Bill C-39 (Historical)

Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act

An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

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

Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

moved that Bill C-39, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today in support of Bill C-39, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

Our Conservative government has been hard at work, delivering on our commitment to make our streets and communities safer for all Canadians, and to ensure that victims have a say in the justice system. Today, I am grateful for the chance to continue those efforts. Our government told Canadians when it was first elected that we would do things differently. We said we would get tough on crime. We have delivered. We said we would make sure that people convicted of serious gun crimes were given sentences that fit the nature of their act. We have delivered. We said we would give the police the tools they need to do their jobs. Again, we have delivered.

Over the last four years, this government has done what it said it would do to keep Canadian families safe in their homes and communities. We have done what we said we would do to help victims and ensure that their rights come before the rights of criminals.

I am therefore pleased to have this chance to speak to the legislation before us today, which would further strengthen this record, and which I know has the support of law enforcement officials, victims' rights groups, and all hon. members.

The bill before us today would strengthen the system of corrections and conditional release in this country in two important ways.

First, it would enhance offender responsibility and accountability, while strengthening the management of offenders during their incarceration and parole. It would also give victims access to more information and modernize disciplinary actions for offenders.

Second, the legislation before us would catch up with the seriousness of non-violent or white-collar crimes.

Let me address each of these in turn.

Bill C-39 would, first and foremost, amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to emphasize that the primary goal of corrections and conditional release is to protect the safety and security of Canadians. This is in line with key recommendations from the independent review panel that our government established in 2007 to review Correctional Service of Canada's operational priorities, strategies, and business plans. It is also in line with our commitment to put the interest and safety of law-abiding Canadians first in the justice system.

Specifically, the amendments before us today would require offenders to conduct themselves in a way that demonstrates respect for other people and property. In addition, they would require all offenders to obey all penitentiary rules and release conditions, while also actively participating in the setting and achieving of objectives in the correctional plans.

Since rehabilitation is a two-way commitment, Bill C-39 proposes amendments to ensure that a correctional plan is completed for each offender. The correctional plan sets out objectives for behaviour, program participation, and the meeting of court-ordered obligations, such as restitution to victims.

As well, Bill C-39 would modernize the system of discipline in federal penitentiaries by, for example, specifically addressing disrespectful, intimidating, and assaultive behaviour by inmates.

Bill C-39 also proposes to strengthen the management of offenders and their reintegration into society by allowing police officers to arrest offenders who appear to be in violation of their parole without having to wait for a warrant to be issued. Police and other criminal justice partners have asked for these changes, and our government is delivering on them.

Victims, of course, have long requested access to more information on offenders and a greater say in the justice system. Bill C-39 would deliver on this in a number of ways. The bill would allow victims to get information on the reasons for a temporary absence, an offender transfer, offender program participation, and any offender convictions for serious disciplinary offences.

A victim's right to attend and make statements at Parole Board of Canada hearings would also be enshrined in law, and offenders would in most cases be prevented from withdrawing their parole applications 14 days or less before a hearing date.

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

The second set of fundamental requirements proposed by Bill C-39 relate to the current system of accelerated parole review.

As Canadians have been made painfully aware over the last few months, not all criminals carry guns. Their weapons of choice may be phony balance sheets or glitzy portfolios designed to deceive honest Canadians into handing over their hard-earned money, often their life savings.

Recently the Minister of Justice introduced legislation to impose mandatory jail time on so-called white collar criminals who commit fraud over $1 million. That legislation would also ensure that the courts will consider requiring these criminals to make restitution to their victims. This would build upon our government's other measures to ensure that the punishment fits the crime. But it is one thing to increase sentences; it is another to make sure offenders serve a portion of those sentences in custody before they are released into our communities to finish serving their sentences there.

Currently, many offenders are released through a process called accelerated parole review. First-time penitentiary inmates who have committed non-violent offences can access day parole at one-sixth of their sentences, and full parole at one-third of their sentences, through a test less rigorous than that required for regular full parole. Unless the Parole Board of Canada has reasonable grounds to believe that these offenders will commit a violent offence if released, they must release them into the community. This means that in some cases a serious fraudster, thief, or drug dealer, for example, can be sentenced to 12 years but actually be released into the community on day parole in just two years and fully paroled at four years.

The status quo gives the Parole Board no discretion in dealing with these cases. The test is whether an offender is likely to commit a violent offence. As a result, even if the Parole Board believes the offender is likely to commit another fraud or theft, or continue dealing drugs, it is compelled to release him and to try to manage him under conditions. In many cases, offenders who have been given what might sound like a proper sentence can be back on our streets not long after their crimes hit the headlines. This offends many Canadians' sense of justice. It undermines their faith in our justice and corrections system. Canadians want change and that is what our government is delivering.

Bill C-39 will abolish accelerated parole review and repeal the sections of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that govern the accelerated parole review regime. It will mean that offenders who commit non-violent or white collar crimes are put on the same footing as other offenders. They will be eligible for regular day parole review six months prior to full parole eligibility, and they will be eligible for full parole review after serving one-third of their sentences. Rather than benefiting from a paper review, they will be subject to an in-person hearing, and the test for whether they should be released will be whether they pose an undue risk of committing another crime.

With the legislation our government is proposing, serious crime will mean serious time for non-violent or white-collar criminals in the same way that it does today for violent offenders. Our government agrees with Canadians that the corrections and conditional release system should put public safety first. The punishment should fit the crime and the rights of criminals should not come ahead of the rights of victims and law-abiding citizens.

Taken together, the changes proposed by Bill C-39 will bring the Corrections and Conditional Release Act in line with the needs of law-abiding Canadians, who have the right to feel safe in their own homes. The bill will also help to ensure that victims can get justice and have a voice in the justice system. I therefore urge all members to work with our government to ensure that the legislation before us today receives the speedy passage it deserves.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, we are going to support this bill, to send it to committee at second reading where we think it should be studied. Nevertheless, we have serious concerns about the government's overall policies in relation to justice matters.

I note that we recently had an announcement by the Minister of Finance that the deficit for last year was $2 billion more than previously reported. It is in the range of $56 billion, the largest deficit in Canadian history, and part of what we see in the future is that we are going to continue to have huge costs. The government will be spending something in the range of $10 billion on prisons in the coming years, and not spending in areas that will help to prevent crime.

Therefore, I want to ask my hon. colleague this: what is the government's forecast for the costs that will result from this bill?

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to my colleague across the floor, the Liberals are always concerned about the cost of keeping criminals behind bars.

We on this side of the House know that Canadians have to be safe and feel safe. We understand that there is a cost associated with keeping criminals behind bars. We feel that Canadians are asking for that, and we are willing to pay for it. It is a small amount to pay for safety in our communities.

I do not know where on the scale my friend would put the cost of criminal acts committed against Canadian citizens, but this cost will be minimal compared to the cost of the damage done to our society.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have been critical of some of the government's policies on criminal justice, particularly the way it rushes things through.

I would like my friend on the other side to explain one of the things that makes no sense at all. I want him to pay close attention to section 15.1 in the bill, which I have here. I have the act in my hand here. Section 15.1 actually just describes Newfoundland. According to their own bill, what the Conservatives are about to amend will only apply to Newfoundland. They clearly have not done their homework. I have the act here, and 15(1) says, “Newfoundland” and the agreement to bring Newfoundland in, I guess, and make criminal justice and the Criminal Code congruent. The way the Conservatives have written the bill, section 15.1, which actually has some good things in it, will only apply to Newfoundland.

I would like my colleague's response on this matter and why this was missed.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is always concerned about the rights of the criminal. He rarely, if ever, is concerned about the rights of victims. This bill is all about bringing the rights of Canadian citizens ahead of those of convicted criminals. It is about making the system fair and responsive to the needs of Canadians.

That is why we will see in this bill, for instance, the whole issue dealing with parole where, in the past, the criminal has had the upper hand. We are now putting some of this power back into the hands of the average Canadian citizen, putting power into the hands of the police who, when they find these people breaching terms, can now arrest them as opposed to having to wait for a warrant.

This is a good bill. I hope my hon. colleague will support it.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I asked a very specific question. I said that there are some good ideas in this part of the bill.

I asked why the government did not even read the act because section 15(1) of the act applies to Newfoundland. It was a very simple question. I was not asking for talking points or hyperbole. If the member is not aware, I will give him a copy of the act as I have it here. Section 15(1) applies to Newfoundland. This bill would only amend provisions with respect to Newfoundland. Why did the government miss that? Is it going to change it? It is a very simple question.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, I did not bring today's copy of the Criminal Code that my colleague has.

I would ask him to please join with us in supporting this bill as we move forward. It is all about Canadians. It will give Canadians an opportunity—

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

You do not even know what you are talking about. You don't even have the Criminal Code, and you are amending the Criminal Code.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

I do not think my friend wants to hear me, Mr. Speaker.

This bill is about giving Canadians an opportunity to honestly see what is happening in our system with respect to parole and the early release of criminals convicted of the most serious offences.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we all know that as bills go to committee there are things that do need a bit of adjustment.

I would like my colleague to highlight why this bill is going to be so important for Canadians and so important for victims.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Absolutely, Mr. Speaker. My colleague raised a good question. This is what we have been trying to illustrate here. This is a bill about bringing responsibility back into the system. It is about giving offenders the opportunity to show the parole system that they are willing to work on rehabilitation. The real advantage of all of this is that, when offenders are released into Canadian society, they have seen the need to be rehabilitated, to take part in the programs that are in the prison system.

There are lots of good things in this bill for every aspect of this House to be willing to support as we go forward. It certainly is a good bill. It is good for Canadians as a whole.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this bill.

I am going to start by talking a little bit about some of the elements of the bill, some areas where I think we are going to have to look further, then some general concerns and some very specific concerns about the direction the government is heading overall, and some concerns about the document upon which this bill is built, which is the Conservative 2007 road map.

Before I get to that, in its first clauses and in what it is seeking to do, this bill changes the nature of the mandate of Correctional Service Canada. Traditionally its mandate has been rehabilitation. What this bill is seeking to do is to clarify that it is the protection of society.

This is placebo policy in my opinion. It is supportable, but let us admit that the principle objective of rehabilitation is to make people better and to not have them offend. Therefore, when somebody does not re-offend and does not commit a crime, there is a safer society. That could be worded differently and that is fine, but obviously rehabilitation is central, if not essential, to that particular objective.

The second clause is concerning, because it does not add any specificity as to how the government would actually implement it. The government is saying in this bill that every inmate would provide a correctional plan to include the level of intervention of their behaviour and their participation in programs, meetings and co-ordinated obligations.

It is all well and good for the government to say to have a plan, but right now there are no resources. Oftentimes in talking to corrections officials or inmates in facilities as I tour the country, I find there are no resources for them to actually carry out their plan. There could be a situation where inmates are forced to have a plan and their parole or release is conditional upon achieving the plan, and yet it is impossible for them to achieve their plan because there are no resources for them to be able to go through and do the programs to meet what they have been asked to establish.

I would have no problem with the idea of saying to an inmate that they have to have a plan and that they have to meet that plan, but correspondingly there have to be resources, plans and programs to ensure that, in fact, happens and that plan can be met. If not, it is an exercise in futility and it means those people are going to be trapped in a situation where they cannot get out and cannot meet the objectives established for them.

The expanded range of disciplinary offences to include intimidation, false claims and throwing a bodily substance are not particularly objectionable.

The establishment of the right of the victim to make a statement at parole hearings is something that I think is very supportable. I think we would have to hear more about how that would work specifically.

There are some concerns, and I think we would have to talk about that at committee, with respect to permitting the disclosure to the victim of the name and location of the institution to which the offender is being transferred, the reason for the transfer, information about the offender's participation, et cetera. We would have to know how that was happening and how we would deal with the privacy laws that exist in the country.

There is a provision that would eliminate the accelerated parole review. It is important for members to know that the accelerated parole review is only applicable to non-violent offenders. There has been some debate in this House previously about eliminating the accelerated parole review for individuals who committed non-violent offences that were still extremely serious.

A white collar crime that victimized a great number of people clearly is a very serious crime, and we would want to make sure that there is an appropriate sentence for it and that the person who committed it is not given the opportunity to end a sentence early.

However, to eliminate all accelerated parole review might be a concern, particularly when we look at the fact that in 2006 and 2007 an offender on conditional release cost an average of $23,000, and this is to correctional services, while an incarcerated offender cost an average of $93,000. So if these are non-violent individuals and there is another way for them to serve that sentence, the question has to be asked whether or not the country should bear those kinds of costs, or whether or not that is in fact appropriate.

There are also provisions to authorize a peace officer to arrest offenders without warrant for breach of conditions of their conditional release. There may be legal issues with that. We would have to take a look at it.

If I could, I think we should look at the document upon which this is founded, the road map that the Conservatives were following with respect to the corrections system and with their agenda as it comes to prisons overall.

Both Mr. Jackson and Mr. Stewart reviewed this particular road map in a report entitled, “A Flawed Compass: A Human Rights Analysis of the Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety”. They stated they had three very specific areas. They called them three strikes. They started with the fact that:

It tramples on human rights and human dignity—strike one.

It will threaten public safety by making conditions in prisons more dangerous and undermine the pathways to prisoners' reintegration—strike two.

It will place enormous financial burdens on taxpayers in lengthening and deepening the level of imprisonment, the disastrous path the U.S. has travelled-—strike three.

They went on to say:

And lest there be any doubt of its abject failure as an exercise in principled and effective corrections, there is a fourth strike—it will intensify what the Supreme Court has characterized already as “staggering injustice” of the overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in the prisons of Canada.

In his portion of the address, Stewart noted a fifth strike against the so-called roadmap, “the near total absence of evidence to support its conclusions and recommendations”.

We need to consider this carefully not only because this plan is ineffective, because it has been tried in other jurisdictions and failed so miserably, but because the costs are so staggering that they have already buried other jurisdictions that have attempted this. The government is chasing after California when California itself is running away from the disaster it created.

We know that California adopted a very similar strategy with respect to corrections, building ever-larger prisons, upping the number of people and the time they spent in them. The result was not safe for communities. It was staggering debt, unbelievable cost and, in fact, less-safe communities.

In California the rate of recidivism, the rate at which people reoffend, has now crossed the 70% line. That means 7 out of 10 people who will walk out of a prison will recommit a crime, or recidivate. It is not exactly an example we want to follow, particularly when California is left in a situation where prisons, like a vacuum, have sucked money out of health care, education, infrastructure and priorities that Californians otherwise would want to see their government invest in.

We are barrelling down this path and what is particularly concerning with all the bills in front of us, not just this bill but others, is that there is not even a bother to offer a costing of this direction. In fact, the public safety minister has said he knows the cost but will not tell.

What we do know in just one bill is that the former public safety minister told the House that a bill was going to cost $90 million. I requested Mr. Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, to do a review and he agreed to do that review. As soon as there was the threat of review, that number changed from $90 million to the minister saying he made a mistake and it is $2 billion. When the Parliamentary Budget Officer concluded his report, he did not say it was $2 billion but said it was going to be $10 billion to $13 billion in costs over the same period of time that they were talking about $90 million. This is an egregious amount of money but it is only one bill.

When we consider the fact that Canada right now is suffering under the largest deficit in its history, where the country is going to have to make tough choices about how to undo the fiscal mismanagement that we have seen over the last number of years, one has to ask how we can possibly afford tens of billions of dollars in constructing new prisons. The problem with this strategy is that at the same time the government is building all these prisons and ratcheting up all these costs, it is slashing from the very things that stop crime from happening in the first place.

As an example, crime prevention has been cut by more than 70%. The victims of crime initiative has been cut by 41%. The very things that develop community capacity, that allow for organizations at a community level to break cycles of violence, addiction and the things that drive crime, are being cut.

When I go across the country and talk to people in communities, whether it is boys and girls clubs, church organizations or not-for-profit groups, they talk about how that cut in funding has impacted on their ability to make a difference in their communities. They talk about the fact that they have no doubt in their minds that it will lead to more crime, less safety. We need to reflect on that.

Dr. Irvin Waller, a leading thinker in the country about how we should approach preventing crime and keeping our communities safe, has quite clearly proven that for every dollar we invest in prevention, we save $11 in other costs, whether it is incarceration, probation, parole, or all the other things that are related. If we are cutting from the thing that saves money at a ratio of $11 for every dollar we spend and at the same time we are ratcheting up prison spending, it is a disaster in terms of its fiscal impact. It will blow a crater into the budget the likes of which it will be almost impossible to repair.

We are at a critical juncture where we have to make a choice about what road map, using Conservative language, we choose and how we deal moving forward. I would suggest that beyond reinvesting that money in crime prevention, going back to those communities, that we should go one step further. In communities like Kitchener-Waterloo or Summerside, P.E.I., I was able to visit crime prevention councils, which developed an action plan to enhance safety in those communities. It was driven from the ground up, saying exactly what they needed to make communities safe places, not some federal dictate that comes down, or some federal program they have to twist and contort themselves to fit into, but a locally driven community action plan that the federal government gets behind and supports, a plan that recognizes the importance of breaking cycles of violence, that recognizes that for inmates more than 80% of them are facing addiction issues and that for most crime that is being faced in communities it stems back to problems with substance abuse.

We need programs that recognize that victims of crime often later become perpetrators of crime in a cycle of victimization that must be broken at a community level. They recognize as well that having additional police on the ground, having proactive policing, going out and engaging young people in a positive meaningful way, giving them positive outlets to express themselves are all ways of making our communities actually safe, not just using words or trying to play politics with crime.

However, it does not end there. We also have to look at what we do in the prisons. At a point at which a young person first has their interaction with the law and makes a mistake, what is the course of action we will take? Right now too many young people, when they first commit a crime, are stuck in remand, where they are unable to get access to any programs or services to make them better. I do not disagree with elimination as an example of the two-for-one remand credit, but let us understand why the remand credits existed. It is because the conditions in remand were so reprehensible and young people going into conditions as minor criminals were spending time with major criminals and coming out ready to commit major offences. In essence we were creating crime factories.

If we are interested in breaking these cycles, we need to do what so many parents have done when faced with the struggle of having a young person who is heading down a dark path. They told me if they had a place to take their son or daughter and know that by bringing them there they would become better and be able to break that addiction, they would walk them to the door themselves. However, they know prison is not that place. They know that when they go to prison, their addiction issues get worse, not better. They are facing not only addiction issues, but when they get there, they are often facing extremely high rates of infectious disease.

Some people have said who cares if the HIV rate is four or five times the rate of the general population, or the hepatitis rate is many more times in prison than the general population. We have to remember that more than 90% of people who walk in a prison door will walk back out. Their health, their rehabilitation is not some criminal hugging interest. It is a self-interest. It is an interest of every Canadian because it has a direct and deep impact on community safety and on public health. Therefore, we need to have places where people actually go to get better.

What is disturbing about the path the Conservatives are choosing to walk down is at the same time they cutting from prevention and cutting from support for victims, they are cutting programs in the prisons.

I had an opportunity to visit every prison farm in the country. I talked with correctional officers who worked in these facilities, in some cases for longer than 30 years. To a last one, every one told me it was the best program we had in corrections. I met with inmates who went through the prison farm program, looked them in their eyes as they talked about the transformation that it caused within them, how working with animals bred empathy and compassion, about how the program placed at the end of their sentence got them ready to reintegrate.

It is not because agriculture on to itself is the solution, although unlike the government I do believe agriculture is still relevant. Believe it or not the Minister of Public Safety said that agriculture was essentially a dead end and there was no purpose for teaching it to people. However, it misses the fundamental point. These men were going through the program. They were spending 10 hours a day working on a farm. Because it was a voluntary program, they had to wake up on their own will at five or six o'clock in the morning, go in and put in a full day's work, working with animals, understanding empathy, understanding the value of work. The dignity and structure of that work is fundamentally what has changed them.

