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.

Criminal Code

[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.

[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.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for opening the debate in a real fashion by saying that conditional sentences are an appropriate sentence in some cases. If we only looked at the newscasts, we would think that conditional sentences are not appropriate for anything and house arrest sentences are synonymous and free willy, people can just do whatever they want.

Could the member expand on his comment that conditional sentences are appropriate in certain cases and could he refer to the whole page, the menu, of conditions that a judge has at his or her disposal in section 742.3 that are not available to a judge in giving a probation order or in sentencing someone to incarceration? There is a menu of items that might be useful in terms of rehabilitation, reintegration, cost saving and so on that a judge might use especially subsection (2).

Could he expand on the types of crimes that have found conviction and should fall within the category section 742.3, specifically subsection (2), and all those conditions about going into a treatment program, a remedy that is not available through a probation order, abstaining from the consumption of alcohol or drugs, the very specific things to which this enactment was designed to be tailored.

We know from our tour of the country with the justice committee, that many of the people in our prisons suffer mental illness, or mental illness problems, addiction problems and other issues that could be better probably dealt with through treatment rather than incarceration.

Perhaps the member could expand on that list, but did not have enough time to go through it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Moncton for the good work he does on the justice committee and in the House generally.

As I indicated in my opening comments, conditional sentences are an appropriate disposition in many circumstances, but not all circumstances.

The government believes, and certainly I believe, that when it comes to serious and/or violent crimes and by default and by definition serious and violent criminals, that individuals convicted of those types of crimes should serve their time in appropriate detention and custodial facilities and not in the comfort of their own home.

However, the member raises a good question. All too often, when we talk about conditional sentences, we talk specifically about house arrest. However, he is quite right there are other conditional sentences that are available to the court for its consideration other than house arrest. Those can be considered in many circumstances.

I believe there are circumstances when they are not appropriate and that was the list I enunciated. Those upon passage of the bill will no longer be eligible for conditional sentence upon conviction when the bill becomes law.

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

Mr. Speaker, we have had this system for nearly 15 years. Given the number of house arrests that have been handed down and would be replaced by prison sentences, surely there must be a way of accurately determining the number of additional prisoners the provincial prisons would have to absorb.

Can the member or the department provide us with this figure? How many prisoners does this represent? What additional costs will it represent for the provinces, which, as we know, house prisoners sentenced to less than two years?

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the former attorney general from the province of Quebec, for all of the good work he does on the justice committee and formerly on the public safety committee. I do not have those numbers on the tip of my tongue. If conditional sentences and house arrests become unavailable for a list of offences, and I listed a number of offences to which that would apply, then more individuals will end up in custody.

The Minister of Public Safety has been asked about this very recently and he has indicated that there will be more use of techniques, such as double bunking, to make the most appropriate and efficient use of the current correctional facilities. I do not know if that will be sufficient or if other expansion or techniques will have to be employed, but that misses the crucial element of this debate.

The debate is on whether a conditional sentence is an appropriate disposition for an individual who commits a serious property offence or an offence of violence. I, and I believe all members on this side of the House, would say that it is not.

A very good example is arson. If a person burns down my house, ought that individual be able to serve his or her sentence at home? I think most Canadians would answer that question in the negative. Confidence in the administration of justice requires that a conditional sentence not be available for that type of serious offence.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I have two questions.

First, as the previous member mentioned, there are thousands of cases of successful sentences like this. Could the member give us specific examples, not a list of conditions, of cases where this did not work?

Second, if the conditional sentences are not effective from a judge who knows all the conditions of a situation and what would be most effective to make a safe society, why do the figures show less repeat offences by people who are sentenced through conditional sentences than those who are sentenced to jail terms?

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

Mr. Speaker, it is not my practice to talk about specific cases or offences. I will advise the hon. member and the House that chiefs of police tell us, with alarming frequency, about individuals who serve conditional sentences in the community. Not only are they in breach of those conditions to keep the peace, to be of good behaviour, to refrain from alcohol and non-prescriptions drugs, but they are also involved in Criminal Code activities. Specifically, they are property offences to make currency to further from whatever addiction they suffer.

There are many examples of individuals who have not only breached the terms of their conditions to keep the peace and abstain from substances, but have also become involved in Criminal Code activity. I think society needs to be protected from those individuals.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my colleague from Edmonton—St. Albert for the good work he does at the justice committee. He is one of our very valued participants. He probes when he asks questions and he has been very helpful in bringing forward some of these justice issues to the table. I want to also thank him for his focus on victims and on protecting society.

He referred to the issue of confidence in the justice system. I would invite him to comment a little further on how confidence in the justice system erodes when serious criminals get to serve their time at home in front of their big screen TVs, their computers and all the luxuries they would normally enjoy at home.

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

Mr. Speaker, my friend who very ably chairs the justice committee points out a deficiency in our current sentencing regime. Individuals who have been convicted of serious and sometimes multiple offences, whether they are property offences or offences of violence, are able to return to their own homes and serve their sentences in comfort with all the amenities of life, be it a big screen TV or their library and CD collection.

The constituents who I talk to, and the public generally, do not believe this is an appropriate disposition. They do not believe that individuals who have been convicted of serious offences ought to serve their sentence in the comfort of their home. In this job, where we are away from home so much, it is a treat to spend a couple of days uninterrupted in the comfort of our homes. I do not believe this is an appropriate penalty, or punishment or sentence for an individual who has been convicted.

My friend from Abbotsford also talked about victims. As he knows, the bill and the proposed amendments have the endorsement of Heidi Illingworth, the executive director of the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime, who said, “The current legislation has not sufficiently restricted access to conditional sentences for offenders—

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe.

[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.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Before moving on to questions and comments, it is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Etobicoke North, tuberculosis; the hon. member for Richmond Hill, Afghanistan; and the hon. member for Yukon, the Arctic summit.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member does good work on the justice committee and is generally not prone to hyperbole, but I did notice one thing in his comments on this bill which addresses the whole issue of conditional sentences and house arrest. He did mention that he believed that our government was not doing enough on crime prevention and suggested that virtually nothing in terms of additional resources had been put into that part of our budget.

I looked at the main estimates for 2008-09 and 2009-10. In 2009 there was about $39.5 million for crime prevention. In 2010 there was actually $64.5 million. That is an increase of $25 million, some 60% increase in funding for crime prevention across Canada.

I would ask my colleague on the justice committee whether he is prepared to temper his remarks somewhat in light of the clear proof in the main estimates that in fact our government is moving forward to address issues such as crime prevention.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I do want to temper my remarks because the member is the chair of my committee and I want to be recognized tomorrow morning and on Thursday morning. I do want to say that there is a big difference between putting something in a budget and showing that is has been spent. Also, just because it is put as a line item in a budget does not mean there is effect and does not mean that it is money being spent in the right place.

When I spoke about crime prevention, admittedly I had a short time to explain, I was talking about the provincial and local levels. I have a municipal background and I know that the member for Abbotsford does too. He knows that money spent locally on things like crime prevention are the best dollars spent. What I hear in my own community and other communities in New Brunswick is that there has not been a real surge in effective crime prevention activity. We have not been getting early enough intervention. We have not been getting the societal need to find other ways to treat criminal activity.

There is one thing on which he and I can agree, and it is not political whatsoever. I do not think the government is interested necessarily in spending social services money on crime prevention. I do not think it is interested in that; we will have a debate on that if we disagree. We are unified in trying to find new tools for police officers, prosecutors and judges to tackle organized crime and gang violence, and I thank him for his co-operation in that regard. It is something that cuts across all parties. It is good to be in a parliamentary and committee milieu where everybody is rowing in the same direction. I have only been here four years, but I am told that that is pretty rare.

I compliment the member on his stewardship on that good part of the discussion, and of course I disagree with him vehemently on the first aspect.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the government has brought in crime bill after crime bill as if that were the single issue facing Canadians. Whether it is in the midst of good times or bad, in the midst of a recession, threats of climate change or other issues, all the Conservatives can see on the horizon is yet another crime bill.

The irony is that many of the crime bills have been killed repeatedly by the government itself through its use of prorogation. Some of these crime bills are on their third and fourth lives because the government keeps putting them up almost like unwanted children and then knocks them off right away. We wonder about its sincerity of getting the legislation through.

This particular bill is a bill that Parliament has seen before. Changes were made at committee based on witness testimony. I have two concerns about this.

One is that the very notion of rehabilitation or alternative sentencing works. The government likes to continually cast aspersions and has the idea that the only way to serve justice is by the traditional forms of punishment first invented several thousands of years ago, whereas everything we have learned since then is that we want to be as concerned about the person coming out of prison as we are about the person going to prison. It does not work.

The second piece seems to be a fundamental disrespect for the judiciary. It is a subtext through all of these bills and notions about what kinds of sentences are being handed out, or not. The Conservatives want to put handcuffs on our judiciary. If they are good enough to sit on the bench, one would think they have the capacity to rule, judge and hand out punishment for certain crimes. The government does not seem to believe that the judges who sit on our benches are capable of interpreting the law and handing out sufficient punishment for crimes committed.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I think I have said that I do not think there is the degree of agreement on the importance of money spent on crime prevention.

With respect to the tweaking of this bill, I guess it all comes down to judges. If a judge gives a sentence of over two years for something, it is a pretty serious offence. However, if he gives a sentence of less than two years, let us say, six months or seven months, is that not an indication that the crime is not as serious as the label would have us believe? Maybe it is an issue of evidence that is proffered. Maybe it is an issue of being a first-time offender. Maybe it is an issue of, in some cases, being able to be out and make restitution. Maybe it is a case of an accused being under the influence or having a substance abuse.

