sea. It is not just search and rescue, it is the Coast Guard as well. At the time the Coast Guard and search and rescue did their utmost to ensure those lives were saved. What we are doing now is questioning the response times and the parameters of response times. Should they be shortened, it would require more resources, not better personnel because they are already the best in the business, in my opinion, but it would require more resources. As a result of that, the questions that came from the government were, “Do you realize the cost of this? Do you know that it is going to cost and extra $200 million, $300 million, $400 million?”

Costs become a factor there, but not a factor when it comes to this. That is certainly something we should question a little further.

I did mention the F-35s in this particular situation. There are many countries around the world that are now casting doubt upon their acquisitions when it comes to not just the purchase price, but also their operations and maintenance over many years. We must question whether this is the right time to be doing this.

As I mentioned earlier, the other issue is the corporate tax cuts. If we look throughout the European Union right now, I will not say that it is becoming a veritable basket case, but nonetheless it is a tough situation for the major countries, and not just some of the smaller economies such as Greece, Ireland and other countries, but also for Germany and in the U.K.

The U.K. is going through major cutbacks and increased fees, measures such as these, in order to curb what is about to become a staggering deficit that not just people's children but their grandchildren will have to pay off. In doing so, it is exercising prudence.

I remember during the election campaign in the United Kingdom the parties were not just bragging about how they would reduce taxes, but they were also bragging about how they were going to reduce costs. It seems as though every party involved, whether it was Liberal, Democrat, Labour or Conservative, was bragging about the fact that that party would cut more.

In this particular situation, information is needed. If the Conservatives are saying that they do not want to create more revenues through taxation, I have nothing against that, but I do when it comes to other things like fees. Recently they imposed a security fee at airports. They can attack us and talk about an iPod tax and the like, but why do they have a tax on travellers? Am I being facetious in saying this? A little, but I am illustrating the point. There are security fees involved because at the end of the day, they cannot pay the bills. It has to come out of general revenue, so there has been an imposition of fees on particular segments of the population.

I even would go so far as to say that recreational boaters now have to get a licence that requires a fee. Is that a cost recovery issue? It just might be, but it is an illustration of how things have to be done.

To curb this $56 billion deficit, if the Conservatives want to get back to a zero deficit in five, six or seven years, there will be some serious decisions that have to be made.

My hon. colleague across the way spoke of cutting transfers. Let me talk about that. They have a big issue coming up when it comes to health care and health care transfers. I would like my hon. colleague to stand up and talk about that for just a moment because at some point he will have to justify giving the same or more money at the same time as he is going to reduce this $56 billion deficit. Let us see if he can jump through those hoops.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague who always asks the most insightful questions and provides the most insightful commentary.

Let us not forget what this debate is about. It is about Parliament's right to know. It is about Parliament's right to information. It is a fundamental right and it is necessary for the proper functioning of Parliament. It is the core to our democracy.

Legitimate requests for documents of the government have been rebuffed. This is indefensible. The government is always attempting to defend the indefensible to have us believe the unbelievable, and we will not stand for that. We need the documents we requested. We need them today.

I will give another example where there is insufficient information for us to perform our duties.

Regarding Bill C-16 to end house arrests, from the information provided to the House, how much would it cost? None, zero, but we all know that Bill C-16 would put more people in jail. Yet the government is telling us Bill C-16 will not cost another red penny.

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

Minister, I am asking about the legislation that is in front of us. I am asking about Bill C-4. Let's start with Bill C-4. What is the head count for Bill C-4? What is the projected cost? It is something you are asking Parliament to pass. What about Bill C-5, Bill C-16? You take your choice. There are 24 bills.

Give me any bill, Minister. Give me projected head counts, projected costs on any bill of your choosing--just one. Why don't you give it to me on Bill C-59? It just passed--

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

I'm asking on Bill C-4, Bill C-5, Bill C-16, Bill C-17, Bill C-21, Bill C-22, Bill C-23B, Bill C-30, Bill C-35, Bill C-37, Bill C-38, Bill C-39, Bill C-43, Bill C-48, Bill C-49, Bill C-50, Bill C-51, Bill C-52, Bill C-53C-54, Bill C-59, Bill SS-6, Bill S-7, Bill S-10.

What are the costs? What are the head counts? What are the implications? Why won't you give them to Parliament?

Disposition of Abolition of Early Parole Act

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to participate in the debate on the motion to prevent debate on the content and substance of Bill C-59. I find it rather odd that the Bloc has supported the government's attempt to stifle any attempt at debate on the substance of this bill.

No one in the House can accuse the Liberals of not supporting the idea of eliminating parole eligibility after one-sixth of the sentence is served for economic crimes. Two years ago, my colleague from Bourassa, our candidate in Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert and our member for Lac-Saint-Louis participated in a press conference with several of Earl Jones' victims to call on the government to quickly bring forward a bill to eliminate parole eligibility after one-sixth of the sentence is served, especially for criminals who commit major fraud and have multiple victims.

No one can accuse the Liberals of not supporting that idea. I think it is really dishonest of the government to make that kind of accusation when it knows very well what the Liberals' position is. This was pointed out by my colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine.

Now I would like to talk about the debate and the fact that the Conservatives and the Bloc members want to limit the scope of the debate. Just seven months ago the members of the Bloc rose in the House to criticize the government for doing the exact same thing it is doing now with Bill C-59. The government moved a motion to block debate.

Last June, the member for Saint-Maurice—Champlain rose in the House to criticize the government for moving a motion to block debate on the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act. The Bloc member for Hochelaga also rose to oppose a government motion to block debate on Bill C-9, the Jobs and Economic Growth Act, by imposing time allocation.

We are opposed to this time allocation motion because we believe that Bill C-59 addresses a very important issue. Furthermore, for two years now, the Liberals have been calling on the government to eliminate parole eligibility after one-sixth of the sentence is served for economic crimes like those committed by Earl Jones, Vincent Lacroix and others.

I think it is a shame that some would have people believe that the Liberals do not want to protect victims. That is simply not true. When the government introduced Bill C-21 on economic crimes and it was referred to committee, the Liberal justice critic proposed an amendment to the bill to eliminate eligibility for parole after one-sixth of the sentence in cases of economic crime. The Conservatives and the Bloc defeated the motion.

Every MP is entitled to his or her opinion on bills that we are called on to debate in the House. It is a fundamental aspect of the democratic process. The operative word here is “debate”, and the collusion between the Conservatives and the Bloc is preventing us from acting as responsible parliamentarians.

We would like to hear from experts. We want to know how this bill will truly address a gap in the law, how it will do justice to victims, how this bill will improve the chances of rehabilitation for those who once lost control of their lives.

Perhaps we should indeed eliminate parole after one-sixth of a sentence for offenders who have committed serious economic crimes and left a number of victims.

However, for non-violent criminal acts that are not fraud, we believe that evidence has shown that parole after one-sixth of a sentence has been very effective and that the rate of recidivism is much lower.

We will never know what the experts might have said since this closure motion eliminates any chance to consult experts. With this government so eager to control everything, it has become somewhat of a tradition to just pass a bill without any idea of the facts that might call it into question.

The Liberals are against this closure motion. It is not justified, and we regret that the Bloc has decided to join the Conservatives to limit the debate on this bill. As far as the substance of the bill is concerned, in the past and still today, no one could accuse the Liberals of not showing their support for eliminating parole after one-sixth of the sentence for economic crimes.

In order to illustrate the government's intellectual dishonesty, I would like to present a chronology of the Conservatives' failures in their so-called fight against crime.

I am referring here to the various bills that have died on the order paper for all sorts of reasons or that have remained in the House or at committee indefinitely.

Here they are. Bill C-15, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts, died on the order paper when Parliament was prorogued; Bill C-19, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (investigative hearing and recognizance with conditions), died on the order paper before the House had a chance to vote on it; Bill C-26, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (auto theft and trafficking in property obtained by crime), also died on the order paper. It is certainly not the opposition that forced the government to prorogue Parliament.

Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act and the Identification of Criminals Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act, died on the order paper, and Bill C-36, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, on the faint hope clause, died on the order paper before being brought back this session. One committee meeting was held on Bill C-46, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Competition Act and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act, before it died on the order paper. Bill C-52, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sentencing for fraud), which is related to Bill C-59, the bill we are dealing with today, died on the order paper when Parliament was prorogued. Bill C-58, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, died on the order paper. The prorogation of Parliament killed many bills.

Among the bills introduced by the Minister of Public Safety was Bill C-34, the Protecting Victims From Sex Offenders Act, which also died on the order paper. The bill to deter terrorism and to amend the State Immunity Act died on the order paper. Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Criminal Code, died on the order paper. Bill C-47, An Act regulating telecommunications facilities to support investigations, died on the order paper. Bill C-53, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (accelerated parole review) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, died on the order paper. Bill C-60, An Act to implement the Framework Agreement on Integrated Cross-Border Maritime Law Enforcement Operations between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America, died on the order paper.

To date, no meetings have been held to discuss Bill C-16, An Act to amend the Criminal Code. Bill C-17, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (investigative hearing and recognizance with conditions), was given first reading 51 days after Parliament was prorogued, and the committee still has not met to discuss that bill.

Bill C-21, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sentencing for fraud), was fast-tracked at committee in just one meeting and still has not reached second reading. Bill C-22, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, was given first reading 64 days after Parliament was prorogued, and the government delayed it for 26 days at report stage because of the debate on the short title.

Bill C-48, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to the National Defence Act, was given first reading 89 days after Parliament was prorogued, and we are still waiting for the next step. Bill C-50, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (interception of private communications and related warrants and orders), was given first reading after 94 days, and we are still waiting. First reading of An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Competition Act and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act took place 243 days after Parliament was prorogued. Bill C-53, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (mega-trials), was given first reading and nothing more.

Bill C-54, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sexual offences against children) only made it to first reading. Bill C-5, An Act to amend the International Transfer of Offenders Act was introduced at first reading by the Minister of Public Safety 15 days after prorogation. Two committee meetings were held and nothing has happened since. As for Bill C-23B, An Act to amend the Criminal Records Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, we are still waiting. After a few meetings on the subject, the minister was supposed to come back with amendments that he felt were necessary in order to make the bill more comprehensive and definitely more respectful. Bill C-39, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts was introduced for first reading 104 days after prorogation and we still have not met in committee to discuss it. Bill C-49, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act and the Marine Transportation Security Act was introduced for first reading 232 days after prorogation and there it remains. Bill C-52, An Act regulating telecommunications facilities to support investigations was also introduced for first reading 243 days after prorogation and we are waiting for the next step. The Senate introduced Bill S-7, An Act to deter terrorism and to amend the State Immunity Act for first reading 49 days after prorogation and we are still waiting for the next step. Bill S-10, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts was introduced for first reading in the Senate 60 days after prorogation. Bill S-13, An Act to implement the Framework Agreement on Integrated Cross-Border Maritime Law Enforcement Operations between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America was introduced for first reading 237 days after prorogation.

I am pointing this out to prove that it is not the opposition parties that are slowing the process down. For all sorts of unknown reasons, the government introduces these bill and then goes no further with them.

To conclude, I would like to question the justification for Bill C-59 and the fact that the Conservatives and the Bloc felt this was urgent enough to warrant this closure motion, which is an affront to parliamentary dialogue.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to the comments of the member in this chamber, and I am a bit surprised, because he is actually engaging in substantive debate around the bill to which the time allocation motion applies. However, what is really before us in the House today is the time allocation motion itself and the government cutting off the amount of time for debate on the bill.

We should not be debating the merits of the bill itself at all, yet I just heard the member say that all kinds of crime bills have been stalled at committee.

Let me give the House a number of the bills that have now passed through the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights: C-4, C-5, C-16, C-17, C-21, C-22, C-23A, C-23B, C-39, C-48, C-50, C-51, C-52, S-2, S-6, S-7, S-9 and S-10. Can the member really suggest that the crime agenda of the government is being stalled?

Some of us would argue they are the only bills we have been dealing with in the House. I wish the member would return to what we are really debating here tonight, and that is the time allocation motion, not the substance of the government's crime agenda.

Standing Committee on Finance

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am saddened today to feel the obligation to rise to address comments with regard to the question of privilege raised by the member for Kings—Hants on February 7.

It is like the movie Groundhog Day. Anyone is familiar with that movie knows it was very successful. American actor Bill Murray relives the day over and over again until he learns his lesson.

It appears the government is reliving the same thing and forcing all other members of the House of Commons and Canadians to relive the same days we experienced back in 2009-10 with regard to a request from the special committee on Afghanistan for the production of documents from the government. The government resisted that. It took a question of privilege to be raised in the House. It took comments from many members of the House. It took considerable reflection and study on your part, Mr. Speaker, before you made a ruling that there was a prima facie case of privilege in that regard.

Yet, again, we are faced with the exact same situation today.

If I look at the timeline, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance tabled its 10th report on Monday, February 7. The member for Kings—Hants, pursuant to that report, raised the question of privilege of which we are now all aware.

I want to concur with the arguments raised by my colleague for Kings—Hants, as well as those raised by my colleagues from Mississauga South and Windsor—Tecumseh on the issue.

However, I wish to note a number of points. I also wish to address, in particular, the issues of cabinet confidence and the requests with regard to all the justice bills. It is important to do so, particularly with the time of events and the government's response to date to the committee's requests for the production of documents. We have not yet heard the government's response in the House with regard to the question of privilege.

On November 17, 2010, the Standing Committee on Finance passed a motion, ordering the Government of Canada to provide the committee with five-year projections of total corporate profits before taxes and effective corporate tax rates from the 2010-11 fiscal year until the 2014-15 fiscal year, inclusive. The November 17 motion also ordered the government to provide the committee with certain financial information pertaining to justice bills, which I will enumerate.

As all members in the House know, I am the justice critic for the official opposition. Therefore, all the information, all the documents requested through the motion of the finance committee have direct pertinence to the committee on justice and human rights. Those justice bills were Bill C-4, the youth criminal justice bill, Bill C-5, Bill C-16, Bill C-17, Bill C-21, Bill C-22, Bill C-23A, Bill C-23B, Bill C-39, Bill C-48, Bill C-50, Bill C-51, Bill C-52, Bill S-2, Bill S-6, Bill S-7, Bill S-9 and Bill S-10.

The motion specifically requested:

—detailed cost accounting, analysis and projections, including assumptions, for each of the bills and Acts, conducted in accordance with the Treasury Board Guide to Costing.

Members are now aware, by the issue of privilege raised by the member for Kings—Hants, that the motion established a deadline of seven calendar days, which ended on November 24, 2010.

On November 24, Finance Canada replied to the committee, and I will read the department's response in its entirety because it is quite important, particularly to any Canadian and any member sitting in the House who takes his or her work as an elected official representing Canadians, a sacred duty in fact, to know the response. It said:

Projections of corporate profits before taxes and effective corporate income tax rates are a Cabinet confidence. As such, we are not in a position to provide these series to the Committee.

The department claimed it was not in a position to provide these documents to the committee because, according to the government, these documents were a cabinet confidence. That is the heart of the matter. Do the documents requested constitute a cabinet confidence and, if so, are they excluded from the rule of the House of Commons, the power and authority of Parliament, to require documents to be provided?

As the House knows, because it has been mentioned by others in the House who have commented on the issue of privilege raised by the member for Kings—Hants, the government has yet to speak to this issue. I understand that one of the parliamentary secretaries has said the government is taking note of all of members' comments in the House, relating to the issue of privilege, and will respond in due course.

On December 1, 2010, one full week after the deadline of November 24, 2010, the committee received a reply from Justice Canada regarding projected costs of the justice bills. I will read the response by Justice Canada in its entirety. It said:

The issue of whether there are any costs associated with the implementation of any of the Government's Justice bills is a matter of Cabinet confidence and, as such, the Government is not in a position to provide such information or documents.

That is interesting because in justice committee, of which I am a member, when we have repeatedly asked the minister for the cost analysis of a government bill before the committee, the minister has never stated that he could not give us that information because it is a matter of confidence. I would challenge members to check the transcripts of justice committee. What I did hear was he did not have the information with him or some befuddled answer that did not answer the question.

On December 7, 2010, after the government had refused to provide the information ordered by finance committee by the established deadline, the member for Kings—Hants provided the committee with written notice of a motion by which, if passed, the committee would draw the attention of the House to what appeared to be a breach of its privileges. That has been done. The committee adopted the motion and the member for Kings—Hants rose in the House to speak to the issue.

On December 10, the committee received an additional response from the Department of Finance Canada in answer to its motion ordering the production of documents relating to the projections regarding corporate taxes before profits.

In response, the department stated:

To the best of its knowledge, the Department of Finance has determined that [the] "series" or projections of corporate profits before taxes or the effective corporate income tax rates have never been previously disclosed. These projections are from a comprehensive economic and fiscal projection that constitutes a Cabinet confidence.

To reiterate, according to the second or additional response of the Department of Finance to the finance committee, the Department of Finance, acting on behalf of the government, claimed that these projections have never been previously disclosed and constitute a cabinet confidence.

As pointed out in this chamber before, but which bears repetition, I would suggest to any Canadian to Google the phrase, “Corporate tax profits before taxes”, and restrict their search to the domain of the Department of Finance Canada. That Canadian would get exactly two results: the HTML and PDF versions of “The Economic and Fiscal Update“ from November 2005. In that update, we find precisely the information that the Department of Justice, in its December 10 additional response to the finance committee, claimed had never previously been disclosed because it constituted a cabinet confidence. In fact, it was disclosed in the November 2005 economic and fiscal update that was issued by the previous government comprised of the Liberal Party of Canada's elected members of Parliament.

Therefore, the assertion on the part of the government, through its Department of Finance, justifying its refusal to obey, respect and act on the order of the finance committee to produce the documents is an outright fabrication.