When I talked to employers in the construction industry or elsewhere, I was told they were some of the best inmates they could hope to hire because they understood the value of work.

While it is true that not every one of them was hired in agriculture, in fact the vast majority were not, they were hired and they were engaged in meaningful ways. What correctional officer after correctional officer told me was there was not a single rate of recidivism.

This program is dead. Its cost was $4 million a year. Four million dollars is a lot of money. It is two fake lakes, but it is not a lot of money relative to the cost benefit that it provides. It is deeply shameful that at the same time we are ballooning prison populations, we are cutting some of the most effective programs at making people better. We are cutting prevention. We are cutting from victims. Now we are cutting from programs inside a prison. The argument is that this is going to make us safer.

When I dare to speak out against this agenda, what do I get day in and day out in question period? Members stand up and talk about how I am a criminal hugger, about how I do not care about public safety, about how somehow I care less about the safety of my children than they do theirs.

I believe Conservatives are misguided on these issues. I believe they are taking us down a wrong and perilous path, which has proven that in every jurisdiction it has been tried, it has failed. However, I would not subscribe to one of them, a motif that did not care about community safety, and they should not impart it upon any other member. It does a disservice to this chamber.

We also have to recognize the impact of mental health and the importance of dealing with mental health in our prisons, particularly in female institutions, where very serious mental health issues will often make up more than 25% of a prison's population. In the male population the number is lower but still startlingly high.

What I hear from police chiefs across the country is more often than not we are using our prisons as repositories for people with mental illness. We are taking those who are suffering from mental conditions, who have no support and no way of getting off the streets, and waiting for them to commit crimes so the police can do something with them. Then they are transferred into prisons, where prisons are woefully under-prepared to deal with their mental illness. As a result, they often put them into segregation. In these segregation cells their conditions further deteriorate.

We are all aware of the story of Ashley Smith. Ashley was a 17-year-old girl whose crime was to throw an apple at a postman and to steal a CD. Ashley had mental challenges. When she was put into prison, they got much worse. The prison system did not know how to deal with her and had her in a segregated cell for 11 solid months. As Ashley tried to kill herself and kill herself, there was no interjection until finally Ashley self-asphyxiated and died.

We need to do much better than that. We cannot allow the mentally ill to languish in prisons with no hope of getting better or for people, like when I was in Her Majesty's penitentiary in St. John's, to be locked into a facility where they have no hope of getting out and getting better.

There needs to be a road map but it is not this one. We can do a lot better.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I recommend the hon. member go back and take a look at budgets that this government has introduced over the last four years. In my recollection it is this government that has increased the budgets for front-line police assistance. We have put prevention in as part of that budget.

I am a regular volunteer with the York Regional Police in York region. Our chief of police is very thankful for the budget allocations that this government has made. We also have five former police officers on this side of the House. It is important to recognize that they bring with them great expertise.

I do agree with the hon. member that having a rehabilitation program in place is the most important. Before I was elected to the House, I worked in disability management. We regularly had to put rehabilitation programs in place for injured workers. Building a rehabilitation plan for an injured employee is the most cost effective course of action for both the injured employee and for the employer.

When we are looking at these resources and how we use them, building a rehabilitation plan that takes place when an offender has the opportunity to build real skill and go out into the employment places afterwards is going to really help him or her.

Would the hon. member not agree that by providing an offender with real opportunities to gain real job skills that will be usable in the workplace is the best plan of action?

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

Mr. Speaker, one of the things we often fail to recognize when we go into our federal facilities is that many of the men and women who are there do not even have the most basic life skills. I am not just talking about literacy. When we put somebody into a literacy program, we do not necessarily hope that he or she becomes an author, but we understand that literacy has a direct ability for employment.

The prison farm program was so important because it taught the skills of the structure of work, the dignity of putting in a full day's job. There was no other program in corrections that allowed somebody to go in and put in a full day like that.

I agree with the hon. member that rehabilitation is essential, but we have to understand that providing skills is more than just taking a class on how to do some specific trade. For many of these men and women, it is much more fundamental than that. They do not understand how to structure their day. They have never had the opportunity to go in and put in a full day's work. They have never known the dignity that comes from work. They should have experiences like working with animals. We have seen in cutting edge research how that builds empathy. These are things we should not turn our backs on.

What concerns me is that we are cutting from programs like that at the same time that we are ratcheting up prison spending. The two are moving in opposite directions and it is going to lead to a disastrous impact.

I encourage the hon. member to read what Steve Sullivan had to say. Unfortunately he was fired because he stood up to the government. Like anybody else who stands up to the government, they are fired or misplaced in some dark corner where they are never heard from again. Mr. Sullivan said that the government's approach to crime was unbalanced, it would not work and it was wrong for victims. The government should look at the types of things he was saying about the cuts to the victims of crime initiative of 41%, or the cuts that have taken place to prevention.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to congratulate my colleague from Ajax—Pickering on his excellent speech. It is important to note the obvious differences between the speech by our Conservative colleague and the speech by our Liberal colleague. The concerns brought up by our Conservative colleague are certainly laudable, since they have to do with rehabilitation measures. However, our colleague from Ajax—Pickering focused particularly on prevention. Indeed, that is what is the most successful. The figures he gave us were also interesting. Of course, prevention is successful in avoiding crime as much as possible, but it can also be profitable economically. As he said, for every dollar we invest in prevention, we save $11 in other costs.

To get back to Bill C-39, I have a question for my colleague, and would like to hear what he has to say. Does he see concrete measures or examples in this bill, in terms of prevention, that could give this bill some merit?

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

Mr. Speaker, in my opinion, there is not much in the bill to do with crime prevention. I can certainly support some elements of the bill, which the committee will be able to use constructively. The Conservatives' proposals do not provide for much in terms of crime prevention. The Conservatives are still using crime to win votes. They are not protecting our communities. That is the problem.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I must say that the speech from my colleague from Ajax—Pickering was extremely rational and was one of the better speeches I have heard in this place.

I want to follow up on the question from the member for Chambly—Borduas.

Thirty-four per cent of aboriginal Canadians between the ages of 25 and 64 do not have a high school degree. We know that many people who live in poverty have a disproportionate likelihood of ending up incarcerated.

There are a number of ways we can affect this problem. We all need to have security in Canada. We want to have prisons. They need to be places where people come out better than they were when they went in. But we also want to keep people out of jail. Whether it is early learning and childcare, literacy programs, or lifting caps on aboriginal education, I wonder if my colleague would agree that these are the ways that we need to go as a country. We cannot equalize our income across Canada, but we can do more to equalize opportunities so that people do not end up in a life of crime. I wonder if he might comment on that.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member talks about the interconnection of these issues far more broadly than even I have, and I think this broad view is important.

When I was in Regina, I had an opportunity to tour the worst areas with the former police chief. He took me to neighbourhoods where children were growing up in homes with no heat, where a meal was a scarce thing, where they had to walk through streets that were unbelievably violent, where, even when I was there, the police had to call in paddy wagons because there had been a shooting. Can members imagine somebody trying to learn in an environment without food or heat? The chief told me about another home where, for six months, raw sewage was being dumped into the basement because they had no solution. And somebody says, “Well, pick up your bootstraps kid and make a go of it”.

If we want to stop crime, we cannot allow children to live in those conditions. If we are interested in making our communities safer, then we have to go to the places where crime originates.

My colleague makes an important point when he talks about how disproportionately represented aboriginal and first nations peoples are in our prisons. They are 10 times more likely than anybody else to be in a prison. This is a national disgrace and we have to look at the reason for it.

More often than not, the reason is that first nations youth do not believe there is a future for them. They have lost hope. They do not feel that this country has opportunities for them to be successful, to set goals and realize them. As long as they lack that hope, as long as they lack that belief that they can cross through and have a successful future, then we will continue to see this kind of disproportionate representation in our prisons.

The terrible thing about the way this debate has been cast is that it makes it seem as though criminals are just these bad people and all we have to do is hit them harder, with bigger sticks, and all of our problems will go away. However, when we look at the underlying assumptions, when we have an honest conversation about what community safety is about, we get a real and honest picture of what needs to be done. Remarkably, it can be done at a fraction of the cost.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as usual, this government is introducing a bill that I have begun referring to as a microwave bill. The Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security should have been studying this bill long ago, but the Prime Minister decided to abusively prorogue Parliament in December 2009.

In fact, because of the Prime Minister, Bill C-39, introduced on June 15, 2010, is a combination of two bills that died on the order paper, namely Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Criminal Code, introduced in June 2009, and Bill C-53, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (accelerated parole review) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, whose short title is Protecting Canadians by Ending Early Release for Criminals Act.

As usual, we have become accustomed to this government's showy, dramatic titles that are, of course, always accompanied by a circus when they are introduced.

So there is nothing new on the horizon, which is serious. It is serious because peoples' safety should come before political games. Instead of creating a circus and rejecting Bloc bills in bad faith, this government should start thinking about taking real action in terms of public safety.

One of the provisions in this bill would abolish the opportunity for parole after one-sixth of the sentence. Since June 2007, the Bloc Québécois has been proposing that parole after one-sixth of the sentence be eliminated because we feel it undermines the credibility of the justice system. We believe that such an action would restore the public's confidence that has been abused by people like Vincent Lacroix and Earl Jones.

On September 14, 2009, we introduced a bill specifically focused on that measure. All victims and the general public unanimously agree on that measure. On two separate occasions we called for the unanimous consent of all parties to pass the bill quickly, so it could be applied immediately to people like Earl Jones and Vincent Lacroix. And what did the Conservatives do? Twice—not once, but twice, so no one could say they did not understand at first, but I am sure they must have understood the second time—they refused to pass the Bloc Québécois bill. And that is terrible, given that with this Bill C-39, they have now presented a provision that they could have agreed to in 2007. This provision would have meant that people like Earl Jones and Vincent Lacroix would not be entitled to parole after only one-sixth of their sentence is served. But in reality, now we can debate the bill all we want, and people like Earl Jones and Vincent Lacroix can apply for parole after only one-sixth of their sentence is served—all because the Conservatives refused to take action quickly when we asked them to.

We will not accept that. Despite the Conservatives' bad faith, we will vote in favour of this bill because we want to study it in committee, since we think it has some interesting points and we feel it is extremely important that more consideration be given to victims. We are prepared to look at this and move it along for the benefit of the public.

We will also vote in favour of this bill because the Bloc Québécois already proposed some of these provisions back in 2007, as I mentioned earlier, including eliminating parole after one-sixth of the sentence is served. There is also the notion of making inmates accountable for their reintegration programs and questioning the virtually automatic statutory release that occurs after an inmate has served two-thirds of the sentence.

At present, in order to keep in custody offenders who are known to be dangerous, but who are due to be automatically released after serving two-thirds of their sentence, a parole officer and the whole team have to make a specific request to have these offenders detained, when they know the offenders will reoffend quickly and violently. I have been a part this process, called a detention, as a parole officer.

It takes a huge analytical effort to show that an inmate who is automatically released after serving two-thirds of his sentence will reoffend violently in very little time. There are very few detentions. They are used only for the most dangerous offenders, and that is unacceptable.

The Bloc has been proposing since 2007 that the government do away with automatic release after an offender has served two-thirds of his sentence. I could give some examples, but I would rather go on.

It is important to provide legislative tools for the people who are working very hard to maintain a balance between public safety and inmate rehabilitation. The mission of Correctional Service Canada and Quebec's correctional service is to maintain a balance between public safety and rehabilitation, which is hard work.

We must not lose sight of a very important point: rehabilitation is the key to public safety. If we introduce a system where public safety equals repression, we are going to find ourselves in a society where safety is seriously challenged. When we talk about rehabilitation and prevention, we are talking about public safety.

Unlike what certain demagogues say, prisons and penitentiaries are not some kind of club med. When people go to prison, they enter what we call crime school. People who have committed more or less serious crimes and who have more or less led a life of crime end up in prison and will develop new skills, make contacts and learn ways of doing things that make them more effective criminals.

If they go to prison for drug trafficking or another offence, they will get even better at committing crimes, hence the need for rehabilitation. The point of rehabilitation is to give tools to criminals to make them less dangerous or not at all dangerous to society. That is a key part of ensuring public safety.

It is important to understand that rehabilitation is key to protecting society, especially since many of these prisoners will be released one day, even those who were sentenced to life in prison. A 25-year-old who is serving a life sentence will be released one day, if he is rehabilitated. Sometimes, a prisoner will receive 10 or 15 years, and after going through the correctional system is just as dangerous or less dangerous. All of these people will get out one day, which is why rehabilitation is so important.

Unfortunately, the Conservatives do not understand that word. In fact, they simply do not believe in rehabilitation because they think that repressive incarceration is the answer. Incarceration is the most serious consequence for a criminal offence in Canada.

Incarceration is punishment in itself. Unfortunately, what this government does not understand is that there is a difference between “consequence” and “punishment”. When our children misbehave, there are consequences and rewards, but incarceration in and of itself is punishment and consequence. What more do we want? Why make incarceration even more repressive since being incarcerated is a consequence and punishment in itself? Applying revenge mentality to the law has to stop. The law is there to create justice and fairness and to make society safer.

This bill goes against the current mission of the CSC, which seeks to protect society by assessing the risk posed by inmates and encouraging them to take part in programs. We all agree that society must be protected, but the government is twisting this ideal to insidiously change the CSC's mandate through this bill. It is not very clear. We do not really know where the government is going with this.

I invite all hon. members to look more closely at this attempt to change the mandate that tries to achieve a balance between rehabilitation and protecting society from the perspective that rehabilitation equals protecting society.

As I was saying, the longer people remain incarcerated, the worse things get, but some people do not understand that. In less serious cases, people should be able to benefit from rehabilitation because, in any event, these individuals are assessed at every stage. The correctional plan is updated regularly, after three months, six months, a year. When these people appear before the board, their file is reviewed again. They are monitored. When they are released, because they are eligible or rehabilitated, they are monitored on the outside by Correctional Services. They have a meeting once a week, either at home, at work or at CSC offices. They are monitored closely until the end of their sentence. I think Correctional Services does good work.

However, it needs to be recognized that certain individuals cannot really be rehabilitated, such as those with psychiatric or psychological conditions. In my personal practice I met some who, unfortunately, could never be released because they are too dangerous. We must then ask ourselves if those people should be incarcerated in a prison. Should they not be incarcerated in a psychiatric institute or hospital? Unfortunately, the bill does not really answer this question. What do we do with very dangerous people who have serious psychiatric issues and who cannot be rehabilitated in the community?

Another important point about this bill concerns the place of victims in the correctional system and their right to be involved in parole hearings. There is also the issue of authorizing the correctional services and the National Parole Board to share information with victims. It is fundamental, not only to the healing process, but also to feel safe as a person who was victimized by another person, to have certain information about the offender, such as where they are, what they are doing, and to know if you will run into them while grocery shopping or at the corner store. It is important to have certain information. However, I wonder—and we can take an in-depth look at this in committee—how much information should be given? What information is relevant? I do not really have an answer to that. The committee will surely enlighten us on that issue.

I really hope victims can have access to information. But what kind of information are we prepared to have? The information should pertain to these people's safety and the healing process.

Even though the Corrections and Conditional Release Act clearly recognizes the interests of victims of crime and the role they can play in the corrections and conditional release process, victims and victims' rights advocates told us that many aspects of the current system made no sense and that victims were dissatisfied. These people will be able to give us some further clarification in committee.

The government tells us that victims have an important role to play. I am trying to understand what the Conservatives have done for victims since they came to power. There was the famous bill that was introduced at one point and then dropped off the radar. It seemed to be designed to give the police tools to fight cyberpedophilia and child pornography. We do not hear anything about it anymore.

The former ombudsman for victims of crime, Mr. Sullivan, was unceremoniously dumped. In mid-August, three and a half months later, he noted in a letter to the minister that the government had found money to expand the prisons yet was cutting funding for victims programs. He also came to see us in committee and told us that this government's actions were all about criminals and that the government was doing very little, if anything, for victims.

This year, the budget for the ombudsman's office will increase by barely 1.08%, and grants and contributions for the victims of crime initiative will decrease from 41% to 34%. Meanwhile, the government is talking about boosting funding for incarceration by several million dollars to build new prisons or expand or renovate prison wings. Mr. Sullivan was right: this government is all about getting tough on crime, but it thinks that by focusing on criminals or increasing sentences, it will solve victims' problems. Unfortunately, that is not what the ombudsman for victims of crime and the victims themselves are saying.

Furthermore, when the government prorogued the House, it killed two bills supported by Canada's police chiefs and the former victims of crime ombudsman, specifically, legislation that would have facilitated online investigations, as I said earlier, especially regarding crimes of a sexual nature against children. I asked Mr. Sullivan what he thought and he told me something rather extraordinary. He told me that if he were prime minister, the Internet legislation would be his top priority and it would be the first bill he would bring forward. Indeed, cyber-pedophilia and child pornography are rampant on the Internet.

A press release I saw on the Internet on October 3 stated that the government is tackling cybercrime. However, after reading the article, I realized that it did not include anything about the Internet legislation.

To close, I would like to mention Bill C-343, introduced by my colleague, the hon. member for Compton—Stanstead. The bill will help victims of crime, particularly by allowing them to be absent from work and receive an income while dealing with their grief or trauma. The bill was introduced in this House but unfortunately, the government voted against it. I thank the other parties for supporting the bill. I truly hope that when it comes back before the House, we will win our case, because it is important for victims.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-39 with mixed concerns. The bill is 35 pages long and has 66 amendments to the act which are of mixed value.

The government, and so typically of it , has taken what I can only say are significant recommendations in terms of their length but which in many respects are housekeeping-type amendments from the Correctional Service of Canada. We can see that in the way the bill is drafted and in terms of the specific sections and the detail in those specific sections. They are obviously concerns from Correctional Service of Canada of problems it has run into. I would say that at least half of the bill addresses those specific problems, ones that we would generally be supportive of.

On the other hand, which is again typical of the government, once it receives those recommendations, it piles on what are in some cases quite extreme changes to the legislation and the corrections philosophy that we have had in this country for at least 50 years.

The government is attacking some of the fundamental beliefs that we have and that we have used to establish what is the best way to deal with those people who commit violent acts or non-violent criminal acts and who are incarcerated in our federal penitentiaries for more than two years. These are more serious crimes, whether they be property crimes or violent crimes. Those are the people we are talking about.

We currently have between 13,000 and 14,000 people incarcerated at the federal level. One of the concerns we have is that because of this piling on of some of the government's ideological inclinations to punish people rather than rehabilitate them, there is no indication from anything we have heard from the government side as to what the impact will be on the incarceration rate. Are we going to keep, on an annual basis, another 1,000, another 1,500 or another 2,000? Those are the kinds of figures I would suggest are likely to come out of this legislation if it were to pass.

It is obvious from the comments that we have heard from the Bloc just now that they will be supportive. I am not sure what the Liberals are doing because typically Liberals do not know what they are doing yet. The Bloc will support this going through second reading and on to the public safety committee.

What hopefully will happen at the public safety committee is that those sections of the bill that are offensive to some of the fundamental principles that we have lived by in our corrections system for the last five decades can be stripped out of the bill. I will address my comments with regard to some of those.

As the bill stands right now, there is an expression in clauses 3 and 4 of the bill that set out the guiding principles for Correctional Service of Canada. What it does now is it sets a balance between the safety of the staff and the inmates in our prisons and, looking forward to those inmates being released at some point, the safety of the public in general when they are released.

There is a balancing act that is in the legislation now. This bill would upset that balance and set as an absolute fundamental priority the protection of the public, again being driven by that ideology that we hear from the Conservatives that somehow the protection of the public and rehabilitation of the incarcerated individual are mutually exclusive. Quite frankly, that is absolutely wrong.