It would be a hard sell to tell the Canadian public, for instance, that luring a child and kidnapping should not be on this list, and maybe I agree in some cases. One could probably see that with theft over $5,000 and, in some cases, being unlawfully in a dwelling house, we do not know of the circumstances. We are going to hear from prosecutors and judges who say that maybe in some cases it is better to have a person under these very stringent rules enforced. Maybe that is the evidence, that we cannot enforce these. If it is a case that we cannot enforce the rules that we have in the code, then we are going to have to look at a lot of other parts of the code, too.

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

Mr. Speaker, I certainly enjoyed my friend from Moncton's speech. I know he listened intently when I delivered my comments.

The provincial courts in different provinces, in fact different appellate courts, have interpreted the current legislation differently. Specifically, when it comes to what is and what is not a serious personal injury offence, that requires some legislative intervention. Some clarity is required so there is more uniformity from jurisdiction to jurisdiction with respect to the availability of conditional sentences. Would the member agree?

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, certainly, that is why we have the committee. We have to look at the decisions of the various courts of appeal. Clearly, there is an awful lot of legislation that has been passed that was not exactly clearly thought out, I admit. That is why some of this debate will take place at committee. Moving some of the offences off the conditional sentence list would be all right.

If the Department of Justice advises us of any definitional problems, as determined by the courts, we are all for that. That is not partisan.

What is partisan is having people think that every conditional sentence means home arrest for a very serious offence. The member himself used arson; someone burned down my house and now he is home watching a big-screen T.V. That is not what this is about.

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

Mr. Speaker, I guess what has been concerning me through this whole process with the Conservatives is the double standard. There is a standard for the Conservatives and their friends, and a standard for everybody else. They move to this zero tolerance position on everything. Everything has to have zero tolerance. Everything has to have minimum sentences. If someone makes a mistake, if someone commits a crime, the Conservatives' solution is the full weight of the law comes down on them. However, when it happens to one of their friends, there is a whole different standard.

For example, if a citizen was driving home through a small rural municipality and was driving 40 klicks over the speed limit and got pulled over, we would think that car would be seized. If he was drinking and driving and going 40 klicks over, they would throw the book at him. And then if he was carrying cocaine, we would think it would be a pretty serious case. But this was Rahim Jaffer, a man who had the Conservative Party logo on his website, and when the case goes to court, it is thrown out. And then the Conservatives, the same people who are undermining the judiciary, the same gang who are insulting our judges--

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. I do not know that the hon. member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe is going to hear the question because I am having difficulty hearing the question.

We are coming to the end of the period allowed for questions and comments. Perhaps the member for Timmins—James Bay could wrap up his question very quickly so we could allow the member a chance to respond.

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

Mr. Speaker, I find it very interesting to hear cheap shots from the Conservatives that suddenly we have to protect the judiciary and that suddenly the judiciary is separate, when they sat here all day and snickered and insulted, until one of their pals gets caught and then the judiciary has to be allowed to do whatever job it is doing in allowing Conservatives to get off the hook.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am all for discretion with respect to judges and prosecutors. We should let them do their jobs. If all of this means that in unison we believe in securing the public and having a system that is knowable, and in the end means that we will restore confidence and trust in the judiciary and the prosecutors of this country, I am all for it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am a lawyer. I passed the bar in 1966 and, as luck would have it, my first job was with the provincial government. I was then approached by the federal government, which, at that point, prosecuted almost all lawsuits involving drug-related offences. I was then approached by a large firm that dealt with criminal law. When that firm broke up, I was ready to open my own office. I opened my office and hired lawyers. I was very involved in the bar association. I became vice-president and then president of the Quebec bar. After a short break from my career as a criminal lawyer, I went back to criminal law.

I also taught and was often consulted by the Law Reform Commission, as were many other criminal lawyers. I then went into politics and became the minister of public safety. I had to face the most dangerous criminal gang in the country, the Hells Angels. I appointed the chief of the Sûreté du Québec. I was friends with the Montreal chief of police. We came up with a new method for the police to deal with organized crime. That led to creation of the Carcajou squad. The idea was that police would integrate their data bases containing information about criminals. On the ground, the investigators always worked in pairs—one from Sûreté du Québec, the other from Montreal police. The method worked well enough and the RCMP joined us. We were the first country to break the Hells Angels and arrest the ringleaders of this organization through Opération printemps 2001.

I do not think that anyone can doubt my desire to decrease the number of victims and to find effective ways of fighting crime. I believe that we have already found one. This mixed squad model has spread across Canada and even into the United States. We were the first to use it, in 1997.

To begin with, I must say that of course I am against sentences of house arrest for criminals who commit very serious violent crimes. Would anyone claim to be in favour of such a thing? We can say this so adamantly on our side of the House because we are confident that everyone is against this, as are judges who also probably do not want criminals who commit serious violent crimes to be allowed to return to the comfort of their homes. Thus, judges do not give such sentences to serious, violent criminals. Also, I am entirely convinced, and I think it is obvious, that the best way to protect victims is by reducing crime. In this effort to reduce crime, we need more than just legislation; enforcement techniques must also be considered. And then there is police work, which can sometimes focus as much on prevention as on catching criminals.

I have over 40 years of experience and I was also Quebec's minister of justice. I would point out, however, that the greatest success of the Carcajou squad—an operation that took place over three years and that also led to the loss of some informants who were killed during the operations—was Opération Printemps 2001 during which 322 individuals were arrested. They were all convicted of something and there were never any complaints about how the police had obtained the evidence used in the trials.

Nor do I know anyone who criticized the sentences that were handed down to this group, which included not only the worst offenders and the leaders, but also minor accomplices.

I had not planned on making a career of criminal law, but that experience led me to do some reading and ask some basic questions about why people commit crime. In university, we criticized one another for not being intellectually honest, but it is even worse when dealing with fraud artists and thieves.

I came to believe quite strongly that, although intervention is necessary, sentence length and severity have relatively little effect. Severe sentences are costly, not only in terms of money spent, but also for the individuals destroyed by long periods of incarceration. What is more, some people who should not have been incarcerated for short periods of time are immersed in a criminal environment for months at a time.

Evidence suggests that the most effective approach is rapid intervention and sentencing. Sentence length is relatively unimportant. I quickly became convinced that there is no such thing as a deterrent sentence. Fear of getting caught is what deters people from committing crimes. God knows that I made enough money by helping people avoid a criminal record even when they were not facing the possibility of jail time to know that most people think getting caught and ending up with a record is bad enough.

The best evidence I have seen to suggest that sentence length is not a deterrent is the seven-year minimum sentence for importing marijuana. To be honest, in 1966, I had never even heard of marijuana. That is when it all started. Cannabis can be turned into marijuana and hashish, but the kind of hemp or cannabis grown here was not hallucinogenic at all. Everything was imported. Imports began to soar at that time, despite the threat of seven years in jail. That is the best evidence that sentencing is not an effective deterrent.

All the same, deterrence can work in some circumstances, such as when people know the consequences of an offence and know that they will be subject to those consequences. Here is an example of that.

When I started practising law, judges could choose between a jail sentence and a fine. However, in the 1960s, a new concept from England was added to the Criminal Code: conditional sentences. The judge would tell the offender that he was suspending the sentence subject to certain conditions. In short, rather than imposing a sentence that day, he would suspend it and, if the person abided by the conditions, he would not have the right to impose it. However, if the offender did not abide by the conditions—the judge could set a number of conditions, such as house arrest—he would be brought before the judge and a sentence imposed at that time.

House arrest, by the way, is a common practice in Europe. In all European countries, including England I believe, it is possible to serve a sentence at home. When implemented in Canada, I thought that this might perhaps replace suspended sentences which, in practice, are difficult to administer—so difficult that offenders were not brought back before the judge for sentencing.

The advantage of conditional sentencing is that the judge states that the sentence is 18 months' imprisonment and that it will be served in the community with certain conditions. The conditions can be very harsh. If the offender does not abide by the conditions, the sentence has already been determined and the individual will have to serve the rest of the sentence. If the breach occurs in the second month, he will have to serve 16 months. If the breach occurs in the sixteenth month, he will not have a great deal of time left to serve. However, the deterrent effect is more immediate and, most of the time, the offender quickly understands.

Conditional sentencing also had many other advantages. For example, it made it possible for individuals to keep their jobs and to support their families. It also allowed them, when possible, to make restitution for damages caused by the crime. Because young adults are often the majority of accused people, it allowed them to continue their education or to attend a program to learn a trade and get a job. Moreover, it was less expensive. I believe we have mentioned often enough that it costs $101,000 per year to keep an offender in a federal prison.

It is not televisions or things like that that cost so much. Over 98% of that amount is spent on security. Spending on security is not as high in the provinces, but it is still significant.

The individual is already feeling the immediate consequences of crime. When we send someone to prison, do we realize what kind of environment that is? That person is surrounded by criminals. Too often, the criminals run the prisons and the prisoner organizations inside. For someone who is impressionable, this is not the best environment. Plus, we are causing this person to lose his job, since he cannot report to work, or we are interrupting his schooling, something that could make him a better citizen, a useful citizen. It also trivializes offences. This person is surrounded by plenty of people who did much worse.