The government department could have said that in the past the information had been released, but that the policy had been changed with a new interpretation of what constituted a cabinet confidence and, as a result, would not be releasing those documents to the finance committee. However, that was not the reason given by the department, by the government, for refusing to release that information. The reason given to the committee for not providing that information, that it is a cabinet confidence, is pure nonsense.

What is the state of legislation regarding cabinet confidence?

As mentioned, one can look to the Access to Information Act and the law of evidence act, and one will find that the government does not have a leg to stand on, and in fact does not have two legs to stand on.

Any reasonable Canadian reading the pertinent sections of the Access to Information Act and the law of evidence act would see that the two responses given by the Department of Finance and the response given by the Department of Justice are nonsense.

As I said, we know that in 2005 the previous government recognized that projections of corporate tax profits before taxes were not covered by cabinet confidence. Such projections are not considered a cabinet confidence when, as is the case with Finance Canada's revenue model, these projections are used by the department in a manner not exclusively related to cabinet operations.

What has changed between 2005 and 2010-11? On what grounds is the government now claiming that these projections constitute a cabinet confidence when there was no such assertion in the past and governments in the past have in fact provided and disclosed that information?

The costs of the justice bills are also important because the Department of Justice, as well, replied to the finance committee by claiming cabinet confidence as a justification for not releasing that information to the finance committee.

We know that due diligence would have required that cabinet consider the cost implications of each justice bill before making a decision to proceed with each bill. We know that under normal practices, an analysis of the cost implications of each justice bill would have been included with the memorandum to cabinet prepared for each justice bill.

Why do we know this? We know it because the Liberal Party of Canada has formed government in the past. We know that when we came power the government that preceded us, the one formed by the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, had done that as well. So these are normal practices. These are practices of a prudent, diligent and competent government.

No diligent, prudent and competent government would consider an issue, whether amendments, or a justice bill bringing in new legislation to the Criminal Code or amending existing sections of the Criminal Code, because that constitutes government policy, would do so without informing itself of the cost of those changes.

That is what previous governments have done, because those previous governments, whatever their faults, have followed prudent, diligent and competent practices with regard to taking decisions on issues brought before cabinet.

As I said, we know that under normal practices, an analysis of the cost implications of each justice bill would have been included with the memorandum to cabinet prepared for each justice bill.

Now let us look at the legislation that deals with what is, or is not, cabinet confidence and whether or not something that falls into cabinet confidence can be accessible.

If one looks at section 69 of the Access to Information Act, it tells us that such analysis and background information is not, and I repeat, not, a cabinet confidence, if the cabinet decision to which the analysis relates has been made public.

A cost analysis of the implications of a justice bill should have been included, and I believe was included, in the memorandum to cabinet, as it is on each and every justice bill.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege in relation to the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Finance.

In our system of responsible government, the government must seek Parliament's authority to spend public funds. Parliament, in turn, has an obligation, a responsibility to hold the government to account and to scrutinize the government's books.

Recently, this government impeded the work of the Standing Committee on Finance by hindering its attempts to better understand the federal government's budget projections.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, Standing Order 108 empowers committees to send for persons, papers and records. House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, describes Parliament's right to order the production of documents as a right that is “as old as Parliament itself”.

On November 17, 2010, the Standing Committee on Finance passed a motion ordering the Government of Canada to provide the commitment with five-year projections of total corporate profits before taxes and effective corporate tax rates from the 2010-11 fiscal year until the 2014-15 fiscal year, inclusive.

The November 17 motion also ordered the government to provide the committee with certain financial information pertaining to justice Bills C-4, C-5, C-16, C-17, C-21, C-22, C-23A, C-23B, C-39, C-48, C-50, C-51, C-52, S-2, S-6, S-7, S-9 and S-10.

Among other things, the motion specifically requested:

detailed cost accounting, analysis and projections, including assumptions, for each of the bills and Acts, conducted in accordance with the Treasury Board Guide to Costing.

The motion established a deadline of seven calendar days, which ended on November 24, 2010.

On November 24, the Department of Finance replied to the committee with the following. I will read the department's response in its entirety. It stated:

Projections of corporate profits before taxes and effective corporate income tax rates are a Cabinet confidence. As such, we are not in a position to provide these series to the Committee.

The government provided no further information to the committee before the deadline.

On December 1, 2010, one full week after the deadline, the committee received a letter from the Department of Justice regarding projected costs of the justice bills. Again, I will read the department's response in its entirety. It stated:

The issue of whether there are any costs associated with the implementation of any of the Government's Justice bills is a matter of Cabinet confidence and, as such, the Government is not in a position to provide such information or documents.

On December 7, 2010, after the government had refused to provide the information ordered by the committee by the established deadline, I provided the committee with written notice for a motion by which, if passed, the committee would draw the attention of the House to what appeared to be a breach of its privileges.

On December 10, 2010, perhaps in response to the written notice I had written on December 7, the committee received an additional response from the Department of Finance.

In its response, the department stated:

To the best of its knowledge, the Department of Finance has determined that “series” or projections of corporate profits before taxes or the effective corporate income tax rates have never been previously disclosed. These projections are from a comprehensive economic and fiscal projection that constitutes a Cabinet confidence. As a result, the Department of Finance has not been in a position to provide these "series" to the Committee.

This response appeared somewhat dubious. For, if any member of the House or if any Canadian wishes to Google the phrase “corporate profits before taxes” and restrict their search to the domain of the Department of Finance's website, he or she would get exactly two results: the HTML and PDF versions of “The Economic and Fiscal Update” from November 2005, in which they would find, on page 83, that the previous Liberal government had actually published projections of corporate profits before taxes from 2005 until 2010.

At this time, I would like to seek unanimous consent to table page 83 of “The Economic and Fiscal Update” from November 2005.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you. You're excused.

I just have a comment about where we go from here.

On Wednesday we have the minister and justice department officials scheduled on this bill. On the following Monday we have a number of witnesses on this bill; there are three. And then we are proposing to go to clause-by-clause.

After that we have nothing, so I'm proposing that we have a steering committee on the Thursday. I believe you might have already been contacted on that. We need to decide what bills we want to deal with next. We have Bill C-16; we have Bill C-4 still hanging out there; we also expect BillS-10 to be at committee very shortly. And we still have the organized crime study. At the steering committee I'll be looking to you for some direction in that regard.

We're adjourned.

Serious Time for the Most Serious Crime Act

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

Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to put the debate on this issue back into context. We are not debating Bill S-6 itself. We are debating motions moved by the government to restore the text of the bill to what it was when it was referred to the committee. After studying the bill, the committee made two minor amendments to reflect concerns raised during the study. The government has rejected those amendments.

The minister attended our committee meeting again yesterday. He urged us to spend more time studying Bill C-4 and make suggestions for amendments, which he would take into consideration. Today, he is objecting to such minor things as the title and extending the deadline after obtaining permission from the provincial chief justice or delegate because circumstances beyond a person's control prevented that person from applying before the deadline. That is what we are debating now.

Let us begin with the easy part, the title. The title the government wants to use is not the same in English and French. The English title is Serious Time for the Most Serious Crime Act. The French title is Loi renforçant la sévérité des peines d’emprisonnement pour les crimes les plus graves. With all due respect, those are not bill titles. They are slogans.

In my opinion, when we are talking about crime and about putting people in jail, we have to take a calm approach. We have to leave the hustings mentality behind and behave like parliamentarians. One would expect a minister of justice to be conscious of the dignity required in exercising his functions and do so of his own accord.

As long as they keep giving us titles that are really slogans, we will vote against those slogans. The trend seems to be on the rise, with the government trying it with nearly all of its bills. If they give us objective titles like the ones the previous government provided, we will vote in favour. This has become absurd. Some of the titles are outright libel against Canada's judges.

In that regard, the most impressive title is that of Bill C-16, which would purports to end house arrest for violent and dangerous offenders. No violent or dangerous offenders ever receive such a sentence, because current legislation clearly indicates that judges cannot sentence dangerous offenders to house arrest. Furthermore, these sentences are for more than two years, and are not the kinds of sentences that violent and dangerous offenders receive. If any judge in Canada were to release a violent or dangerous offender to serve his sentence at home, it would be the duty of the crown prosecutor on the case to appeal the decision. In some cases, the sentence could be overturned.

The government needs to stop making up these slogans and start proposing objective titles. In this case, I see a specific problem. Indeed, this time there are two slogans and furthermore, the French and English are not the same. This is what happens when advertising executives are hired to give titles to bills.

The second amendment, which is more serious, would extend the time period. Lawyers who have experience with these kinds of cases gave evidence before the committee. They explained to us how complex the procedures are and how hard it is to build a case 15 years later. Indeed, these requests are made 15 years after the offences, and the offender may have been through many different prisons in many different cities. The lawyers have a very hard time finding the old files. This was acknowledged by correctional authorities, who told us how much effort they put into these requests. They also told us that in many cases, it would be impossible to fulfill all of the requirements as set out in the legislation within the prescribed 90-day period. I therefore believe that the amendment proposed by the Liberals was carefully designed and drafted to target a specific problem, unlike the bills presented by this government.

It is only in exceptional circumstances beyond the control of the inmate, as the amendment says, that the chief justice of the province or a delegate could grant this additional 180-day deadline.

Victims have waited 15 years and we would be asking them to wait even longer. They will be told to wait 90 more days because for reasons beyond their control, the inmate the inmate's lawyer was unable to follow all the highly complex procedures within that timeframe. What is so unreasonable about that? Does the minister lack confidence? If anything comes from a committee, then it is no good. He asks us to make suggestions and we do. They are justified, but he does not accept them. I fully agree with the eloquent remarks made by the member who spoke before me.

Consider this: 84% of murder victims knew their murderer. Murder is often committed by a family member. In at least one case, that of young Mr. Kowbel, the father and sister testified to give him a chance even though he was the one who attacked them 15 years earlier, killing his mother and seriously injuring his father. Nevertheless, his relatives recognized his rehabilitation efforts.

This is essential legislation and we only use it when necessary. It is essential for setting the stage for someone facing a sentence of more than 10 and up to 25. He has to have some incentive for good behaviour and respect for the guards. This legislation is good for safety within the prisons and it has not been abused.

Statistics show that before 1995 only 63 applications were filed, 13 of which were denied. The fact that not many applications were denied makes sense because before an application is filed, prison officials have already reviewed the case. Of that number, 27 were approved, but with sentences up to 16 years and 20 years. Three were from 21 years to 23 years. Of the cases that were approved by the juries, 6 were denied by the National Parole Board. We can see from this that the safeguards are substantial.

Since that time, 921 people have been eligible but only 169 requested authorization. Of that number, 141 received authorization to apply and 125 were granted early parole. The result? No repeat murders. There was only one serious criminal offence, an armed robbery. Fifteen people were sent back to prison because they failed to meet some of the very strict conditions of parole imposed on offenders under the supervision of the National Parole Board. In addition, 11 people died.

This is not a law that is abused. We are keenly aware that it may require victims to testify and may cause them painful moments. The cases we are discussing, like the Olson case, will not be affected. Regardless, these offenders will have no chance of parole.

This is a useful law in terms of prison security. It is a good law that encourages some criminals who have committed serious crimes to be rehabilitated. It is a law that, in the end, has produced excellent results. What is worse is that we think that we are doing more in Canada but, in this case, it is quite the opposite.

In Canada, the time that murderers spend in prison is greater than in all other western countries, as well as in Australia and New Zealand.

Let us therefore respect the committees and vote the same way as those who have studied the issue carefully.

Criminal Code

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

Mr. Speaker, we have agreed with many of the bills introduced recently in the House.

The Minister of Justice is always saying that it is the opposition's fault that his bills take so long to pass. He is lying outright, and this is a case in point. Here is a bill meant to fill a gap identified by the Supreme Court of Canada in October 2006. I believe the Conservatives were in power in October 2006. It took them three years to draft a bill to respond to that Supreme Court ruling, as its title indicates.

The government introduced an initial bill in October 2009. Then it prorogued Parliament, thereby killing the bill. So the government had to introduce it again. When the House resumed, the government did not introduce the bill right away. There is not one iota of difference between the current Bill C-30 and Bill C-55, which died on the order paper. I did not count the days like my colleague who spoke before me, but the government did not introduce the bill currently before us until May 31, 2010.

And yet the minister is always complaining that we delay his bills, that the opposition is preventing him from doing his work again. Just 15 minutes ago, he was in front of the cameras blaming the opposition for once again impeding the progress of his bills. This example is concrete proof that his incompetence and idleness are to blame. At his pace, he would have a hard time winning a race with a bunch of snails.

He introduced his bill on May 31, 2010, and this is the first time he has invited us to debate it in order to refer it to committee. No one can say that the opposition is to blame for the fact that the gap in the Criminal Code identified by the Supreme Court still has not been addressed over four years later.

This government is also in the habit of blaming judges. Not only does it blame them, but it speaks about them insultingly. I will demonstrate that in just a moment, but first, let us see what the Supreme Court decided.

The Supreme Court did not decide that a right should be taken away, contrary to what the parliamentary secretary said in his press releases. The court found that this right never existed and that it was important that it be established through legislation, not by police or the courts. It is up to Parliament.

Clearly, if conditions can be imposed prohibiting offenders from using certain substances, there needs to be some means of monitoring those conditions, even if it is not through testing. That is obvious. It is so obvious that the legislators at the time did not see it and did not provide for the obligation to provide samples.

That is what the Supreme Court found in 2006. Paragraph 732.1(3)(c), which allows a condition to be imposed that prohibits the use of certain substances, defines a criminal offence. But simply creating an offence does not result in enforcement powers. This is common sense and should have been obvious to the legislators at the time. Even though it is clear that the authority to require samples of a bodily substance and the resulting analyses would help enforce a condition prohibiting the use of certain substances imposed under paragraph 732.1(3)(c), that is not enough to conclude that this authority is implied.

That seems to me to be quite a sensible legal ruling. The court made the following suggestion:

Where Parliament authorizes the collection of bodily samples, it uses clear language and sets out standards and safeguards for collecting these samples.

The court is saying that things should not be done haphazardly.

Parliament has not provided a scheme under s. 732.1(3) for collecting bodily samples and such a scheme cannot be judicially enacted.

The fact that it cannot be judicially enacted is why the government introduced a 16-page bill. The law cannot go messing with people's bodies as it sees fit. There must be assurances that analyses will be carried out medically and correctly. But it is not up to the court to enact that. It is up to Parliament. That is what Parliament was told in 2006. But it was not until 2009 that the Conservatives introduced their first bill. Then they let it die with prorogation. They reintroduced it on May 31, 2010. Then they did not raise the subject again until now. Here we are debating it in December 2010, more than four years after the Supreme Court of Canada's comments.

This government is in the habit of demonstrating its scorn for the Canadian judicial system in all kinds of ways. I would like to read from the minister's press release about Bill C-30. In the last paragraph on the first page, it says:

The amendments being introduced today are an effective response to the Supreme Court of Canada's decision that made it impossible for law enforcement officials to fully monitor individuals under court order prohibiting them from using drugs or alcohol.

That is not what the court did. The court did not make it impossible. It was not provided for in the law. And the court decided that because it was not provided for, it was not the court's job to determine, in 16 pages, how the samples could be taken to ensure their accuracy or that conclusions could be drawn that might deprive people of their freedom.

We are so proud to be a country that respects rights and freedoms. This is part of how we respect people's freedom. Before putting them in jail on technical evidence, we have to ensure that the evidence is solid.

The Minister of Justice also began criticizing us for another reason recently. He laughed at us because we do not accept his alternative titles. In this case, I can tell him that we will agree with his title, which is “Response to the Supreme Court of Canada Decision in R. v. Shoker Act”. Now that is how to objectively describe, without using propaganda, the bill that is currently before us.

This is one case where he did not fall back into his bad habits. Unfortunately, not all bill titles are like this. The best example is the Minister of Justice's new trick, which involves inserting his campaign propaganda into the legislation. Since he is likely somewhat unsure of the value of the legislation, he starts by spewing his propaganda, which is an insult to the judiciary. One example is Bill C-16, Ending House Arrest for Property and other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders.

Has there ever been a ruling in Canada ordering house arrest for serious and violent offenders? If so, it is contrary to the current legislation, which states: “[if the court] is satisfied that the service of the sentence in the community would not endanger the safety of the community...”

Thus, the first condition for house arrest is that it does not endanger the safety of the community.

That should go without saying. If we stop detaining violent and dangerous offenders and release them, that will jeopardize public safety. The minister never said that that was happening anywhere in Canada. And if this was the case with one out of the thousands and tens of thousands—if not more; I think that the number of sentences handed down every year in Canada is in the six figures—, there is recourse and it can be taken to the Court of Appeal. The case can be appealed on the basis that the offender is violent and dangerous.

It is a ruse, a trap to eliminate more cases in which house arrest could be used. The Conservatives do not like house arrest. This happens in almost every country in Europe. It is extremely useful with an offender who has committed a first offence. By imposing some conditions, we can turn them away from crime. We can force them to take courses and support a family, we can impose a curfew, monitor him and impose an addiction treatment if he has a substance abuse problem.

Keep the person at home. It is a lot less expensive and much more effective than sending him to do time, when he will likely lose his job if he has one, interrupt his studies and meet other criminals who will teach him tricks to commit other crimes. We know that prison is not a very good school. In civilized countries, prison is reserved for truly dangerous people. Here, we are following the model used in the United States, a country with the highest incarceration rate in the world: between 730 and 760 incarcerations per 100,000 inhabitants. Our rate is 120 per 100,000. I do not know how much the Conservatives want to increase that number by, but at 120, we are average. Out of 155 countries, we rank about 50th. Our rate is even higher than that of almost every European country, except one country in the United Kingdom.

The bill will take this tool away from judges in first offence cases. When I was public safety minister in Quebec, I was told—and this was consistent with my experience after more than 25 years practising criminal law—that up to 90% of people who are brought before the court are brought there only once in their life. It is the other 10% that causes us major problems.