In fact, if we do not rehabilitate, if we do not reduce the recidivism rates with an effective treatment for the person incarcerated, we enhance the likelihood of that person committing more crimes, often more violent crimes, when they are ultimately released. We have that from all sorts of sociological studies, not only in Canada, but in any country where there is a reasonably vibrant democracy.

When we see the shift in this fundamental approach, we have to say that we cannot support it. At committee, we hope a majority will see it that way and those provisions will be struck out, so that we stay with the existing balance that has served us so well. It is not perfect, and that is why we are supportive of some of the other amendments. There are changes that could be made that would enhance the safety of staff in our prisons, the inmates, and ultimately society when those inmates are released.

There are other provisions in here, and we are hearing this from some of the critics of this bill, that are an attack on the fundamental rights of Canadian citizens, which rights should continue when a person is incarcerated. As I am sure most members of this House know, there was a battle at one point under the charter on whether people incarcerated at the federal level were entitled to vote in federal, provincial, and municipal elections. Ultimately, the Supreme Court of Canada decided that this was a fundamental right that was not taken away by a conviction and sentence in a federal penitentiary. That was not implied in the charter. Corrections Canada could not take away the right to vote and it was reinstated.

Because of the way Bill C-39 is drafted, there will be attempts in the future to undermine the basic rights that our Supreme Court has said continue to exist under the charter. For instance, there are several paragraphs in which rights that are now recognized under the existing law are being called “privileges”. If they were called “privileges” before, they are now being removed from the law completely. We can see this shift quite clearly in several sections in which there is an attempt to undermine the ability of the inmate to continue to function, at least to some degree, within the normal parameters.

We know this is important. Anybody who has worked in corrections knows that even somebody serving life is ultimately, in the vast majority of cases, going to be released. They have to be released in a position to function in society. If we take away all those rights, if we turn them into non-citizens, the chances of rehabilitation go down dramatically. The likelihood of recidivism goes up correspondingly and dramatically. It is important to maintain that balance. There is a clear attempt on the part of this government to undermine that balance at this time in this bill.

The other significant concern that I have, and that my party has, with regard to Bill C-39 is that, although we support the concept, it is proposing that the responsibility should lie with the inmates to take advantage of programs that would assist in their rehabilitation.

That can take a number of different directions. Sometimes it is just teaching basic life skills. It was one of the reasons we heard such a negative reaction to the decision by the government to close the prisons in farm settings. Above and beyond just about anything else, they taught inmates, often young inmates, some basic life skills. They had to get up in the morning. They had to get ready to do their work. They had to go to their work. They had to perform the jobs they were assigned to. They had to do everything with a reasonable amount of diligence.

We learn those skills by experience. It is hard to learn them when sitting in a cell for 23 hours a day. It does not work that way. It is one of the major reasons we saw such an overwhelming response and opposition to the government's decision to close those prisons. It was a major mistake, one that the rest of society will suffer from for quite some time, at least until we get rid of the government and reopen those prisons, which allow people to learn on-the-job life skills.

There is other programming such as education, but the most important is psychiatric counselling and treatment. I say this from the experience I had sitting on both the justice committee and the public safety committee, where I listened to the staff in the corrections services who actually worked in the prisons. A number of those were in administrative positions but came from front-line positions. Psychiatric counselling and treatment may include pharmacare to deal with what are often chemical imbalances. Our prison system is woefully inadequate in providing those services.

I remember one time the deputy head, now the head of Corrections Canada, estimated that of the 13,500 inmates in the federal penitentiaries close to 50% had serious psychiatric problems, and that a majority of that 50%, if they were out in society, could be confined to a psychiatric institution. The sad part was his admission that they were getting nowhere near the treatment that they required, which was an absolute necessity if they were going to be rehabilitated.

The other point that he made was that, with respect to education and lifestyle-type programs, all too many of our inmates have access to them only late in their sentences. A large number of them are released before they can complete the programs, whether it is psychiatric treatment, an educational program, or a lifestyle program. They never get to finish them because they are not available to them. They are put on a priority list when they come in, but those who are already there get the first shot at them. As they move up the list, they are also spending more time. By the time they get to the top of the list, they are about to be released. In effect, few inmates benefit from the programs because there are all too few of them available.

We know, from admissions from the government, that it is going to spend somewhere around $9 billion on concrete, glass, and steel to build new prisons. There is no corresponding increase in funding for programming, none whatsoever.

It was interesting to listen to the staff who were out picketing the minister at one of those announcements, when he was running around the country making announcements of new prisons, the amount of money being spent, and the number of new beds there were going to be.

The people in those institutions now working with those inmates, our professional staff, said to him that this was crazy, that instead of more cells, they needed more programs and more staff. There is a stress level among the staff because there are not enough of them. A large percentage are often off on stress leave, which only places additional burdens on the remaining staff. So we have a staff morale problem in prisons, and it comes down to two fundamental issues: first, we do not have enough staff, and second, we do not have enough programming for the inmates.

We have a government that is quite prepared to spend taxpayers' dollars to follow its theme of punishing people, making people accountable. But it is not going to spend any money on what is really necessary: to rehabilitate inmates while they are incarcerated. It boggles the mind. Imagine historians 50 years or 100 years from now looking back at this period of time and wondering what we were doing. The government cannot see that we have a rare opportunity to turn these inmates' lives around, to make them responsible citizens so that they no longer prey on citizens.

We will blow the opportunity, because on that side of the chamber it is all about punishment. Conservatives cannot get their heads wrapped around the fact that we need to rehabilitate. If we are going to have an effective correction program, whether it is at the provincial or federal level, while we have that person in our control, and I am being serious, we have to force them to turn their lives around. To do that, they need to be provided with the necessary support.

This fundamental approach is a real problem in the bill. All it does is perpetuate the notion that, to solve our crime problem, all we have to do is build more prisons, more beds, incarcerate more people. All we have to do is look across the border to see that this does not work. It is quite interesting to see what is happening there. In many states, including Michigan, which is adjacent to my hometown, prisons have been built that they no longer can afford, just to punish people.

Conservatives will know that, for the last decade, more and more states have been closing prisons, reducing their prison populations because they cannot afford to keep them. There are states that are spending more money on prisons than on post-secondary education. That is a ludicrous position, and we are moving that way when we see these kind of decisions.

There are some fundamental changes required for this bill, and I hope that the committee will agree. On the other hand, there are provisions that our corrections staff are telling us they need. We support them on that. We would be supportive of giving authority to the Parole Board to accept victim impact statements. That is not done in parole now. Corrections Canada would advise when parole was coming up or when the person was being transferred.

A number of mechanisms that are being put in place now make good sense. They will assist victims and victims' families to deal with the reality of the person who is going to be released from custody.

Hopefully at committee those changes will be made, the good parts of the bill will ultimately get through and the bad parts will be removed.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak in support of Bill C-39.

The legislation before us today would strengthen our correctional system and sets the stage for implementing a number of fundamental reforms identified by the Correctional Service Canada's 2007 independent review panel report, “A Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety”.

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

We have made progress in responding to these recommendations and we intend to continue this good work as part of this government's commitment to making public safety a priority and to put the rights of victims and law-abiding citizens ahead of those of criminals.

The legislation before us today would help ensure that the system of corrections better meets the needs of victims while also improving offender accountability. It would also ensure that so-called white collar offenders serve appropriate time in custody.

The current Corrections and Conditional Release Act recognizes the interests of victims of crime and the role they play in the correctional and conditional release process. However, victims and victims' advocates have voiced dissatisfaction with the current provisions and have called for enhancements.

That is why Bill C-39 proposes to enshrine in law a victim's right to attend and make statements at Parole Board of Canada hearings.

Additionally, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act would be amended to expand the information that may be disclosed to victims by Correctional Service Canada and the Parole Board of Canada. This would include: first, providing information on the reason or reasons for offender transfers with, whenever possible, advance notice of transfer to minimum security institutions; second, disclosing information on offender program participation and any convictions for serious disciplinary offences; third, sharing the reasons for a temporary absence from a correctional facility; and four, providing guardians or caregivers of dependants of victims who are deceased, ill or otherwise incapacitated with the same information that the victims themselves can receive.

As well, when offenders withdraw their participation 14 days or less before a parole hearing date, the board would now be able to proceed with the review and the decision in their case. This would ensure that victims would no longer travel long distances to attend a parole hearing which is then cancelled at the last minute. Victims would also be able to request information on the reasons for a waiver of a parole hearing.

In addition to the proposed reforms to maximize the knowledge and access to services offered to victims of a crime, a national advisory committee on victims' issues, co-chaired by the Departments of Justice and Public Safety, would be created. This committee would give victims the opportunity to provide input into the policies and procedures that impact victims and victims' services. Such changes would help ensure the interests of victims are front and centre.

In line with recommendations from the 2007 independent review panel on corrections that our government established, Bill C-39 proposes to make offender rehabilitation as well as reintegration into the community a shared responsibility between offenders and Correctional Service Canada. Offenders would therefore be specifically required to: one, conduct themselves in a manner that demonstrates respect for other persons and property; two, obey all penitentiary rules and conditions governing release; and three, actively participate in the setting and achieving of the objectives in their correctional plan.

Furthermore, to underscore the importance of managing an offender's sentence, when Correctional Service Canada is completing a correctional plan for each offender, components of that plan would be required by the legislation. These include expectations for behaviour, program participation and fulfillment of any court-ordered financial obligations, such as restitution to victims.

As well, Bill C-39 would modernize the system of discipline in federal penitentiaries by, for example, specifically addressing disrespectful, intimidating and assaultive behaviour by inmates. This legislation would also respond to police concerns by authorizing police officers to arrest, without warrant, an offender who appears to be in breach of a condition of any conditional release.

As we have heard, the legislation before us today would do away with a system of parole in this country that lets some offenders spend very little time behind bars. It would mean that stiffer sentences handed out for non-violent or white-collar crimes are actually served in custody longer and that victims of fraud can see justice done. It would mean that offenders can no longer hide behind a veneer of fancy suits to evade the full consequences of their actions.

The proposed amendments abolish accelerated parole review, which currently provides these offenders with day parole after serving as little as one-sixth of their sentences and full-day parole after serving one-third of their sentences. Under the reforms our government is proposing, individuals who commit crimes such as fraud would be treated the same way as violent offenders. They would be eligible for regular day parole review six months prior to full parole eligibility and full parole review after serving one-third of their sentences.

What is more, the test for parole would no longer be whether they are likely to commit a violent offence as it is today. Like other offenders, they would only qualify for parole if the Parole Board of Canada is convinced, during a face-to-face hearing, that they do not pose an undue risk of committing any type of crime, including fraud.

Together with reforms recently proposed by the justice minister, the reforms which the government is proposing today would mean that fraudsters and scam artists would get the time in custody that their crimes deserve. This change also sets the stage for earned parole, a cornerstone of many reforms suggested by the review panel.

In order to better protect society, this legislation would also ensure that the Parole Board of Canada has the capacity and power it needs to do its job. Recognizing the weight of the decisions that the Parole Board of Canada must make on an ongoing basis, the CCRA would be amended to: first, increase the number of full-time board members from 45 to 60 to reduce the reliance on part-time members; second, to allow for the direct appointment of part-time members to the appeal division; third, to clarify that Parole Board decisions are consistent with the protection of society and are necessary and proportionate to support conditional release; and fourth, to provide that the parole or statutory release of offenders who receive a new custodial sentence is automatically suspended.

We are taking this stand on behalf of all Canadians who want the rights of law-abiding people properly balanced with the rights of offenders. We are taking this stand on behalf of everyone who wants action on crime now. That is what we intend to deliver now and in the coming days and weeks as we introduce legislation on other matters affecting the safety and security of Canadians. That is what our government was elected to do and we intend to do it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-39, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act . Although I support the bill being sent to committee, the bill has many flaws. When we deal with a crime agenda or matters relating to correctional or conditional release or safety issues, it is important that we take a very thoughtful approach to it.

I have been in Parliament since 2004. In 2006, when the present government took over, it introduced crime bill after crime bill. It talked about getting tough on crime and then prorogued Parliament. It reintroduced similar bills under different names and then prorogued Parliament again. It has now introduced this bill for a third time.

I think Canadians are getting tired of this game of chicken. If the government is really concerned about the safety of Canadians, then it should have attended to the bills. The normal modus operandi of the government is to blame the opposition. I do not think that is a good idea because the opposition did get all those bills through in the previous Parliament. I hope this time Bill C-39 will go off to committee and be addressed there.

The issue of being tough on crime does not necessarily result in the safety of citizens. Why do I say that? Statistics and experts have proven that it is not the super jails that keep citizens safe. It is the deterrent or prevention of crime that is the better approach. If building super jails and having tougher sentences was the panacea, our neighbours to the south would have the safest country in the world. Unfortunately, they do not. In fact, the recidivism rate is 70% in the United States. This is the rate of reoffending. People should know that when offenders get out of jail their potential to reoffend gets greater. Why does it get greater? For example, if a person is put in jailed for petty theft and put in jail with criminals who have committed worse criminal offences or who have worse criminal records, then they get to meet with those types of people and in fact learn skills.

What could we do to overcome these types of issues? We could have areas within prisons where we could teach inmates life skills. Many of the prisoners in jail do not have life skills. They commit petty crimes and then commit more and more crimes. I think it is important to look at the whole cost of prevention rather than cure.

Experts have told us that the deterrent to crime is investment in literacy, investment in job creation, investment in affordable housing and investment in mental health.

Why do I talk about literacy? As I mentioned, people who have been in jail are not functioning at the level they need to function at. I have been on the board of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health for 12 years, so I know what I am talking about. When we ask police why crimes are taking place, the one word they use constantly is “drugs”. When we ask them what we can do about it, they say that more beds and more rehabilitation centres are needed. We were told that no resources were available for helping the mentally ill and that once people were out of jail there was no affordable housing. When they come out of jail, they have nowhere to sleep and nowhere to go and, therefore, this vicious cycle continues.

It is important that when we, as a country, look at issues surrounding our criminal offences, our jails and our whole justice system, we are cognizant of what we should do in order to prevent crime rather than find solutions after the fact.

When people are in jail, there is another issue, and that issue is they are also exposed to people with drugs. It is sad to say but there are a lot of drugs available in prisons. Then what happens? There is the sharing of needles and through the sharing of needles, prisoners get AIDS.

We may turn a blind eye saying that it is too bad and that this type of people is not what we cater to, but it is sad day when in a developed democracy we do not look after the marginalized or the vulnerable. What is it that we are supposed to do? If we do not address the problem, we will have a huge problem in terms of our health care.

Everyone in here and all of our constituents want to be safe. All of us realize that safety is a critical issue for us. Unfortunately we do not live in a Utopia and therefore when we have to live and work within an environment that does not allow everybody to have equal opportunities, there are areas where we may not be safe.

If we are told that prevention is better than a cure, then what are some of the things we can do? What are priorities should the government have?

The current government's priorities have not been economically sensible. There has been a lot of waste. There has been hype and talk about crime agendas without an intelligent solution. The government wants to spend $9 billion on building super jails for unreported crimes.That is a little tedious for anyone to understand.

Why would the government put in so much money when statistics show that the crime rates are on the decline? In fact, what are some of the opportunities lost? We know that a lot of prisoners cannot function. For them to function, we need to invest in literacy. In this day and age when we talk about globalization, Internet savvy and computer literacy, it is hard to imagine there are those within our society who cannot function at any level and who need assistance.

People suffer from many forms of mental illness. It is important therefore, instead of wasting money on building super jails, that the government invest in areas such as social housing, literacy and mental health.

What is also of a great concern is that despite repeated demands, the government has still not revealed the cost of the so-called road map, the tough on crime agenda. It has frustrated the efforts of the Parliamentary Budget Officer who is trying to do his job to get the accurate figures.

We in Parliament need to operate on accurate figures. We need to know how much things cost, so we can make the necessary choices, whether it is this opportunity or that opportunity. The Parliamentary Budget Officer was established as part of the Federal Accountability Act. It is a shame that the government, which brought in the Federal Accountability Act, plays games with accountability. It does not want to be accountable.

My question for the government is this. If the government is so concerned with the safety of Canadians, I would like to know, and the House would like to know, what the cost is? Then Canadians can decide whether the investment the government is proposing is going to keep us safe.

When we talk about the road map to strengthening public safety, the government made an assertion that crimes were on the rise, but that has been challenged by experts. We need to ensure the bill provides proper provisions. The bill's provisions should be the establishment of the right of a victim to make a statement, to hold hearings, et cetera. It authorizes police officers to arrest, without warrant, an offender for a breach of a condition while on conditional release.

Some of these issues are important, but we have had experts such as the UBC Professors Michael Jackson and Graham Stewart, the former director of the John Howard Society, who released a scathing human rights analysis of the government's correction policy.

It is important, as we move forward with any agenda, that we give it a thoughtful process. I strongly recommend that when this bill goes to committee, we have the proper hearings, that we come up with a proper solution, that we collectively work for the safety of all Canadians and that we use intelligent, smart solutions and not hype up the talk. I do not think there is anybody in the House who would like to have criminals roaming around the street and who would not want the safety of Canadians.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-39. Once again this is an example of the government having bills under different numbers at different times. Just last year we were speaking to this bill, which was Bill C-43 at that time. Now because the Prime Minister once again prorogued the House and shifted us back to having to start over again, we have no choice but to go through that process again.

Nevertheless, as previous speakers have addressed the bill today, we have observed that there are some parts of the bill we support, but we have some other issues with other parts of the bill. As has been indicated by the Bloc speaker, the Bloc will support the bill going to committee. One would hope that we will be able to resolve differences on these issues at the committee stage.

Bill C-39, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. The short title to the bill is strengthening Canada's corrections system act. It was introduced and received first reading in the House under the original Bill C-43 in June 2009. That is how long we have been dealing with this bill.

The bill is designed to improve public safety in a number of ways: first, stating explicitly that the act of participation of offenders in attaining the objectives of the correctional plan is an essential requirement for their conditional release or any other privilege; second, expanding the categories of offenders who are ineligible for an accelerated parole review and the categories of offenders subject to continued detention after the statutory release date when they serve two-thirds of their sentence, for example, offenders convicted of child pornography, luring a child or breaking and entering to steal a firearm; and third, extending the length of time that offenders convicted of a subsequent offence must serve before being eligible for parole and increasing from six months to a year the waiting period for a hearing after the National Parole Board has turned down a parole application.

In addition, it would authorize a peace officer to arrest, without warrant, an offender who is on conditional release for a breach of conditions and it grants the Corrections Services Canada permission to oblige an offender to wear a monitoring device as a condition of release when release is subject to special conditions regarding restrictions on access to a victim or geographical areas.

As the critic for our party pointed out, this is a very lengthy bill and there are many changes, improvements and amendments to the bill.

Also, it would increase the number of reasons for the search of vehicles at a penitentiary to prevent the entry of contraband or the commission of an offence.

The bill also focuses specifically on the interests of victims, which has been dealt with by several of the previous speakers. For example, initially the bill would expand the definition of a victim to anyone who has custody of or is responsible for a dependant of the main victim if the main victim is either dead, ill or otherwise incapacitated. Also it would allow disclosure to a victim of the programs in which an offender has participated for the purpose of reintegration into society, the location of the institution to which an offender is transferred and the reasons for the transfer. These are additional benefits to expand the interests of victims of crime.

In addition, the bill entrenches in the act the right of victims to make a statement at parole hearings. As the member for Windsor—Tecumseh pointed out, this is a new section of the act. It is something that certainly will be appreciated by victims and victims groups in this country.

As well, a number of the clauses of the bill make minor amendments to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, such as linguistic modifications or re-formulations designed to clarify legislative intent. Some sections are also designed to make the administration of sentences more effective, for example, increasing the maximum number of members that may sit on the National Parole Board. A government member talked about the number of National Parole Board members being increased from the current 45, I believe, to 60. The difference is that they would be full-time members rather than part-time members. We do not see a problem with that.