The Conservatives always tell us that serious and violent criminals must not be in the comfort of their homes. I do not think that judges give light sentences. This bill is not intended to punish serious and violent criminals—which the law already does—but those who have not committed serious and violent offences, people the judges have decided do not present a danger to public safety. These are the instructions given to judges.

We are always given the example of a case that came up somewhere or another. I notice that most of the time—this time is an exception, but we will look into it—we are talking about sentences imposed in a first instance. Very little is said about these sentences. When a judge hands down a sentence, he or she must take into consideration a number of factors that are mentioned in sections 712 and onward.

Some of these factors push the judge in one direction or another. For example, denouncing the unlawful conduct would be along the lines of indulgence, while deterring offenders or anyone from committing offences would be leaning toward harsher sentences. Separating offenders from society, where necessary, has to do with dangerous offenders. As for providing reparations for harm done to victims or to the community, the judge starts to run into problems because if the person in question is forced to lose their employment, they will not be able to provide the reparation. I believe that true rehabilitation begins with the effort of making restitution to the victim. That is what we should be looking at.

One of these elements, the social reintegration of the offender, takes a different tack. The judge has to consider all of this. Every time hon. members across the way give us an example of a sentence, they only give us one reason. Anthony Doob, the famous criminologist from Toronto, conducted an experiment. He looked at how many reasons the newspapers reported as to why a sentence was handed down. He found that it was one reason and a quarter. He then looked at how many reasons judges gave to justify their sentences and on average they gave 11 to 13 reasons.

If it appears to be so terrible, then why was there no appeal? We are told that two cases are being appealed. I will look into why the appeal courts handed down sentences that were seemingly contradictory. I think, on the contrary, that these sentences might seem contradictory because the facts were quite different and there were some factors that called for harsher measures and others that called for clemency. I do not really like the word clemency, so I will talk about measures to ensure rehabilitation.

This system has been in place for 14 years, and it seems to me that the government should be evaluating how it is applied and the measures it includes before proposing any changes. Nothing in the government's proposals is motivated by danger, poor administration or the disastrous consequences of some action. On the contrary, since this system was put in place, crime has gone down overall. In any case, the government would have to prove to us that house arrests have had negative consequences in enough cases to warrant amending the legislation and wiping out our confidence in the wisdom of judges.

People always talk about the comforts of home and big-screen TV. Although ministers and members may enjoy the comforts of home, when you have had some contact with the criminal world and you have dealt with these people, you know what sort of lives they lead. The main characteristic that people in prison share is that they are socially maladjusted. Sociological studies conducted when I was Minister of Public Safety for Quebec showed that these people are socially maladjusted.

I can guarantee that not one member could spend a week without leaving the basement of most of these people sentenced to house arrest. I would even suggest that they try spending a week in their own home without leaving. They would see whether house arrest is a form of punishment. Just for fun, I once tried to stay home for a whole weekend. House arrest is definitely a form of punishment, especially in the sorts of homes these people live in.

Mention was made of fraud and how it was very different. If it is, then sentences for fraud should be different as well. I do not see why the government is targeting fraud. There is a lot of minor fraud for which short prison sentences or house arrest would not be appropriate. Obviously, this sort of sentence would not do for Earl Jones or Vincent Lacroix, and I believe that all judges would agree.

Mention was also made of the many sentences that would be affected by this measure. Drug trafficking is serious until you look closely at the definitions of trafficking. Trafficking includes giving and offering to give someone drugs. Marijuana is still classified as a drug, so if a guy offers his girlfriend a joint and she says no, he has trafficked in drugs in the eyes of the law. Is he what we would call a dangerous offender?

The government always forgets about less serious cases in its new bills. It talks about the most serious crimes. It eloquently condemns the most serious crimes, but it ignores anything less serious. By focusing on the most serious crimes, it overlooks all of the accomplices who have committed less serious crimes.

Here is another example involving drugs. Parents know that their child is smoking marijuana or hashish. Two or three envelopes arrive from Morocco, but their son tells them not to open the envelopes. What should those parents do? I know what I would do because I know the consequences. However, many parents would keep the envelopes and give the child a lecture. Some parents might throw the envelopes out, which makes them accomplices. What they did was less serious, but if they get caught, they have to suffer the consequences.

I knew one young woman who accepted packages for a friend who was away. In that case, the minimum sentence was applied and she got the same seven years in jail as he did.

Lastly, we have to talk about costs, which are significant. There can be no doubt that costs will go up because of this bill.

This means that they will have to go to provincial jails, but there is no space for them. Double bunking is already happening. Because there is no space for them, they get out sooner. “In and out” treatment is common in cases where it would have been better for individuals to serve their sentences at home with the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads to remind them of the possibility of going back inside.

I do not understand why they have not yet given us the breakdowns, but in this case, the cost alone means that proportionally fewer sentences will be served in their entirety.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask the member two questions.

First, there seems to be a number of members on the other side who just do not understand or support conditional sentences. Could the member explain why thousands of successful conditional sentences have been given out? In fact, they have had more successful outcomes than jail terms.

Second, as parliamentarians, we are all partly responsible for the misconception that conditional sentences simply mean sitting in one's house watching TV. Indeed a number of other items are part of those conditions on occasion and are one of the reasons why conditional sentencing is often more successful than incarceration.

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has asked an excellent question and I believe that there are two aspects to it.

I will start with the second aspect. It allows judges to impose conditions that would ensure better rehabilitation, that would ensure reparation for the crimes committed and that could also put the person into schooling or a job retention program.

My colleague first asked why members on the other side do not understand. I feel that they do not have any understanding whatsoever of crime in general. They have no experience in this area. They keep talking about deterrence. A suspended or conditional sentence is an effective deterrent.

The number one reason that tough sentences are not deterrents— the main reason—is that people do not know anything about them. I am sure that if I asked the members here to tell me how many mandatory minimum sentences there are in the current Criminal Code, very few would pass the test, especially if I also asked for some examples.

How can it be a deterrent if no one knows how long a sentence they would get? But when the judge tells someone that he is going to have to serve 18 months with certain conditions, that person understands that they have the remainder of their 18 months to serve.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great fascination to my colleague. He obviously has many years of experience in this matter. The issue of conditional sentences is really important. As he has pointed out, our Conservative colleagues across the way continually use the spectre of criminals to demonize the justice system, and it is completely separate from reality.

I spent many years working with men and women coming out of prison. I lived with them. I helped get them back on their feet. I saw the levels of recidivism. I saw what worked and what did not work. One problem the Conservatives never deal with is people have to be reintroduced to the community at a certain point.

I know some of my colleagues over there believe the glory days will be when we bring back capital punishment for furniture theft and everything else. They will not have to worry about reintroducing people to society. However, this is a major issue of the justice system. It is not just punishment; it is how we reintroduce people. I remind the House that many people have gone through the system again and again and yet they have managed to come back into society because the options and steps were available.

What does my hon. colleague think will happen in terms of social policy if we go down this retrograde road that the Conservatives go down, with their flat tires and their flat earth society? What will happen if we take away the tools we have right now to reintroduce criminals back into society and reintroduce them as citizens as opposed to just the condemned?

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

Mr. Speaker, I could go on at length, but I will simply say this, and there is no doubt in my mind about it. All of the money we have to spend on fighting crime will be spent on security and nothing will be spending on social reintegration. This will create more victims. If we put more money into prevention and social reintegration, we would have less crime, and therefore fewer victims.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, with the member's vast experience, could he comment on the justice policy, programs and bills put forward by the Conservatives in the sense of whether they are evidence-based? He mentioned one particular professor who was totally against Bill C-9 as an example. When I sat on justice committee, my perspective, time and time again, was that what was presented was totally not evidence-based.

Does the member have any comments on that?

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

Mr. Speaker, I would very much like to speak with him, because I thought more or less the same thing at first. I thought that the best option for a judge was a suspended sentence. If the individual committed any breaches, the judge could consider the breach and what it meant in terms of how dangerous the individual was. The judge could therefore reassess the length of the sentence.

In practice, however, I defy anyone to name a single province in Canada where suspended sentences have worked, that is, where they automatically brought the arrested individual before the judge who had imposed the suspended sentence. Most of the time, it had to do with a new offence, so it was settled by the second judge.

I remember one judge in Montreal, Justice O'Meara, who was very strict. When someone was brought before him a second time, I can assure this House that the sentence he had suspended was then imposed, and it was definitely a deterrent. At least a number of conditions can be imposed. This can also be done with a suspended sentence, but in that case, the individual is fully aware of the sentence he will be given if he breaches his conditions. This is for practical reasons. I would like to explain to him how this works in practice, and he will probably gradually come around to supporting conditional sentences, just as I did.

[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.

[Stephen Woodworth]

They don't get caught.

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

The member says they do not get caught. Let us take a look at who does get caught.

Taking the same population base but looking at those who have been incarcerated and what happens in their first year out, 30% are caught and charged with additional crimes. Again, a number of them are clearly breaches of their parole but others are new crimes. That is the reality. If we look at the longer term, the rate of recidivism is even worse for those who were incarcerated. The rate spreads even more than that 11% to 30%. It has been an effective tool.

There is no question that there are certain crimes for which this should not be used and a couple of them, in fact, are in this bill. It is for that reason and that reason alone that we will be supporting it going to committee. We have every intention of taking out the offensive parts.

Let me deal with those offensive parts. I know there was a question earlier today about the disrespect that the government consistently shows to the judiciary, and this bill is another example of it.