In any event, we have already said we agree that the Supreme Court was right to shed light on this anomaly. We can prohibit someone from consuming certain substances without giving the court the power to order a technical and scientific verification that the person is complying with these conditions. This is a lot like drinking and driving, a more common crime, and one that is even committed by people who do not have a criminal record or other criminal behaviour.

When I first started pleading cases, it was quite funny to listen to those cases because police officers had observed, in the accused, the symptoms that the Supreme Court had defined as symptoms of drunkenness in a case in 1926: eyes glazed over, slurred speech, staggering gait. The police would say that the accused was staggering and his speech was slurred and that was how they established whether a person was drunk or not. It was rather ridiculous and that is why we were finally able to get objective evidence with the breathalyzer. There has been a dramatic drop since this objective measure has been in place.

In this case, I think this legislation was necessary. Personally, I think six months should have been plenty of time to draft such a bill following the Supreme Court ruling. It should not take three years to do so. The minister, who is supposedly thinking of the potential victims, could have sped things up a little. Fortunately, he has no problem tooting his own horn. He concluded his November 30 news release by saying that the government, “is standing up for victims of crime, and putting the rights of law-abiding citizens ahead of the rights of criminals”.

I do not know why he said that. It must have been out of habit. In this case, the provision was suggested by the Supreme Court, which he does not like. I do not see how this puts the rights of law-abiding citizens up against the rights of criminals. In any case, nearly all sentences that come with probation orders do in fact include abstinence conditions.

I do not believe that all of these people are criminals. Indeed, just because someone commits a single offence or has a drug problem at one time in his life does not make him a criminal for the rest of his days. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that if an abstinence condition is imposed because the offender has a drug problem, there should be some scientific way to verify his compliance. If it were obvious—

Protecting Children from Sexual Predators Act

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

Mr. Speaker, that is a well considered point and it has been mentioned in the past. I guess that is one of the reasons that we are supporting the bill at second reading in principle and wish to send it to committee so we can examine, through the process of expert witnesses, that particular point that the member makes.

I also want to point out that the bill proposes coordinating amendments to other bills currently before Parliament which would include reforms to better protect children against sexual predators, namely, Bill S-2, protecting victims from sexual offenders act, and Bill C-16, the ending house arrest for property and other serious crimes by serious and violent offenders act.

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

Thank you.

Good afternoon, minister. I heard everything you said. It is quite clear we will never be able to support this. That's why we're in favour of certain amendments. I'm especially referring to the short titles that are not consistent with what the bill states.

For example, the short title of Bill C-16 is "Ending House Arrest for Property and Other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders Act". That's not what the bill refers to. We voted against Bills S-6 and C-22 for the same reason. Your good parliamentary secretary came to my constituency to say that we had voted against it. However, that's not true; we voted against the short title, which is completely unrelated to the bill.

If you want to discuss the real issues, we'll do that. On page 180, the total amount of Funding to support victim services and violence prevention in aboriginal communities and to increase national support for missing persons investigations for votes 1 and 5 is $2,449,000. This is a request from aboriginal women. I know that because I sit on the Standing Committee on Indian and Northern Affairs.

Will these amounts be paid directly to the aboriginal communities or will they be allocated to police departments to help increase searches? The problem is victim searches. What do those amounts represent?

Motion in amendment

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today to speak on Bill C-22.

In terms of background, the bill would make reporting Internet child pornography mandatory for Internet service providers and other persons providing Internet services. This is a very important concept whose time is long overdue.

The government has taken a very long time to reintroduce the bill. It has lost time in presenting the bill, due to prorogation. The bill's first iteration was Bill C-58. We all understand the issue of child pornography and we all know that children have to be protected. Children are an important asset. They need to be protected. They are vulnerable and they are easily misled.

My question to the government is, if protecting children from exploitation, as the short title says, is really a priority of the government, why then, after prorogation, did it take it four months to reintroduce this bill?

In fact, there was no change to the bill. The only thing that changed was the short title. Why? Regarding sexual exploitation, if protecting children is really a priority of the current government, then let us stick to the business of protecting children. Let us stick to the right law. The long title of the bill is, “An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service”. This is exactly what the bill would do. This is the formal title. It is an accurate title. The aim of legislation is to protect children from pornography and for the people who provide Internet services to report it.

So why is the government playing games?

The government has repeatedly changed the names of bills, without making any real changes to the bill itself. It has either changed titles or prorogued Parliament and reintroduced the same bills over and over again. Changing titles to political sound bites is not really protecting the kids.

The long title is precise. It describes exactly what Bill C-22 is supposed to do.

The short title is misleading. It overstates what the bill would do.

I would like to make it clear that the bill is a good bill. What we are debating here is why the government is wasting time to change the title of the bill.

The Liberals support the bill. We do not support the title. It is a step in the right direction to address the issue of child pornography and the issue of Internet predators and to make it the responsibility of the providers of Internet services to give us the information.

However, the bill would not completely solve any problems. That is why the short title really is not accurate. It does not reflect accuracy.

The Liberals attempted, at committee, to change the short title to represent what the bill would actually do. The Liberals proposed the “child pornography reporting act”, because that is exactly what this bill attempts to do. The amendment was rejected, so the Liberals decided to remove the short title completely.

Other opposition parties agreed at committee with the content of the long title, because as I said previously, it is what the bill would actually do.

This is not the first time that governments have tried changing or modifying titles. They have done it in Bill C-21, the bill to modify the Criminal Code in regard to sentencing for fraud. It was then replaced by a short title, saying it is the law to defend the victims of white-collar crime. The short title is really longer than the long title, which is the correct title.

If the government is serious about defending victims of white-collar crime, why did it take it 215 days after prorogation to commence the debate for the second time on this bill?

There was another bill, Bill C-16. It went through the same process.

It is obvious that the government is not really serious. The Conservatives claim to be the government with the law and order agenda, but we see the repeated bills, over and over again. If nothing gets passed through Parliament, the Conservatives prorogue Parliament and bring bills back to the House under different names. My question is then, why does the government not get serious about dealing with this issue? It should stop trying to score cheap political points.

In the stakeholders' view of the bill itself, the commissioner of police and the provincial police support this bill. The director of Cybertip.ca states that the bill is a step in the right direction. It is the good first step. The Canadian Centre for Child Protection states that this is a good, right step. Companies such as Bell, Rogers and Telus all agree that this is important.

Statistics Canada indicates that the illegal action of the people who rely on child pornography has increased from 55% in 1998 to 1,408% in 2008.

These images of pornography that are being accessed are horrifying. We all can probably give examples of children and young people who have been enticed on the Internet to do things that they would normally not do. Children are vulnerable. Children seek affection. Children think the person is telling the truth. When children are getting enticed by the Internet, it is important that this bill be put in place immediately.

Cybertip.ca made a presentation at committee and provided the committee with some very interesting information. What it said was very disconcerting. It said: 36% of the images analyzed by the centre depicted sexual assaults on children, and 64% depicted children in a deliberate sexual manner; 76% of web pages analyzed had at least one child abuse image where the child was less than eight years of age; and of the children abused through extreme sexual acts, including bestiality, bondage or torture and degrading acts such as defecation, 69% occurred against children under eight years of age.

What are we doing to protect our children? These are horrifying statistics.

Cybertip.ca also said 83% of the images were of female children.

Liberal members support this bill, but we do not want games being played on the backs of children. We want the law to be passed. We want the law to be effective. We want the law to be there so that, with the technologies that develop, the Internet users, the criminals who use these measures, are put to the test. We need to get them behind bars. We need to protect our children.

It was the former Liberal government in 2002 that made it illegal to deliberately access a website containing child pornography, rather than just having possession of such materials. It is important that we do it.

It was also the former Liberal government that put in place the law allowing a judge to order a service provider to supply the information to authorities when there are reasonable grounds to believe that child pornography is accessible through an Internet service provider.

It was the Liberals who put Cybertip.ca in place, an online reporting tool for child pornography.

The United States and Australia passed similar legislation in 2002 and 2005.

I urge the government to stop dragging its feet, stop playing games with short titles, and let us go forward with the bill.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

In any event, I am confused. With regard to Ms. Bonsant, I don't know her specific record, but I do know what the record is with respect to Bill S-6, Serious Time for the Most Serious Crime Act, where currently murderers can apply for parole every two years after they serve 15 years, which means families have to continuously go through that to testify before parole boards, relive those kinds of horrific crimes and relive the grief they've suffered. Victim groups have been asking for years for that faint hope clause to be repealed. Bill S-6 would have repealed the faint hope clause and ensured criminals convicted of murder could no longer apply for that early parole and have that revisited every year to the grief of those families.

Bill C-16, Ending House Arrest for Property and Other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders Act, formerly Bill C-42, would also have ended house arrest for serious crimes such as luring a child, arson, and aggravated assault. This would obviously also impact victims and those that have crimes perpetrated on them.

Bill S-10, Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act, or formerly, Bill C-15, introduced minimum sentences for serious drug offences.

Bill C-268, which was the minimum sentence for human traffickers, was introduced by my colleague, Joy Smith, the Conservative member from Manitoba. It would have introduced stricter penalties for people who participate in human trafficking of children.

The Bloc Québécois voted against all of those, every one of those.

Justice

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

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice has called his legislation, Bill C-16, the Ending House Arrest for Property and Other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders Act.

This is untrue for two reasons. First, this measure only applies to those sentenced to less than two years. In addition, the law clearly states that violent and dangerous offenders cannot benefit from this measure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Thank you.

If you could spare me one minute, I just wanted to talk about the next meeting. Right now scheduled for the next meeting is Bill S-215, which is suicide bombing. We will have the sponsor of the bill and we will have a justice department official available. Then we move to clause-by-clause. My guess is it will only take an hour.

Do you want me to schedule in anything else? I expect by Thursday we're also going to have a consultation report. As soon as we receive it we'll distribute it to you.

There are a couple more bills: there is Bill C-16 and there's also Bill S-6, faint hope. Do you want to get started with faint hope in the second hour of the next meeting?

Mr. Comartin.

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

Mr. Speaker, with Bill C-16, the government wants to eliminate most community sentences a judge can hand down. Before a judge can hand down a sentence to be served in the community, section 742.1 of the Criminal Code already stipulates that the judge has to be “satisfied that the service of the sentence in the community would not endanger the safety of the community”.

In the opinion of the Minister of Justice, do Canadian judges comply with this requirement?

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

I'll try to be brief too. I know we want to wrap this bill up today, and we don't, and I don't, want to extend this.

As much as I could agree with a lot of what Mr. Dechert and Mr. Woodworth have said, if it was just this one bill, fine, but the speech writers and slogan guys in your backrooms have preceded you.

We are supposed to be adopting a short title, not a big long paragraph commercial. This is supposed to be a short title. I will just refer members to other legislation we now have in front of us.

Bill C-21, the long title is “An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sentencing for fraud)”. The short title is called—believe it or not, this is supposed to be short—“Standing Up for Victims of White Collar Crime Act”. This is how the bill is expected to be cited by people in courts of law, and the short title is actually not very short.

And as if to really, really cap this, Bill C-16, which is simply called “An Act to amend the Criminal Code”, the government drafters have walked away from the short title, which is what we normally do—give it a short title so people can refer to it. They now describe Bill C-16—go check it out—with an alternative title. Why do we need an alternative title? It now reads, “This Act may be cited as the Ending House Arrest for Property and Other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders Act”. How short is that?

So I am sorry, but in this particular Parliament, it is my hope that members, legislators, will grab hold of this—the attempt to torque the short title of a bill for a political purpose—and bring the thing back to a normal level where we can have a nice, clean, accurate short title.

That is why Mr. Murphy took the approach he did, and that's the approach I'm going to be taking in the future. And we'll have a chance to debate this again probably.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Yes. Bill C-16 has been referred. There is also a private member's bill, Bill C-389. We are currently dealing with Bill C-4, the amendments to the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Those are the bills at our committee. Then there is the organized crime study.

Perhaps at our next meeting you could come prepared with some ideas with regard to our business moving forward.

The other thing is that I would invite the following motion:That the Committee cover the costs of hospitality incurred from the light lunch on September 28, 2010, at 12:00 p.m. with the Departmental Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs of the National Assembly of the Republic of Kenya.You may recall that we had a meeting with them.

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

Okay.

Just to pursue this line, with regard to some of the other legislation that you've mentioned today and that's coming, but specifically with regard to Bill C-4 and Bill C-16, I guess it would be, has this type of an analysis been made as to whether there will be additional cost to the public prosecution office or to your department for the implementation of these new crime bills?

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

I can assure you that we are all in favour of helping victims.

You have yourself spoken about Bill C-16 which you have entitled “Ending House Arrest for Property and Other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders Act”. I think you will agree with me when I say that if we released violent and dangerous offenders, that could put the security of our community at risk.

But section 742.1 of the Criminal Code states that these kinds of punishments may be served at home. It provides: “If ...the court...is satisfied that the service in the community would not endanger the safety of the community...” and adds a number of other conditions that must be met before the court may allow these people to serve their sentence in the community.

Would you admit that the title you gave to Bill C-16 presupposes that judges do not respect the first condition set by the Criminal Code that allows them to give sentences that must be served in the community?

Criminal Code

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-16. A number of members spoke eloquently to the bill yesterday and we want to proceed further and hear more debate on this issue before it goes to committee for whatever amendments are deemed necessary.

This bill is another Conservative crime bill that has been recycled several times. It is basically a blinding array of paper that we see in front of us year after year. The bill started as Bill C-41, Bill C-42, then Bill C-9 and now it is Bill C-16. The reason it has had such a torturous journey is because of the government.

The government mandates fixed elections and then does not follow its own laws. It called an election a year ahead of time and killed all of its bills. Then, within a month, it prorogued the House and killed them all again. A year later, it prorogued again and kills them another time.

It is little wonder that the public is having second thoughts about the government's commitment to this so-called tough on crime policy which is not being tough on crime. As a matter of fact, any government should have a smart on crime policy, but that certainly does not describe the government's actions on this file so far.

Bill C-16, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, ending conditional sentences for property and other serious crimes, would amend section 742.1 of the Criminal Code which deals with conditional sentencing to eliminate the reference to serious personal injury offences. It would also restrict the ability of conditional sentences for all offences for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 14 years or life and for specified offences prosecuted by way of indictment for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 10 years.

The first bill of this type was introduced back in September 1996. We now have a 13 year history of dealing with this type of legislation. In fact, it has worked fairly well over the years. It allows for sentences of imprisonment to be served in the community rather than a correctional facility, which some people have called a school for crime. It is a midway point between incarceration and sanctions such as probation or fines.

The conditional sentence was not introduced in isolation but is part of a renewal of the sentencing provisions in the Criminal Code. These provisions include the fundamental purpose and principles of sentencing. The fundamental principle of sentencing is that a sentence must be proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender.

The renewed sentencing provisions set out further sentencing principles, including a list of aggravating and mitigating circumstances that should guide sentences imposed. The primary goal of conditional sentencing is to reduce the reliance upon incarceration.

We dealt at length with the costs associated with keeping an inmate in prison in Canada. In the provincial system it is $52,000 a year and in the federal system it is $90,000 a year. Yesterday a Bloc member pointed out that it would be anticipated that we would be looking at an extra 13,000 to 15,000 people in the system because of this and the projected cost would be somewhere around $780 million. That is just a guess because no one knows exactly what the figure would be. I would have to think that the government would know, having come up with this initiative. It also is not the one that would fulfill the cost. The cost would be borne by the provinces. We are talking about conditional sentences of less than two years and those people will be sitting in provincial jails, some of which have to be built.

In Manitoba's case, it is running at capacity at the moment. Therefore, if this legislation were to pass, provinces such as Manitoba could not actually fulfill the laws. They would have to embark upon a prison expansion program funded by the Province of Manitoba or any other province. It would take a number of years to build a new facility at a cost of many millions of dollars. When we say that the cost is around $700 hundred million for this initiative right now, that is not taking into account the cost of building new jails, which, in some cases, could take many years.

The public is being misled because the Conservatives go for these one-off thirty second advertising clips saying that they will get tough on crime, but they do not give any explanation of what the final result will be. They do not explain to people that it will cost billions more. For example, last week, on the two-for-one credits sentencing, the Conservatives went so far as to indicate that it would cost about $90 million. Within days, however, they were contradicted by more reliable sources and had to admit that it would be $2 billion. If we multiply these sort of figures among the 13 or 16, or whatever number of crime bills their crime bill factory keeps producing in this House, we are talking about huge costs. That is fine, but what is the benefit?

Let us look at best practices. Since governments talk about best practices when it comes to IT issues, computer issues and all sorts of other issues in society, why not apply the same best practices approach to the judicial system? We can make changes and improvements to bills but we should not be embarking on programs that have been totally discredited elsewhere. The United States is a very poor example but that is the type of example the Conservatives tend to want to follow.

The primary goal of conditional sentencing is to reduce reliance on incarceration by providing the courts with an alternative sentencing mechanism. In addition, the conditional sentence provides an opportunity to further incorporate restorative justice concepts into the sentencing process by encouraging those who have caused harm to acknowledge the fact and to make reparations. At the time of their introduction, the conditional sentences were generally seen as an appropriate mechanism to divert minor offences and offenders away from the prison system.

As I have indicated, there are two major benefits for doing that. One is to keep first-time offenders away from hardened criminals, the criminal university that these prisons are, and to also look at the cost of $52,000 a year to keep them in these prisons. The overuse of incarceration was recognized by many as being problematic, while restorative justice concepts were seen as beneficial. In practice, however, a conditional sentence was sometimes viewed in a negative light in some cases. That, of course, gave the government the opening it needed to bring in some new rules.