I understand my time is up for today and that I will have further time to complete my remarks the next time we debate this bill.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The member will have 13 minutes to conclude his remarks the next time this bill is before the House.

The House resumed from October 18 consideration of the motion that Bill C-39, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

When this matter was last before the House, the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona had the floor and he has 13 minutes left in the time allotted for his remarks. I therefore call upon the hon. member for Elmwood--Transcona.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to continue today on the debate on what is now Bill C-39.

The bill is designed to improve public safety and notably by stating explicitly that the active participation of offenders in attaining the objectives of the correction plan is an essential requirement for their condition of release or any other privilege. It is also designed to deal with expanding the categories of offenders who are ineligible for an accelerated parole review and the categories of offenders subject to continue detention after their statutory release date when they have served two-thirds of their sentence. For example, offenders convicted of child pornography, luring a child or breaking and entering to steal a firearm are examples.

In addition, the bill would extend the length of time that offenders convicted of a subsequent offence must serve before being eligible for parole. Also, it would increase from six months to a year the waiting period for a hearing after the National Parole Board has turned down a parole application.

The bill would also authorize a peace officer to arrest, without a warrant, an offender who is on conditional release for a breach of conditions. It would grant the Correctional Service of Canada permission to oblige an offender to wear a monitoring device as a condition of release when a release is subject to special conditions regarding restrictions on access to a victim of geographical areas. It would increase the number of reasons for the search of vehicles at a penitentiary to prevent the entry of contraband or the commission of an offence.

The bill also focuses specifically on the interests of victims by expanding the definition of “victim” to anyone who has custody of or is responsible for a dependant of the main victim if the main victim is dead, ill or otherwise incapacitated. It would disclose to a victim of the program in which an offender has participated for the purposes of reintegration into society, the location of an institution to which an offender is transferred and the reason for the transfer. It also would entrench in the act the right of victims to make a statement at parole hearings, which is a new element.

The whole development of victims' rights over the years did not start with the Conservative government. It was not an idea that somehow the Conservative government developed in its policy rooms. The fact is that this is a long-term process. In fact, I recall in Manitoba, as far back as, I believe, 1970, when Premier Ed Schreyer, the first NDP premier in Canada, was elected on June 25, 1969. Within his first four-year mandate, he brought in substantial changes to the province of Manitoba and to the country of Canada. One of the initiatives that he brought in was a criminal injuries compensation fund, which may have been the first of its kind in Canada at the time.

Nevertheless, the criminal injuries compensation fund has been around in Manitoba now since 1970. Therefore, the Conservatives have absolutely no monopoly on victims' rights and victims' services in this country. As a matter of fact, the Conservative government, the champion of victims' rights, hired Steve Sullivan as the victims' ombudsman. When he started doing the job of advocating on the part of victims, the government, which appointed him, got rid of him by not renewing his term. That has some reflection on the government's real commitment to victims' rights.

However, over the years, beginning with the criminal injuries compensation fund and initiatives such as that, we have seen a gradual progression toward more rights for the victims. There was a time not so long ago, maybe 20 years ago, when it was almost impossible for a person to find out the resolution and the developments of their break-and-enters, for example. Many people have come to me over the years and told me how their house had been broken into and that they were told by the police to go home and forget about it and that they would deal with it. However, no information came their way as to what stage the case was at and the disposition of it.

That was changed not only under NDP governments but I am sure under Liberal governments in other provinces and, of course, Conservative governments in Manitoba. The Filmon government made some moves, as well as the Gary Doer government. Now there is an array of victim services available. After a break-in of a property, the victim gets a call from the police and a kit is dropped off indicating phone numbers that people can call for counselling, if required.

At more and more stages, people are being kept updated and informed of the processes, and we in the NDP support that. The member for Burnaby—Douglas and others in the NDP are on record as being very strongly supportive of victims' rights and services. So it is somewhat surprising; well, maybe it is not so surprising but it is unfair for the Conservatives to keep riding this horse. The Liberal critic yesterday spoke on this bill and I listened carefully to his speech, which was very good. He kept referring to the Conservatives' calling him a hug-a-thug.

The fact of the matter is that it is peculiar to the current Conservative government. I do not recall the Conservative government of Joe Clark, which of course was not around that long, or of Brian Mulroney taking this kind of approach. This seems to be something that is peculiar to the group that is in power right now, and I really do not think it has had a lot of results to show for its efforts in this area.

The government may think that somehow it is making progress by coming up with boutique-type bills that are not 100% necessary. For example, a lot of the measures that it is introducing in these bills are already covered under the Criminal Code. What it should be doing, as has been mentioned by many people in the House, is taking the time to revamp the entire Criminal Code, something that is long overdue. It is a very old piece of legislation that is hundreds of pages long. If the government were showing vision in this area, it would make an announcement that it is going to revamp the entire Criminal Code and invite the parties onside.

I remind government members that it was one of their own colleagues, Gary Filmon who they appointed to a federal board, who developed the approach, in a minority parliament, that he would involve all opposition parties on controversial issues. It was not only Meech Lake. That was a very good example of how a very smart leader operating in a minority situation confronted a very important decision in this country.

He did not make an arbitrary decision like the Prime Minister does and drive ahead at all costs. He involved the party leaders. He got Senator Carstairs, who was a leader of the Liberal Party, involved in the committee. He got Gary Doer, who was opposition leader at the time, involved in the committee. That is how they dealt with the issue of Meech Lake.

Even when it came to something as simple as a smoking ban that was controversial in those days, Premier Filmon reached out to opposition leaders and got them on board. He found that system actually worked. The government actually did that on Afghanistan just last year and it worked reasonably well. Why it continues to refuse to learn from history and previous good practices that would help the government, Parliament and the country is really beyond me.

We can allow the Conservatives to continue their beating of the drums, their calling the member for Ajax—Pickering a hug-a-thug and their cheap shots, but the reality is that the public is not buying it. I think the member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor agrees with me.

The Conservatives have been doing this now for almost five years, but where are the results to show? They have gone through a couple of elections. They showcase them, but they are all the same bills. They brought them in two, three and four years ago. Then they prorogued the House, then brought them all back; then they had an election, then prorogued the House again and then brought them all back.

Where are those great polling numbers that this policy is supposed to produce? It is just not there. The Conservatives are no more popular today than they were then. They should be looking at how they are running the government right now.

Let us look at the long form census, the debacle of this summer. The Conservatives cannot seem to get their agenda on track.

I had wanted to talk about the “Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety”, which is one of the reasons why the government is bringing in the legislation, but I know our public safety critic will be speaking on this bill later, and there are other members in the House who will deal adequately with that particular issue.

I understand the bill will be going to committee, because the Bloc has indicated its support for the bill. Hopefully at committee we will be able to make the adjustments and amendments needed to make this a better piece of legislation for the benefit of all Canadians.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport]

Madam Speaker, after listening to the gentleman across the way from the NDP espousing the virtues of his party and how it stands up for criminals, I am wondering if this is a change of focus for the NDP.

Could the member tell me if this means that, instead of sitting down every time one of our bills to protect victims comes forward, the NDP is now going to start standing up to protect Canadians? Is that what he is saying?

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

Madam Speaker, I think if the member checks Hansard, he is going to find that he misspoke.

He really meant to say “stands up for victims”. I am sure he would apologize for that error. He accidentally said “stands up for criminals”, which of course is probably what he actually meant to say at the end of the day, but of course he did not intend to do so this morning.

I know the member is a very good member of Parliament. He is hard working and he follows the party line over there. He is probably the first one up in the morning, getting the orders from the Prime Minister's office, reading them and being right up to snuff on all the latest nuances.

I would guess that the member would be the number one MP over there doing that. I know he has read up on the latest news. I get my MP hits in the morning, and he gets his at eight o'clock at night, before some of the papers have even hit their deadlines. He is well-informed. I am sure he is just following the Prime Minister's orders.

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

Madam Speaker, one of the issues I noticed was that the Conservative member stood up.

There are so many debates and so many issues that are brought to this House, and so many times that we get up to speak, as my hon. colleague does, and it goes Liberal, Bloc, NDP and back to Liberal.

I can only wish for more engagement of debate in this House. I think it is paramount to what we are here for, and it is not acknowledged by some members of the Conservative Party, or all the members of the party, which is really a sad statement.

We are in a minority Parliament situation. They certainly have to put themselves through the process of debating within the House and being questioned by the members.

Perhaps the hon. member could comment on that. He has been up in the House more than I have. He has probably seen in these debates, each and every one of them, what I call the sloganeering nature of many of these bills, as he pointed out, which was stop-and-go politics, or not so much politics but stop-and-go legislating.

What the Conservatives are doing is getting it to a certain point, drawing it back by prorogation or whatever it may be, then bringing it back into the House once again. I think the member has a point about the idea of looking at the Criminal Code in whole. Unfortunately that may not allow the Conservatives to put up the nice slogan that they desire.

I would like the member to comment on that and also on the lack of debate, by both sides, on any issue that comes to this House.

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

Madam Speaker, the member is correct. We have seen the government put up one speaker on a bill and then simply let the debate take its course on this side of the House. It is not there to answer any questions on its bills.

However, there is an exception to that. We had, this spring, the Minister of Immigration actually give the House the respect it deserves. He was here for the entire debate. In fact, he asked the first question for every speaker on the immigration bill. I thought that was a class act on the part of the minister. Did another minister follow his lead?

Provincially, it is normal. If the finance minister has a bill before the House, the minister is there. In the Manitoba legislature, if any minister of any department has a bill before the House, the minister is there for the entire debate. He or she does not just simply do the introduction, walk away and not stay to ask questions.

The immigration minister sat here every hour. He listened to every speaker and he asked the first question, and that is what the government minister should be doing.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Madam Speaker, I want to start by thanking my colleague for his speech. I would like him to tell me what he thinks about the fact that in this bill, this government has reintroduced the abolition of release after an offender has served one-sixth of his sentence.

This is something that the Bloc Québécois has been talking about since 2007. It introduced two bills and called on the House to pass them quickly. There was only one clause in the bills, and it would have abolished release after one-sixth of the sentence had been served. But this government refused to vote for this measure. If it had, then there would not even be a clause in Bill C-39 to abolish release after one-sixth of the sentence, and the Earl Joneses and Vincent Lacroix of this world would still be in jail.

Currently, these people are entitled to be released after serving one-sixth of their sentence. What does my colleague think about abolishing release after one-sixth of the sentence has been served? And what does he think about the fact that this government makes a big show of talking about public safety instead of thinking about the safety of the people?

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

Madam Speaker, I recognize that the Bloc has been a strong and long-time supporter of this measure. I recognize that is something it feels strongly about, and I think there would be a lot of support in the House for that particular measure.

I recognize the concerns regarding Earl Jones and other white collar criminals, where cases have been dealt with and will not be affected by changes to the legislation. That is sad because we, in this country, have a terrible record.

I mentioned last week that in the United States, its system has managed to put away 1,200 white collar criminals, including a couple of Canadians. The entire Canadian system has only effected 2 convictions and they are both against the same guy. We have put away 1 person who was guilty of white collar crimes in Canada, while the Americans have put away 1,200, and they think their system is not good enough. As a matter of fact, President Obama is re-regulating the entire financial services industry as a result of what happened two years ago.

We have a long way to go in this country to start operating on the basis of being smart on crime. On this side of the House, the Bloc, the NDP and the Liberals are all in favour of changes to our system and putting white collar criminals away for longer periods of time, but what we want to do is look at the entire criminal justice system and be smart on crime. We want to do things that work, not necessarily just blindly follow the American system, the three strikes and you are out system, with private prisons and warehousing people, which does not work. We disagree with that, but there are other areas of common ground here.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Madam Speaker, getting smart on crime means that there need to be a lot more programs in prisons so that, when the offenders come out, they will reintegrate well.

One of the programs that is desperately needed, in terms of its expansion, is a public health program to deal with drug treatment, whether it is behaviour modification or getting the drugs for treatment, and then upon their release, a community-based reintegration program. This is often not available in prison. With this approach, we end up having people in prison longer, and yet when they come out, they reoffend. It is wasting money and it is not going in the right direction.

Could my colleague comment on the drug treatment programs that are needed and the smart on crime approach he is talking about?

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

Mr. Speaker, I think the proof is in the pudding here with the government announcing it is going to spend $9 billion on new prisons. In fact, a fraction of that amount could do what the hon. member has said.

A very high percentage of people who are in prison, particularly women, are dealing with addiction and mental health problems. Those people do not really belong in a prison; they should be in a mental health facility. They should have access to treatment programs whether they are in a mental health facility or in a prison. The government is not paying attention.

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

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this bill, which comes at a very bad time. We will try to deal with this methodically. I want to respond to my colleague who just spoke. The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights is currently studying six bills, including Bill C-4 on young offenders. The review of this particular bill is not complete because the government has not yet tabled the necessary documents, as it should have done in June 2010. The bill we are discussing today could also die on the order paper because it may be some time before it is studied in committee.

I do not know whether my colleague, the member for Ahuntsic, is studying as many bills that affect the public in the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. If she is, then we have a serious problem. This government is playing politics and taking a piecemeal approach to justice issues, doing a little bit here and a little bit there. It has introduced a bill that I would say is extremely worthwhile and has been a long time coming. The Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of this bill, and we would like to send it to committee as soon as possible.

Let us look at the dates of this bill. On June 16, 2009, we were examining Bill C-43. Summer arrived, the House adjourned, and then MPs returned. In October 2009, we were examining Bill C-53. Then, the government—not the opposition parties—decided to prorogue. This bill died on the order paper on December 30, 2009. Now, the government has re-introduced the bill as Bill C-39, which is the same as the previous bills C-43 and C-53. I hope this one will not die on the order paper, because it is very important.

The government is accusing the opposition of not looking out for victims, of not caring about them or being interested in them. According to the government, the only thing that the opposition cares about is criminals, and getting them out of jail as soon as possible. I never hear so many blatant lies from the other side of the House as I do when they talk about victims. We absolutely care about victims. The best example is that the Bloc Québécois has been calling for the abolition of the one-sixth of the sentence rule for two years now.

I will give a little legal lesson, more specifically on criminal law, for my colleagues opposite. It is a problem with criminal law that comes up when an individual is sentenced. The best example is the case of Colonel Williams. We can talk about him now, because he will probably be sentenced to life in prison, with no chance of parole for at least 25 years. We can get back to that, because the government just introduced another bill. Let us take the example of someone sentenced to jail time. Bill C-39 applies only to someone sentenced to more than two years. That is extremely important. We are talking about sentences of more than two years in prison. The problem is that in provincial prisons, in Quebec in particular, this service already exists. However, even if the individuals are sentenced to two years less a day, they are still eligible for release after serving one-sixth of their sentence.

In terms of criminal law, let us look only at sentences of at least two years, for example, someone in Quebec who is sentenced to three years in prison. This person is sent to the regional reception centre in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, in the Montreal region. Regardless of where that person is from, that is where they are sent.

It takes between three and four months for the case to be dealt with. If the person was sentenced to 36 months in prison, after six months, or one-sixth of the sentence, that person is already eligible for release, and no one will have dealt with the case.

There is a gap there. We have long been saying that parole must be earned and that release after serving one-sixth of a sentence should not exist. I have 30 years of experience as a criminal lawyer. Some of my clients were released after serving one-sixth of their sentence. After having been sentenced to three years, they were released after six months and no program had been established for them, which made it far more likely that they would reoffend.

My colleague, the member for Ahuntsic, who is a criminologist and has worked with these types of people, probably knows what I am talking about. This is exactly what is happening in prisons. They cannot even begin to work with an individual who has one foot out the door if he was sentenced to two or three years in prison. He has practically left before he has arrived. Why? Take the example of one of my clients. We decided that it was better for him to be sentenced to 24 months in prison instead of two years less a day because it would take longer to serve a sentence of two years less a day in a Quebec prison than a 24-month sentence. One-sixth of 24 months is four months, and so he was released after four months. There was not even enough time before he was released for them to deal with his case and have a meeting to discuss a plan for his return to society.

That is the worst possible mistake. As I have been saying in this House for nearly six years now, the problem with the Conservatives is that they do not understand. So, I will try to explain it again. The Conservatives think that minimum prison sentences will solve everything. Nothing could be further from the truth, so far that even the Americans are beginning to realize it. Canada—and especially the Conservatives—seems to be a few years behind. In two or three years, they are going to realize they are on the wrong track.

The public is not shocked when someone receives a four-year sentence, but rather when that individual gets out after one year. The public is shocked by the fact that people are not serving their sentences. That is precisely what the Bloc Québécois has been criticizing for some time.

Whether my Conservative friends like it or not, minimum prison sentences do not preclude offenders from being eligible for parole. Even with a mandatory minimum of three years, the individual is still eligible for parole. That is what the Conservatives do not understand. Once again, we will try to explain to them that it is the parole system that needs to change. The parole system needs to be changed so that people who are sent to prison are not released unless they have a plan for their reintegration into society. That is the problem. In the example I gave of someone who has been sentenced to three years, if he is eligible for parole after six months, he will sit back and do nothing.

That is why we are calling for the elimination of parole after one-sixth of a sentence is served. That is also why we hope to vote quickly to pass this bill. I know my Conservative Party colleagues always overreact because of the worst criminals. In the case of Colonel Williams, who has committed a rash of unspeakable crimes in the Belleville and Trenton area, if he is sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, society will take care of him. He will be sent to prison, as he clearly deserves. I will not try to defend him here, since I am not his lawyer.

That is not the problem. The worst criminals deserve the harshest sentences. That has always been true. The problem lies with individuals who are not criminals, but who are going down a path of crime. If we do not stop them, if we do not take measures to stop them, they will become hardened criminals. Generally they are individuals who are serving their first penitentiary sentence. Obviously it depends on the crime, but in most cases, a person's first penitentiary sentence is somewhere between 3 and 10 years. Those are the people this bill absolutely must catch and as soon as possible.

When I say “catch”, I mean we must encourage them to do what it takes to return to society with a plan in order not to reoffend. The problem is that the parole board does not help. It does not have a chance to work with the individuals. If an individual is eligible for parole after one-sixth of his sentence, what will he do? Take, for example, an individual who has a three-year sentence. When he arrives at the regional reception centre—every province has them—it takes three to four months before his case is reviewed. What do you think he does in the meantime? He plays cards, watches television, drinks Pepsi and waits. No one works with him, at least not very much. Someone needs to work with him as soon as he arrives at the penitentiary.

There is something my Conservative friends do not understand. I will explain it to them yet again. An individual who is sentenced will return to society and if he is not properly prepared to return to society, then, unfortunately, he will reoffend. It is a known fact that the risk of recidivism for this type of person—I am talking about those who receive sentences between 3 and 10 years—is quite high. The risk is there. We have to find ways to correct this.

Quite honestly, this is a good bill. This afternoon, the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights is going to study Bill C-22 on Internet child pornography. We all support this bill. It must be passed. Everyone agrees that this legislation needs to be put in place. It must be passed, but the government will have to submit it to us. The same holds true for Bill C-39. We must deal with it as soon as possible because it is a good bill. The parole board needs to be able to implement it. But no work is being done right now because no one knows whether the bill is going to come. The bill might not pass and could die on the order paper because of an election in the spring of 2011, for example, which is not such a far-fetched idea. It could happen. Suppose there is an election in the spring of 2011. If the government has not submitted this bill to us—we have six bills to study—then it is going to have to set priorities for the committee. We have already agreed to study Bill C-22 while we wait for the translation of the report on Bill C-4 on young offenders, as I said earlier. But it is important to pass Bill C-22 on child pornography.

There is the other bill on vehicle theft—I cannot remember the number—that we discussed before the House adjourned a week ago. Everyone supports this bill.

The government should do the sensible thing and say that since the opposition supports a number of bills, they will be sent as soon as possible to be studied, discussed and passed.