There are a couple of clauses in the bill that would shift discretion from the judiciary to the prosecutory. The way that works is that a prosecutor would decide that a person was going to be charged with a certain offence but would have a choice as to whether he or she were going to proceed by indictment, which is the more serious way to do it, versus summary conviction. If the prosecutor decided that it would be by way of indictment, the judge then would have the use of this tool removed from his or her tool kit. He or she could no longer use it, simply by that decision. Even though the judge at the end of the day might say he or she would not be sending a person to a federal penitentiary and not committing him or her to custody for more than two years, the judge still would not be able to use the conditional sentence simply because of the decision by the prosecutor.

Our system should not function that way. It historically has not functioned that way. We have trusted our judges. I will repeat, as I have so many other times in the House, that we have the absolute right to be proud as legislators and citizens of Canada in knowing that we have one of the best judiciaries in the world. I do not think there are any in the world that are better. I might argue that one or two are peers of ours. But we would be taking away that discretion if we passed this bill, in those two clauses in particular.

There are other clauses in here where clearly conditional sentences, given the right set of facts, I would say in the majority of cases, should apply. If the judge says he or she is not sentencing someone to more than two years, conditional sentencing should still be available to the judiciary in those cases. I will get into that more in committee.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy the remarks made by the member for Windsor—Tecumseh. He has talked about a whole bunch of things, some of which apply to this bill and some of which do not.

The real issue is very narrow. The government is not eliminating conditional sentencing. What it is suggesting in this bill is eliminating conditional sentencing for serious and violent crimes. Some of them are listed: aggravated assault, human trafficking, luring a child, street racing causing death, arson, fraud, counterfeiting, most auto thefts and extortions. I cannot believe that anyone in the House would say that those particular offences should be subject to conditional sentencing. I do not know why we are even getting into that.

My question to the member is on this very narrow issue. Does he agree that those particular charges should or should not apply to conditional sentencing, if someone is found guilty?

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the question because it lets me get into some of the specific sections that I had not been able to in my speech.

Let us look at these. It would pertain to any sentence that the prosecutor elicits that has caused bodily harm, notice I said bodily harm, not serious bodily harm. If somebody gets a scratch on their finger, the way our code works, that is a bodily injury and that falls under this section. If somebody gets a cut hand in an altercation, they would not be eligible for a conditional sentence. That is one of the examples. That is a specific one.

Let us look at some of the other ones. There is one that always gets me. I practised a significant time in criminal law, but I also did a lot in family law. As a result, I had a number of cases where one parent abducted the children of the relationship. This section precludes, under any circumstances, the use of conditional sentences for that. There may be an abduction that lasts a day, two days or three days, where a parent has taken the child before the child is recovered and taken back to the legal custodial parent. There cannot be a conditional sentence.

It works. It is an ideal tool for that kind of situation. I can go through any number of other sections where the same thing would be true and where it should be available. It is a tool our judges need. They should have it available to them. We should not be taking it away from them.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, when someone commits a crime, obviously someone has to take action, sentence some punishment and rehabilitation. Hopefully, it is someone who has listened to all the evidence, someone who has years of experience in the criminal system, someone who learns the background of the case and the person, and of course that person would be a judge.

I would like to ask the member, and this bill is just the tip of the iceberg, how has the government eroded the tools available to judges to make the most appropriate decisions that would make Canadians safer?

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

Mr. Speaker, again, I thank my colleague from Yukon who worked on the justice committee with me for a period of time.

I thank him for that question because it is another point I wanted to raise that I did not have time to raise. There is a provision in this bill, and it is along the lines of what the member has asked, that says if any offence has a mandatory minimum sentence, conditional sentences cannot be used.

I have to say, first, I do not think the section is necessary. I think there are enough court decisions that say if there is a mandatory minimum, there is no discretion on the part of the judge. The history of this section is that the judge cannot use it subsequent to incarcerating someone. That has been the history of the section.

The effect of it, then, is that we see the government moving more and more toward, and in some areas, really silly mandatory minimums. We are going to see it shortly if the news over the weekend is the same. The government is going to bring back the drug bill, and for five marijuana plants there is going to be a mandatory minimum of six months or 30 days, whatever it is. I think it is six months. The judges are not going to be able to use conditional sentencing for that.

There is a provision in conditional sentencing that cannot be used in probation, that requires a person to take treatment. We know, with regard to drug offences, so much of that is related to a health issue rather than a criminal justice or criminal law issue. That is a great tool to have available with regard to drug offences.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh. It is obvious to all listening in the House why he is so often nominated the most knowledgeable member in this place.

The question I have for him is on two fronts. The first is with respect to this almost aggressive attitude from the government toward the judiciary that we see time and time again. The stories the government is willing to relate to describe its tough on crime agenda is via way of almost a verbal assault on the reputation of judges in this country. The government is interested in tough on crime but not so much in being smart on crime. That is worrisome to me. Why that bias?

The second piece is around this broad stroke that is contained within this bill. He gave a couple of examples of what happens when it is removed as an option for a whole suite of crimes. Is it not true that New Democrats actually support some of the conditions, some of the sentencing provisions within this bill but are seeking to remove the most draconian, the ones that will not effectively make society a safer place to live in?

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

Mr. Speaker, there are some sections in here, and as I said, we will be supporting the bill to go to committee so we can include these. One of the sections where we would preclude the use of this section is luring a child. I think everyone agrees with that. Again, I can think of one or two situations where we may say maybe we should leave that as a judicial discretion, and I will explore that at committee. However, overall, on the surface, it would appear that, yes, absolutely, we should not be using conditional sentences for that.

There is one on arson, where it is based on planning a fraudulent act. Again, it is almost in the line of organized crime and should not be used. There are several more. One is on kidnapping.

There is another one. It is a dual one and I am not sure how we are going to handle this. The section is the theft over $5,000. That is what has been put in the bill. What was not put in the bill is another section that is included in that of a testamentary document. So, one can be convicted of that, either by stealing a testamentary document or stealing more than $5,000. There is any number of factual situations I can think of where the theft of a testamentary document should not preclude the use of this. And is $5,000 the right figure? Should it perhaps be higher, given inflation and the rest of it?

However, there are a number of sections that we will be supporting because they make sense. And I have to say what we are going to find, when we look at this, is that judges have hardly ever used those in those circumstances anyway. They are by far the exception. As were those other sections that we passed the last time. We have good judges in this country. They are not going to use this section and they have not.

What the current government has done, what this political party has done, consistently, is use those rare exceptions where a judge has gone offside and it uses those as an example to justify this wholesale change for this very valuable and useful tool.

[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.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I think the member's speech was well researched by the department and had some very good information in it. I would like to ask him a few questions, which I have asked before.

Court cases are in the papers. They become public once they are finished. Considering that the Bloc has announced that there are hundreds and probably thousands of successful conditional sentences, could the member give a few examples of unsuccessful ones that indicate the need for this particular bill?

Of course, society is made safer if a person is less likely to reoffend. The evidence is that under conditional sentences the offenders are less likely to reoffend. Has that been shown? Why would that not be safer for society in a number of cases? I am not saying in all cases but in a number of cases. Hopefully the researchers have come up with answers to those questions since I asked them about an hour ago.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will tell the House what a lot of our constituents tell me.

We have sent out ten percenters into our own constituencies to judge some of the responses from our constituencies. A number of them have gone out asking a question regarding conditional sentences. Many constituents respond by asking, in the case where someone is an arsonist and burns down someone else's home, burns down someone else's property why would we then allow that person to complete the sentence in his or her own home?

Many times we read about people who have breached the conditions in a conditional sentence. With respect to drug crimes, many have continued to either traffic or to be involved in that culture.

I would say to the member for Yukon, it is correct that there is a difference between the former government and this government. We take the rights of victims very seriously. We look at the offenders. Protection of society is the guiding principle. In many severe cases we believe, my constituents believe and I believe that they need to be lived out. Offenders need to spend their time in prison doing time for their crime.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to my friend's speech earlier.

The Conservatives at one point in their history used to be quite interested in the costs of various pieces of legislation. Whenever we would bring a bill forward, particularly on the environment, it seemed to be their constant obsession that they would ask about the costing of the program.

Many times we have asked that the same consistent approach be applied here. What are the expected costs of different pieces of legislation? Initially the minister projected one of the bills at $89 million. I believe that the Parliamentary Budget Officer will be coming out with costs later this week and the early estimates are that it is in the several billions of dollars. There is a cost associated with changing the law, changing the punishment and the amount of time people spend in jail.

This seems to me to be an important part of this debate. Has my colleague costed the bill or has his government done so and if not, why not?

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, again the member is asking about the cost of the program. Let me tell him about the cost to society.

The cost to society in putting some of these folks into their own home so that they can go out and reoffend is huge. There is the cost to the victim. There is the cost of the victim knowing that after going through the whole judicial process, the guy is being put back into his home rather than into prison. There is the frustration that the victim experiences seeing that the guy gets to live out his sentence in the luxury and confines of his home.

Therein lies the great distance between us and the New Democrat members: they look to the offender, to the criminal asking what is the cost; we look to the victim and ask what is the cost to society.

[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--

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Rick Casson, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, could I have some order please.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

What's good for the goose is good for the gander. What does the bill cost?

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Never make a proposal with no cost in it.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order, order. If members would like to continue their conversation, they can do so outside the chamber.

The hon. member for Lethbridge.

[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.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, the member is a very good member and always gives well-researched material. As he has been here so long, I can ask him a harder question because of his experience.