Concern has been expressed that some offenders are receiving conditional sentences that are not appropriate. When the bill gets to committee, which it will at some point, maybe some changes will need to be made, but there are probably some parts of the bill that we will find acceptable. It may be beneficial to allow persons. who have not committed a serious or violent crime and are not dangerous, and who otherwise would be incarcerated, to serve their sentence in the community. Certain commentators have argued that sometimes the very nature of the offence, however, requires incarceration of the offender.

Yesterday, the member for Burnaby—Douglas mentioned that he was not aware of any example. We have asked members to show examples where conditional sentences have not worked out. Where is the big problem? The government is supposed to be here to solve problems, but if it cannot identify what the problem is in the first place, then why is it doing this, other than maybe for publicity purposes.

The provisions that govern the conditional sentences are set out in sections 742 to 742(7) of the Criminal Code. Several criteria must be met before the sentencing judge may impose a conditional sentence. The offence, as I had indicated before, cannot be a serious personal injury offence, which is an indictable offence. Indictable offences include high treason, treason, first degree murder or second degree murder involving the use or attempted use of violence against another person, or conduct endangering or likely to endanger the life or safety of another person or inflicting or likely to inflict severe psychological damage upon another person, for which the offender may be sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years or more. Also, an offence or an attempt to commit an offence of sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon, threats to a third party causing bodily harm, or aggravated sexual assault.

The offence for which the person has been convicted must not be terrorism, so terrorism is excluded, prosecuted by way of indictment for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 10 years or more.

The offence for which the person has been convicted must not be a criminal organization offence prosecuted by way of indictment for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 10 years or more.

There is a picture emerging. We are talking about very limited numbers of cases here, and certainly not the super serious ones that I have just indicated on the list.

Another issue, of course, is the whole area of judicial independence. If we follow the Conservatives' reasoning on these types of bills, we really do not need a judge. We can simply have a law clerk mete out the sentences. The whole area of judicial independence is there because judges are trained and have many years of experience, and in law they are always given latitude to deal with cases on an individual by individual basis.

What the government is trying to do with these types of bills is to take away the judicial independence of the judge. It wants to sideline the trained individual and simply mandate what the sentence will be. There is no need for a judge to do that.

The sentencing judge must be satisfied that serving the sentence in the community would not endanger the safety of the community. That is another issue that the government likes to talk about. However, one of the criteria is that the sentencing judge must be satisfied that there would not be an endangerment to the community.

Insofar as the other criteria are concerned, the objectives of sentencing are the denunciation of unlawful conduct, the deterrence of the offender and others from committing offences, the separation of the offender from the community when necessary, the rehabilitation of the offender, the provision of reparation to victims and the community and a promotion of the sense of responsibility of the offender.

We have a situation with the government appointing Mr. Sullivan as an Ombudsman for Victims of Crime for a three year contract. After the three year period, he does not have a lot of good things to say about the government. He indicates that it is shortchanging victims of crime.

The government has wrapped itself around the flag and, for several years, has claimed that it is looking out for victims and acting in the interest of victims of crime. However, the very first Ombudsman for Victims of Crime that it appoints, after only his first, and last as he is not being reappointed, three year term, reports that the government is not that helpful to the victims of crime and that it is more concerned about punishment than it is with the victims of crime.

It has also been proven that victims of crime tend to like the whole idea of conditional sentences, because they are interested in results. They are interested in the rehabilitation of offenders. How is society better off if people keep reoffending? That is not what we are trying to do here. It is not a positive for the victims of crime to have people reoffend. Let us do things that are going to stop them from reoffending. If conditional sentences help people not reoffend, we should do that.

Speaking of victims of crime, there cannot be any bigger victims of crime than the taxpayers of this country if they have to put out another $700 million to fund more prison construction to house people who are going to be, at the end of the day, statistically bigger reoffenders because they are in the prisons as opposed to communities.

Another really good example I would like to mention now is this whole idea of closing down the six prison farms. We have petitions coming to our office on this issue. This is an issue that will rock the Conservative base because people shake their heads when they realize that the government would close down six prison farms that have been operating for years and produce terrific results. Almost everybody I talk to asks why the prison farms are being closed down and says the number of them should be increased.

The House resumed from May 5 consideration of the motion that Bill C-16, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, from what we are hearing today from the members in their speeches, the wheels are definitely coming off this tough on crime bus that the government has been trying to drive for the last couple of elections.

The first example was the Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, Mr. Steve Sullivan, who criticized the government for not taking action on victim's rights.

We had one of the ministers backtracking on another crime bill the other day, the two for one bill, and having to admit that it will cost $2 billion rather than $90 million.

Earlier today, a Bloc member indicated that under Bill C-16, at $52,205 per inmate, that will cost about $780 million for the extra prisoners and that will be paid by the provinces, not the federal government.

Does the member think the government has been negligent in not costing out this proposal before it brought it to Parliament or does he thing the government actually knows what the cost will be and just will not tell us?

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-16, especially since at our caucus meeting this morning, our colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin gave an excellent presentation on this important bill.

I am the chief organizer for the Bloc Québécois. I therefore have a political role as well. Before I go on any further about Bill C-16, I will try to explain how this bill shows that the Conservatives are in political disarray.

When the Conservatives came to power in 2006 and 2008, transparency was one of the main planks in their election platform. But the Speaker of the House was forced to take the Conservatives to task on the issue of Afghan detainees. So the Conservatives can no longer use transparency to score political points.

Then there was probity. The Liberal regime had just come to an end with the sponsorship scandal, and the Conservatives were keen to show that they were whiter than snow. It was their way of positioning themselves as the alternative to the Liberals, who were facing corruption charges.

In recent weeks, with the affair involving Rahim Jaffer and the former status of women minister, we have seen that the Conservatives do what the Liberals did as soon as they get the chance, so the Conservatives should forget about probity.

They also talked about the economy. They styled themselves as the great defenders of the economy, and they said they were going to help the economy turn around. But they made some very unfortunate decisions, such as reducing the GST. That was in their election platform twice, and it cost them $14 billion. Today, we have a deficit of close to $50 billion, and the Conservatives are trying to blame the global economy. It is true that there was a crisis, but the Conservatives did themselves out of substantial revenue with their political ideology. I remember that they even wanted to put things right in the employment insurance fund. The Liberals had taken $54 billion from that fund to reinvest in the consolidated revenue fund and pay other expenses instead of putting the money toward EI.

In recent weeks, government ministers have been saying that there is no more surplus in the EI fund. There will be an annual deficit. The $50 billion is gone. The Liberals spent it, but the Conservatives neglected to say that they ran up a $50 billion deficit this year.

What is left of their political agenda? They can be tough on crime. That is what they have left. That is why I said that the Conservatives are in disarray.

Look at the title of Bill C-16. It is quite something. Bill C-16 contains the exact same provisions as Bill C-42, which died on the order paper due to prorogation. Once again, they used Parliament for partisan purposes. Bill C-16 is now known as the Ending House Arrest for Property and Other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders Act. Bill C-42, which is in fact the same bill, was known as the Ending Conditional Sentences for Property and Other Serious Crimes Act.

The Conservatives are grasping at straws. They are trying to use any means to prove that they are tough on crime and that they are trying to defend the public. However, this bill deals with something other than crime.

The title, Ending House Arrest for Property and Other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders Act, suggests that it will solve the problem of extremely violent offenders, even though the bill really deals with conditional sentences. It has very little to do with the extreme violence suggested by the title.

Before 1996, persons found guilty of a criminal offence and sentenced to less than two years' imprisonment had to serve the sentence in jail. They no longer participated in their regular activities, such as work or school, and lost the ability to fulfill their family, professional and social responsibilities.

Conditional sentencing for adults has only been in place for 13 years. The bill before us amends a law that has only existed for 13 years. Conditional sentencing became law in 1996 with a bill that received the support of the Bloc Québécois. Our party felt it was important to create an alternative to incarceration because judges need as many tools as possible in order to hand down the most appropriate sentence, the one likely to result in the reintegration of the offender, while guaranteeing public safety and the appearance of justice.

Once again, this takes public safety into account. It is the first condition that must be taken into account, and that is why my colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin mentioned it in his excellent speech this morning.

Before handing down a conditional sentence, the judge must first respect an initial condition, that public safety not be jeopardized. If the individual is a danger to the community, the judge will not release him into the community or will not issue a sentence that allows him to be in the community. The judge will simply send him to jail.

When an individual receives a conditional sentence, this means that he will serve his sentence within the community. He therefore stays out of jail as long as he respects the mandatory and optional conditions imposed by the court.

The main condition is house arrest. The courts have decided that someone who has received a conditional sentence must, in principle, be on house arrest for the duration of the sentence.

Prior to 1996, people found guilty of a criminal offence and sentenced to terms of just a few days were required in all cases to serve their time in prison. The primary objective of conditional sentences was to reduce incarceration and give the courts an alternative.

This is where we see the Conservative demagogy. It reminds me of the Quebec film À soir on fait peur au monde. The Conservatives believe that there are many criminals roaming the streets and that they are very violent and extremely dangerous. They are talking about sentences of less than two years for serious crimes—a crime is a crime—but for which we have been trying, since 1996, to focus on reintegration: young people go to school, fathers have jobs, and so on.

When the judge has determined that there is no danger to society, it is explained to the offender that he will be monitored, but that he can keep his job and support his family, as opposed to how it was prior to 1996, when he would have been sent to prison, would have lost his job, and would not have been able to support his family.

Prior to 1996, people found guilty of a criminal offence and sentenced to terms of just a few days were required in all cases to serve their time. Since the adoption of conditional sentencing, judges can give a person who poses no danger to public safety a sentence that is less than two years to be served in the community.

The Criminal Code requires that a number of conditions be met before the judge can hand down a conditional sentence. That is important to understand. Since the Conservatives have decided to evoke images from the horror film À soir on fait peur au monde, we have to determine if this bill will really put extremely dangerous criminals in jail. The Criminal Code has requirements for conditional sentences. For one, the person must be found guilty of an offence not punishable by a minimum sentence.

There are minimum sentences and, to be eligible for a conditional sentence, the person must not be charged with a offence punishable by a minimum sentence.

The judge has to find that the offence merits a jail term of less than two years. I will say it again, a crime is a crime and it is always serious. However, when the crime is punishable by two years less a day, it is understood that this sentence obviously does not apply to the most serious crimes in society.

The judge must be convinced that serving the sentence in the community would not pose a threat to public safety. I spoke earlier about the title of the bill: Ending House Arrest for Property and Other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders Act. The Conservatives want to be tough on crime. Every week they try to change public opinion because things are not going well with all their other political endeavours. Being tough on crime is all they have left. Of course, once again, they are trying to mislead us. Indeed, judges must be convinced that serving the sentence in the community would not pose a threat to public safety. So the first condition is that the offender must not be someone who poses a threat to society.

The judge must be convinced that the conditional sentence meets the criteria of the principles of sentencing set out in sections 718 and 718.2 of the Criminal Code. Of course I am not a criminal lawyer. If I have time later, I will talk more about those sections.

The following offences are ineligible: offences prosecuted by way of indictment; offences punishable by a maximum of 10 years or more; offences related to organized crime; terrorism offences; and serious personal injury offences, pursuant to section 752. I repeat, those offences are not eligible for conditional sentencing. Those are people who are convicted for being a member of organized crime, for a terrorism offence or for a serious personal injury offence, in which the victim was seriously injured or there was an attempt to cause serious personal injury or attempted murder, all very serious offences.

Bill C-16 adds to the list of offences that preclude conditional sentencing. Once again, the Conservatives' goal is to make that list longer. Let us continue with our original theory that the Conservatives are having political problems with the rest of their election promises. Being tough on crime is all they have left. They did not dare abolish conditional sentencing. They probably have another bill ready to go in a few years in which they will add more crimes to the list of offences that preclude conditional sentencing. That will allow them to continue their partisan politics, play their horror film again and scare everyone. That is the Conservative reality.

And that, by the way, is what the Republicans did. The crime rate in the United States is much higher than in Canada and higher still than in Quebec. The U.S. administration has had to release 30,000 prisoners over the past few months, primarily because it ran out of money, it ran out of room in the prisons and it was felt that the crimes and the sentences would be better managed through monitoring on the outside than by keeping those people on the inside.

For partisan and political purposes, the Conservatives probably want to score political points for trying to reassure people who have suffered serious harm from serious crimes. Indeed, this happens. There are street gangs. Crimes are committed, but I have never heard the government extending millions and billions of dollars to fight organized crime or to fight street gangs or very serious crimes. For that matter, I have not heard the government announce any funding for rehabilitation either.

As the hon. member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin so very intelligently made us realize, people who have committed crimes and been rehabilitated do not brag about it. We must take the time to look around us. There are people who have committed crimes, had the good fortune to be rehabilitated and today are good and honest citizens. The problem with such people is that they do not brag about it, while we are more aware of violent crimes and those who commit them because that is what we see so often on television and in other media.

As I said, our colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin intelligently—brilliantly even—told us that at this point in time, we can only imagine how many sentences are handed down in every court in Quebec and the rest of Canada every day.

Errors may occur, but should we scrap the whole system because one judge makes some kind of mistake? I think that is easy for the Conservatives to do. Television cameras are typically set up near courthouses to keep an eye on what is going on. That is something we see every day, something we live with. We rarely see good news stories on television. The media like to sensationalize bad news stories. However, the thousands of rulings handed down are generally excellent considering how justice is administered in Quebec and Canada. We have inherited a very good justice system from our forebears.

We inherited our justice system from our parents and grandparents. It is a choice. I am looking at how the Conservatives want to change it. There was a big debate on abortion in the House. Our predecessors resolved that issue.

For purely partisan reasons, some people are doing everything in their power to reopen debates that have been put aside. It is the sound and fury of partisan politics once again. I often say to those who will listen that power can make people crazy. Some of the people in power in this House are well on their way there. Once again, the only thing the Conservatives have left is their tough on crime agenda, and they are going to milk it for all it is worth. That is what is going on today with Bill C-16.

We have to take a respectful approach to this bill because the cases that will be exempt from the legislation involve conditional sentencing, which was brought in in 1996. As I said, Bill C-16 adds more crimes to the list of those not eligible for conditional sentencing.

Parts of the proposed new section 742.1 read as follows:

(c) the offence is not an offence, prosecuted by way of indictment, for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 14 years or life;...

(e) the offence is not an offence, prosecuted by way of indictment, for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 10 years, that

(i) resulted in bodily harm,

(ii) involved the import, export, trafficking or production of drugs, or

(iii) involved the use of a weapon; and

(f) the offence is not an offence, prosecuted by way of indictment, under any of the following provisions:

(i) section 144 (prison breach),

(ii) section 172.1 (luring a child),

(iii) section 264 (criminal harassment),...

(v) section 279 (kidnapping),...

(viii) paragraph 334(a) (theft over $5000),

(ix) paragraph 348(1)(e) (breaking and entering...),

(x) section 349 (being unlawfully in a dwelling-house), and

(xi) section 435 (arson for fraudulent purpose).

It can be any kind of arson, even setting fire to a moped. That is why members have to understand that adding to the list of offences for which a judge can no longer hand down a conditional sentence restricts the power of the law passed in 1996.

Once again, the government is restricting judges' power and, I repeat, we are talking about sentences of two years or less, so two years less a day. That is the reality.

The list is so long now that it is almost like turning the clock back 10 years to a time when conditional sentences did not exist as an alternative for adults.

Criminologists have long agreed that tougher sentences do not reduce crime. Recent studies confirm that there is little correlation between the severity of a sentence and the number of offences. But publicizing arrest rates and increasing the likelihood of being arrested do really have an impact on crime.

A conditional sentence not only involves a penalty, but also rehabilitation and restorative justice. This combination is more likely than incarceration in a correctional facility to prevent an offender from continuing to endanger the public after serving his sentence.

In addition, certain conditional sentences require the offender to make restitution to the victim and society and comply with very strict rules. Since 2000—

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to begin my speech by picking up where the hon. member left over because I think this is the kind of problem in this Parliament and in this country right now in terms of making policy and crime bills when we do not have the facts in front of us.

The facts are that under the current law, no one can get a conditional sentence unless they have been sentenced to two years less a day. That means nobody who has been sentenced by a judge and who has been given a sentence of over two years qualifies for a conditional sentence. So the kinds of examples that are being brought up, of luring children and sexual offences, are not the kinds of offences that are being considered for conditional sentences because those are people who would get sentences of more than two years.

It is a good place for me to begin. Where New Democrats want to take the public debate in this country in terms of crime bills is back to a fact-based, intelligence-based, smart on crime perspective. Unfortunately, that is not something we have seen a lot of from this particular government.

New Democrats begin from the point of view that public safety is best served when offenders do not reoffend, when people who have breached the Criminal Code come back into our communities and do not commit another criminal offence. That is the best way to keep Canadians safe in this country.

Over 95% of the people who end up in prison in this country, whether provincial or federal, are coming back into our communities. Not only should we be approaching our carceral and our justice policy in this country based on facts and intelligence, but we should be basing it on self-interest. Canadians are only safe when those people come out of prison and do not reoffend.

Conversely, locking people in jail only to have them come out and commit more crimes does nothing to make our communities safer.

Bill C-16 seeks to curtail and restrict the number of conditional sentences, and the number of conditional sentence circumstances that judges are permitted to hand out in this country.

Let us look at the facts. Conditional sentences are proven to help with offender rehabilitation. Conditional sentences are an important crime prevention tool because they decrease the recidivism rate.

No policy maker who understands that point would stand in this House and say that we should be restricting the number of conditional sentences given by judges in this country if they truly believe that we want offenders to stop reoffending.

Most rehabilitation programs can be more effectively implemented when the offender is in the community rather than in custody.

Members on all sides of this House on the public safety committee have heard evidence time and time again, and we all agree, that up to 80% of offenders in our federal institutions suffer from a mental health or an addictions issue. Now if that is the case, a very important tool available to the judges of this country, when they determine that an offender does have a mental illness or an addiction, is to ensure that those offenders get access to treatment. Where are those treatment facilities located? Predominantly in the community.