Since this bill will likely be studied by the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, I think things should go quickly. But we have to give the penitentiaries the means to prepare release plans. This is the process where an offender is told that he has five years left to serve, for example, and he has to begin, now, to take part in preparing a release plan or serve his last five years.

At least the individual still has the choice in prison. But it is clear that he may leave—and will leave—after five years. There needs to be some follow-up with this person. During the entire prison sentence, the individual offender's treatment needs to be personalized, just as the courts hand down personalized sentences.

The individual must be made aware that their release from prison is as much their responsibility as the crime they committed. The person was found guilty or pleaded guilty to the offence and was given a sentence. However, after they are sentenced, many individuals tend to sit in prison and just wait for the end of the sentence. This bill should put an end to that. We must change the attitudes of people as they enter the prison by asking them about their plans for release and what they want to do. Do they want to finish school? Do they want addiction treatment? Do they want some sort of training? What do they want? That would set the wheels in motion so that they can leave prison better equipped than when they arrived.

Obviously, that is not what is happening right now. The National Parole Board, the prisons and the Correctional Service of Canada are not able to provide these services. That would require many things. The government supports this bill, but it needs to invest the necessary funds. Why invest? Because criminals will eventually be released. Victims need protection. They are always talking about victims.

There is something that we do not understand about the Conservatives. The National Parole Board takes care of victims, especially in terms of the prison system. This organization's main priority is the rehabilitation of an individual who is rejoining society, but the victims must also be protected and every possible step must be taken to keep that individual from reoffending.

I am being told that I have only two minutes left, but I could go on about this for a long time. I would like the Conservatives to remember this: automatic sentences have never solved anything. A minimum prison sentence has never solved anything, and that will not change today. All the studies presented to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that minimum prison sentences have never led to a decrease in crime.

We must ensure that these individuals serve their sentences, keeping in mind that they will one day return to society. It is clear that we will probably never see people like Colonel Williams, who will receive a minimum sentence of 25 years for a double murder, outside the prison walls. But we will see people who were sentenced to five to ten years in prison, and some are already close to being released.

Did people like Mr. Jones or Mr. Lacroix, who owned Norbourg, learn their lesson? With all due respect, I think that the only thing they learned was not to get caught.

Unfortunately, with the current system, prisoners learn more about not getting caught than they do about preparing for their release.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating my colleague on his excellent speech. I am sure he would agree that this government's actions in terms of public safety and protecting victims have been nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

I listened carefully to the member's speech. I have not read Bill C-22 that he mentioned, so I wonder if this is the much talked-about bill that police forces have been waiting for for nearly 12 years now, that will give them the tools they need to go after pedophiles and the producers and consumers of child pornography. Furthermore, we know that between 1980 and 1990, there were about a thousand child pornography images and videos on the Internet. Now there are millions of such images and videos on the Internet. This means that thousands of children have been abused in making these photos and videos, and it means that thousands of pedophiles are profiting from these photos and videos.

Police forces want to have the ability to obtain the IP addresses of these cyber-pedophiles and producers of online child pornography. Will this bill give them that capacity? The former victims ombudsman, Steve Sullivan, said that if he were prime minister, that would be his top priority. I do not believe this bill will do anything in that regard and I wonder what my colleague's thoughts are on this.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague and immediately reassure her. Indeed, police forces have been waiting for Bill C-22 for almost 10 years. I recently went over this bill again because we will be studying it this afternoon when the hon. Minister of Justice appears before the committee. We have asked the minister to hurry up and not waste time.

The problem with Bill C-22, which deals with fighting pornography, is whether the government will grant any funding. I should warn my colleagues across the way that if I get a chance to ask the Minister of Justice a question this afternoon, it will be this: Will the government provide funding? It takes specialized squads to deal with this crime and that is precisely the current problem. We will need to create squads, like the ones for fighting organized crime. We have to do exactly the same thing to deal with pornography, a crime that is much worse and even more insidious. Nevertheless, now we have the services and the systems.

Yesterday, we were looking at what the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is implementing in terms of a system that will allow us to move forward. However, the RCMP needs money. Bill C-22 is indeed a bill that the government claimed it was introducing to protect victims, but the bill has not been implemented yet. Neither has Bill C-30. The Conservatives campaigned in two elections on a promise to implement this bill. The time has come for that party to put its money where its mouth is.

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

Madam Speaker, my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue gave a very interesting speech. He talked about the Conservative strategy of making a show of being tough on crime. Their show is costing Canadians dearly. The government is planning to spend billions of dollars on prisons for offenders who have committed unreported crimes, according to the Treasury Board President. It makes absolutely no sense. Even worse, the Conservatives are cutting all the programs that help reduce crime in our society.

The Conservatives are spending billions of dollars. They seem incapable of managing this money and putting it towards the right priorities, such as programs to reduce crime and to keep criminals from reoffending. And while they are cutting these programs, they are investing billions of dollars to build prisons across the country.

Does the member think that the Conservatives' approach, which is to make a show of being tough on crime, could lead to an increase in crime? The programs to reduce the crime rate in our society are no longer there.

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

Madam Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. That is exactly it.

The Conservatives' problem is that they think that once an individual goes to jail to serve a minimum prison sentence, the problem is solved. Believing that is the biggest mistake the Conservatives have ever made, because that is when the problem starts.

Once people are arrested and imprisoned, we must ensure—and that is the problem—that they will not reoffend when released into society. We must put programs in place. It is all well and good to build prisons, and it will probably help some Conservative members get a prison in their riding. But there will be some big surprises, because having a prison in one's riding is not as fun as it seems. I know because there are prisons in my riding, and it is the same thing. It is not fun, because you need programs so that the people sent to jail do not reoffend when they are released. That is the challenge of sending people to prison, and that is what the Conservatives do not understand. They think that once people are sent to prison, the problem is solved. That is not true.

I agree that we must look after the victims, but the Conservatives are in no position to tell us about how much they have invested in the Fonds d'aide aux victimes d'actes criminels, that is for sure. In fact, it is quite the opposite—they have not invested at all. They think that by putting people away and isolating them from society, the problem is solved. But no. One day, those people will return to society, and we will have to see whether we are ready and whether we have done everything we can to prevent them from reoffending. If they unfortunately do reoffend, it is because we currently do not have any programs to make people understand that parole is something to be earned. That is exactly what this bill should do, but we will have to amend it to make that possible.

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

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak in favour of Bill C-39, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

The legislation before us today follows through on a number of changes identified by the Correctional Service Canada's 2007 independent review panel report entitled, ”A Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety”, to strengthen our correctional system.

The government has made strides to respond to the 109 recommendations in the panel's report. Most of these recommendations fall into five broad categories: first, increasing offender accountability; second, eliminating drugs from federal prisons; third, modernizing physical infrastructure; fourth, elimination of statutory release; and, finally, moving toward earned parole. Many of the recommendations also relate specifically to the concerns of victims.

Our government responded to the recommendation to eliminate drugs from prisons by announcing a new anti-drug strategy. This strategy allows the Correctional Service Canada to significantly expand the drug detector dog program at all federal prisons and institutions. It also increases security intelligence capacity in institutions and their surrounding communities and purchases security equipment for maximum and medium security federal prisons, while also enhancing perimeter security around those institutions.

The government is also taking action to tackle gangs in our prisons, a presence that significantly contributes to the use of drugs.

Bill C-39 builds on and expands our reference to respond to these recommendations by affirming our commitment to the rights of victims, increasing accountability of offenders and ensuring that first-time or non-violent offenders do not get off with a proverbial slap on the wrist. We continue to view the protection of law-abiding Canadians and the rights of victims as the priority of our justice system, and rightfully so in my submission.

I will begin by addressing some of these issues with some detail, beginning with how this legislation recognizes the role played by victims and also how it provides victims with better information.

While it has been the case that victims can attend parole hearings, this practice will now be enshrined into law. This legislation also provides the Parole Board of Canada and Correctional Service with the ability to better inform victims with information such as the reasons for an offender transfer and, where possible, notification when offenders are moved to minimum security. In addition, some forms of institutional behaviour by the offender, such as serious institutional infractions, may be reported along with the reasons for any temporary absences from correctional facilities.

Victims have told us time and time again that this is the type of information they require and our government is responding by providing it to them.

We are expanding the ability to notify victims from those who are the direct victims of the offences to also include guardians or care givers of dependent victims who are deceased, ill or otherwise incapacitated with the same information that the victims themselves would otherwise receive.

Under the current legislation, when an offender withdraws his or her participation 14 days or less before a parole hearing, the National Parole Board can formerly and currently not proceed with the review and make a decision. However, Bill C-39 would put an end to needless travel by victims to attend these hearings that are often cancelled at the last minute. Once again, we are responding to the requirements of the victims of the criminal justice system.

Offenders will often waive their parole hearing, but under the proposed legislation, victims will be able to request information on the reasons an offender gives for waiving a parole hearing.

To ensure that victims have an opportunity to provide input into policies and procedures associated with victim services, a national advisory committee on victims has been created. This complements additional proposed reforms and improves the information available to all victims. Taken together, these changes will bring the interests of the victims to the forefront.

Effective rehabilitation and eventual reintegration should be a shared responsibility between correctional workers and the offender. As such, offenders must be held accountable for their criminal behaviour and also for their rehabilitation. In keeping with this recommendation from the independent review panel report, the following legislative changes will specifically require offenders to: first, behave respectfully toward other persons and property; second, obey conditions of release and all prison rules; and third, ensure that offenders are more actively involved in setting out and achieving the goals achieved in their respective correctional plans.

The legislative changes contained in Bill C-39 would formalize expectations for offender behaviour, program participation and fulfillment of any court ordered financial obligations such as restitution to victims as part of their correctional plan.

These legislative changes respond to the needs of staff in correctional facilities, all of whom have a right to expect a safe and secure work environment. Employees of Correctional Service Canada are hard-working and fine public servants and they deserve and ought to expect a safe work environment. They also respond to the needs of all Canadians who have a fundamental right to expect that the corrections systems will work the way that it ought to work and that their safety and security is paramount.

The legislation would allow police officers to arrest, without warrant, an offender who appeared to be in breach of any condition of conditional release. This responds to the police concerns with respect to the current requirement of contacting parole officers prior to making an arrest for an apparent breach. Police officers, too, are fine, hard-working and dedicated public servants and this amendment to the legislation is in direct response to lobbying efforts on behalf of police officers and their respective bodies.

Under the current system, accelerated parole review allows non-violent, first-time offenders to access day parole at one-sixth of their sentence and automatic full parole at one-third of their sentence. For these offenders, rather than a hearing the process for considering release is simply a paper-based review. However, Bill C-39 would change all this by removing this form of review from the Corrections and Conditional Release Act so that all offenders, whether they are first-time fraudsters or sentenced for violent assault will follow the same review process.

The tests for granting parole will no longer be whether they are likely to commit a violent offence. As with all parole reviews, Parole Board members will consider the risk that the offender may present to the society if released and determine if and to what extent that risk can be managed in the community.

The Parole Board of Canada will continue to hold the protection of society as the overriding consideration in any release decision. Whether convicted of fraud or assault, offenders will be eligible for regular day parole review six months prior to full parole eligibility and full parole review after serving one-third of their sentence.

This change is an important first step toward another of the review panel's recommendations, specifically that of earned parole. I listened with great interest and I am happy to hear that my friends in the Bloc Québécois are advocating toward some system of earned parole.

The legislation would also enhance the capacity of the Parole Board of Canada. The Parole Board of Canada bears a tremendous responsibility for making very important and very difficult decisions regarding conditional release. Accordingly, the CCRA will be amended to do the following. It will increase the number of full-time board members. It will make it possible to directly appoint part-time members to the Appeal Division. It will clarify the provisions in the CCRA that conditional release decisions are consistent with the protection of society. Finally, it will enshrine into law the practice of automatically suspending the statutory release of offenders who receive a new custodial sentence.

Cumulatively these legislative reforms will set into motion the good work that was contained in the 2007 independent panel report and are a key step in transforming and modernizing the federal corrections and conditional release system. These reforms would further ensure our streets and communities remain safe for everyone and this should be a goal for all members in this honourable House.

The legislation is part of this government's stand on behalf of all Canadians who want the rights of law-abiding people to be respected and to come first. After all, we all want the same things that honest, hard-working Canadians want for themselves and their families, and that is simply a safer country, a country where criminals do not get off with a slap on the wrist but, instead, are held to account and have to face the full weight and consequences of their actions and real difficult changes to their lives before rejoining society.

This is appropriate and that is what our government was elected to do. This is why we are putting forth multiple pieces of legislation to protect Canadians, such as Bill C-39, and we will continue to do so. I ask all hon. members to vote in favour of the bill.

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

Madam Speaker, this bill contains several legislative amendments to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. I wish the government had done a similar thing in its Criminal Code amendments. Instead of having one or two bills in front of the House, there are half a dozen, each one tweaking some other little piece of the Criminal Code. I know the government has done it for political purposes, but this bill has bundled things together, which I accept.

I am not one to put a price on the cost of public safety. However, with all of these changes, could the member reveal to us the costs of these proposed legislative amendments?

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

Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Scarborough—Rouge River will no doubt recall that budget 2008 invested $478.8 million over five years to initiate the implementation of the new vision for federal corrections. This money was earmarked. The government feels very strongly that offenders ought to be held accountable and that the recommendations of the independent panel ought to be implemented. Accordingly it has allocated the funds do so.

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

Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest my colleague. He talked about the additional funding that would go into building prisons. However, I would like him to respond to one of the strongest criticisms that has been levied against the government, which is the cutbacks in crime prevention programs.

We know full well that when there are crime prevention programs in place, for every $1 spent there is a saving of $6 later to the taxpayer in policing costs, prison costs and court costs. Preventing the crime at the very beginning not only stops the occurrence of potential victims, but puts taxpayer dollars to a much more effective use as well.

The Conservative government has cut back on crime prevention programs. It is absolutely absurd for the government to come forward and say that it wants to reduce crime when it has reduced crime prevention budgets.

Could the member comment on why the Conservatives are willing to invest billions of dollars in building new prisons and are not willing to put money into preventing crimes in the first place, which is what the vast majority of Canadians support?

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

Madam Speaker, I do not mean to diminish the effectiveness or benefit of crime prevention programs, but our government has consulted with victims groups and police officers and it is the priority of this government to put the rights of law-abiding citizens first.

The protection of society is the paramount principle of the corrections system. Enshrining victim participation and guaranteeing victims rights are our priorities. As I said, I do not mean to diminish the value and effect of crime prevention, but at the end of the day protection of society has to be the paramount principle, and Bill C-39 responds to that.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Madam Speaker, I take this opportunity to commend the member for Edmonton—St. Albert for the very fine work he does on the parliamentary justice committee, on which I have the privilege to work with him, representing his constituents and helping to keep the people of Canada safe.

Has the member consulted with his constituents on this bill and on other government legislation designed to protect victims and stand up for law-abiding citizens? Perhaps he could inform the House on what his constituents may have said in that regard.

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

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Mississauga—Erindale for all the work he does as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice.

It will come as no surprise to members of the House or to that member that in Edmonton I am known as a bit of a justice hawk. Frequently in my householders and occasional 10 percenters I talk about justice issues and the work that this government is doing and the work that I am doing on the justice and public safety committees.

I have consulted widely with my constituents with respect to the corrections system and offender accountability and more broadly with the government's safe streets and safe communities agenda, which puts the protection of society paramount and puts the protection of victims and victims rights at the forefront of the criminal justice system.

I can tell the member and all members of this House without equivocation that my constituents unequivocally support this legislation.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, the five points that my hon. colleague talked about relate to increased offender accountability, eliminating drugs from prisons, making parole and statutory release harder to get, and renewing physical infrastructure, which is a fancy way of saying building more prisons. All of these represent a philosophy of putting more people in jail for longer and making it more difficult for offenders to get access to rehabilitation, but instead, trying to punish them into good behaviour.

I wonder if my colleague could name any jurisdictions that he is aware of, or any places that the government has studied, where these policies have been put in place and there has been a determined reduction in the crime rate, where communities were safer as a result of these policies. I wonder if he could name two different jurisdictions where that has occurred.

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

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Vancouver Kingsway for the work that he does as his party's public safety critic and for the work that he does on the public safety committee.

My colleague is right. This bill represents a different philosophy from the philosophy of his party, and I would suggest, a different philosophy from most members on that side of the House. Where they are focused on the rights of the offender, the members of this government, and certainly myself, are preoccupied with the right of society to be protected from violent offenders, to be protected from fraudsters, to protect victims and give them a meaningful right in the process, and to promote safe streets and safe communities.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Madam Speaker, we know crime actually costs the Canadian economy more than $70 billion a year. The last statistics we have indicate that 67% of that is borne by the victims of crime. Auto theft costs the Canadian economy $1 billion a year.

I wonder if the hon. member would agree that one of the primary functions of government is to protect its people and that it is about time we stopped shifting the blame to the victims and started taking responsibility as a government.

I wonder if he would have some insight as to why the opposition would not support making the rights of victims a priority in all of our criminal justice legislation.

I wonder if there are any other bills that he might want to talk about that could give Canadians confidence that their justice system is finally being reformed to put the rights of victims ahead of criminals.

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

Madam Speaker, it is unfortunate that I only have one minute to respond, because the member invited me to talk about all of the bills that our government has promoted to promote safe streets and safe communities, but I will talk about at least one.

The hon. member will no doubt recall Bill C-25, which is now law and which ended two for one credit for individuals on remand while awaiting trial. The member no doubt would agree with me that led to all sorts of perversions with respect to accused individuals delaying their pretrial process and therefore taking credit for the very generous two for one and sometimes three for one credit.

This government, as does that member and as do I, believes in the protection of society. Society benefits from legislation such as Bill C-25 and Bill C-39, which puts the rights of victims at the forefront and makes the protection of society the permanent goal.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-39, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

The bill is a combination of Bill C-43 and Bill C-53, which were presented in the last session and are back before us today as a result of the Prime Minister's decision to prorogue Parliament last year.

This proposed legislation seeks to end early release for criminals and increase offender accountability. We are hopeful, on this side of the House, that the legislation before us today can be improved in moving forward to the committee process. I would like to think that all of us have the same objective of ensuring justice initiatives contribute to making our communities and our streets safer places for all Canadians.

There is no doubt that in this House we do differ greatly in the type of approach that would achieve best results. The current Conservative government's approach to justice matters centres on spending $10 billion on prisons in the coming years. I am not convinced that investments in prisons, without resources for crime prevention, would achieve the goal of decreasing crime in our communities.

Statistics Canada tells us the crime rate fell 3% in Canada last year and is down 17% in the past decade. This includes a decrease in violent crimes and homicides. Rather than continuing on a course that is arguably achieving the desired results, the current Conservative government made dramatic cuts, an incredible 70% funding reduction, to crime prevention programs and also reduced funding for victims' programs by 43%. Now, after recording the largest deficit in Canadian history, in excess of $55 billion, the government is forging ahead to build republican-style super prisons, to the tune of anywhere from $10 billion to $13 billion.

While the Conservative government continues to push what it refers to as a tough on crime agenda, it neglects the instruments of government that have proven to be most effective in preventing crime. No one objects to offenders who have committed serious or heinous crimes being sentenced appropriately. However, by focusing solely on imprisonment, which carries a huge price tag and offers only short-term solutions, the Conservative government is failing to address the root causes of crime.

Governments are defined by the choices they make. The Conservatives are choosing to spend $10 billion on new super jails on the notion that this would make Canadians feel safe. This is a plan that would implement failed republican policies from the United States.

Conservative budget projections show a plan to double prison spending, by 2013, over 2006 levels. This represents an increase of well over 200%, while at the same time, funding for crime prevention programs has been cut by more than half.

Whatever happened to the premise of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?