The justice department has some excellent researchers and lawyers on staff who are well experienced. I have asked the same questions throughout this entire debate for all the Conservative members and the justice researchers have not come up with the answers. Why is that? Perhaps it is because, unlike most policy and legislative forming in government, the Conservative government has turned topsy-turvy on justice and the legislation does not come from the bottom up, is not scientifically or evidence based. It comes from the top down, so perhaps there are not answers to these questions.

I will ask the Conservatives one last time to first give a number of examples of situations where the conditional sentence was imposed and did not work properly. Second, when the recidivism rate, the chance of reoffending and hurting Canadians, is less with conditional sentences than those with jail sentences, why would we reduce them in some cases? I am not saying we should not reduce them in some serious cases.

[Rick Casson, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's involvement today on this issue, and many others.

Let us look at the issue of the victims for a second. We have situations where crimes are committed and the victims are in the same community where these conditional sentences are carried out.

I want to refer to a third-party quote, which is always good to have. The member opposite can take that for what it is worth. This is from Heidi Illingworth, the executive director of the Canadian Resources Centre for Victims of Crime. She stated:

The current legislation has not sufficiently restricted access to conditional sentences for offenders who commit serious and violent offences, including repeat offenders...Victims feel distress when they see offenders, not only those responsible for their own victimization, but also those who commit other serious crimes, sentenced to ‘house arrest.’ This proposed change will address concerns that some victims and survivors of violent crime have expressed to our organization.

Think of the victims just for a second. When a conditional sentence can be carried out in the same community where the crime was carried out and the victim is still lives there, it has a serious, long-term effect on the stability of the victim.

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

Mr. Speaker, the serious concern I have, watching this endless amount of crime bills come forward, is the position is always that the judge should never have discretion. Therefore, there is no discretion in the case of assault causing bodily harm. It could be two guys pushing each other in a bar. There is certainly a difference between that and beating someone up with a baseball bat. There would be no discretion on fraud. They would be thrown in jail. It might be a $100 credit card fraud. There would be no discretion on B and E. I know kids in my community who have committed B and E. Would I throw those kids in jail? Most of them just need some clear direction, which they are not getting.

Yet we see the same government's sense of entitlement, sense of two standards. When one of its friends was caught going 40 kilometres over the speed limit, driving drunk and cocaine possession, what happened? The judge did not take it. The Conservative Party says that we have to allow discretion when it comes to the pals of Conservatives. What is really hard to take is the hypocrisy of the party and its loony views on crime.

[Rick Casson, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think anyone in the House would argue with where most of the loony views come from in the House. It is very close to where that member sits.

It is unfortunate that the member would try to raise the issue. We are dealing with conditional sentencing. We want to deal with people who prey on our children. We want to deal with people who prey on our seniors. We want to deal with people who kidnap. We want to deal with people who are serious repeat violent offenders, yet the member chooses to approach this debate like that. It is very unfortunate.

[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?

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

The hon. member for Yukon will have seven minutes remaining when the House returns to this matter.

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.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

When the bill was last before the House, the hon. member for Yukon had the floor and there are seven minutes remaining in the time allotted for his remarks. I therefore call upon the hon. member for Yukon.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure again to rise on this very important bill, a bill that is important for my riding and, indeed, the justice system and all Canadians.

To briefly summarize what I was talking about in the first 13 minutes, I made the point that many Conservative MPs do not have an appropriate understanding of the effectiveness of conditional sentencing and of the success rates of conditional sentencing. As all studies have shown, it makes victims and Canadians much safer because it has a higher rate of reducing future crime. There is a lower rate of recidivism when someone is on a conditional sentence than when they go through incarceration.

People say that incarceration for a number of criminals is just a university of crime. They are with people who are not helping them get on in life or develop good methods and morals. They are teaching them ways to continue in crime, whereas conditional sentences have all sorts of conditions which many people do not understand that help rehabilitate someone and get them prepared for a meaningful life. Everyone, of course, goes back into society after their sentence is finished.

It is hard to believe that the government actually takes this whole crime agenda seriously. It talks about it all the time but it keeps shutting down Parliament and delaying its own crime bills every time it gets close to being in trouble. At the last prorogation there were 19 crime bills. A lot of those bills could have been through already. If the government were really serious about protecting Canadians it would not keep delaying its own bills on crime.

I sat on the justice committee for a number of the bills and virtually all the experts and all the witnesses we saw on a vast majority of the bills showed that a number of the provisions being put forward did not make any sense when they were tested against the reality of what worked, of what the stats showed, of what actually reduced crime and of what protected victims. Therefore, the justice committee had to make a number of modifications. The precursor to this bill, Bill C-9, we had to drastically change because it was so out of whack with reality and with what witnesses and experts said would actually protect Canadians and reduce victims.

I would agree that some violent crimes should not be eligible for conditional sentences, which is why I am willing to let the bill go to committee. However, for a number of crimes that should still be allowed, where judges should have discretion. The government has made no indication and cannot answer the question about the cost of this. There have been disastrous results from the Conservatives' other bills when someone else analyzed the costs. There is no analysis here, especially considering the provinces will have to pay for some of it and they have no idea what would need to be transferred to the provinces.

When we are in this huge deficit, the biggest in history, the Conservatives need to keep raising taxes. They raised the income trusts for elderly people in this country. EI premiums are going up. We are all paying airline taxes and huge interest rates on our income tax. Now they want to put in another bill that will cost a lot of money with no costing whatsoever and no telling the provinces what they will have to pay.

The second point I want to make relates to the appellate courts. If the lower court has a problem with a sentence that does not provide an appropriate conditional sentence, then it is appealed. The appeal courts do not have a problem interpreting the conditional sentencing. Both Ontario and Alberta Courts of Appeal agree that conditional sentences are not interpreted the same way for dangerous offenders purposes, which have totally different consequences and purposes.

Another problem with the bill is that it totally avoids the principles of sentencing and the circumstances of the crime. If the government thinks the bill will get away without a constitutional challenge, it has another think coming. If we defy major principles in our justice system, looking at the principles of sentencing, the circumstances of a particular crime by eliminating one of the options for the judge, then that certainly will be challenged at some time in the future.

The last point relates to policy development. Policy development in the federal system normally starts with experts in a department, such as the Department of Justice, who have years of experience. They find a need in society, work it up, study it around the world, talk about the problems and then they bring forward legislation.

It has been made quite clear to us in committee that on a number of justice cases the government has been working the other way around. The government just tells the bureaucrats what to do. In those cases, Department of Justice officials have not even been able to defend the legislation because they did not develop it. It is indefensible, as the experts explained to us in the justice committee.

I would like to ask Conservative members if they could give me three examples of cases where the courts gave an inappropriate sentence for a violent crime, a conditional sentence, and those sentences were not appealed. Conditional sentences have worked in thousands of cases. I would just like to have three examples of where a conditional sentence was given for a violent crime and the sentence was not appealed.

As one of my colleagues said, a lot of this bill appears to be a solution looking for a problem. I was a bit more enthusiastic about this bill at the start but when the government cannot answer any of these questions about it, it really puts the whole effort into question.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the end of the speech given by my colleague, whom I thank. I also want to thank him for the work he does. We sit together on the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, and he is a goldmine of information because he lives in the Yukon. He represents a huge area.

Does my colleague know whether there are any studies specifically for the Yukon on the impact this bill would have in terms of the number of inmates who would no longer be entitled to a conditional sentence? Can my colleague tell us how many criminals—because they are the ones who get conditional sentences—would be directly affected if this bill were passed as is? I will come back to this point in a few minutes when I speak on behalf of the Bloc Québécois.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I do enjoy working with my colleague on the aboriginal affairs and northern development committee.

The short answer to his question is that no specific study has been done. It would have a very big effect on my riding because of the number of aboriginal people in my riding. There are even more in the other two territories.

As the member well knows, an inordinate number of aboriginal people are incarcerated in the justice system. It is not working. The numbers are way above the proportion of the population. This bill would keep more people in jail where they will not get as much treatment and rehabilitation as those people who receive conditional sentences. A lot more aboriginal people will be in prisons. A lot more people will be in prisons across Canada who could then become more dangerous offenders and we could have a lot more victims.

The other point is that we have a restorative justice program in the Yukon, aboriginal justice, that has incredible rates, sometimes close to 100%, of people who do not reoffend when they receive conditional sentences. Whereas in the traditional incarceration system, the rate of recidivism is 30%, 40%, 70% and people come out a danger to society.

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

Mr. Speaker, three years ago the Conservative government appointed Canada's first ever Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, Steve Sullivan. Just in the last week, he criticized the government for shortchanging victims of crime and taking money away from the program. This is hardly the message that the government would want to project having spent years pretending to be friends of the victims of crime. His criticism of the government is that it is spending too much money on sentencing and not enough on victims of crime.

I would like to ask the member whether he agrees with Mr. Sullivan's assessment and whether he has observations on what went wrong over there. The government hired Mr. Sullivan three years ago and it clearly is not willing to reappoint him and does not want to go along with his recommendations.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, as the member knows and as he heard quite well in question period, any time an independent officer criticizes the government, they are not reappointed. The government does not like criticism.

I actually have not read that report. The member makes a very interesting point, because the only defence that many of the Conservative speakers make for these bills that do not make any sense to the experts is that they are protecting the victims.

Now, the one thing that would allow the Conservatives to force bad bills through Parliament has turned out to be a fallacy because, as the member just outlined, the government has retracted resources to help the victims of crime.