What judges will often do, when they determine that the root cause of a person's brush with the law, an offence, is related to that individual's addiction or mental health issue, then often the most intelligent, smartest and safest thing to do is to give that individual a conditional sentence, where he or she is serving time in the community with the condition that he or she obtain treatment, the breach of which means going back to prison.

Or, we can do as the government suggests and get rid of that option and put that person in jail. Every single person who studied this issue in the public safety committee will say that there is a total lack of appropriate mental health services and an absolutely terribly long waiting list for anybody to get effective treatment for alcoholism or a drug addiction.

Also, we would be putting those people into prisons where there is almost a total absence of 12-step programs and a total absence of access to healthy, sober and clean peers who can actually assist the addicts and alcoholics with their recovery because we do not find those people in prison too often.

Statistics Canada said in a 2006 study that 11% of offenders who spent their sentences under supervision in the community committed a further offence within 12 months of the conclusion of their sentences. This compares with 30% of those who do jail time.

The fact is that there is a recidivism rate of one-third of the people given conditional sentences. That is right, the recidivism rate for those who get conditional sentences is three times less than those who go to jail. How, then, can a government credibly say that it is sound public policy for those people not to get conditional sentences?

Let us talk further about the facts. Let us look at the current process for conditional sentences. The process for giving conditional sentences in this country is already strict. This is the present situation for someone to be eligible for a conditional sentence. The offence committed must not be a serious personal injury offence involving the use or attempted use of violence or conduct endangering the life or safety of another person, and with a maximum sentence of 10 years or more.

Right off the bat, conditional sentences are not available to people who are involved in a serious personal injury offence or even the attempted use of violence. Any of these hysterical examples of violent people serving time in the community in front of their big screen TVs is simply false.

There must not be a terrorism or criminal organization offence with a maximum of 10 years or more. We are not talking about gang members or anybody involved in any kind of serious terrorist, criminal organization or gang offence.

It must not be an offence with a mandatory minimum sentence. They are excluded from conditional sentences as well.

As I have said before, a conditional sentence may only be awarded by a judge when the sentence that is considered appropriate in the case was two years less a day. People who lure children are not getting sentences of two years less a day. They are getting longer sentences than that.

I am going to pause and talk about cost for a moment. The government wants to get tough on crime on someone else's dime. When it restricts conditional sentences in this manner to sentences of two years less a day, it means that offenders are doing their time in provincial jails, not federal ones.

When the government gets tough on crime, it is dumping 100% of the cost of that policy on the provinces. Not only is that not right, I wonder how the provinces in this country feel. We are starting to tally up the cost of the government's tough on crime policies and we are finding out that we can measure that in the tens of billions of dollars.

Last and most important, a condition sentence today may only be granted when the judge is satisfied that serving the sentence in the community would not endanger the safety of the community. That is the current law. The question I asked earlier and would ask any member of the House is to give me an example where a person is serving a conditional sentence in the community and there is a problem. Nobody can point to it.

The government wants to change the law, but it has no facts. It does not surprise me because one of the members of the government famously went on television a few weeks ago and said she did not care if the statistics showed that crime was going down, she just feels it. It is about time that we restored some facts, intelligence, and logic in developing criminal policy in this country.

Once a conditional sentence is granted, what happens? Offenders must keep the peace and be of good behaviour, they must not miss court appearances, they must report to a supervisor, and they must remain within the jurisdiction of the court. Optional conditions include mandatory community service, prohibition on drug and alcohol consumption, prohibition on owning a weapon, attending treatment programs, and any other condition that the court considers desirable.

When we stop and think about that, what we have is a system where a judge can craft an appropriate sentence in an appropriate circumstance that will help offenders correct their behaviour. That is why we called it Correctional Services Canada, not the punishment services of Canada. The point is that anybody who truly cares about making our communities safe wants to ensure that we do everything we can to have offenders correct their behaviour.

How is that served by restricting the very tools that a judge needs to correct the actual behaviour?

I want to talk a bit about costs. Again, the current government has asked us to support legislation which will see a significant increase in the prison population. That is not debatable. When the government says it does not want people serving their time in the community, it wants them serving it in prison, one does do not have to be a logician to know that means that is going to swell the number of people in our prisons.

Last week, the government's own estimate for its two for one sentencing bill ballooned by 2000% overnight. The minister stood last Tuesday and said that the cost of that bill would be $90 million. When faced with the Parliamentary Budget Officer's study about to come out, he amended that figure the next day and said, sorry, that it would cost $2 billion. For one bill, the federal cost will be $2 billion. That is out of the minister's own mouth. And there are another 12 bills coming.

Now, the $2 billion of course is only the federal component of that bill. For the provinces, which are going see their prisons swell by ending the two for one provision, the cost is estimated at between $5 billion and $8 billion.

So, one bill alone, the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates, is going to cost Canadians $10 billion. This bill will do the same thing. It will add more people to our prisons.

I also want to talk about the absolute poor drafting of this bill. This bill would, and this government wants this, eliminate conditional sentence options for all offences in the Criminal Code, which have a maximum sentence of 14 years or life.

Do members know what offences would caught by that? There are some offences in there that are caught, which I think we can agree, that are not appropriate for conditional sentences. However, how about forging a testamentary instrument? Perjury? Fraud over $5,000? Being in possession of counterfeit money? These are the kinds of offences that the current government wants to say to a judge that absolutely do not qualify for conditional sentences.

Those are exactly the kinds of sentences that may be entirely appropriate. We may have people who have a drug addiction. We may have people who are desperate for money. And so, what do they do? They counterfeit money. Or they commit fraud over $5,000. That is not very much in today's economy. So, they commit fraud of $6,000 or $7,000. It may be totally appropriate to sentence these people to stay in the community, and attend drug and alcohol treatment as a means of getting at the root cause of the problem. This bill would do away with that.

I want to turn for a bit to victims and the idea of restitution. The federal victims ombudsperson, who was just let go by the current government just two weeks ago, has said that one of the most important things to victims is that they know that the person who perpetrated the crime against them is receiving rehabilitation. They have a direct interest in the rehabilitation of the offender. It is important to the victims' healing. They want to know, at the very least, after they have suffered, that the person who committed the act against them will not do it again, that nobody else has to suffer the pain, the profound pain that those victims have suffered.

So, when we have a conditional sentence, and let us say we have offenders who have a job in the community, and they receive a fine ordered against them or they are ordered to make restitution against the victim, do we not as Canadians want these people to comply with that? How are we served by saying, “No, we are going to take these people out of the community, they will lose their job, and we are going to put them in prison for 18 months. There. That's better.”? Of course it is not. It is ridiculous.

We want these offenders, in that case, to be working in the community and taking responsibility for their actions and making good to the victims. That often requires these people to continue working and maintaining their employment so that they have the means to pay their fine or to pay the victims the restitution that is owed to them, or to obtain the services and treatment that is required in order to make the victim satisfied that they will not commit an offence again.

We know that the cost of keeping an inmate in a federal jail is approximately $100,000 a year for a male offender and about $140,000 a year for a female offender. Keeping an inmate in provincial custody costs about $52,000 a year. The estimated cost of keeping someone in the community, under community supervision, and a conditional sentence is $2,398 per inmate per year.

Let us look at the tally so far. Nobody can point to any problems with conditional sentences now. They give judges a wide array of tools to fashion an appropriate sentence. Conditional sentences are better for victims. Conditional sentences are better for rehabilitation. Conditional sentences are better for restitution. They cost approximately 3% of what it costs to incarcerate someone federally. They cost about 5% of what it costs to incarcerate someone provincially.

When the government talks about victims, the only victims I see in its current suite of criminal bills are the Canadian taxpayers. That is who the real victims are in this, and here is the kicker. All of these bills that are coming forward for purely ideological reasons have been tried before in the United States. We are not guessing what the effects of these bills will be. We know what they will be. The fact is that not only will these bills cost tens of billions of dollars to Canadian taxpayers, but they will not even make our communities safer.

I am going to repeat that. After spending that money, after all the rhetoric, we cannot even say that crime rates will come down as a result of these policies. How do we know that? Because 30 of the United States during the 1980s and 1990s tried these very methods. We know what the crime rates are in those states. We know what happened when states built bigger prisons, cracked down on crime and locked up more people in harsher conditions for longer. We know. Canada does not have to make that mistake again.

It may be arguable that we could spend $20 billion or $30 billion over the next five years in this country and we could have a good debate if at least it arguably made crime rates go down, but we know they do not. It is bad public policy. It is bad economics. It is a bad criminal justice approach.

I want to say something about the previous minister, because some of these words are not my words; some of these words are the government's own members' words. The previous minister of public safety, about six months ago, said that the mentally ill should not be in our federal prisons, that it is not an appropriate place for mentally ill people to be. Where should they be then? They should be in the community getting access to the services they require to deal with their mental illness issues. How do we do that? We do that by giving conditional sentences. How does this bill square with what the previous minister of public safety said? It does not.

In the case of R. v. Proulx, the Supreme Court of Canada examined the issue of conditional sentences, and this is what the court found:

[W]hen the objectives of rehabilitation, reparation and promotion of a sense of responsibility may realistically be achieved...a conditional sentence will likely be the appropriate sanction....

The Supreme Court found that a conditional sentence can provide a significant amount of denunciation, particularly when onerous conditions are imposed. It found that a conditional sentence can also provide significant deterrence if sufficiently punitive conditions are imposed.

The highest court in our land, the best legal minds have examined conditional sentences and said that they do deter criminals. They do denounce criminal activity and they are most often the best sanctions to promote rehabilitation, reparation and a sense of responsibility.

I am going to conclude by talking about victims, because the New Democrats care about victims in this country. This is what victims want. They want us to denounce crime and deter criminals. They want to know that offenders are being rehabilitated. They want to know that when those people come back to the community, they will not be hurt by them again. That is why we need to pursue policies in this country that are smart, not tough, but smart. Conditional sentences achieve all of these goals.

I encourage every member of this House to look at the facts carefully, put ideology aside and fashion criminal policy in this country that is effective, intelligent and what Canadians really want.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-16 regarding the use of conditional sentencing in our judicial system.

First I want to point out that this is a bill that has changed names, has changed labels and has changed as the government changes its priorities, because the government places a higher priority on political tactics and advantage than on making the House work productively.

Prorogation has been used as a way for the Prime Minister to protect his job and avoid accountability, and as a result many bills that the government allegedly considered important have died on the order paper.

Bill C-16 is yet another example of a piece of legislation that has been delayed because of these kinds of cynical political ploys by the government.

The Conservative government always presents itself as having a monopoly on being concerned about crime and punishment in this country. On the contrary, here I stand, proud of my voting record, my speeches, my remarks in the House and my work within Newton—North Delta to keep citizens safe against the dangers of criminal activity.

Bill C-16 represents an example of how the Conservatives' inability to incorporate other points of view and expertise into their thinking makes their crime agenda full of smoke and mirrors.

Let me provide an example of what I mean. When conditional sentencing was first introduced in September of 1996, four criteria were required before a conditional sentence could be considered by the sentencing judge. One of them states that the sentencing judge has to determine that the offence should be subject to a term of imprisonment of less than two years before conditional sentencing can ever be considered. Thus when the bill calls for a ban on conditional sentencing for offences that prescribe a maximum sentence of 14 years to life, it is redundant because the option never existed to begin with.

Shortsightedness by the government with regard to the bill does not stop there however. The fact is that our prisons are overflowing. Prisons are now applying in overwhelming numbers to allow for double-bunking of prisoners. This is to prepare for the expected influx of prisoners over the next few years due to new legislation that will put more people in prisons for longer periods.

This flies in the face of the concept of rehabilitation. A 2001 prison service directive stated, “Single occupancy accommodation is the most desirable and correctionally appropriate method of housing offenders”.

Whereas budgets across all departments have been frozen until the year 2013, look down south to see that throwing people in prison is a blanket approach that is just not working.

A study released last year by the Pew Center on the States delivers a staggering statistic. It states that 7.3 million Americans, or 1 in every 31 adults, are in the nation's prison system. This is staggering and the burden of costs on taxpayers is astronomical.

This why we have seen at least 26 U.S. states reverse the trend of recent decades by cutting funding for corrections. California, as an example, has changed parole violation rules, and as a result, reduced the number of convicts returning to incarceration.

Conditional sentencing is a means to assign the proper sentence that fits a particular crime, making the distinction between those who are a danger to society and those who can be rehabilitated without costing taxpayers.

We, as a party, recognize that conditional sentences, when used as a part of plea bargains, have begun to cause concern within the Canadian public, which is uncomfortable with house arrest for a range of more serious offences. Conditional sentences need to be used appropriately. Therefore, while the intent behind the bill does not have merit, there are far too many unknowns before we can proceed on this legislation.

As an example, we do not have any kind of statistics or indepth data in front of us to determine how judges are implementing these sentences across the country. Conditional sentences were created with the intention of strengthening public safety, not weakening it, and we want to ensure that remains the case.

At this point, we have to be strategic on a number of levels in order to introduce the most logical, efficient and effective piece of legislation possible. We must ensure that the punishment fits the crime and that we are assess criminals with the lens of rehabilitation, rather than strictly in terms of incarceration. We must consider the cost to taxpayers and how this kind of legislation will burden the provinces, which have jurisdiction of the country's correctional facilities. Most important, we have to remove blind ideology from these debates in the name of the common good, rather than achieving political advantage.

For all those reasons, I am comfortable in voting in favour of sending the bill to committee stage so we, as parliamentarians, can get better information on the subject matter. When it comes to crime, punishment and the safety of our citizens, politics should never come above the facts.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak again about Bill C-16, which was known as Bill C-42 barely a few months ago. Two years ago it was Bill C-9.

There are always questions about the administration of justice. How can justice be better administered? How can we ensure that dangerous criminals stay behind bars as long as possible? We will not find positive answers to these questions in Bill C-16.

For those who are watching, I should explain what we are talking about. When an individual is brought before a court for having committed an offence, a break and enter for example, the judge has a myriad of options, ranging from a simple fine to jail time. Somewhere between those two options is parole and absolute discharge.

When it comes to detention, the Conservatives need to stop kidding us. I am sure that the translators, who are wonderful, will put this correctly in English: a conditional sentence is still a sentence. And that brings us to the final types of sentences a judge can impose—a fixed term sentence or a conditional sentence. Since the Conservatives are not familiar with this, I will explain it to them.

In 1996, a number of attorneys general and ministers of justice—including the current Minister of Justice, who was in Manitoba at the time—determined that this was expensive and that some people were jailed too long for nothing.

We must understand one extremely important thing, which I will repeat because the members opposite do not understand: a conditional sentence is a sentence of imprisonment. The Conservatives are saying that offenders serve their sentence at home with their feet up doing nothing. I will come back to that. They are bending the truth, if not totally lying to the public when they say such things. It is absolutely not true.

I practised law in 1985, 1990 and 1995, and from 1996 to 2003. I argued many cases and learned a lot about the system. For example, an individual is brought before a judge, who hands down a conditional sentence. It might be a good idea for certain Conservative MPs to read and consult section 718 of the Criminal Code, which is not being amended by this bill. This section is the basis of conditional sentencing. It reads:

The fundamental purpose of sentencing is to contribute, along with crime prevention initiatives, to respect for the law and the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society...

These words are important and our favourite Conservatives need to understand them:

...by imposing just sanctions that have one or more of the following objectives:

(a) to denounce unlawful conduct;

(b) to deter the offender...

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

We see that the third objective does not come first.

The fourth objective is, “to assist in rehabilitating offenders”. Those are not my words. That is what it says in section 718 of the Criminal Code. Do the Conservatives want to abolish section 718 while they are at it?

Then there is the fifth objective, “to provide reparations for harm done to victims or the community”. An intelligent judge—and God knows, judges are intelligent—who has read and understood section 718 knows how to apply it. Let us be clear about something once and for all. It is a shame my Conservative friends are not listening to what I am saying.

A conditional sentence can only apply to sentences of less than two years.

Less than two years. Is that clear enough?

The very title of the bill is reprehensible. It is absurd. It does not apply to hardened criminals or those who commit dozens of break and enters. It applies to sentences of less than two years given for offences such as petty theft, auto theft and joy-rides. These sentences are usually given to young people who do not understand. They are not hardened criminals. Judges want them to consider their actions. We are not talking about thieves who commit armed robbery. That kind of crime buys a minimum of four years in jail because a weapon was involved. Anyone who uses a weapon to commit theft gets a minimum of four years in jail. Is that clear enough?

This bill is worse than backward; it drags us back nearly 30 years. The Conservatives' mentality is dangerous because it would move us backward.

That is not the worst of it though. When the Minister of Justice told the committee that this was what attorneys general wanted, committee members asked him if every attorney general in Canada agreed with him. He had the nerve to say that the majority agreed. The problem is that he did not study the issue. The Minister of Justice just came up with this bill. Initially, it was Bill C-42. Now it is Bill C-16, but it is the same bill. Only its number changed. The Conservatives did not study the issue. God knows that I can say so because I was a member of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights when we studied Bill C-42. We asked them if they had done any studies suggesting that this kind of bill is useful and necessary and that attorneys general and crown prosecutors want it. The answer was no.

So why are they introducing this type of bill? For one reason and one reason only—to respond to the Conservatives supposed target population, which is asking them to be tough on crime. The problem is that when you are tough on crime, you also need to be smart on crime. You have to understand these sentences and these demands. When the bill is studied again, they will trot out the same numbers again. Numbers can speak for themselves. Hold on tight, you are in for quite a surprise.