In 2005, the last year of a Liberal government, the National Crime Prevention Centre supported 509 projects in 261 communities throughout the country, for a total investment of $56.8 million. In this current year, with a Conservative government, there are 285 projects, down from 509, funded with $19.27 million. That is less than half the number of projects, with only one third of the money being spent.

These are the wrong choices if the goal is to reduce crime and keep Canadians safe, and these are the wrong choices to prevent crime from occurring in the first place.

The crime agenda should be balanced. We need to be tough on crime, but we also need to be unwavering in our commitments to rehabilitation and crime prevention. We cannot forget that less crime is the objective and we certainly cannot ignore the costs associated with the government's justice agenda.

Parts of the legislation before us evolved from the Conservatives' 2007 report entitled, “A Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety”. The report called for a new direction to Canada's corrections. Expert opinion has suggested the so-called road map was significantly flawed in terms of human rights and human dignity and that it in fact threatened public safety, and also that it came at a tremendous cost to the taxpayer.

Instead of learning from the mistakes made in California, the Conservative government would have Canada head down the same path and make the same mistakes, the path that led to a staggering debt and did not improve community safety.

If the Conservatives' plan to build super jails and incarcerate more people by passing laws that prescribe minimum sentencing was a key to a safer community, the United States would be the safest place in the world. California has implemented the very crime policies that the Conservative government is now proposing. The State of California is on the brink of bankruptcy. Its current prison system costs $8 billion annually and is overflowing with more than 160,000 inmates.

An article in The New York Times, in March of this year, referring to the California prison crisis, says that California spends about 11% of the state budget, or roughly $8 billion, on the penal system, that there are 167,000 prisoners in California, and that new reforms are under way with the goal of reducing the prison population by 6,500 by next year.

If the Republicans have learned from their mistakes, it is only right that the Conservatives should also look to what is happening there and go down a similar path. California has incarceration rates 700% higher than in Canada. In 2008, Canada had the lowest crime rate reported in the last 25 years, so it is no wonder I am perplexed as to why the government would be so determined to proceed down a path that has proven itself to be ineffective.

Bill C-39 attempts to clarify that the protection of society is a paramount consideration for the Correctional Service of Canada in the corrections process and for the National Parole Board and the provincial parole boards in the determination of all cases. While public safety has long been a primary consideration, it appears that the government felt it necessary to elevate it to the status of paramount. I look forward to hearing more from the government as to the necessity of the change in wording.

One aspect of the bill that is appropriate is a provision that enables a victim to make a statement at a parole hearing. Every opportunity must be available to provide for the victims' voices to be heard. Bill C-39 strengthens the victim's access to information with provisions enabling the victim to access information on the reasons for a temporary absence and an offender transfer, offender program participation, and any offender convictions for serious disciplinary offences. Bill C-39 also legislates the victim's right to attend and participate in parole hearings. In this way, this legislation is a start in moving victims' rights in Canada forward, and for that I am appreciative.

While the government would applaud itself for its efforts on behalf of victims, it also begs the question as to why the government chose to reduce the grant for victims of crime initiatives by a staggering 46% in the 2010 budget and cut the contributions to the victims of crime initiative by 34%. Although the Conservative government professes concern for the rights of victims, we have not seen those words translate into meaningful resources to support victims of crime.

The Liberal public safety critic has highlighted concerns about the correctional plans component of Bill C-39. The proposed bill provides that a correctional plan is to include the level of intervention by the service in respect to the offender's needs and the objectives for the offender's behaviour, his or her participation in programs and the meeting of the court-ordered obligations. In theory, it seems logical that the rehabilitation of an offender would follow a clear path. However, there is little merit in imposing the requirement for a plan without any sort of resources to support the development and execution of that plan.

Other aspects of the bill before us today include the expansion of the range of disciplinary offences to include intimidation, false claims and throwing a bodily substance.

As well, there is a section that would eliminate accelerated parole review for non-violent offenders. This is another area where the House will need to evaluate the cost of incarceration and the most suitable way for the offender to serve the sentence.

The last provision of the bill provides a peace officer with the authority to arrest without warrant an offender for a breach of a condition of the offender's conditional release. Again, this is another area where I look forward to hearing from the committee as to the possible issues that may arise from such a provision.

The true cost of the Conservative government's justice and corrections agenda remains a guessing game. Canadians deserve to know the price tag. The government's justice agenda is certain to cost well into the billions at both the federal and provincial levels and puts on all provinces a responsibility they just cannot afford just to satisfy the Conservatives' agenda.

It is challenging to stand in the House and support at second reading a piece of legislation while I have significant concerns about the costs associated with it. That is part of the bigger picture that we are facing today.

I look forward to seeing this bill back in the House following the committee's review, in anticipation that necessary amendments will be made to improve Bill C-39.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Madam Speaker, I cannot help but scratch my head at the lack of understanding by the hon. member across that crime costs Canadian families in excess of $70 billion a year. That is a figure which is borne by the victims of crime predominantly. Victims across Canada are bearing 67% of the costs of crime.

The member talked about decreasing crime rates. The crime rates are decreasing because of the hard work of this government, the justice minister and this party to put a focus on crime. In my community, despite the extra resources we recently had a warning in the small town of Stouffville that property crimes are on the increase. People are breaking and entering into homes at night and there are car thefts.

There is a very real concern among Canadians that we get the job done once and for all. We have tried the failed practices of previous Liberal governments for generations and they did not tackle the problem.

Would the member not agree with me that we need to focus on protecting society? Would she not agree that we need to refocus and balance the justice system so that it puts the rights of victims ahead of those of criminals? Would she not agree that we need to focus on turning the criminal justice deficit into a society surplus by once and for all dealing with the issues of crime and keeping the people who commit crime off the streets?

The member talked about sending the bill to committee. We all know what happens when a bill from this side of the House goes into a committee dominated by the opposition coalition. The opposition members talk tough in the House, but when they get to committee and the cameras are turned off, they turn legislation over and restore the focus back on the criminals and not on the victims of crime. There is a complete focus on trying to rehabilitate people who have committed crime after crime.

For once it would be refreshing to stand in the House and to have members focus on the people who matter, the victims of crime, and to turn that $70 billion deficit into a surplus once and for all.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Madam Speaker, I take exception to some of the commentary by the member.

Clearly we are concerned about victims. If the Conservatives are concerned about victims as they claim to be, why in the name of heaven would they have made such dramatic cuts, a 70% funding reduction to crime prevention programs, and another 43% for victims programs.

If their emphasis is on helping the victims and doing whatever they can to ensure victims are their first priority, then how can the member possibly stand there and not speak to the fact that the Conservatives have made such significant cuts in funding for the programs that are there for the victims?

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

Madam Speaker, I enjoyed the member's speech.

We are obviously hearing the PMO's talking notes. They are given out to Conservative MPs. That is what they get in the morning, a document stating what they have to think and what they have to say. The line is basically that anybody raising questions about another Conservative botched bill should be criticized because somehow the person is choosing criminals over victims. We know that is absolute balderdash.

What we have is a government that is actually doing everything it can to create more victims by cutting the crime prevention programs that stop crimes from being committed in the first place. There have been cuts of two-thirds to 70% in crime prevention and cuts in psychiatric care. Those who commit crimes need to get those mental health supports so they will not commit other crimes.

In case after case we see the Conservative government, in some weird, bizarre, inappropriate way, trying to cut away the programs that protect the Canadian public. I will not even start on what the Conservatives have done with their attacks against Canadian police forces and police officers, and their cutbacks in basic supports such as forensic labs.

It is absolutely appalling what the government has done. What the government offers is to build more prisons after the fact, but what it is really trying to do is to create more victims. I guess in some bizarre, inappropriate way it is trying to profit politically from that.

How inappropriate does the member feel it is to have the government slash crime prevention programs, just cut and rip them apart, so that there are fewer programs to protect the Canadian public? As a result, of course, there are more victims.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Madam Speaker, the member is absolutely right. It is absurd that the government is speaking out of both sides of its mouth. On the one hand it is saying that we really need to take care of the victims and put the victims' rights first, but at the same time the government is cutting programs that are designed to help the victims. It does not make sense.

The government stands and says it has a tough on crime agenda, but from what I have observed and from its actions, it is not the least bit interested in making sure that in being tough on crime it is recognizing that it is the victim who is the person hurt by what is going on.

The government is not at all interested in addressing the root causes of crime. We have said time and time again that we need to talk about prevention. Maybe it is because all the programs have been cut and the government has started to do away with any kind of program that would look at preventing crime that we are seeing more and more victims.

It is time for the government to focus on the victim. It is time for the government to acknowledge that it has made a mistake, that it should never have cut those programs. It should bring them back. Let us look at this piece of legislation and recognize once and for all what is wrong with it and what is wrong with the government's tough on crime agenda.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Madam Speaker, I was quite interested in the so-called support of the Liberal Party and the NDP in terms of their outrage against crime. We all know they say that here in the House, but when they get to committee, it is a totally different story.

We are the only party that does support the victims, safe streets, safe communities and a safe country. Our party has put forward legislation which in fact will help victims and all Canadians.

I would like to ask the hon. member, where did she find this 70% reduction in funding for the protection of victims? Where are those numbers? How did she arrive at those numbers? Can she give us an actual number and where it comes from?

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Madam Speaker, as I said in my remarks earlier, Statistics Canada is telling us that the crime rate fell 3% in Canada last year and is down 70% in the past decade.

[An hon. member]

Where was it 20 years ago?

[An hon. member]

Where is it?

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

You know from your own budget that you have cut the funding for programs by 70%. I do not have to tell you where to go to look for that. You know that you have done that. You have also cut funding for victims programs by 43%.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Order, please. I would ask the member to direct her comments through the Chair.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

I will do that, Madam Speaker.

Let us talk about the Conservatives' 2007 report, “A Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety”. The report calls for a new direction to Canada's corrections system. However, expert opinion suggested that the so-called road map was significantly flawed in terms of human rights and human dignity and in fact it threatened public safety.

How can we look at a bill that is supposed to be for victims when it is patterned after something the Conservatives already talked about in 2007 and clearly is not at all intended for the purpose they say it is intended?

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor.

From the outset, I will state that I will be supportive of the bill going forward to committee. There are some issues in the bill that need to be carefully thought out. There are some positive things in the bill, but all of us have concerns.

I will not be critical of members in the House in the aspect of the bill that is paramount to us all, and that is the safety of the citizens of our country. All members here, no matter to which party they belong, truly believe they are here to make sure there is legislation in place to protect our citizens on a daily basis. I commend all of us on that. What I and other members have issues with is the approach.

How did we get there? Some legitimate issues have been raised particularly by members of my party and our public safety critic. Rehabilitation has always been paramount to the whole corrections system in this country. I am quite concerned that that whole idea is being eroded. We also want to make sure there are programs and the necessary funding in place to ensure that people do not reoffend. Programs which deal with issues of safety have been cut over the last few years. Those programs are vital to ensure the safety of our society. I am concerned about the erosion of those programs.

Some of the aspects of the bill need to be clarified. Bill C-39, the ending early release for criminals and increasing offender accountability act, was introduced in June of this year by the Minister of Public Safety. The bill amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. We should look at some of the things the bill tries to clarify.

It clarifies that the protection of society is the paramount consideration in the corrections process for the Correctional Service of Canada, the National Parole Board and the provincial parole boards as well. It provides that a correctional plan is to include the level of intervention by the service in respect of the offender's needs and the objectives for the offender's behaviour, the offender's participation in programs and the meeting of the offender's court-ordered obligations.

It expands the range of disciplinary offences to include intimidation, false claims and throwing a bodily substance.

It permits victims to make a statement at parole hearings. It permits the disclosure to a victim of the name and location of the institution to which the offender is transferred, the reason for a transfer, information about the offender's participation in programs, and convictions for serious disciplinary offences, and the reason for a temporary absence or a hearing waiver.

It eliminates accelerated parole review. It provides for the automatic suspension of the parole or statutory release of an offender who receives a new custodial sentence and requires the National Parole Board to review the offender's case within a prescribed period. It authorizes a peace officer to arrest without warrant an offender for a breach of a condition of the offender's conditional release.

Some of the objectives in the bill are probably supportable, and we are supporting sending the bill to committee, but we have to make sure that public safety is the paramount consideration when dealing with corrections issues.

My party believes that rehabilitation is key to preserving public safety and preventing recidivism. We believe in a corrections system where human rights are promoted and respected .

For these reasons we support the bill in principle, namely that public safety remains paramount in corrections policy, but we have concerns with the government's overall road map to corrections, including the over-vamping and deterrence at astronomical costs.

One of the major concerns I have heard from provincial premiers is how little consultation is taking place at the provincial level; this when so many of the costs will be carried by the provincial governments. This would be a heavy burden. They want to make sure they are part of the consultation as we move forward with legislation dealing with criminal offences and rehabilitation.

A number of organizations have also expressed concern about this bill, including the John Howard and Elizabeth Fry societies, and the Criminal Lawyers' Association. Rehabilitation is the key to an effective corrections system, prevention, and public safety. Professor Michael Jackson, a former director of the John Howard Society, has stated that they have serious concerns with this legislation.

There are different groups that need to be heard at the committee level. That is one of the reasons this bill needs to go to committee. We can then look at different ways to correct and modify this bill.

There are some positive things I see in the bill, but I have to say that we are concerned about the overall cost of some of this legislation. It will be shared by all taxpayers. The provincial premiers will have a difficult time managing their budgets. They are concerned about where this legislation is going and how it will affect their treasuries.

We heard from Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who stated that the cost of one of the bills could be in the range of $10 billion to $13 billion. This is an astronomical cost that, without question, will have an effect on our ability to provide other services, whether we are talking about health or other social services.

We also know there has been some erosion taking place in the programs that deal with prevention. If public safety is paramount, then we must make sure we have programs and resources in place to deal with crime prevention, so that people will not be reoffending.

A concern to us all is that so much of the legislation before us imitates our friends and neighbours to the south. I think we would all agree that the cost has been enormous on their society, with little decrease in crime or criminal activity.

If we are going to look for a road map, we want to make sure it is one that all of us could be supportive of. I believe it should be guided by principles based on fact and not emotion. It should have the resources in place, and we should know where we can get the funding for the programs.

Thus far, I see in this bill a cost to all of society. There is a cost to the treasury and to the public. We have a series of concerns that we keep raising. I hope the government will listen.

I think we would all agree that establishing the rights of victims to make a statement at a parole hearing is an important and positive aspect of this legislation. How it is implemented, how it is done, is something the committee will have to take a look at.

Of course, we would want to involve victims groups as well. It would probably be done on a case-by-case basis, because I am not sure all victims want to make a statement at the parole hearings. However, if they wish to, they should be given that opportunity.

The level of intervention would probably be decided on a case-by-case basis, with the victim having the opportunity to make a statement.

There have been a series of issues raised by different people, primarily advocacy groups. We need to listen to the John Howard Society and the Elizabeth Fry Society, which do good work in trying to rehabilitate criminals. We need to make sure that individuals do not reoffend. It is in the interest of all of us. For this reason, I will be supporting the legislation. I hope that we will be able to resolve some of these issues at the committee level before the bill comes back for third reading and final approval.

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

Madam Speaker, over the last few months, we have seen the Conservative government shovelling money off the back of a truck to Canada's wealthiest corporations. The cost of the new fighter jets has doubled. There is $1 billion for the summit in Toronto. I could go on and on about the boondoggles that the government has been engaged in. Conservatives have a reckless disregard for appropriate financial management.

At the same time, we have seen a slashing of 70% of crime prevention programs. The National Crime Prevention Centre had funding slashed from $57 million to $19 million. We have seen a refusal to provide adequate funding to the RCMP. The Conservatives promised this funding many years ago, but now they seem to have forgotten that promise. They have been strangling the forensic laboratories that provide information important for crime prevention and for solving crimes.

So we see disingenuous hypocrisy; there is no other way to put it. The government is shovelling money off the back of a truck to its big business friends. At the same time, they are slashing funds for crime prevention, crime investigation, and policing. They are not keeping their promises. They bring forward these bills just so they can say they are doing something, when they should be dealing with the problems created by Conservative mismanagement of the criminal justice system.

I would like the member to comment if he thinks it is appropriate that the government has slashed crime prevention programs by nearly 70%. The government is creating new victims while saying they want to be smart on crime.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague makes a valid point and I fully agree with him. I do not believe it is appropriate for the government to be slashing crime prevention programs to the tune of up to 70%. Part of being tough on crime is to make sure that there are programs of prevention out there. Every time these programs are eroded, it makes our society less safe.

Remember, it was Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page who said that one of the government justice bills, instead of costing $90 million, as was originally estimated by the minister, would actually cost between $10 billion and $13 billion. There is a huge discrepancy between $90 million and $13 billion. These programs are a huge cost that is going to be borne by all of us.

I also am worried about the impact it is going to have on our social infrastructure. Already provincial premiers are complaining about the cost of our legislation. If we are going to put forward more of these justice bills, I hope we are doing it in partnership with our provincial premiers, because they also have a stake in all this. There is a cost to them and a cost to all of us, because there is only one taxpayer.

I also realize that there is a cost of inaction. I am not one who says we should do nothing and that will be it. No, I agree that we have to act. But let us do it in a way that makes economic sense and is in the best interests of public safety. At the committee level, there will be an opportunity to debate and to engage different stakeholders, so that we can have legislation we can all be proud of.

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

Mr. Speaker, on the heels of what I consider to be a fine speech indeed, I want to thank my colleague from Davenport for his attention to this matter. I know he will listen attentively to what I have to say.

I want to start by talking about what I feel is one of the essential ingredients for crime prevention: programs that encourage our youth to get more involved in communities and in programs that allow them to help build communities. I have witnessed this first-hand. Whether they are below the age of 18 or between the ages of 10 and 15, there are some excellent programs for them. They encourage youth to get involved in community cleanup, activism, and certain issues that are important to them and to the entire community.

I represent a riding in Newfoundland and Labrador that encompasses 191 towns. One can well imagine that the culture and activism in the region creates quite a tapestry of individualism and community spirit. The programs help prevent crime and sickness. There are many different community groups that want that one common goal at the end, which is to raise awareness of crime and make our communities safer.

This bill is not so much about crime prevention. The title of the bill is An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. As most of us know, a lot of the bills regarding incarceration and imprisonment involve conditions upon their release.

There have been several renditions of this. There were two bills prior to this one that, following the prorogation of last winter, have been combined in one bill. Before I get into the gist of this, I would like to say there are many components of the bill that should be supported by all of us in the House, because they go much further toward protecting our society.

A lot of the common themes and recommendations that came from the 2007 road map were premised on a hypothetical profile of Canadian offenders. This came from the Conservative ranks starting in 2007. Much of it deals with the imprisonment of dangerous offenders and creating new rules upon their release. There has been significant debate on putting dangerous offenders in prison for first-time offences. I have enjoyed the debate in the House. I wish the government had engaged in the debate a little more. But in the talking points we received there have been some valid arguments.

One of the issues comes down to the dangerous offender. It almost seems as if we have elevated the debate to a point where the offenders have taken on a new character. It is as if the offender has become a certain type, an individual different from how he was perceived before 2005-06, when the Conservative government was elected.

It leads me to think that we should be somewhat nervous about this attitude. It is almost as though a mind-shift has taken over the headlines of newspapers, the media in general, whether electronic or print. Sometimes we neglect to go beneath the headlines and dig deeper into individual circumstances.

Many people in my riding read the news of the day. It simply states, at the very beginning, the name of the offence, what happened and a headline saying that somebody did this. I do not want to go into details because I do not want to mention any particular case. However, what happens is that we have this visceral reaction against the people who have perpetrated these particular crimes. I am not separate from that. I, too, read some of these headlines and wonder how some people can bring themselves to commit a crime that is so drastic.

One of the questions we seldom ask and should be asking when we get caught up in these headlines is what brings a person to a level of desperation that compels the person to do this. We need to ask what the circumstance is of the particular individual prior to the crime to push the person into behaving in such a manner. I do not think these words would say to someone that they are getting away with crime.