The point I have made numerous times in Parliament, the second point on the same topic, is that the Conservatives are actually jeopardizing the victims to be re-victimized when they put forward bills that would make Canada more dangerous, by not doing what the experts say and providing treatment such as conditional sentences and restorative justice that have proven track records.

When there is restorative justice or a conditional sentence, all sorts of conditions go along with it. Conditions relate to substance abuse, which is quite often involved in over 50% of the crimes, and rehabilitation, which gets people ready to reintegrate into society. It is that which makes society safer and protects victims. We should be concentrating on that rather than sentencing that has been proven not to be effective in many cases.

Recent studies that have come out cost billions of dollars, money that could have been used to finance removing the root causes of crime, dealing with victims and rehabilitating offenders.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I compliment my colleague from Yukon for a very incisive approach to a very serious problem in the country.

Because we are talking about a justice and crime agenda that the government has laid out, he has taken the trouble to actually look at dissecting the problem and proposing solutions. The member has analyzed exactly what the problem is.

I note with some optimism that both our colleagues from the other two parties, the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue and the member for Elmwood—Transcona, have underscored two very important issues that I would like to have my colleague from Yukon comment on.

First, this is a very large and very diverse country, not just geographically but culturally, and in a large geographic environment like our own, where people develop local, regional approaches to maintaining harmony and co-operation in communities, legislation like this might not be the very best solution.

Second, if we are going to implement legislation such as that which the government has proposed, and as my colleagues from Yukon and Elmwood—Transcona have pointed out, there has been no indication of the resources that will be put in place to achieve restorative justice, rehabilitation and reintegration. I think those are very important issues to keep in mind.

I wonder whether my colleague would step away from his learned approach to this and reflect on the other practical measure here, which is that this is a regurgitation of bills that have been presented prior in this Parliament and in a previous Parliament and were abandoned by the government through prorogation. Is it, in his estimation, a situation where the government is simply not taking its own legislation seriously and that perhaps we are lonely voices in the desert crying out for justice with the government's deaf ears as our audience?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate working with my colleague. He made a number of points and I will not get through them all in the time I am allowed. His first point was about our large geographic country. It is not only large geographically, but it is also very large culturally, with probably more diasporas than any country in the world. This leads to people in different situations. Aboriginal people have totally different cultural systems.

For instance, if we remove restorative justice and force aboriginal people from the high Arctic to be incarcerated when there are no prisons there, they may have to be moved thousands of miles from their family or support system. We are just going to increase the problem and cause more crime. They could never be rehabilitated. We do not have any sensitivity to the various cultures in this country.

That is why I said that this bill is easily going to get a constitutional challenge. The principles of sentencing look at the circumstances of the crime and of the person. When we remove the tools and the flexibility that judges have to deal with these vast differences in Canadian cultures and Canadian geography, it is really not constitutional and it is certainly not as effective as it could be in reducing crime.

The second point he made was excellent. I referred to it in the first 13 minutes of my speech. It came out recently that these bills cost billions of dollars and had limited effectiveness. That money should have been spent on prevention and the root causes of crime, on reintegration of criminals into society, and on rehabilitation. I will use probation as an example. If we remove this, there will be probation, and in probation we do not get that rehabilitation and reintegration. Therefore, we would be more likely to have more victims and a more dangerous society.

[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.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member's speech and there are many misrepresentations. Let me deal with a couple of them.

One is his whole inference that we should save this money and use it for rehabilitation. Millions and millions of dollars are spent on rehabilitation. In fact, we introduced new money to ensure youth were kept from crime. My colleague from Niagara West—Glanbrook and three NDP members who share the community of Hamilton were beneficiaries of $2 million to invest in the community to ensure we kept youth from crime.

There is the misrepresentation that this is not about violent crime. In 2006 we presented a bill to end house arrest for violent crime and the opposition not only fought against it but gutted it. So everybody is very clear, as a result of that, criminals remain eligible for house arrest for a long list of property and serious crimes, including, among others, aggravated assault, human trafficking, luring a child, street racing causing death, arson, fraud, counterfeiting, most auto thefts and extortion.

Why would the member not want to protect victims of these very serious crimes and ensure the perpetrators would be off the street so they would not reoffend? He is talking about it being expensive. Let me tell everyone that if somebody burns down a second house, it is very expensive.

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleague needs to take the time to listen to me. What he just said is not true, and I will explain why. The bill title is not correct: An Act to amend the Criminal Code (ending house arrest for property and other serious crimes). What my colleague does not understand is that people who commit arson are not entitled to conditional sentences. There are minimum sentences of more than two years for arson. As soon as there is a minimum sentence, the offender is not entitled to a conditional sentence.

I do not mind giving a law course. Where the law provides for a minimum sentence, there is no possibility of a conditional sentence. Is that clear enough?

This is true of a number of offences, including the one the member referred to. There are minimum sentences for offences such as setting fire to a vehicle or home.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue speaks knowledgeably and from experience. He said that even after four years, the Minister of Justice and his government still have not bothered to present any studies in support of their bill. That is surprising.

The Minister of Justice just presented us with a document that reflects his ideology more than anything else. Even the member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale said that this bill had been introduced previously. But even after four years, the Minister of Justice has changed nothing. What is more, the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue said that the government had not even conducted any studies yet.

The government wants to convince the House without any evidence. The member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale said that there might be opportunities for members of this House to debate instead of accepting the Conservatives' ideology. That is shocking.

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

Mr. Speaker, they have to listen from time to time. It would be worth reading what Julian V. Roberts and Thomas Gabor wrote in “The Impact of Conditional Sentencing: Decarceration and Widening of the Net” in volume 8 of the Canadian Criminal Law Review on pages 33 to 49. I am not the one saying this; it was in the studies the minister was asked to do. One of the studies states:

A 2004 study found that conditional sentencing has had a significant impact on the rates of admission to custody, which have declined by 13% since its introduction.

This represents a reduction of approximately 55,000 offenders who otherwise would have been admitted to custody. I am not the one saying this; the government is.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for livening up the debate in the House.

He did point out that the cost per inmate would be $52,205. That is the incarceration rate, and if the person were on conditional sentence, it would be around $2,300. If we take the figures he gave, a projected 13,000 to 15,000 more people in the system, and if we do the math, we would be looking at around $783 million. I could be wrong because we just had it done.

We know this bill has been around before. It has been introduced under different bill numbers in past years. No one can tell me the government does not have a projection of the costs. I have been in government before a couple of times. We costed out every legislative initiative before we introduced a bill.

They know what it is going to cost, and we know that a lot of this cost is going to be offloaded onto the provinces, as the member for Yukon said. Guess what. In a lot of cases, the provinces do not even have the facilities available right now. It will take them 10 years in some cases to have the proper facilities to house the inmates.

Where did the member get the figure of an extra 15,000? I certainly do not question his figures, but 15,000 people—

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order. The hon. member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will repeat myself for the benefit of my Conservative colleagues. It costs $52,205 a year to keep someone detained. There will be an additional 13,000 people detained. My colleagues will do the math. It is 13,000 inmates multiplied by $52,205.

I did not make this up. I got it from a study entitled, Adult Correctional Services in Canada, conducted by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, and which we can find in the 2005-06 report of the Adult Correctional Services in Canada, Juristat, Volume 28. I hope my colleagues will wait because I have not finished. It gets better.

I can see why a person would want to bend the truth when they do not want to tell the truth, but statistics do no lie. I am not making this up. “Another Statistics Canada study found that adult offenders who spent their sentence under supervision in the community were far less likely to become reinvolved with correctional authorities within 12 months of their release than those who were in a correctional institution”. Those are not my words. That is what Statistics Canada found.

When we are told something that is not true we must stand up and debunk it. That is precisely the problem with this bill. It does not tell the truth and will not solve our problems.

[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.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up a little further on the statistics that the speaker for the Bloc mentioned. He pointed out that we were talking about a cost of $52,205 per inmate. If we are projecting another 15,000 inmates in the system as a result of the bill, we are looking at roughly $783 million.

Who will pay for that? A lot of this cost will be provincially based and the provinces do not have enough cells to house the prisoners they have right now. The $52,000 is the cost per inmate per year under the current system, but if we have to spend hundreds of millions building new facilities to house the inmates, and it might take a number of years to do that, what will they do in the interim? Will the government delay bringing the bill into force for five or six years before it is actually implemented?

What does the member think of the cost implications and does he think the government has these figures? No government introduces legislation without knowing what it will cost. The Conservatives know, but they are not telling us.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona putting forward the $783 million figure in the House. As I said earlier, the government has already frozen the budget in corrections until 2013. Maybe this is because it is playing politics with the legislation.

By prorogation and other means, this bill has never gone through. It has been introduced under different labels, names and numbers. The tendency of the government is to play politics in the House instead of fixing the system and spending that $783 million on rehabilitation.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am impressed by the fact that some people in the House are engaging in the debate and are actually talking about statistics and studies that either address the issue or undermine the government's position on the issue.

My hon. colleague will be interested in reflecting again on a couple of the main issues. One of them is the government's sincerity on this. We have already been given an indication on this. We have seen it because we have been in the House and we have lived it. The government presents legislation and then says that we do not agree with it because we are bad and it is good. Therefore, it rams it through, tells the public it is tough on crime and then allows the bill to lapse with prorogation. Its sincerity and seriousness is always up in the air.

Second, instead of supporting the legislation with statistics, arguments and studies that support the issue of what to do in society when there are offenders and instead of looking at issues like how much we should invest in the process of arresting offenders, how much we should invest in the process of bringing those to justice and then how much we must invest if we actually incarcerate them for a particular period of time, the government comes up with zero answers.