I will give the real numbers for those who are listening. I did not make these up; they come from the Department of Justice. Actually, they are from the Department of Public Safety, which is practically the same thing. They work hand in hand. This needs to be heard. The average annual inmate cost—I am going to take my time, Mr. Speaker; you can add this to the time I have been allotted—for persons in provincial or territorial custody—the provinces, Quebec, Yukon, Ontario—including remand or other forms of temporary detention was, listen carefully now, $52,205 in 2005-2006. I will repeat that in case the Conservatives did not understand. It cost $52,205 per year to keep someone in a provincial prison. But the best is yet to come. The cost of monitoring an offender within the community, including conditional sentences, probation, supervision, fines and release was $2,398.05 in 2006-2007. I will translate that into plain language since they did not understand. I will repeat it.

It costs $52,205 per year to keep someone in prison, while a conditional sentence costs $2,398.05 per year. The government's figures show that the recidivism rates for individuals who receive conditional sentences have significantly decreased. I am repeating that because they do not understand. The Bloc is not the one saying this.

However, if we were to adopt this bill as is tomorrow morning, we would have 13,000 to 15,000 more prisoners in our provincial detention facilities. That is many hundreds. I hope they know how to count on the other side. Let us take the lower number, 13,000, and multiply it by $52,000. I hope they know how to count. That money could be invested in rehabilitation programs and we could offer appropriate services to the people who need them.

The worst is that regions like Yukon and the Northwest Territories will pay the price because, unfortunately, those regions have a lot of crimes committed by aboriginals. There is a high rate of imprisonment among aboriginals.

In 1996, the government was smart. This government was not in power in 1996. The government implemented conditional sentences because it had thought it through and had conducted studies. It said this was about actual prison sentences. The offender must be found guilty of an offence not punishable by a minimum sentence.

It is clear that if someone commits murder, we will not waste our time. That is what the Conservatives do not understand. Conditional sentencing applies only to sentences of less than two years for which there is no mandatory minimum term of imprisonment. Possession of a firearm for dangerous purposes carries a minimum sentence of three years. That is not an eligible offence and conditional sentencing would not apply. Let us take, for example, multiple charges of impaired driving. If the court imposes a sentence of more than two years, this does not apply. It applies only to people who are imprisoned for less than two years.

Whether our Conservative friends like it or not, when we see the real figures, we can see that judges have taken their role so seriously that, since 2000, they have tightened up monitoring and imposed stricter conditions for an individual to be eligible for conditional sentencing.

When conditional sentences were first being developed, around 1996 or 1997, people were very concerned about whether an individual would respect all the conditions that were set. It was out of respect for the victims—the Conservatives like it when we tell them these things—that the criteria to qualify for a conditional sentence were tightened to include custody. It is a form of imprisonment. It might be at home or at a detention centre or reception centre. The individual's schedule is monitored. The monitoring system is very important in such cases. The individual is regularly and continuously monitored.

To demonstrate this, for days on end, many of my clients were woken up at 3 a.m. by the monitoring service that called to ensure they were at home in bed. Once that was confirmed, the service wished them a good day and hung up.

They are prohibited from having anything other than a land line phone. When cell phones came on the scene, someone could gallivant all over the place and answer as though he was at home. Now conditional sentences prohibit cell phones, because the individual must be reachable at home. So what happens when someone breaches one of the conditions of his conditional sentence? This is very important.

What the Conservatives fail to grasp is that the person is sentenced, for example, to an 18-month conditional sentence, with certain conditions that are set, approved and signed by the court. The individual who breaches the conditions is arrested and serves the rest of the sentence without being eligible for parole. What does that mean? I will explain it for my Conservative friends. Take the example of an individual who is arrested and is given an 18-month conditional sentence. If he does not respect the conditions on the first week-end, he is arrested and jailed, and has to serve the rest of his sentence without possibility of parole. I can assure you, as I have represented a number of these clients, that the court will be very reluctant and hard pressed to release them under other conditions.

I would like to end by telling my Conservative colleagues that eliminating conditional sentences for 39 offences is not the way to reduce crime. This propaganda must stop. This means one thing and we must realize it. If individuals, if the Conservatives, if the Minister of Justice wish to impose jail sentences rather than conditional sentences, it is because they do not trust the judges. That is extremely dangerous. In fact, we need to realize something: if we are unhappy with a judge's sentence, we can appeal. That is what the appeal courts are there for. The government should stop beating around the bush and just say that they do not trust them. We believe that we must trust our courts and, above all, that we must keep conditional sentencing, which is a good measure, one that works well and reduces crime.

The House resumed from May 3 consideration of the motion that Bill C-16, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to speak to Bill C-16.

First, I was proud to be part of the justice committee when we limited Bill C-9. We took out minor offences, where people should not always be incarcerated because it would make society less safe. There were some ridiculous provisions in that bill. The opposition made it far more sensible.

As the members have heard all afternoon, I have asked simple questions about the bill. A bill is usually brought in when there is a big outrage and a problem. I have asked every member of the government to give me examples of how it is not working and why we need to make this change. There was no answer from the parliamentary secretary, or the minister or any member who has spoken,

A member from the Bloc has already said that there are hundreds and thousands of examples of conditional sentencing having worked for some of the minor offences in the bill. No one is arguing that in some of the serious offences it should not be allowed. However, for some of the minor offences, would it be possible to do that? There is no answer and no example.

The second question I have asked is if conditional sentences have been proven by the stats to be far more successful in reducing recidivism, when people get out, they do not commit other crimes, when it makes victims and other Canadians much safer, why would we change that? Why would we limit it in the less serious examples?

A member mentioned earlier that these conditional sentences were not done just off the cuff. Average research shows 11 to 13 reasons for the case from a judge, a judge who has a lifetime of experience in the criminal justice system, who understands the situation, who understands what will work and what will make Canadians safer. Only then do they oppose those sentences.

Why can the Conservatives not come up with examples? Perhaps it is because judges who have this lifetime experience do not give out conditional sentences. In a lot of cases, they make wise decisions and do not give them in serious situations, which would be covered in this bill. Just because the bill would prohibit them from giving out conditional sentences does not mean that they give them out now.

For a lot of the serious crimes, judges would never give out conditional sentences. This is one of the reasons why people are having such a hard time coming up with as many examples as there are for success stories.

I would encourage people to attend the restorative justice organization of the city of Ottawa to hear the success stories, or to read Professor Doob's book. I would challenge any Conservative member who does not believe in conditional sentencing to do that and then come back and say that he or she does not believe in them. There have been huge benefits to society, huge protection of Canadians and victims, in some of the cases where conditional sentences have been applied.

The members have brought forward a lack of understanding. In some of the Conservative speeches, it is very true. There is a lack of understanding of how it works. One Conservative member suggested that the people on conditional sentences just watched TV. In jail they get to watch a lot of TV as well. That is not all that is involved in a conditional sentence. This is not the only reason it turns out to be successful.

There are a number of other conditions of rehabilitation, conditions that cannot be provided on probation, that help. They could be tougher on the criminal and certainly would give him or her a much better chance of not recommitting an offence. It makes society much safer for the victims so they are not re-victimized. It makes it much safer for Canadians if criminals do not reoffend.

The vast majority of offenders get out. When they get out, we need a way to ensure they are unlikely to reoffend, which will keep all of us safe. They need the investment in rehabilitation.

When I go into the prisons, prisoners say that they are not getting the anger management they need. They are not getting the drug rehabilitation programs they need. They are not given the re-education they need to get out and to be successful in society, which would keep everyone much safer.

As some members alluded to at the beginning of this debate, we need to invest in the root causes of crime and the prevention of crime. Some of the minor crimes, as people have mentioned, are committed under bad circumstances or the individual came from a bad family situation. The person should not be put in jail as a result. Learning the background and finding out the cause of those crimes could stop the situation before it came to any kind of sentence.

The government could continue to invest in the aboriginal justice strategy. To the government's credit, it has extended the funding for a couple of years, but we wanted it to be made permanent. Under that system people working in restorative justice counsel individuals and they have a tremendous success rate in reducing recidivism and, in a number of cases, have eliminated it. It is almost like not approving funding for judges every two years. This strategy should be made permanent. The government could certainly continue investing in it.

I want to talk a bit about the policy process or the way the government comes up with the laws that I have seen when I was on the justice committee. Bill C-9 was just one of them.

When we had hearings in Toronto we were told by the public that the system had been turned upside down. The normal policy development process involves experts. In this case it involved experts from the justice department, people who have spent a good part of their lives finding out how to make Canadians safer by bringing in effective laws.

In this particular case, we were told that the direction came from the top. It avoided all the evidence and the science. It was not evidence-based legislation. The experts told us what would actually reduce crime and make people safer. However, for whatever reason, the government brought in totally ineffective laws that would endanger Canadians even more. Witness after witness, the experts at committee, made the same case. That is why some of these laws, like Bill C-9, were overturned, eliminated or put into a more reasonable and rational shape.

We would like this bill to go to committee in order to limit the situation to those cases where a conditional sentence would actually make sense. We have heard some examples today of some cases that should be in the bill and some that should not but that type of debate will be had at committee.

Hopefully at committee the government members, who will have had another couple of years of experience, will now listen more carefully to the experts, listen to what is working and what is not and we can come to a compromise and come up with a bill that will make Canadians safer by using the effective restorative justice processes, new processes compared to the thousands of years of failure by incarceration resulting in a number of people becoming worse off after jail and making society less safe.

One of the points made by the opposition, which the experts have proven to be another fallacy, is that this change would act as a deterrent. This is not what most criminals are thinking about. Making a change like this would not be a deterrent. Evidence has proven that deterrence is the perception of getting caught. If we want to have deterrents for these crimes then we would increase our police force, increase monitoring and increase the understanding that criminals will get caught. It is not by changing sentences in the ways being suggested in this legislation.

Judges need to make the right decisions but by limiting their options there will be more probation and suspended sentences, which actually will make society a more dangerous place. In those circumstances, one cannot add the same conditions. As I said earlier, conditional sentences have a number of conditions that can be put on offenders to ensure they do not reoffend, that they are not just sitting in cells learning more crime but actually being rehabilitated. That would not occur in some cases where judges' options are limited. They would not be able to do that.

People are unaware, which is partly the problem for all of us. There are some success stories and stories of difficult conditions imposed in conditional sentences. There are success stories of restorative justice here in Ottawa. From the society in Ottawa all the way to my riding, the farthest riding in the country, there are great success stories in restorative justice. We need to ensure that when we create a bill like this, we do not throw out the baby with the bathwater, that we do not throw out the good success stories in an attempt to limit certain situations, which, as I said, we all agree need to be limited as to when certain types of sentences can be provided.

If we want judges to have the best chance of making society safer, they need as many tools available to them as possible. They are the ones who listen to the evidence, understand the situations people come from, understand the circumstances of the crime and understand what caused it. They are the ones who understand, with a lifetime of experience in the criminal justice system, what would be most successful when dealing with a particular person, a particular offence and to make it safer for all of us. To do that, they need the tools. Why would we as parliamentarians want to limit the number of tools available to them to make the wisest decisions? In some cases, they will use this tool and another tool. Why would we want to limit the tools so there are less successful outcomes in the criminal justice system?

[Rick Casson, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, conditional sentences became a sentencing option over 13 years ago with the proclamation in September 1996 of Bill C-41, sentencing reform, chapter 22 of the Statutes of Canada, 1995. The original intention of conditional sentences was to promote the protection of the public by seeking to separate the most serious offenders from the community while less serious offenders could remain among other members of society with the effective community-based alternatives while adhering to appropriate conditions.

Conditional sentences were to provide an intermediate sentencing option between probation and incarceration to permit less serious offenders to remain in the community under strict conditions if their sentence was less than two years, the court was satisfied that allowing the offender to serve the sentence of imprisonment in the community would not endanger the safety of the community, and their offence was not punishable by a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment.

An amendment was made in 1997 to add a requirement that the court be satisfied that sentencing the offender to a conditional sentence of imprisonment would be consistent with the fundamental purpose and principles of sentencing set out in section 718 to 718.2 of the Criminal Code.

In 2000, the Supreme Court of Canada held in R. v. Proulx that a sentencing court must first find that a sentence of imprisonment of less than two years is appropriate before considering whether the sentence can be served in the community under conditional sentence order. In other words, a court must be of the opinion that a probation order and/or fine would not adequately address the seriousness of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender.

Second, a penitentiary sentence, a term of imprisonment of more than two years, would not be necessary to do so and a sentence of less than two years would be appropriate. Once this decision is made a court would then determine whether the sentence of imprisonment of less than two years may be served in the community, bearing in mind the other prerequisites I referred to earlier, community safety for one.

Over the years conditional sentencing decisions that appeared on their face to be questionable have contributed to a loss of public confidence in this sanction and therefore in the administration of justice.

A number of observers, including some provincial and territorial counterparts, became increasingly concerned with the wide array of offences that received conditional sentences. By the time our government took office in 2006, it had become clear to us that further limits to the availability of conditional sentences were needed. Our government responded to these concerns when it tabled Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (conditional sentence of imprisonment), on May 4, 2006. Bill C-9 was referred to the justice committee just one month later on June 6, 2006.

Bill C-9, in its original form, proposed to eliminate conditional sentences for offences prosecuted by indictment and punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years or more. It was and still is the opinion of this government that offences prosecuted by indictment and punishable by a maximum sentence of imprisonment of 10 years, 14 years, or life are serious offences that should not result in a conditional sentence order. This is so even if the court ultimately finds that a sentence of less than two years is proportionate to the circumstances of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender.

Bill C-9 as originally drafted would have caught serious crimes such as weapons offences, offences committed against children and serious property crimes. However, opposition members thought that the scope of Bill C-9 went too far in limiting conditional sentences and amended it to only capture terrorism offences, organized crime offences and serious personal injury offences as defined in section 752 of the Criminal Code that are punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years or more and prosecuted by indictment.

This was similar to the approach taken in Bill C-70 which the previous government had tabled in the fall of 2005, but which died on the order paper with the call of the general election later that year. The amendments to the bill created some strange results. First, the opposition amendments to Bill C-9 created a situation where offences punishable by a maximum of 14 years' imprisonment or life are not all considered to be serious crimes. I would like to remind members that these are the highest maximum available in the code.

Second, as a result of amendments to Bill C-9, offences contained in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act are not excluded from eligibility for a conditional sentence unless they were committed as part of a criminal organization. Consequently, the production, importation and trafficking in a schedule I drug such as heroin would not be caught and would be eligible for a conditional sentence of imprisonment. However, as members of the House know, our government has proposed mandatory minimum penalties for serious drug offences. I would expect that when the legislation is enacted, as I hope will soon be the case, these offences would be ineligible for a conditional sentence.

Until the coming into force of Bill C-9 on December 1, 2007, sentencing courts had only to interpret serious personal injury offences for the purpose of determining whether the threshold for a dangerous or long-term offender application had been met, because that term only applied to the dangerous and long-term offender provisions. Since Bill C-9 came into force, courts have wrestled with the interpretation of serious personal injury offences in the context of conditional sentences.

The Alberta Court of Appeal in Ponticorvo, 2009, reviewed its decisions in Neves, 1999, where is considered the definition of serious personal injury offence in the context of dangerous offender provisions. In that context, the court concluded that section 752 required that the offence considered be objectively serious. However, in the context of conditional sentencing, that court of appeal found that the use or attempted use of violence sufficed and did not require any overlay of objective seriousness. In other words, it ruled that it should be easier for the Crown to establish that an offence is a serious personal injury offence in the context of a conditional sentence than it is in the context of a dangerous offender.

While that is an appropriate interpretation, there have been some cases that do not follow the decision of the Alberta Court of Appeal and continue to apply the guidelines developed in the context of dangerous offenders in determining whether an offence is a serious personal injury offence.

Another concern with the definition of serious personal injury offence is that serious property crime, such as fraud, could still be eligible for a conditional sentence. We are well aware of recent examples of the devastating impact of fraudulent conduct. Victims who have lost their life savings have called for strengthened sentences for those types of crimes. It is hard to disagree with their concerns, especially considering the fact that fraud, which is punishable by a maximum sentence of 14 years, would still be eligible for a conditional sentence, despite reforms enacted by Bill C-9. It is clear to me, and I suggest to many Canadians, that greater clarity and consistency is needed to eliminate the availability of conditional sentences for serious violent and serious property offences.

For these reasons, Bill C-16 proposes to remove the reference to serious personal injury offences in 742.1, to make all offences punishable by 14 years or life ineligible for a conditional sentence. This would make the offence of fraud and many other crimes ineligible for conditional sentences.

Bill C-16 would also clearly make offences prosecuted by indictment and punishable by 10 years that result in bodily harm, involve the import, export, trafficking or production of drugs or involve the use of weapons ineligible for conditional sentence.

I hope all members in the House will support the bill. It is important that this new bill comes forward to control the use of conditional sentencing.

[Rick Casson, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I speak today in support of Bill C-16, ending house arrest for property and other serious crimes by serious and violent offenders. This bill is designed primarily to restore confidence in the criminal justice system by proposing additional restrictions to the use of conditional sentences of imprisonment.

The House is quite familiar with this issue--

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak in support of Bill C-16. This bill would end house arrest for property and other serious crimes by serious and violent offenders.

It is good to hear that the NDP is going to vote in favour of this to move it to committee. I am sure our committee, chaired by the member for Abbotsford, will do good work on this bill.

Bill C-16 addresses the issue of conditional sentences or house arrest as it is often described. The issue is not a new one and has been considered by this chamber in recent years. While that debate is relatively fresh in our minds, there does not seem to be an appreciation for the operation and principles of sentencing in criminal cases in Canada, and within that, the proper role for any sentencing option, including conditional sentences. This is what I will use my time to address.

It has become clear to me over the years here, as illustrated by the nature of the debate over various aspects of this government's tackling crime agenda, that the sentencing regime, while widely criticized, is understood by relatively few people.

Criticisms based upon misperceptions or misunderstandings contribute little to a serious discussion about a serious issue. In fairness, I recognize that part of this has to do with the sheer complexity of modern criminal law, which must deal with everything from single assault through complex commercial crime, all the way to terrorism and to cybercrime that uses the most advanced technologies.