However, the problem with some of these talking points and headlines, and locking people up and throwing away the key type of attitude leads us to believe that there is nothing more than just that. It is this shallow attempt to look at crime legislation, Unfortunately, what we forget, which is what I returned to a the beginning of my speech, is the crime prevention program that dismissed that crime in the first place. The person who committed that most violent of offences, if circumstances had dictated, if the community had engaged that person at the very beginning of a turn for the worse, then could we not have avoided that situation? It is the type of situation we cannot quantify. That is the problem with the debates that we have here within this particular chamber. We need to dig deeper into the crime prevention side.

I am voting for the bill at second reading because I know there are people who are dangerous offenders and because there was no level of community engagement at the beginning that could have avoided the particular crime. I get that and I think almost everybody in this House gets the same message. We have no problem with taking this to the next round and sending it to committee. I understand about tightening some of the rules and putting people back into society after serving time. However, the problem is that we have only skimmed the surface of what is a complete package to bring crime rates down.

Crime rates have dropped over the past 15 to 20 years, although I would not say dramatically. Each day when I see the news, I can guarantee that at any given moment, on any particular radio station's website, 40% of the news deals with events that happened in the last 24 hours and names are released. What is in a name? What is in the circumstance is what we must look at. Unfortunately, however, when we try to bring some semblance of mature debate in this House about crime prevention, what bothers me the most is that we do not give it the attention that we should and, unfortunately, that does not lead to a wholesome debate.

Yes, I will support sending the bill to committee for a very important reason. This would further the debate for crime prevention. The prison system across the country is about to get a tremendous amount of financial pressure. How will we address this in light of the fact that we have a tremendous deficit? We need to make an agenda of items like health care and pension reform in light of the fact that we also have new expenditures in the prison system.

One of the things I want to address, which I hope the committee addresses once it receives the bill, is the road plan for people to receive the resources by which they can put themselves back into society in a different state of mind than when they first entered. Where are the resources by which prisoners can help themselves to get back into society the way that we think they should be engaged back into society?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the hon. member knows that the bill would do a couple of dramatic things to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, two things in particular that are of enormous concern to those familiar with the system.

It has been argued that the bill reflects a profound shift in the way that corrections are delivered. The two particular issues are a wording change that seems innocuous at first but would actually change the act in a way that would pave the way for violations of offenders' rights and also affect their ability to access rehabilitation services.

I wonder if my hon. colleague would comment on how concerned he may or may not be about that fundamental shift that stems back from the road map that was authored by Mr. Sampson, a minister in the previous Mike Harris government that advocated privatizing prisons and other policies such as that.

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

Mr. Speaker, I ended my speech by saying that I was concerned that we may be taking a step backwards with respect to this bill because the resources we give to a particular individual to come back into society would be much different from when they entered.

Another thing that bothers me is that with this fundamental shift, this mindset shift I will call it, or perhaps it is a paradigm shift, when people go back into society they have not received the resources by which they can resuscitate their behaviour.

We know that California adopted a similar strategy with regard to corrections. Building larger prisons, upping the number of people and the time they spend in them, the result was not safe for communities. As was pointed out, there was staggering debt, unbelievable costs and in fact less safe communities. The rate of recidivism in California has now crossed the 70% line, which is the rate at which people reoffend.

I think the member has a very valid point. On the other hand, there are also valid points from the government when it talks about the input of victims, which I do agree with.

There we go. In typical Liberal fashion, we have this side and we have that side.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on behalf of the New Democratic Party to Bill C-39.

After listening carefully to debates from all sides of the House, it is my desire to express something that I hope will have a bit of a unifying effect on this debate. I believe that all members of this House want to have safe communities. I believe that all members of this House care about victims. I also believe that all members of this House advocate policies that they really believe will result in safer communities, better respect for victims and, what we all hope to achieve, a reduction in the crime rate in this country.

Where we differ, and debates should be marked by respect and care as we listen to each other, is in the various approaches and philosophies that may be advanced to achieve those ends.

Speaking on behalf of the New Democrats, we believe in the approach that we characterize as being smart on crime to attain those ends. I cannot emphasize enough that New Democrats believe in protecting victims. In fact, as I have said in this House before and I will say again and again, our party has been the one with the strongest record of protecting victims. We have always been a party that speaks out for the most marginalized in society: the poor, the disabled, people whose voices are often not heard in debates and those who do not have access to power. I would also point out that it is a well known fact in sociology and among people who are familiar with the issue of crime that crime most often is committed by and against those very groups. Most victims of crime are actually found in the most marginalized sectors of our society, the poor, et cetera.

The New Democrats have always brought those voices to the House of Commons and have always insisted that their interests be taken into account when we discuss any issue. Therefore, I am proud today that New Democrats can be said to be one of the strongest voices in this House for standing up for the rights of victims of all types.

I want to talk briefly about women because women are often the victims of crime. Our party has a policy commitment to advancing the equality rights of women that is second to none in this House. When we talk about advancing the interests of victims and bringing their voices to any debate that touches upon their interests, once again, New Democrats have a record that is something to be proud of.

I can also say that the New Democrats believe fundamentally that the best way to keep our communities safe is to take whatever measures are effective and that work to ensure that offenders do not reoffend. That seems like a simple concept but it is absolutely profound in its application. When someone breaks the law and is sent to jail, the number one goal ought to be to do what we need to do to ensure that while the person is in custody that the person when he or she gets out does not come out and re-victimize someone else.

This is where philosophy comes into play. There are those on the government side of the House who believe that the way to accomplish that goal is to increase the severity and duration of the punishment that those people experience. They say that more prisons need to be built and that more people need to be locked up for longer periods of time. They claim that if Canada invests billions of dollars in that policy approach, we will have safer communities. I respectfully disagree with that. I do not disagree with it because of ideology. I disagree with that because of facts.

Earlier today, I asked one of my colleagues on the public safety committee, the member for Edmonton—St. Albert, to name two jurisdictions in the world where the policy approaches that the government is taking toward crime, locking more people up in harsher conditions for longer periods of time, has resulted in lower crime rates. What was his answer? He refused to answer. He could not name one place on earth.

One would think that the government, with all its resources, with its ability to do research, with the entire civil service at its disposal, with its Department of Public Safety and Department of Justice, could do that research. It could provide this House with the kind of information we need that would support these policies. But not one state, not one government, not one country, not one province, can the government name where these policies have been put into place and have actually resulted in safer communities.

I do not call that an ideological attack. I call that a fact-based one. I am legitimately curious. We are not the only society on earth that is grappling with crime. Every society is. Around this world there is every kind of approach to crime one can imagine. There are more liberal approaches, more conservative approaches, tougher approaches, more lenient approaches. The northern European countries' approach focuses more on rehabilitation. Southern European countries and eastern countries, and countries all over the world such as Asian countries, have strong approaches to crime with very tough prison conditions.

What are the results? Why can the government not tell us which model it is emulating? Why can it not tell us which country or state it is using as a model that has adopted these policies that result in safer communities? The fact that the government cannot mention one causes me great concern simply as a parliamentarian.

This bill does have some interesting measures that are worthy of some discussion. Of course, I also think it is fundamentally flawed because profoundly, philosophically and policy-wise, it is simply mistaken.

Bill C-39 takes the absolute wrong approach to correctional policy. It does not promote public safety. It runs counter to reducing reoffending behaviour. It opens the door to violation of human rights. It runs counter to several Supreme Court of Canada decisions on the rights of people as they are treated by the justice system. It adopts a U.S.-style approach to prisons that is regressive, expensive and ineffective.

I want to mention a timely and topical piece that ran today. The head of Correctional Service Canada, Don Head, today announced that his department estimates it will have to spend $2 billion over the next three years because of the Conservative government's approach to crime. It will have to lock up an additional 4,500 Canadians. To put this in perspective, right now there are approximately 13,500 offenders in the federal corrections system. This would add another 4,500 people to that, approximately 30% more people, in the next 36 months.

Mr. Head said they will have to hire thousands more staff. The department will have to spend much more money on programming. It will have to double-bunk prisoners because it simply does not have the space to house the number of people the government wants to lock up in the next three years, in violation I might add of international conventions to which Canada is a signatory, saying that we would not double-bunk prisoners in cells overnight.

That $2 billion estimate is lower than the Parliamentary Budget Officer's estimate, but I would point out that it is higher than the figures the Minister of Public Safety has indicated so far. Before we spend billions of dollars, Canadians very legitimately ought to ask if this is a good approach and if it will work.

A good analogy that all Canadians can relate to is how we treat our children. What is the proper approach to dealing with a child who misbehaves or breaks a rule? The Conservative government has a one-sided approach that says to punish that child. Just punish them. That will work for certain children in certain circumstances. I grant that punishment is one aspect of our corrections toolbox. That simply has to be there. With respect, where I think the government is misguided is that punishment is not the only tool and it is not the tool that should be used predominantly.

What happens if a child is dyslexic and misbehaves in school, not because he or she is a bad child, but because that child is actually masking the fact that he or she cannot read?

What happens if children have FASD, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and their fidgeting and inability to follow rules is not because they are bad people but because they suffer from brain damage? What happens if a child has low cognition or a low IQ?

These are the kinds of people who are in our federal institutions. I say with no hubris whatsoever that I have done something that I dare say 90% of the people in this chamber have not done, and that is that I have visited more than 24 prisons in this country. I have to say I was surprised when I walked into my first federal institution almost two years ago. I had never been in a federal prison before.

What I found was that there is no monolithic population. Our prisons are not filled with 100% bad, scary, evil people. There are some people like that in there. For probably between 10% and 20% of people in federal prisons, that is exactly where they should be at all times. The public needs to be protected from those people.

After that, the truth is that the population in prisons is on a continuum and on a gradient. There is every single type of person in that prison. There are people who are illiterate, who have brain damage, who are of low intelligence, who suffer from FASD, who have had traumatic events happen to them, and who are in prison because of their addictions and their mental health.

I went into the RPC in Saskatoon about a month ago. I asked the people who work in that prison, not the prisoners, what percentage of people in that institution committed crimes that are directly related to their addiction, and the answer I got was 70%. These are people who are in a bar, get drunk, get in a fight or something, and this is what happens. I am not excusing any of that. Any kind of breach of the criminal law is wrong and it needs to be dealt with and dealt with appropriately.

The question I ask is, for those people who are in prison, what is best way to make sure that when they come out they will not do it again? That is what I want and it is what the people of Canada want. I certainly know it is what the people of Vancouver Kingsway want. They want to be safe.

They want to know that when they walk in the streets or in that bar on a Saturday night or in the stores or parks or schools that they are safe. That means that those people who come out of prison are not going to hurt them, and 96% of people who enter federal institutions do come out.

What we do know is that simply locking them up for longer and in harsher circumstances will not work for the vast majority of these people. I am not saying this because of morality or compassion; I am saying this from pure cold-hearted logic. It does not work. That is what I will go back to. If the government can produce studies that show where these policies have worked, I would be very interested in seeing those studies and having my attitudes adjusted accordingly. It cannot do that.

This bill does a number of things. This bill makes it harder for people to get parole. It extends the length of time that offenders convicted of offences have to serve. In other words it keeps people in jail for longer.

It requires the active participation of offenders in attaining objectives of a correctional plan, and that is part of their release plan. That is a good thing, except it also fundamentally changes two things in our prison system.

The historic standard as established by the Supreme Court of Canada is that when citizens enter our prisons they lose some important rights. They lose their right to liberty. They lose their right to be in society. That is a profound loss. However, they retain every other right that all Canadians have. That is why people can still vote in prisons. That is why people still have the right not to be tortured. That is why people have the right to health care. The Supreme Court of Canada said that when Canadian citizens walk into prison, they do not stop being a citizen. They will be punished severely by losing their liberty, but they do not lose those other rights. That is a hallmark of a modern, advanced, mature, democratic state. What this bill would do is alter that.

The second thing it would do, which I think is extremely concerning, is that it changes the approach to prisoners, to allow our corrections system to take whatever measures it thinks are appropriate to deal with prisoners, as opposed to the least restrictive measures to accomplish the goal.

Here is what that means. Just like with our children, it means that when a person abrogates a rule or misbehaves we take the least possible measure that is necessary to change the behaviour, not the most extensive one. The bill would change that.

This is because the government is proceeding on what I think is a flawed basis. It is proceeding on what is called the road map that was authored in 2007 by Rob Sampson, who was the minister of privatization under Mike Harris in the Conservative government of Ontario. When he became the minister of corrections, he advocated strongly for the privatization of Ontario's prison system. That is like putting a fox in charge of a henhouse.

The road map does not engage in a careful, evidence-based review of Canada's correctional system. It cherry-picks statistics to give a distorted view of crime trends. It ignores the history of our prison system. It ignores the jurisprudence that provides the judicial context to imprisoning Canadians. It was designed to tell the government exactly what it wanted to hear. It was written in haste. It was done in less than six months from start to finish, and it did not hear from all the stakeholders who Canadians would want to have input, if we are making sure all voices that have experience in the prison system are brought to bear on this.

One thing the bill does that is good is that it allows victims to have enshrined in law the right to have input into parole hearings. I say let us take that one step further. If it is good to have victims' input at parole hearings because we want to have their voice reflected, is it not important that we have the voices of all stakeholders in determining prison policy in this country? The government did not do that with the road map and that is a flaw.

I want to tell a story because this is not just about statistics and about philosophy. We had before the public safety committee a number of witnesses who testified when we were studying the provision of mental health and addiction services. We had a young woman named Amber Christie as a witness who had been imprisoned 30 times. I want to quote what she said:

As I sat and reviewed the documentary footage made of Ashley Smith's time in prison, I couldn't help but find myself being able to identify with her. I myself have been in prison 30 times. Of those 30 times, 29 of them were spent either all in segregation or the majority of time in segregation. I can identify completely with the desperate need to have human contact and the loneliness and isolation that you feel being locked in a cell with nothing to do all day. I remember I would look forward to meals because I could read the labels of my drink containers over and over and over again. I was not segregated because of behaviour issues or security issues, but because I was withdrawing from heroin.

I was still unable to have anything in my cell to help me stay occupied, such as a book or a pen or paper. I looked forward to count, when the guard would come and count us and hopefully we'd have a nice guard to sometimes tell us how their day was. It was human contact.

I will pause here to state that this description is all too accurate for too many people in our corrections system suffering from mental illness and addiction. These are the conditions that the government wants to move us closer toward, and it will do absolutely nothing to make our communities safer. In fact this approach would make us less safe as is evidenced by the 29 repeat visits Amber made to prison before she got the help she needed. Here is what she had to say about the conditions in prison that finally allowed her to break free of that cycle of recidivism. She said:

I continued to go through those revolving doors until my last stay in corrections in 2005. For the first time I was sent to Alouette Correctional Centre for Women and for the first time I was not segregated. This happened to be the first time...I was checked into health care, and to my amazement I was sent to a unit.

From there on I got a job in the institution, as it was a work camp, and I reconnected with family outside of prison with the help of a wonderful doctor.... I also received health care when I was in prison, something I rarely ever encountered in other prisons.

...there was a program that was happening all around me that was hard to go unnoticed. There were babies in this prison. ... The way the prison was being run was more like a rehabilitation centre.... It was amazing. Not only was there a library and a gym there, there was a native elder there to talk to. As well, there was drumming and dance every Tuesday night. As a mother myself, I have to say that it helped me to remember the things I was giving up, and I know that the other inmates dealt with their problems....

I was released from prison in October 2005, and I have not been back since. ...this prison changed my life. I had been in many prisons before, but this prison treated me like I was a person and not a number.

That speaks louder than anything else I can say.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is quite ironic to be in the House and listen to the member opposite comparing criminals to children. I have two kids of my own, a two year old and a four year old. I can assure the hon. member that they are not stealing cars, or breaking and entering into people's homes. They are not home invaders. I hasten to say that I do not treat them like I would treat someone who would kill someone, steal cars or invade someone's privacy.

It is truly remarkable to hear about the poor criminals who might have to share a cell with someone after they have murdered or invaded someone's home late at night, as they have been doing in my community of Stouffville. Police have recently issued a warning because breaking and entering late at night is on the increase as are incidences of auto theft. We have the poor victims who find themselves confronting someone at two o'clock in the morning in their home, yet we hear about the poor criminals who are going to have to share a cell with someone. We finally are ramping up our criminal justice system to put the rights of the victims ahead of the criminals.

The members keep talking about the costs associated with balancing the justice system. They like to talk about statistics Canada and how crime is on the decrease. How about Statistics Canada reporting that costs of crime to our economy and to families is over $70 billion a year? Those are 2003 figures. The cost of pain and suffering to victims is $35 billion a year. Those are the real costs of crime.

When the member talks about the cost, why does he not talk about the cost to victims of crime? Only the NDP, the opposition coalition, fronted by the leader of the Liberal Party, but led by two failed NDP premiers, would suggest that somehow Canadians do not want people who commit crimes to be in jail, that we should put the focus on them as opposed to the victims of the crime.

When will the member sit down with real people in his riding, victims, and find out what they really want? It is a criminal justice system that represents Canadians and puts the rights of victims ahead of criminals once and for all.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, let me tell the member what former victims' ombudsman, Steve Sullivan, said about the government when he testified before the public safety committee on April 20. He said:

—we have asked that the government refocus its efforts and its priorities on trying to meet the real needs of victims of crime. Sentencing and the “get tougher on crime” agenda will not meet the real needs of victims of crime, who are suffering every day, who call our office every day, who have trouble making their mortgage payments because they have lost their job, whose kids are acting up in school because they can't get counselling. These are real challenges that victims of crime face every single day. Obviously we need to have prisons, and we need to have programs for offenders who are in prison.

The government fired its own ombudsman.

I will take no lectures from silly comments like the one I just heard. Clearly the government did not listen to a word I said. It does not understand or comprehend, not a whit, what we are talking about. It reduces to the lowest form of argument, name calling and simplification and straw man arguments, which typifies the government's approach.

We need to have an intelligent, mature, fact-based discussion, something the government is proving incapable of, whether it is on crime, the long form census or any other issue that the government acts ideologically on. It ignores evidence of what real Canadians want, what Canadians need and what they want to say for communities, and it is not a George Bush style approach that will cost them billions of dollars and make them less safe in our communities. That is the Conservative approach.

The New Democrats do not accept that.

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

Mr. Speaker, around 1970 a provincial government brought in the criminal injuries compensation fund to compensate victims of crime. To hear the Conservatives talk, we would think are pointing to a Conservative government having taken an action like that. It was Canada's first NDP government, led by Ed Schreyer, elected June 15, 1969, that brought in the criminal injuries compensation fund, a fund designed to compensate victims of crime. The NDP was the originators of benefits for victims of crime.

Therefore, the government has no monopoly when it comes to issues on victims.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I can go further, and I have a modern example. Steve Sullivan, the victims ombudsman, in the last several years in two successive budget submissions, recommended that the government put sex abuse rehabilitation centres in every major urban centre in our country. Why? Because it is a well known fact that the majority of sex offenders have been sexually abused themselves.

If we want to do something to reduce the number of children who are victims of sexual abuse, we should invest in centres where they can get trauma abuse counselling, not only to help them but to cut recidivism in the future. What did the government do? Twice it rejected it and did not put a penny in its budgets to help children who were victims of sexual abuse as recommended by its victims ombudsman. Yet the government says it cares about victims of crime. Really?

All the government wants to do is show the public that it is tough on crime by locking more people up. It is a policy that is ineffective and does not work. The government cannot come up with a single place on earth where that policy approach has demonstrated a reduction in crime. That is not tough on crime. That is dumb on crime.

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

Mr. Speaker, some of the themes my colleague touched upon I would have to agree with in many cases. The rehabilitation of individuals and the resources that are not available for individuals to rehabilitate themselves is one thing that needs to be addressed within our system. Given that the system is about to face some rising costs, there are some added pressures in many regards.