Will my colleague reflect on those two main principles and tell us whether in fact the government is serious about—

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. The hon. member for Newton—North Delta.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member for Eglinton—Lawrence has been in the House since 1988. He understands the politics played by Conservatives time and time again. As he said, through prorogation and by playing politics, they have delayed this. There is no sincerity whatsoever when it comes to being effective on crime.

They leave the perception with public that they are tough on crime, but when it comes to effectiveness, there is no such thing associated with the Conservatives. We are sending the bill to the committee stage so the Conservatives can listen to other experts and other members of Parliament from the opposition and come up with a bill that will work, that not only will allow us to put the people who lure children and commit serious crimes in prison, but also allow us to use conditional sentencing for less determined crimes.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a few questions for the hon. member. Could he point to any examples in the country where an offender on a conditional sentence, which is a sentence two years less a day, has created a problem? Could he tell Canadians if he is aware of such a problem?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of any offenders who were in prison less than two years. There is always a chance. Look at the crime prevention strategy that the city of Surrey had put together in consultation with all the MLAs, all the MPs from different groups and experts. It has come up with punishments based on the crimes. When there is a crime with a lesser degree of offence, the individual can be rehabilitated by using the social dollars that we can put into the system.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, could the member tell us if this bill would have any effect on a particular group in his riding, the people he deals with the most? The justice system has a different effect on different Canadians.

Is there a reason why the government keeps bringing back the same bill after the experts have said it needs improvement?

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

Mr. Speaker, the member for Yukon mentioned in his speech that our country was very diverse economically, socially and culturally. My riding is as well. It is a very diverse riding from an economic and cultural perspective. I agree with the member for Yukon that the bill would create similar challenges to those that the member and his constituents would experience.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will follow-up on my last question to the hon. member. I asked if he knew of any examples where conditional sentences posed a problem. I am curious about his party's support of the bill at second reading, when neither he nor anyone in his party, I respectfully suggest, cannot come up with a single instance of a problem created by a conditional sentence which would justify Parliament restricting judges from giving conditional sentences.

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

Mr. Speaker, we want to send the bill to committee to ensure we can have a realistic discussion there. We can bring in the experts. The bill, I would hope, would incorporate crimes like sexual assault, luring children and abduction. I also hope we can take out the ones we do not need in the bill. We can do that at committee stage.

[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.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I will ask one question now and if there is time later, I will ask other ones.

The member made an excellent point about people in the criminal justice system. I think he said that 80% are there for reasons of either mental illness or addictions. Many Canadians are not aware of that. The criminal justice system is not simply chock full of people who have chosen to do wrong, but it is people who have addictions, health problems or mental illness.

I think the government members are sincere in wanting to reduce crime, but the fact is that many of their bills are misguided. If the government members were serious about reducing crime would they not put the emphasis on and resources and energy into those 80% who are there because of mental problems or addictions? That would be a great starting point. I am not sure that Canada does sufficiently well at this time dealing with people in those unfortunate situations.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his astute question. He is absolutely correct in that not only is the government going in a misguided direction with bills like this one, but it should be going in a completely different direction.

If we really want safe communities in this country, then we need to start putting resources into front-line mental health services and into addiction and alcohol treatment centres. We need to start attacking poverty and homelessness. Most importantly, I know that aboriginal issues are important to the member because he comes from an area of the country that has a strong aboriginal population. We all know that aboriginals are vastly overrepresented in our prison system. Aboriginal women are the fastest growing segment of our prison population and very often they are faced with these problems. Those are the kinds of things we need to attack if we are serious about cracking down on crime in this country.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Vancouver Kingsway made an incredibly cogent, thoughtful and fact-based speech. He certainly made a strong case as I know there were strong cases made during committee.

Does the member think it is rather disrespectful that the bill was brought forward yet again without the changes reflecting the input of all of the witnesses and members of the House? I find it really troubling that we have a dialogue in the House and then the bills are not adjusted.

I have had the opportunity of reviewing the Library of Parliament material. It has done a very cogent review of the conditional sentencing provisions that were only in place for a little more than a decade. It provides extreme detail in how conditional sentencing is to be provided.

I would refer the member to another example about addiction which probably does not merit incarceration. That would be gambling addiction which is a serious problem across Canada.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her intelligent observations as well. She does a great job representing the people of Edmonton—Strathcona and brings an intelligent approach to every issue in the House.

I want to answer by talking about victims again because the government likes to invoke crime victims to justify its legislation. This bill shows the government is not putting the needs of victims first. Steve Sullivan, the former victims' ombudsman until he was let go by the government, said:

By focusing solely on sending guys to prison longer, we're not serving the majority of victims of crime out there. We have to broaden our perspective of meeting victims' needs and sentencing might be a part of that, but it's a very small part for most victims.

...the stuff we hear every day on the phone is the needs of victims will not be...addressed by having offenders stay in prison longer.

Once again, if we really care about victims in this country, we need to focus on making them safe. That means dealing successfully, adequately and effectively with people who commit wrongdoing.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the member on an excellent speech. He is absolutely right when he says that Steve Sullivan has criticized the government. After all, Steve Sullivan was the government's choice as the first Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime.

The wheels are coming off this tough on crime bus that the government is driving because, in the last week Steve Sullivan criticized the government. One of the ministers had to admit that rather than a $90 million cost on the two-for-one sentencing the cost was going to be $2 billion. Now we have information that perhaps the cost for Bill C-19 might be as high as $783 million if we add an extra 15,000 people into the prison population. That is a cost that is going to be borne by the provinces, by the taxpayers in those provinces.

In its budgetary documents, has the government budgeted for these projections? The government knows what the cost item is going to be for bills like this one. Could the member tell us whether the government has any plans for adding these amounts into its budget for next year?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the truth is that the government has been anything but transparent and forthcoming on the issue of the cost of its crime bills. For the last year the government has utterly refused to provide an estimate of the cost of its crime bills. For the last six months it has taken one-third of the staff of the office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer to cost out these bills.

One bill cost $10 billion. This bill will add billions more. Mandatory minimums for people who have as few as five marijuana plants will put more people in prison and probably will cost billions of dollars more as well. It is not an exaggeration to say that Canadians can measure the cost of the government's, what I would call, dumb on crime approach, to be in the tens of billions of dollars.

In terms of cost, I do not think that is where Canadians want to put their money, particularly when it will not make communities safer.

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

Mr. Speaker, before I ask my question, I would like to say in all sincerity that I have always appreciated the speeches from the member for Vancouver Kingsway, as well as his exceptional preparation beforehand. I recognize that our two parties think very much alike on various issues, except when it comes to Quebec's sovereignty, of course. He showed once again how thorough his preparation is, and his examples are both noteworthy and timely.

I would like him to speak to one point in particular. There is a lot of confusion over conditional sentences versus suspended sentences. A suspended sentence is when a judge does not hand down the sentence that he could, but suspends sentencing on certain conditions. If the person meets these conditions, the judge cannot hand down a sentence.

A conditional sentence is what he basically just spoke about, when the judge hands down a sentence and he believes that the person could serve it in the community, again, with certain conditions. If these conditions are not met, the person will spend the rest of his sentence in jail.

If this option is taken away, what direction does he think judges will take with the excessive number of cases they will have because of this bill? Will they opt for a suspended sentence, incarceration or a third option, a fine? These would always be cases of not more than two years in prison.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to express to the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin on behalf of all members of the House our appreciation for the work he has done in this place. He is an example to us all with his intelligent approach to justice. He was the minister of public security in Quebec and he brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to these issues.

He is absolutely correct. 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 primary goal of conditional sentencing is simply to reduce the reliance upon incarceration. The conditional sentence provides an opportunity to further incorporate restorative justice concepts into the sentence process by encouraging those who have caused harm to acknowledge this fact and to make reparation. It seeks once again to get at the underlying causes of the behaviour.

I was in Athens, Ontario last night meeting with some wonderful people who talked about prison farms. They told me that a lot of offenders are people who have simply done something wrong. They are not necessarily bad people; they are people who need correcting. Conditional sentencing is an important tool in helping people correct their behaviour, and this makes us all safer.

[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—

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

The hon. member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his speech. I would like to ask him a question about conditional sentencing.

Some say that the conditional sentencing system no longer works. I imagine that we will learn more in committee when witnesses appear before it. Some will speak of the effectiveness of this system.

If the system is not working well, does the member believe it is because the federal government does not provide the provinces with enough money to manage it?

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is right, especially because sentences of less than two years are administered provincially. First of all, the federal government has not invested enough in rehabilitation. We have seen that. Furthermore, if we decide to jail these people, they will serve their sentences in provincial institutions.

The Conservatives are trying to scare people. They want to promote their political interests with their tough on crime ideas. However, the provinces, not the federal government, will be footing the bill.

I realize that the committee will study conditional sentences. I hope it will ask to hear from those responsible, the provinces, because they will be footing the real bill.

This law was established in 1996 in order to provide for rehabilitation. It is less costly than placing someone under surveillance in the community. According to the report we have today, it costs 10 times less to serve a sentence in the community than in a prison.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been following this debate closely, as I have many of the amendments that have been brought forward by the government in its effort to brand itself as the party that is tough on crime. Having supported some of the bills it has brought forward with respect to criminal law amendments, I am consistently struck by how it is not really being tough on crime and I would prefer that it be smart on crime.