Part of it has also to do with the nature of the Criminal Code sentencing regime itself, which contains a lengthy list of purposes, objectives, and principles that have often been supplemented by complex legal rulings from different levels of courts all across this country.

It is not hard to see why those who are not formally trained in law, as I am not, may find it challenging to understand immediately the specifics of particular reform proposals, such as those before the House today.

Yet, our role as lawmakers is to work through these complexities and through these challenges to ensure that we understand the current shortcomings of the law and how the proposed reforms we are discussing would effectively address those shortcomings within the overall sentencing regime.

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Lethbridge.

To really understand the current shortcomings of the conditional sentencing regime and the central problem that Bill C-16 intends to rectify, we must understand the original rationale for the creation of conditional sentences.

Shortly stated, conditional sentence is a sentence of less than two years that a judge allows offenders to serve in the community subject to a number of conditions whose breach could send them directly to prison.

I can readily acknowledge that for the average Canadian the notion of a conditional sentence seems somewhat confusing and even contradictory at times.

While the conditional sentence is a form of punishment, it is not easily categorized because it straddles the line between prison, probation, and even in some cases has the markings of the hallmarks of parole.

For instance, it is not actual jail time because if the offenders satisfy all the conditions that are imposed upon them, they will never spend a single day in prison despite the nature of the offence for which those individuals were convicted. Nor is it probation, for a probation order is typically made in the case of a suspended sentence and is enforced quite differently with greater difficulty than a conditional sentence.

As the name implies, a conditional sentence takes the form of a sentence. By the same token, a conditional sentence is not parole since the offender is not released after having served an appropriate period of time in a prison or a penitentiary under the authority of our Canadian correctional system. It is the sentencing court, not a Parole Board, that exercises the discretion to order a conditional sentence in lieu of jail time.

In hindsight, it is clear from the statements of the original sponsoring minister back in 1994, as well as from subsequent court judgments, such as the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in R. v. Proulx, that the conditional sentence was conceived as an alternative to imprisonment and as one way to reduce Canada's rate of incarceration. We heard the NDP bring that forward here this afternoon.

While this is a laudable objective, it cannot be allowed to detract from the protection of society as the guiding principle or to diminish the right of that society to denounce particularly heinous conduct and to punish those responsible for that conduct.

This brings me to the central issue that I want to raise with regard to conditional sentences. Prior to this government's most recent conditional sentencing amendments in 2006, there were four criteria for a conditional sentence order. First, the sentence had to be less than two years. Second, the person had to show that he or she was not deemed to be a danger to society or to the community. Third, there was no mandatory minimum term of imprisonment. Fourth, there had to be consistency with the fundamental purpose and principles of sentencing.

The discretion that was granted to judges by these criteria was quite wide. In fact, from the outset, critics have reasonably argued that the discretion accorded by Parliament in the early years of the conditional sentence regime itself was overly broad. For example, with regard to the first and second criteria, even now most sentences in Canada are less than two years and, among the large number of Criminal Code offences, there are still relatively few that call for mandatory minimums.

By the same token, the third criteria originally asked a sentencing judge to assess the danger of an offender to his or her community, but without offering any supporting criteria against which to make an assessment. The fourth criteria provided insufficient direction for the proper use of a conditional sentence. The purpose and principles of sentencing cover a lot of philosophical ground in that they require sentencing judges to balance denunciation, deterrence and separating an offender from society by methods of rehabilitation, restitution and the development of a sense of social responsibility by the offender. That responsibility was placed on the judiciary.

Criteria one and two illustrate what many believe was so radically wrong with the conditional sentence regime as originally enacted: the focus on the length of the sentence rather than on the nature of the offence, the character and criminal record of the offender and not so much the consequences for the victim of that criminal's action.

It was particularly notorious that the conditional sentencing regime as originally developed did not see fit to explicitly exclude particularly odious crimes such as child sex offences. In such cases, the repugnant nature of the offence, the character of the offender and the consequences for the victim should have been paramount considerations and should have automatically made such offences ineligible for conditional sentences.

It should not be surprising, therefore, that the courts had difficulty grappling with conditional sentences. This was especially so after the Supreme Court in R. v. Proulx appeared to endorse the notion that no offences were presumptively excluded from the conditional sentence regime. In fact, Proulx offered very little guidance to sentencing judges, nor did the Supreme Court itself appear to have a consistent approach to conditional sentences. Four conditional sentencing cases decided by the Supreme Court at the same time as Proulx highlighted the apparent lack of judicial consensus on these issues.

I see that my time for debate is up. I am very pleased that the government has moved forward with this. We have done this before in Bill C-9. We have done it at other times in the House. We have debated it recently in past Parliaments. I look forward to this bill being passed quickly, moved to the committee, studied, and brought back to the House. This is going to make Canada safer and a better place for all.

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

Mr. Speaker, with regard to Bill C-16, it is important to set it in its context.

I will try to demolish the myth of the Conservatives being concerned about crime and victims in our country. I wish the person who keeps talking about the revolving door had some knowledge of it. He obviously is fully ignorant of it. The condition that will come from the bill, if it ever gets through the House and into law, will encourage repeat recidivism at a much higher rate than it if does not get through.

Let us go back to the myth. Conservatives stand in the House repeatedly, and in public even much more often, and claim to be tough on crime, but this bill is the classic example of them being not smart on crime at all, but also being highly hypocritical when they take that.

It is one of a series of bills that has not received any attention from the House and not passed through to final debate because of decisions made by the government, whether it called the election in a complete contrary theme to the legislation the Conservatives themselves had passed and which they again had promulgated as a major reform then promptly ignored and breached, but any number of crime bills some of which were in areas that did not need to be dealt with. They just get sloughed off because they call an election or they prorogue the House and we have to start all over again.

We have seen that repeatedly, literally in the range of 10 to 20 bills that are constantly being shoved backwards because the government is much more interested in its political survival than it is in dealing with those issues in our society around crime.

I will make a second point before I go specifically to Bill C-16 because Bill C-16 raises this issue. I have been saying repeatedly in the House, at every opportunity I get, that we badly need a systematic, holistic review of our Criminal Code.

We see it in the sections, and I hope, if I have enough time today, I will be able to point some of these out before I finish my speech on Bill C-16. However, we have huge contradictions in the Criminal Code, repeated contradictions, both with regard to the nature of the conduct we are trying to make a crime and with regard to sentencing.

We will see situations where I think the average Canadian would say that obviously this is the range of penalty and punishment that this crime should elicit. Then they will take another section that has more extensive penalties and punishment and the crime itself is of much less serious consequence in the eyes of the average Canadian. That is repeated over and over again. There is huge duplication in the Criminal Code.

We have been, and the government is particularly guilty of this, piecemealing amendments to the code way too long.

It is interesting, if we look at the experience in the United States and to a lesser degree in England, their approaches have been much more systematic in major reform. There are some ideas we could learn from those. I will not go on with my diatribe on that, but we badly need to do something about the Criminal Code.

Let me finish with this in this regard. One of the things where we could have done this was with the Law Commission, which was promptly done away with in the first term of the government. It was the ideal body in the country that could have initiated this. In fact, it was beginning to do some work on what was a crime, what should be a crime. It was beginning to do research on it when all of its funds were cut by the government. I think that happened in the 2007-08 budget.

Had that not happened, we might have finally seen some meaningful movement on getting that major reform to the code, which would make the job of our police officers, our prosecutors and our judiciary a lot easier than it is now.

Going to Bill C-16, to set this in context, roughly 14 years ago, September 1996, we introduced into the code the concept of conditional sentences. What conditional sentences were to do was part of the overall reform we were doing through that period of time, trying to make our criminal justice system not only more fair but more efficient, more effective. Overall we have seen that we have made some significant progress in that regard by reducing the rate of crime, particularly violent crime, in this country.

I fight oftentimes on the justice committee, as I did on the public safety committee when I was there, with my Conservative colleagues about not seeing the numbers right or numbers being manipulated, which I find frankly quite insulting to Statistics Canada, specifically Juristat that does an excellent job with the statistics. But the bottom line when we get into that debate is we cannot argue about the murder rate. In 99% of the cases there is a body or witnesses to say this person was murdered. We cannot argue about that, and the reality is that the murder rate in absolute numbers, not just in percentages but in absolute numbers, has been dropping for the last 20 to 25 years. We peaked in Canada at about 900 murders in one year. We are now down, averaging over the last few years in the range of 610 to 650. So there has been that kind of drop in murders in this country.

Over that 25 year period, our population would have gone up by 10%, 12% or 15%, so the murder rate has dropped quite dramatically. Part of that is attributable to the reforms we have carried out through this period of time, and the conditional sentences were one of those reforms. We introduced them. The concept behind them is, and this has been found all the way up to Supreme Court decisions, that they are a form of incarceration. This always gets ballyhooed by some of the pundits but mostly by the Conservative Party, but they are in fact a form of incarceration. Prisoners are in their own residences not in institutions, but under very strict conditions, and I think this is the point again that the Conservatives regularly forget, much stricter conditions than we can do under either probation or even under parole, when prisoners are coming out of a federal institution.

The other point one has to make about a conditional sentence is that it cannot be used, no matter what the charge is and what the facts are, unless the judicial officer makes the determination that the appropriate sentence would be less than two years. That is the way it has always worked since 1996, in spite of some of the amendments we made a few years ago. That is still the basic condition. Judicial officers at whatever level of court they are sitting have to hear all the facts of the crime, and the facts around sentencing, and then make a determination that if they are going to send the person to custody, to incarceration, they are going to send him or her to a provincial institution because the determination, after hearing all the facts, is that the person should be incarcerated for less than two years. No matter how severe the offence is, on its surface and after looking at all the facts, judicial officers are determining a sentence of less than two years.

Everybody in the House knows that if people are going to be sentenced to less than two years, they are going to be sentenced to a provincial institution. So the incarceration rate we are talking about, if the bill were to go through, is all going to be about individuals who would be going into provincial institutions. Those people would no longer be eligible for conditional sentence; the judge would determine they are going to be incarcerated. As is so typical of the government, no arrangements are being made with the provincial governments to pay for all those additional spaces.

I want to highlight this by pointing out that the first crime bill the Conservatives brought into the House in 2006, after they were elected, was Bill C-9 and it dealt with this issue. At that time they introduced about 40 sections of the Criminal Code that would no longer be eligible for conditional sentences.

I thought the height of hypocrisy was when they did their public relations work on this and they talked about these being serious violent crimes that were no longer going to be eligible. I have to say, and I say this with some pride on the part of myself, my party and the opposition parties, that there were four or five, maybe six, sections of the code that in fact did deal with serious violent crimes. Some were sexual assaults; some were robbery with violence; they were those types of crimes.

The opposition parties said that the government was right, that people who commit these crimes and are convicted of these crimes, even when the judge is saying they should not go to jail for more than two years, should not be eligible for conditional sentences. We agreed to that.

However approximately another 35 sections had nothing to do with violent crime. The one I always use as an example of these sections that we were not going to be able to consider conditional sentencing for was falsifying a testamentary document such as a will or trust document. That was going to be excluded from consideration of the use of conditional sentence. And we could go through the list. There were some forgery sections that are clearly nothing to do with a violent crime. At the end of the day, the opposition parties stripped that bill of those 35-odd sections, dealt with the serious ones and passed it, and it is now law.

There is one other point we have to make about Bill C-9, because to some degree, not as severely, it is going to be repeated if Bill C-16 goes through. Early on in the committee process of Bill C-9, I asked the Department of Justice to tell me and the committee how many more people were going to go into custody. At the time, and it was not much smaller then, there were about 12,000 people in custody. If Bill C-9 had gone through as originally proposed by the government, there would have been an additional 5,000 people incarcerated in our provincial institutions every year.

The point I want to make, and we are seeing this again when we see the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Public Safety come before their respective committees, is that they do not know, and if they do know, they are obfuscating what is in fact the reality. At that period of time, both those ministers were in front of the justice committee and neither one of them knew, until we dug that information out of the Department of Justice, how many people were going to be incarcerated. But they were quite prepared to go ahead and pass that kind of legislation for charges that clearly fit exactly into the rationale of why we started with conditional sentences. They were going to exclude them from use and had no idea of how many people were going to go into custody.

We are seeing the same thing repeated this time. Maybe not with the report that is going to be coming out this week from the Parliamentary Budget Office on how much it is going to cost for one of the other bills that has gone through this House and is now law, but I am still expecting the Minister of Justice to show up at the justice committee, assuming this gets there, and say to us, “Do not worry. Be happy. There is enough room in our custodial settings to take care of all the additional people who are going to end up there.”

If he says that, he is going to be saying it from a complete base of ignorance, because we know, and we heard it from my colleague from the Bloc, that in all of the provincial institutions, without exception, right across all 10 provinces and all 3 territories, their facilities are bulging.

We have an international responsibility. We have signed protocols at the international level to not double-bunk. We have signed those. That is a treaty that this country has committed itself to, and there is not one province in the country that is abiding by it.

We are double-bunking and in a lot of cases triple-bunking, and we are beginning to do it more and more in the federal institutions. Therefore, we are breaching the international commitments we made to other countries.

I want to make one more point about the use of this device, again referring to my colleague who raised the revolving door issue. It is about recidivism. The statistics show and have shown for at least the last 10 years that if someone is put under control under conditional sentencing, within the first year, since that is the comparison we are doing, there is an 11% rate of recidivism where another crime is committed. Oftentimes, I have to say, the vast majority of that 11% is not actually a new crime but a breach of the conditions the person is under. The other 89% live up to the conditions. They are law abiding and do not commit any other crimes.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise and speak to Bill C-16, which, but for prorogation, might be Bill C-42 and, but for incessant elections, might be Bill C-70. In any event, this is a proposed law that speaks to a tool the judiciary has in its toolbox called conditional sentencing.

I am struck by the previous speaker and the tone in the House generally when it comes to characterizing bills by names that presumably everyone can understand what they mean. The Conservative government attempts to cut, with a very large swath, colour with a large brush, a whole area of law with a very simply phrase.

For people tuning in to the debate about Bill C-16, they would, because of the way the government labels bills, think this is a debate about ending house arrest for property and other serious crimes by serious and violent offenders. That would be the title of the book or the movie that people would be watching if they were tuning in to this debate.

When we actually peel away the layers of the onion, we realize that we are talking about an enactment of Parliament that was substantially amended in 1995, with some minor amendments in the last Parliament, which is imposing conditional sentence. It does not say imposing house arrest with a big screen TV and extreme television. That is not to be found in the code.

The Criminal Code is a large volume that regulates the laws punishing criminals for proven facts that lead to a sentence or conviction. The Criminal Code does that. It is divided up into many sections, sections involving offences against the state, invasions of privacy, offences against the person, offences against property. Administrative aspects are in there as well. There are some 800 sections in the code and one of those sections deals with imposing a conditional sentence.

Let us be clear. If someone who commits a crime is sentenced to two years less a day, that individual is eligible, in some cases, for conditional sentence. Anybody who is found guilty of an offence that gets a sentence of more than two years is not, will not be, has never been, eligible for conditional sentencing.

Maybe some the people listening today are parents. They realize that if they take away their teenage daughter's cellphone, that is pretty serious punishment. If they banish her to her room for a week, that is really serious punishment. However, if they tell her she has to eat her vegetables, that is not that serious in the realm of possibilities of sentencing.

Conditional sentencing is available to judges. It provides them with the opportunity to say that there is some possible merit in the person. The individual has done a bad thing, but maybe he or she could be rehabilitated, maybe we could get to the root cause of why he or she is acting this way.

This opens up the larger debate of what are we doing as a Parliament about crime prevention.

We have been doing very little lately because we are spending our time watching our own big screen TVs and the Minister of Justice saying that this bill would end house arrest for property and other serious offences, when in fact it is trying to curb a tool being used by judges and prosecutors every day.

Let us be clear again. A defence attorney defends a person accused of something. That is not within the realm of this debate here. We are making law that would be used by police officers and prosecutors. Police charge a person with an offence. Prosecutors will look at a whole range of proof possibilities. They will also look at the range of possible sentencing. The prosecutors, the police and eventually the judge will look at the sentence in a holistic fashion and say that there are a number of options available, such as the individual is just a bad person and he or she should be locked away. Unfortunately the Conservative government thinks everybody falls into that category, and there are a number who do.

However, there are also people who, because of addictions to substances or horrendous nurturing child development socio-economic background problems, are driven to crime. A number of people, because of mental illness, which still has not been addressed in our communities, may turn to a life of crime and perhaps, in the first few incidences, are committing crimes that a judge, a prosecutor or a police force official would say that the person could benefit from a conditional sentence. Conditional sentences are often recommended by prosecutors.

This painting of the picture by the Conservatives that all policemen and all prosecutors want the most harsh sentence and want to put the person away is not always the case.

This is why we have debate in the House and why we have committees where we will hear from the people actually doing the work, the prosecutors, the policemen and, hopefully, the judges. They will tell us that this is a tool that exists among all the other tools which include incarceration. If someone commits an offence they can be charged with an offence and incarcerated. If it is a really serious offence, the offender will get a really long jail sentence.

My friend from Edmonton—St. Albert does not want to talk about cases but let us cut it up as to the type of offences that might occur and the sentences that would be incurred.

If someone commits a really serious sexual assault involving bodily harm and it is his fourth offence, he will not get six months or a year. He will get a serious sentence, not a conditional sentence. It is an academic argument. It is a wrong argument to say that we are giving house arrest to the big screen TV watching criminals for the very serious offences on multiple occasions. The evidence will be before us in committee. Contrary to what my friend from Edmonton--St. Albert said, the committee and this Parliament have not heard any evidence about conditional sentencing. We will hear that if the bill goes to committee.

I would remind members of the House that we get the big wheel of the justice committee going and then all of a sudden there is a prorogation and we start all over again. Heavy is the head that wears the crown over there, in that the government keeps stopping Parliament and bringing in legislation and we have to hear evidence all over again.