I have studied this bill and have spent a lot of time, not just in this session but in both Parliaments since being elected, dealing with crime legislation. All of us have enhanced our literacy, so to speak, on these issues. The bill before us today is talking about a blanket elimination of conditional sentences.

I know the member is very well versed in these issues. I do not recall any really high profile cases where conditional sentencing was an issue and yet the government is not proposing some small surgical amendments to deal with those cases, if and when they exist, but rather a broad-based elimination of the entire conditional sentencing system.

Is the member aware of any specifics that would culminate in a draconian bill like one? If so, would he comment on those and let me know whether this bill, to his satisfaction, addresses those?

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is correct. This bill does not address anything, other than the Conservatives' political deficit. They are really working hard on that. If a government is tough on crime, it cannot be smart on crime. The Conservatives talked about transparency in their election promises. As we can see from everything going on with the Afghan detainee issue, transparency is not one of their strong suits.

When it comes to integrity, the Conservatives are no smarter than the Liberals with their sponsorship scandal, if we look at what happened with Rahim Jaffer and the former status of women minister.

There was a $16 billion surplus when the Conservatives took power. We are now looking at a deficit of $50 billion. They are no smarter when it comes to economics.

All they have left is being tough on crime, but they cannot be smart on crime.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague from Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel. He gave a wonderful explanation of how the Bloc Québécois see this bill. I would like to ask him a question about judges.

In every piece of legislation, the Conservatives seem to be questioning the judges' judgments. And that is no redundancy, that is reality. The judges are there to judge and to render judgments. Does he not think that this is contempt for the justice that is meted out by these great people we have in Canada?

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

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

The symbol of justice is a set of scales. It is true that this balance has always been sought in Quebec and Canada. As I was explaining, we are not the ones who created this balance system, but rather our predecessors did. They made that choice.

The Americans made a different choice. Now, for purely partisan reasons, the Conservative Party is trying to copy the American system, which has gone way too far. As I was saying earlier, the Obama administration had to release over 30,000 prisoners. There was no more money to keep them in custody, and thus no more money for rehabilitation, and it was thought that their offences were not serious enough to warrant keeping them in custody.

Once again, it is a choice based on partisan politics. The Conservatives believe that by being tough on crime, they are pleasing the media, that are often present in courtrooms, but personally, I trust our predecessors' judgment, and that is not the kind of society I want to pass on to my children.

[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, my colleague is right. I seriously think this is just political bravado by the Conservatives who are trying to score political points. I would not be surprised if they have not done any calculations. What is more, my colleague is absolutely right. The federal government is dumping the problem and its cost on the provinces and that is tough for them to take. I trust my colleague and I also trust the hon. member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin. I know they will be able to get to the truth in committee and show how the Conservatives are passing the buck to the provinces.

This will not solve anything and no one is asking for this. My colleague is right; there is no call for this. Whether we are talking about the prison system or the legal system, no one is asking for this legislation to be changed, especially not the provinces who do not want to end up paying the bill.

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, 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.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

That's right, people have been telling me, too.

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

The member is not sympathetic to that, but I would ask him to take a petition around and talk to people.

The NDP critic was in Athens, Ontario, the other day. The member may have never been to Athens, Ontario, but I have been there many times and it is not really a hotbed of NDP votes. I can assure everyone of that. That whole area has had a strong Conservative base for many years. As a matter of fact, voting Liberal in that area is really stepping out. The people there are not happy about the situation with the prison farms. It runs contrary to common sense.

The issue is that the Conservatives have obviously been in government a little too long, because they are starting to lose their grip on common sense. That is fine. If they want to ignore the prison farm issue and continue to close them down, then they do that at their peril because that issue is going to be around for some time to come.

Another principle underlying sentencing is proportionality. The sentence imposed by the court must be proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender. Another sentencing principle is that aggravating and mitigating factors have to be taken into account because there must be similar sentences for similar offences.

One of the reasons conditional sentences came about in the first place 13 years ago is that there was not a consistency across the country in terms of sentencing. For the same offence, a person would get a certain sentence in one province and someone in a neighbouring province would get a different one.

This certainly is a time to take another look at the Criminal Code. As a matter of fact, the NDP critic from Windsor—Tecumseh has talked about that repeatedly, that as a Parliament we should sit down and do a rewrite of the entire Criminal Code. That is fundamentally what should be going on in this case rather than just making piecemeal reforms.

I have many more points to make, but perhaps I can make them in the following debate throughout the day.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, the member might want to get his pen out because I have three questions.

First, he and a number of us have mentioned in the last couple of days the costs for the provinces. I wonder if he has any input from attorneys general of the provinces on that.

Second, he mentioned that the government cannot really be serious about its crime bills because it keeps proroguing Parliament or having elections, both of which put off its own crime bills. However, he did not talk about the seriousness related to this bill and the fact that the government has only had three speakers. There have been all sorts of objections that have come out and people have found technical problems, yet no one in the government has spoken to defend them. The justice minister and the parliamentary secretary have not even spoken.

However, my main question is on proportionality, as he has mentioned. When a judge whose job is to invoke justice has had the tool removed that would naturally work for justice in a given situation, he has to look for another option. That might have the unintended consequence of his choosing a suspended sentence, for instance, with probation. That could actually be more dangerous because the person would then not necessarily go back to jail and certainly would not get the rehabilitation that would make it safer for victims and other Canadians.

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

Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend actually asked four questions, not three.

I have listened to him make presentations on this and other bills in the House and I certainly agree with him. He has an excellent analysis of the problems.

I did bring up the issue of the government speaking, last week too, when the minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism actually showed up in the House for his bill. He listened to each and every one of the speakers and actually participated in the debate by answering the first question and asking questions in each of the questions and comments periods. Then he was quickly followed by the minister for democratic reform who was here for all the speeches on his bill to limit Senate terms. I think we in this House, speaker after speaker, recognized that. Certainly in the Manitoba House, for a large number of years, that was just common practice.

So, where is the government? It has gone AWOL again. It seemed to change its pattern for a few days, but now it seems to have gone back to its old way of ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona for his excellent summary of the current situation and the conditions under which a judge can impose a conditional sentence.

I will only mention three of the conditions: the person who has been convicted of an offence cannot be subject to a minimum sentence; the judge must find that the offence merits a jail term of less than two years; and the judge must be convinced that serving the sentence in the community would not pose a threat to public safety. The member presented these facts, and I would like to thank him for that because it gives us a clear idea of the current situation.

I would like to ask him the following question. How transparent does he think the government really is when it calls the bill the Ending House Arrest for Property and Other Serious Crimes by Serious and Violent Offenders Act? That is the alternative title the government has given this bill. What does the member think about a government that misleads people in this way?

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

Mr. Speaker, that is certainly consistent with the current government's advertising program. It is as if the Conservative Party advertising firm has simply tied its way into the bills in the House of Commons. Over and over again, the Conservatives feel they have to add a sexy title to the bill that sort of fits in with the press release that is already written. I say they do not have to do that. The press releases are ready. I have a bunch of their clippings here that I could show to anybody who wishes to see them. That is what they do. I think they write the press releases first and then they write the bills based on the press releases. All their crime efforts are really based more on trying to gain votes, and it is just not working. Their numbers are going down because the public, I think, is seeing through what they are up to here. The fact of the matter is that their crime agenda is just not getting the traction they hoped it would get at the initial stages.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I noted that my colleague spoke of the American experience in his speech. The U.S. went down this road of being tough on crime, throwing people in jail and being heavy on punishment, to find it really was not working.

I remember hearing a speech in Sault Ste. Marie from a Jesuit who works with gangs in San Francisco. He very clearly made the case that simply throwing people in jail and getting tougher in terms of punishment was not working for the people he was in contact with every day in the organization where he was executive director. He said to me that Canada should learn from the U.S. experience, that we should not go down that road and that we do not need to spend that kind of money or create that kind of pain and hardship for everybody concerned.

I would like the member to expand a little on his knowledge, understanding and experience of the American experiment that did not work.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is an issue of déjà vu. The reality is that Europe has lower crime rates, Canada has mid-range crime rates and the United States has the highest crime rates. Let us assume, for want of a better argument, that they are 25 years ahead of us. If we are looking at what they did 25 years ago, we would see that they have a system that does not work.

They expanded private prisons in the United States in an explosive manner to house criminals under the “three strikes and you are out” program and the mandatory minimum programs of Ronald Reagan back in the 1980s. At the end of the day, what have they got? They have a system that is bankrupting their state and the highest crime rate around.

How could that possibly be seen as following best practices? What is it going to take for the government to wake up and realize that, on this and other issues, it should be looking at best practices? It could look and see what works in Sweden or what works and does not work in other countries. Why be wedded to an American system that has been proven not to work? Not only does it not work, but it costs a fortune.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

There is enough time for a very brief question, perhaps 30 seconds for the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, just following up on the thoughts of my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona, it seems to me that the United States should be the safest country in the world, given that it has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Can he elaborate on this seeming contradiction? If tougher sentences make safer streets, why is it that the United States has the toughest sentences in the world and the highest rate of crime? Can he expand on that?

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

Mr. Speaker, I think it just shows that prisons are really crime schools. Prisoners are put in with other prisoners and learn the trade. At the end of the day, they come out with their degree. They are just better at crime when they come out of prison than when they went in.

How is that a positive for society if prisoners keep reoffending? We are trying to stop that system, and having conditional sentences seems to be working. It is also cheaper.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

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

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

On division.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

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