However, we are looking forward to hearing from the participants in the justice system as to whether the tool is being used and whether it works.

As I was saying, the other tools that a judge, prosecutor and police officials have at their disposal is to work together toward incarcerating criminals. Let us review that one. In many circumstances the best deterrent for future criminal activity is having someone not out and available to do that crime. There is no question about that. The best prospect for public security and public safety with respect to certain individuals is keeping them incarcerated. A little side note is that when they are in our corrections facilities they often commit crimes as well because it is not as controlled as Canadians would like to think. Criminal activities do take place inside our corrections facilities. Therefore, when we remove someone it is not as if we are getting rid of their criminal activity. That is number one.

Number two is that without any rehabilitative programs and without any care for making the person better, the period of incarceration has, in many cases, especially for a first or second offender who might merit a conditional sentence, the opposite effect. The offender does not learn necessarily good things in prison and he or she comes out a worse offender or a worse potential offender.

There is another fallacy in the Conservatives' hide and seek justice philosophy. They think they can convince the Canadian public that by putting people away and removing them from society they will never come back into society, and, in some cases that is true. I do not have the facts in front of me about that but our list of dangerous or long term offenders who will be incarcerated forever, multiple murderers, is in the percentage of 1%, 2% or 3% of our incarcerees now. I think it is that low.

I will be conservative for a moment and say that the vast majority, 80% perhaps, of offenders will get out of prison. When they get out even the Conservative would need to come up with a reason to put them back in. Therefore, they do need to reoffend and thus the victimization reoccurs.

What is in everyone's interest is to know that incarceration happens, which is the first element in the toolkit. Second, if there is a sentence that merits a period of leave or freedom, it can be accomplished with a guilty plea, a sentence and a probation order. In some cases, a probation order would be very acceptable. However, as we heard time and again, probation orders are not as fluid. They are not a useful tool to judges because they do not allow as many conditions attended to the probation order as a conditional sentence. I do not hear the government saying that we should end all probation orders. It must think the probation order works even though it has fewer conditions than a conditional sentence regime.

The conditional sentence is the third element in the toolbox that I would like to discuss. It is found in section 742.1 of the Criminal Code of Canada which, as I have said before, is the best thing a Conservative justice minister ever did by creating the Criminal Code or putting it together. That is some 100 years ago and we are looking for some improvement and some new things from a Conservative justice minister, but near the end of the code it has a tool for judges to say that if a person is convicted of a offence and it is less than two years and, this is a key thing, the judge is satisfied that serving the sentence in the community would not endanger the safety of the community and would be consistent with the fundamental purpose and principles of sentencing set out in section 718, the conditional sentence may work and may be used by a judge.

Section 718, which I have referred to a number of times, is probably the most important part of the Criminal Code because it sets out our principles of sentencing and they do not weight one more than the other. It says that if a person has done a crime we should seek to denounce that crime. There also should be an element of deterrence so that it does not happen again. Deterrence is general to the general public. If a person does something, the conviction of that and the sentence attended to it should deter people generally from doing that and it certainly should deter the person specifically.

There are also elements of rehabilitation. Is the person who committed the crime and has been convicted eligible to be rehabilitated? The goal of most of the criminal justice legislation that comes from this place must be to make society safer. Making society safer would occur if there were less crime. There would be less crime if there were a serious crime prevention agenda, a serious attended budget for crime prevention and less bickering between the federal government and the provinces with respect to how to spend resources on crime prevention.

For a moment I will digress and say that there is a bickering by distance. The provinces may get social transfers but they always say that they do not have enough resources to fund probation officers and police officers who intervene in the community. The provinces are doing very little with federal money to get involved in crime prevention. We must remember that everything with the government is storefront. It is not what is behind the storefront, but in the storefront the Conservatives put the Ombudsman of Victims of Crime, Mr. Steve Sullivan. He did an admirable job. He spoke up for victims. However, like Kevin Page, AECL and everyone who gives the government a few problems, speaks up and speaks the truth to power, the Conservatives are not renewing the contract to Mr. Sullivan. How serious are they about victims rights really and how serious are they about a crime prevention agenda?

The provinces would like to do more in this regard.

I do not know if our intergovernmental affairs critic is here but in the old days there were a number of first ministers meetings, attorneys general, justice ministers and even the prime minister might be involved occasionally in the past, but there has been very little dialogue with respect to crime prevention and to changes to the Criminal Code from the current government members.

The Conservatives are not as much interested in finding the root causes of crime and treating them, or in finding out what programs are effective and funding them, or in talking to the provinces on how to better implement their programs on a national scale, province by province and territory by territory, as they are in the 5 p.m., 6 p.m. in the Atlantic provinces and 6:30 p.m. in Newfoundland, national news stories that say, “We have done this today. Look at us. We are going to make the language simple.”

I find nothing wrong with simple language but in this case it is misleading to say that this is about house arrest. This is about the section of the code that gives the judge options. If a judge chooses to employ the conditional sentence for a crime that is less than two years, he or she may, in most cases has to, implement certain conditions, and they are here, that every person convicted of a crime that befits a conditional sentence shall keep the peace and be of good behaviour, shall appear before the court when required to do so, shall report to a supervisor within two working days after making the order, thereafter, when required and at the behest of the supervisor, shall remain within the jurisdiction of the court unless has permission to do otherwise, shall notify the court or the supervisor in advance of any change of name or address and promptly notify the court.

If any of those conditions are broken, and if provinces are adequately funded for officers to enforce these orders, which is a big problem for the provinces, the government throws out legislation, puts it on the books and subsequently has a turf war with the provinces and territories as to how the laws will be implemented and who pays for it. There is a systemic downloading of services to provinces in this regard. However, those are the standard conditions and if they are broken the person goes back.

I think we will hear from witnesses, if this goes to committee, why it is a valuable tool that need not be restricted any more than it is and needs to be a tool of the judicial discretion that exists. We must remember that from the moment the government took office it has attacked judges because it did not like anyone who was not in their caucus, which is getting smaller month by month. In other words, the government would like to have judges like those in the United States who run on political campaigns, on a set of political promises and toe a political party line.

The government has had very little respect for judges since it came to power and now it wants to take away further discretion. It is okay to have that belief, but when it stands and says that it believes in judicial discretion, its actions with respect to legislation does not show that.

Let us talk about a good judge, a good prosecution and good police officer bringing an individual to court who may be saved. These additional conditions are available to a judge for people who have been found guilty of an offence for which a conditional sentence order might apply. They could be ordered to abstain from the consumption of alcohol or other intoxicating substances. There is no such order in our corrections facilities. It is a given that they cannot in corrections facilities but the reality is that it happens.

As I said earlier, and I think we would all agree, many people who commit crimes and are in our prisons have substance abuse issues. It is the root cause of much crime in this country. We should be doing something to allow judges to force people convicted of offences to refrain from consuming alcohol or intoxicating substances.

Another condition could be abstaining from owning, possessing or carrying a weapon. Other conditions are to provide for the support and care of dependents, if the person has them; perform up to 240 hours of community services over a period not exceeding 18 months; attend a treatment program approved by a province; and comply with, and this is the catch-all, such other reasonable conditions as the court considers desirable.

Let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let us keep conditional sentences subject to what the evidence tells us about their efficacy. Let us not completely denigrate the system, which is the whole pith and substance of what the hon. member for Edmonton—St. Albert, in leading the government in this discussion, said. He said that because conditional sentences are used, so people can watch their big screen TVs, the whole system of justice is brought into disrepute.

What brings the system of justice into disrepute is the agent of the government, the representative of the government who stands here and says that something that is being used every day by good judges, good prosecutors and good policemen is not working. That is what brings it into disrepute.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is certainly an honour for me to rise today to begin second reading debate on Bill C-16, ending house arrest for property and other serious crimes by serious and violent offenders Act.

This bill, aptly named, proposes to restrict the availability of conditional sentences in the same manner as advanced in the former Bill C-42 in the last session of Parliament. Our government is taking further action to crack down on crime and to protect the safety and security of our communities.

A conditional sentence of imprisonment is one that is less than two years and one that a court may permit an offender to serve in the community under conditions and supervision. Bill C-16 proposes amendments to the Criminal Code to ensure that conditional sentences are never available for serious and violent offenders, and serious property offences which were never intended to be eligible for a conditional sentence in the first place.

Let me be clear to all members of the House. This government's proposed legislation would ensure that House arrest is no longer used for offences that pose a significant risk to law-abiding citizens.

Conditional sentences of imprisonment came into force over 13 years ago with the proclamation in 1996 of Bill C-41, entitled “Sentencing Reform”, which is found in chapter 22 of the Statutes of Canada, 1995. Among the key elements of that legislation were the following: the creation of conditional sentences as a new sentencing option; the first ever parliamentary statement of the purpose and principles of sentencing, which are contained in sections 718 and 718.2 of the Criminal Code of Canada; and increased emphasis on the interests of crime victims, including the recognition that the harm done to victims should be considered at the time of sentencing.

As originally enacted in 1996, a conditional sentence was available as a sentencing option provided that the following prerequisites were met: first, the sentence must be less than two years in duration; second, the court must be satisfied that allowing the offender to serve the sentence of imprisonment in the community will not endanger the safety of the community; and third, the offence must not be punishable by a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment.

Shortly after the implementation of Bill C-41 and in response to concerns that courts were awarding conditional sentence orders for quite serious offences, a requirement was added that the court be satisfied that sentencing the offender to serve a conditional sentence of imprisonment is consistent with the fundamental purpose and principles of sentencing as set out in the Criminal Code.

The fundamental purpose of sentencing, as described in section 718 of the code, states that a sentence must contribute to respect for the law and the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society by imposing just sanctions that have one or more of the following objectives: first, denouncing unlawful conduct; second, deterring the offender and other persons from committing offences; third, separating offenders from society where necessary; fourth, assisting in the rehabilitation of offenders; fifth, providing reparation for harm done to victims or the community; and finally, promoting a sense of responsibility in offenders and acknowledgement of the harm done to victims and to the community.

The preconditions for a conditional sentence, along with the deemed aggravating factors added to the Criminal Code by Bill C-41, such as evidence that the offender abused a position of trust, were designed to screen out serious offences committed in circumstances for which denunciation, general deterrence, and incapacitation should be considered the primary sentencing objectives. In addition, the fundamental principle of sentencing is that a sentence must be proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender.

In 2000, the Supreme Court of Canada held in Regina v. Proulx that the conditional sentencing regime does not exclude any category of offences other than those with a minimum period of incarceration, nor is there a presumption for or against its use for any category of offence. The court said, however, that it was open for Parliament to introduce such limitations. Unfortunately, sentencing courts have interpreted the availability of conditional sentences in an inconsistent fashion because of the lack of clear parameters, allowing in some instances violent and serious offenders to serve their sentences under a conditional sentence of imprisonment.

This unfortunately has resulted in criticism of the sanction and a loss of public confidence in the administration of justice and, I would submit, in the justice system overall.

The government responded expeditiously to these concerns when it took office by tabling, in May of 2006, Bill C-9, an act to amend the Criminal Code regarding conditional sentence of imprisonment. As introduced, Bill C-9 proposed to eliminate the availability of conditional sentences for any offences punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years or more that were prosecuted by indictment.

This would have caught serious crimes such as sexual offences, weapons offences, offences against children, and also serious property crime such as fraud and theft over $5,000. However, as ultimately passed by Parliament, Bill C-9 only further restricted the availability of conditional sentences by excluding terrorism offences, organized crime offences, and serious personal injury offences that were punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years or more and when they were prosecuted by indictment.

As defined by section 752 of the Criminal Code, a serious personal injury offence has two components. First, it is defined to specifically include the three general sexual assault offences which are contained in sections 271, 272 and 273 of the Criminal Code that are used for adult and some child victims.

However, the second component of a serious personal injury offence does not provide the same certainty because it includes indictable offences other than high treason, treason, first degree murder or second degree murder involving the use or attempted use of violence against another person, or conduct endangering or likely to endanger the life or safety of another person, or inflicting or likely to inflict severe psychological damage on another person, for which the offender may be sentenced to imprisonment for a term of 10 years or longer.

It is this aspect of the existing conditional sentencing provisions that are so problematic and this is what the bill before us today addresses. Rather than leaving it to the individual courts to determine whether a particular case qualifies as a serious personal injury offence, this bill clearly identifies all offences which will never be eligible for a conditional sentence. It removes the uncertainty and provides clarity to our law.

Up until the coming into force of Bill C-9 on December 1, 2007, sentencing courts only interpreted serious personal injury offence for the purposes of determining whether the threshold for a dangerous or long-term offender application had been met under part 24 of the Criminal Code. This is because the term had been enacted and defined for the dangerous and long-term offender provisions only.

Since Bill C-9 came into force, courts have had to interpret the definition of serious personal injury offences in the context of conditional sentences, a context which is quite different than that for dangerous and long-term offenders.

For instance, in Regina v. Becker in 2009, a decision of the Alberta Provincial Court, and in Regina v. Thompson, a decision by the Ontario Court of Justice, the courts were asked to determine whether the offence of robbery was a serious personal injury offence in the context of the availability of conditional sentences.

In both cases, threats were made, yet in only one of the two cases did the court ultimately find that robbery met the definition of a serious personal injury offence. In other words, the eligibility of the same offence, in this case robbery, for a conditional sentence was interpreted differently by these two courts, with the result that a conditional sentence was available in one case but not in the other. Clearly, that inconsistency needs to be resolved.

In two other cases before the Courts of Appeal in the same two provinces, both courts interpreted the serious personal injury in the conditional sentence context in the same way, but differently from how serious personal injury had been interpreted to date in the dangerous offender context. More specifically, in the 2009 decision by the Alberta Court of Appeal, in Regina v. Ponticorvo, the court held that serious personal injury in the conditional sentence context included the use or attempted use of any violence and was not restricted to only the use of serious violence. In so doing, the court applied a different interpretation than it had to the same term in the dangerous offender context in Regina v. Neve in 1999.

Moreover, the Court of Appeal for Ontario, in Regina v. Lebar, in 2010, confirmed this approach and concluded that for the purpose of the availability of conditional sentences, Parliament created:

--a divide between crimes where violence is or is not used, not between crimes of serious violence and less serious violence.

That is found at paragraph 69 of the Ontario Court of Appeal judgment.

What these cases illustrate is that there is considerable uncertainty about how the existing conditional sentences will be interpreted and applied. However, this bill would provide the needed clarity and the certainty to say which offences are not eligible for a conditional sentence. This would, in turn, prevent the need to wait for these issues to be finally resolved by the appellant courts.

Another concern is that the definition of serious personal injury offences does not cover other serious property crimes which would still be eligible for a conditional sentence.

For instance, fraud, which can have a devastating impact on the lives of its victims, is punishable by a maximum sentence of 14 years. Although this type of offence can be every bit as devastating as a serious personal injury offence, it is still technically eligible for a conditional sentence.

In addition, the current prerequisites of the availability of a conditional sentence do not exclude drug offences unless they are committed as part of a criminal organization and provided that they are punishable by 10 years or more and prosecuted by indictment. Consequently, as a result, a conditional sentence would be available for the production, importation and trafficking in a schedule 1 drug, such as heroin.

I think members would agree with me that most Canadians would not find that result reasonable.

It is my view that the current conditional sentencing regime still fails to categorically make conditional sentences ineligible for many very serious crimes. Greater clarity and greater consistency is needed to limit the availability of conditional sentences and to protect Canadians from serious and violent offenders.

In order to address these concerns, this bill proposes to eliminate the reference to serious personal injury offences in section 742.1 and make all offences punishable by 14 years, or life, ineligible for a conditional sentence. This would make the offences of fraud, robbery and many other crimes ineligible for conditional sentences.

It would also clearly make offences prosecuted by indictment and punishable by 10 years that result in bodily harm, that involve the import or export, trafficking and production of drugs, or that involve the use of a weapon, ineligible for a conditional sentence.

While this element of the legislation would significantly limit the ambit of the conditional sentencing regime, the addition of these categories would not capture all serious offences prosecuted by indictment and punishable by a maximum of 10 years.

To resolve this, this bill also proposes a list of 11 specific offences prosecuted by indictment and punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years that, upon passage of this legislation, would become ineligible for a conditional sentence. These offences are: prison breach, luring a child, criminal harassment, sexual assault, forcible confinement, trafficking in persons, abduction, theft over $5,000, breaking and entering a place other than a dwelling house, being unlawfully in a dwelling house, and arson for fraudulent purposes.

Conditional sentences are an appropriate sentencing tool, in many cases. However, access to them does need to be restricted when it comes to serious property and serious violent offences.

This government shares the common sense belief of all Canadians, that the punishment should fit the crime, especially when it comes to serious and violent offences, and serious and violent offenders.

This legislation, when passed by this House, would make it clear to the courts that those who commit serious property and violent offences will serve jail time and that house arrest will no longer be an available sentencing option.

I hope that all hon. members will appreciate that and support this legislation.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

moved that Bill C-16, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from the hon. House leader of the official opposition as to the future business for the remainder of this week and up until Thursday of next week.

We will continue today with the debate at second reading of Bill C-10, Senate term limits. Following Bill C-10, I will call Bill C-12, democratic representation. I will continue with this lineup tomorrow.

Next week, we will call Bill C-4, Sébastien's law, Bill C-16, ending house arrest for property and other serious crimes by serious and violent offenders, and Bill C-13, fairness for military families. All of these bills are at second reading.

Tuesday, May 4, will be an allotted day. I am looking forward to the motion that my hon. colleague and his party will select for that opposition day. I note there are some nine allotted days in this parliamentary period, and obviously there are many important issues that the opposition has to choose from, including the east coast shellfish industry.

Criminal Code

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-16, An Act to amend the Criminal Code.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)