Community activism, in many cases, is not being utilized as much as it can. In my area of Newfoundland and Labrador some of the programs have been extremely successful in engaging youth and avoiding crime. There are instances where people have shown lenience toward abominable behaviour.

I want to get one aspect of the bill that he may have addressed, and I apologize if I did not hear it. One of the things the NDP expressed is the establishment of the right of the victim to make a statement at parole hearings. How does he feel about that and does he feel it can be utilized, which I personally think it is a good thing? How can impact statements at parole hearings be utilized within our society that makes our system better and the fact that we do not utilize that aspect enough to help keep our societies safe?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the New Democrats believe we need to stand up for anybody who has been victimized by crime. Offenders need to hear from victims. They need to know the impact of their crimes. Victims need to have their voices heard and we should enshrine in law their right to do so. Otherwise, they are victimized a second time.

New Democrats also support the rights of victims to access information about offenders. We cannot leave offenders in the dark, fighting for every scrap of information. Knowing that an offender is being rehabilitated is an important step on a victim's road to healing and recovery. Mr. Sullivan pointed out that victims of crime do not care if the person is locked up for an extra six months, nine months or a year. What they really want to know is when offenders get out of jail, they will not be victimized again. What victims do not want is for the government to simply focus on punishment.

I will not quote again the words of former victims ombudsman Steve Sullivan, but that is what victims want and that is what their ombudsman said. He is the voice of thousands of Canadian victims. It was his job to hear from them to ensure their voices were reflected in the chamber, and he did so. I would encourage the government to listen to that voice instead of ignoring it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to follow my colleague, the member for Vancouver Kingsway, in this debate. He raised very important points. I certainly hope the Conservatives opposite, who tend to get only the information that the PMO is willing to give them, consisting of a couple of pages of notes with some lines that they repeat ad nauseam, are actually absorbing the kind of information they are getting from the NDP members who are giving the facts.

The facts are the government manages crime like it manages the budget. We have record budget deficits in our country. The government is applying the same incompetence to the criminal justice system, and I will come back to that in a moment.

What we really have is two debates. The first debate is on Bill C-39. That bill, as we know, has components that we certainly support. These recommendations have been before the government for a number of years. We are glad it is finally acting upon issues such as having victim impact statements inserted into the parole process. That is very important. It is a recommendation that the government has been sitting, but it is finally introducing it. It is an important modification that we support.

There are a number of housekeeping items as well in the bill that we support. The bill could have gone rapidly through the House, but then the government, as it is wont to do, sort of on the back of a napkin, threw a number of elements into the bill that are not helpful. That provokes the second debate on the government and how it approaches criminal justice issues and how it approaches, in a sense, trying to reduce the crime rate, doing the things that other countries have found reduce the crime rate. Instead the government seems to want to stoke the crime rate by removing such important programs as crime prevention. It is absurd. However, I will get back to that in a moment.

It used to be said that people do not vote Conservative except for two reasons: budget management and crime. Those are the only two items.

We would not vote Conservative because we want a better health care system because that is what the NDP has brought to bear.

We would not vote Conservative to support more programs for veterans because the government, as we have seen, guts veterans' programs across the country.

We would not vote Conservative to get a better education program or more accessibility to universities.

We would not vote Conservative to improve the environment or to have fair taxes. With the HST that has been imposed by the Conservative government on British Columbians, the fair system has become less and less fair. Every time there is a middle-class tax cut, user fees go up even more. Every time Conservative governments tackle fiscal issues, the middle class is left with having to pay more through user fees. It is a bit of a shell game. Taxes are cut for the wealthy and they are increased, through user fees, on the middle class.

We would not vote Conservative to get better health and safety protections in the workplace, or to get stronger transportation safety regulations or to get a better quality of life to protect Canadian jobs, to reduce debt loads because under the government's watch the debt loads of Canadian families have increased substantially.

We would not vote Conservative for any of those reasons.

However, the Conservatives promised to bring some fiscal prudence to the management of federal government affairs. Let us look at the top 10 boondoggles from the last few months. There is the HST, as I mentioned. There were corporate tax cuts of $60 billion handed out to Canada's wealthiest corporations, to be transferred to the Bahamas or Panama. We had the G8 and G20—

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I hear absolutely no bearing on the speech that the member is giving as being relevant to the question before us. I ask that you bring him back to order to talk about the bill before us.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member has been speaking for close to five minutes now, so if he could bring his remarks to the substance of the motion before the House, the Chair and the other colleagues in the House would appreciate that.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, but as you well know, the whole issue here is the Conservative misuse of resources, and I will take a moment just to set the case for how badly Conservatives have managed the fiscal direction of the country and how that has an impact on their criminal justice policies as well. I know the Conservative members opposite do not like to hear the facts, but as a financial administrator, which was my profession before I became a member of Parliament, I will say that they are going to have to just accept that facts have to be brought to the table.

We had $1 billion for the G8 and G20 summits. We have had the Senate appointments, of course, the Olympic waste and the overruns in the security budget, and the advertising budget being supersized at multiple times what the advertising budget was supposed to be. We had the absurdity of doorknobs being changed in Prince Edward Island and hundreds of dollars spent on signs advertising that. We had the AbitibiBowater payoff of $130 million and the F-35 fighter jet costs.

Coming back to criminal justice policies, we also have the $9 billion boondoggle on the creation of prisons. That is what the Conservatives say is their criminal justice policy. They have managed very ineptly the finances of the country, but they are saying, “Trust us on crime”. They brought forward this bill that could have received all-party consent immediately, because as I mentioned earlier on Bill C-39, some of the provisions all parties support, but they wanted to throw a few poison pills in it just to provoke more of a debate.

We have to wonder, when they are willing to put $9 billion in prisons, what they are cutting back on. That is the point that I want to make and why it was important to talk about the fiscal ineptitude of the government, because when we look at the criminal justice system we see the same kind of mean-spirited, inept, incompetent approach on criminal justice issues.

What have they cut back? It has not just been the constant verbal assaults on our police officers and police chiefs that we saw during this incredibly divisive gun registry debate. It is also what they have chosen not to put money into. The public safety officer compensation fund was an NDP motion, voted on by Conservatives. Four years after they were elected, they are still refusing to put in place a public safety officer compensation fund so that when police officers or firefighters die in the line of duty, their families are compensated. It is absolutely appalling, but that is their approach, to say to police officers and firefighters, “We do not care about you”. Four years they have been waiting. Every year they come to Parliament Hill. Every year they get the back of the hand from the Conservative government.

The Auditor General's report is very clear about the kinds of investments that are needed for forensic laboratories with the RCMP. What we have seen is an increase of nearly 25% to 30%, depending on the location across the country, in waiting times for important forensic information that leads to crimes being solved. In the Vancouver area, where I come from, the lower mainland of British Columbia, we are talking about now a half a year wait for important forensic information.

It is criminally irresponsible to say, “We are going to throw a bill into the House of Commons but we are not going to provide supports for our police officers. In fact, we are going to verbally attack them. We are not going to put those additional police officers that we promised on the streets of Canadian cities. No, we are going to cut back on that. We are going to cut back on the forensic lab support”.

Even though more resources are called for, they are saying to the Canadian public, “No, we do not want to put more resources into forensic labs so we can get information back more quickly, so our law enforcement authorities will be able to solve crimes more quickly. No, we are going to take all of that $9 billion and invest in new prisons, not in supporting our front-line police officers, not in solving crimes”.

This is absolutely irresponsible, incompetent behaviour, and that is exactly what the government is doing.

It has cut back on courts. We have seen in my own riding of Burnaby--New Westminster, and this is partly federal Conservative but also partly provincial Liberal irresponsibility, that they closed the local courthouse, so we now have more of a backlog in the court system as well.

The front-line police officers are not getting the support they need. The forensic laboratories are not getting the support they need. The court systems are being cut back, so the criminal prosecutors and judges cannot do the work they need to do.

Perhaps the most reprehensible in all of this dumb on crime approach, incredibly short-sighted for all the key sectors that actually need investment of resources, is crime prevention. We have been saying this morning and as the debate has gone on into the afternoon that the Conservative government has cut back on 70% of crime prevention funding.

What does that mean? Looking at the National Crime Prevention Centre, looking at community crime prevention programs, it means that the programs that actually prevent crime are not being adequately funded.

Is that appallingly stupid? Yes, it is. We know, and international studies have shown this as well in case after case, that to put a dollar into crime prevention funding, $6 will be saved later on in policing costs, investigation costs, court costs and prison costs.

On the $9 billion that the government wants to waste on prisons for unreported crime, we must remember that the crime rate has been coming down, despite Conservative ineptness on this issue, because of demographics. As the population ages, the crime rate goes down. It is the same phenomenon we are seeing in western Europe and in the United States.

In terms of cutting back on crime prevention and putting $9 billion into prisons, when one-sixth of that amount would lead to a much more effective approach to criminal justice issues, a much lower crime rate, and most importantly in this corner of the House, fewer victims, should that not be the goal of the government?

That is certainly a fundamental Canadian value. What Canadians want to see in the criminal justice system is fewer victims. They want to see fewer victims of violent crime, fewer victims of property crime.

Yet this government does the exact opposite of what it needs to do and does it by shovelling money like there is no tomorrow, like there is some kind of magical Conservative money tree out there where they can just take $9 billion and build the new prisons for unreported crime. Forget about crime prevention programs and forget about supports for forensic laboratories to actually solve the crimes. Forget about front-line police officers. Forget about compensating the families when those police officers are killed in the line of duty. Forget about all of that because what the Conservatives want to do is build their legacy: $9 billion in brick and mortar prisons for unreported crime. It is an absolutely absurd, irresponsible approach, but that is what the government is choosing to do.

The Conservative MPs here are not ripping up the talking points forced on them by the PMO. They are not supposed to deviate from that or think for themselves. They are not supposed to think for their community. They are not supposed to think in the best interests of the country. No, they are supposed to take what the Prime Minister's Office gives them and read it verbatim.

Every single one of them knows, if they have been consulting with crime prevention activists in their community, that their goal should be fewer crimes and that is done by investing in crime prevention.

Their goal should be a more rapid turnaround and swiftness in justice. That is done by adequately funding the forensic laboratories.

Their goal should be more community policing. The way to do that is to put more front-line police officers in the streets of the city, as they promised years ago and have not delivered.

Their goal should be that when a police officer falls in the line of duty his or her family is taken care of.

Even though they voted on my motion and they said they would bring it in, they have now been stalling for four years in doing that fundamental thing.

What else have the Conservatives cut back on? They have also cut back on programs on drug-impaired driving. It is an absurdity. These are the things they are cutting back on so that they can build nine billion dollars' worth of prisons for unreported crime.

I want to come back to the forensic laboratory. I talked about average wait times of 114 days, and higher in the Vancouver region where it is nearly half a year. How do other countries handle the turnaround for forensic laboratories?

The Forensic Science Service in the United Kingdom has a turnaround of seven days as opposed to nearly half a year. The National Laboratory of Forensic Science in Sweden has a turnaround time of 28 days. The Auditor General's report indicates that even in the United States, which has not been as good at forensic funding as it should be, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has a turnaround of 80 days. These jurisdictions are adequately funding their forensic laboratories. They are putting the resources in place. They are putting the money where it needs to go.

It is absolutely foolish to say that a priority for the criminal justice system as reflected in Bill C-39, with the little poison pills thrown in by the government as justification for the building of more prisons for unreported crime as the President of the Treasury Board said so clearly, is to spend $9 billion to build these prisons. Yet the programs that are being starved for funding or have received substantial cutbacks in funding, such as the National Crime Prevention Centre, have to go hungry while the Conservatives strive through Bill C-39 to build more prisons.

We in this corner of the House are looking for a smart on crime approach. We need fewer victims. We need fewer crimes. We need to ensure that programs for problem youth are present, because we know these youth can be diverted away from a life of crime at an earlier stage. Study after study has shown that. Yet we have seen cutbacks in key youth crime prevention programs and youth program funding, so there is a greater chance for these youth to go to prison, which is a university for crime. Then we see, as the member for Windsor—Tecumseh said yesterday in the House, the government cutting back on other programs, within the prison system, as well.

If our objective is to reduce crime, to have fewer victims, there are two things we have to do. First, we have to make sure that we head off people, particularly youth, who find themselves drawn into a life of crime. We have to stop that cold. We have to make sure there are fewer victims. Crime prevention programs, sadly cut by the government, actually accomplish that. Second, when these individuals go to prison, we have to make sure that we get the rehabilitation rate up as high as possible.

Nobody who is a risk to society should be released. However, we have to make sure that those who come to the end of their sentence have been completely rehabilitated. How do we do that? We do that through the agricultural program in the prison system that the Conservatives cut back. We do that through psychiatric counselling and treatment. In the estimates of the Correctional Service of Canada, up to 50% of those in the prison system are subject to psychiatric counselling and treatment. They have mental health issues, so we have to provide more support there. Instead, the Conservatives have supplied less. In term of education programs, there again the member for Windsor—Tecumseh said very clearly that what we have seen is less support, not more.

In every single stage of the criminal justice system, the mean-spirited Conservative government has slashed and burned all of the programs that reduced the crime rate and reduced the number of victims in society. Instead, the government offers more crime, more victims, and more prisons. What a foolish concept. What a foolish approach.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is truly remarkable. It gives me great confidence in the people of Canada when I hear members of the NDP speak, because in their wisdom, the people of Canada know better than to ever give that group of people the mandate to run this country.

It is truly remarkable that there is a group of people in the Parliament of Canada who would actually suggest that victims want criminals on the street. It is absolutely unbelievable to me.

My seatmate in the House is a passionate advocate for the victims of crime. Has the hon. member ever asked her if she wants to see the person who perpetrated the crime against her family out on the street, or if she feels a sense of sympathy that criminals may have to double-bunk for a couple of years until we build more prisons? I doubt it, because you are too busy talking to the criminals in the prisons who are advocating for better treatment, who are worried about whether they will get certain things. The hon. member should speak to the victims, not the criminals. It is absolutely unbelievable.

The hon. member talked about police officers. Which party do police officers and the brave chiefs of police decide to run with when they run for office? They come to the Conservative Party because they understand that the Conservative Party reflects the values of police. It respects the values of Canadians.The member for Oxford and the former commissioner of the OPP who is running in Vaughan understand what the NDP do not understand, which is why the NDP will always be a rump in the House. They understand that Canadians want a balanced justice system. Canadians want a government, and they finally have one, that puts the rights of victims ahead of the rights of criminals. When will the member finally understand that it costs Canadians--

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order. I will just remind the hon. member to address his comments through the Chair. I will have to cut him off there to allow time for a response from the member for Burnaby—New Westminster.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely shameful not only that the member has not listened to anything, but that he is attacking police officers and he is again attacking crime prevention programs. It is absolutely absurd. Admittedly the member's intervention was kind of garbled and I know he is new to the House and has not found his feet yet, but to try to pretend there is some justification for the slashing of crime prevention programs that create fewer victims in this country is misinformed, to say the least, and disingenuous at best.

This is the Conservative litany. The Conservative members have got their notes from the Prime Minister's Office. They are unable to deviate from them. They have not been able to bring a single fact to this whole debate. Why? Because the PMO one-pager did not have any facts. It did not talk about the slashing of crime prevention. It did not talk about the incredible disrespect for our police officers and firefighters by the government's refusal to implement the public safety officer compensation fund. It did not talk about the Auditor General's report and the slashing of the forensic laboratory funding that every other country in the world funds. The one-pager did not talk about any of that. That is why--

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order. Questions and comments, the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my question has to do with the asymmetry in the media's coverage of crime.

A while ago I spoke to a gentleman who is now the head of the YMCA in North America. He got his start in my riding many, many years ago. He told me how he got started with the YMCA. There was a shopping centre in my community that was known to be a kind of marketplace for drugs at the time. A few people, including this individual, got a group together and sort of befriended the young people who otherwise may have been lured into drug trafficking or drug taking. They would have coffee with them or would get together for a game of basketball.

These kinds of things do not get reported in the media. We do not see on the front page of the Globe and Mail, “Youth worker has coffee with young person”. What we see is that a bank was robbed or that some other crime was committed. We tend to devalue the capacity of crime prevention, which is a quiet way of doing things, a quiet initiative. We tend to devalue that as a way of combatting crime.

I would like to hear my hon. colleague's comments on that.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question, which was a much more coherent, fact-based question than the rants we have heard from the other side.

The member has raised a very important point. I was a financial administrator before I became a member of Parliament, and I had to make every dollar count. That is how most Canadian families do their work.

Here we have crime prevention programs that make every dollar count. For every dollar invested in a crime prevention program, six dollars are saved in policing costs, court costs and prison costs later on. It is one dollar to six dollars. Every dollar invested saves six dollars.

The government foolishly, recklessly, irresponsibly, rather than building on those crime prevention programs to reduce crime, to have fewer victims, is doing exactly the opposite. It is slashing and burning the crime prevention programs, and then borrowing $9 billion to build new prisons so it can cut the ribbons when they open. It is absolutely irresponsible. It is exactly the wrong thing to do.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, let us talk about facts. The government still has the problem of explaining how when crime rates are going down it wants to spend $2 billion on more prisons to imprison more people. It does not make any sense.

What is missing from this bill is mental health diagnosis and treatment, literacy and education programs, drug and alcohol treatment, and work programs. By the way, the government also cut the prison farm system which also helped to make our communities safe.

Here are a couple of facts for the government, and on which I would like the member to comment. The total spending on drug interdiction activities will hit $34 million this year, up from $100,000 in 2005-06. Meanwhile, total expenditures on substance abuse programs is actually going down, from $11.8 million in 2007-08 to $10.1 million in 2009-10.

With everybody acknowledging that 80% of prisoners in our federal institutions have an addiction, a figure even the other side will acknowledge, what are the member's comments on a government that would reduce spending on addictions treatment—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member is certainly one of the bright lights in this Parliament because he actually brings facts and research to bear, which is the responsibility of all of us to do. I am chagrined to see one-half of the House, the other side, not bringing a single fact. Those members just bring their one-pager, whatever the Prime Minister tells them to say, rather than bringing a single fact to bear on this issue. It seems they are incapable of a fact-based approach.

Another example is addiction programs. I talked about the cutbacks to psychiatric care and the disrespect to police officers, the steadfast refusal to bring in a public safety officer compensation fund. There are cutbacks to crime prevention and cutbacks to forensic laboratories. Now addiction programs are being cut back 20%. It speaks for itself how the government approaches—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Questions and comments. The hon. member for Kitchener Centre.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this debate confirms to me something that I have often observed about how people project their inner selves onto their opposition. I could not help but think of that when the member opposite suggested there were rants going on over here, because quite frankly, I have never heard such a rant as the member delivered a few minutes ago.

When we talk about the facts, again I see him looking at his one-pager. I want to tell him about some facts from my riding of Kitchener Centre. I would like to invite him to drop by the Morning Glory Café which receives money from our government in order to help young people find jobs and to improve their job skills. I would like him to visit our police and our crime prevention society which are doing great work with anti-gang strategies thanks to a $3.5 million grant from our government. I would like him to check out the high on life program which our government is funding to help young people stay off drugs.

These and other measures are all things our government has been funding. I would like to know if the member has even heard of them or if he is deliberately misleading people by ignoring them.

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

Mr. Speaker, of course the member was out of order. When he sees full well that my desk, like the desks of all my NDP colleagues, is packed with information and facts, for him to compare it with a one-pager that he got from the PMO is inappropriate.

That is exactly the issue. He is talking about the few surviving programs that the Conservative government has not yet cut. We said that the National Crime Prevention Centre has been cut 70%. He is right to say there is still that 30%. He brought forward some of the programs.

What the member is doing, very directly, is reinforcing the NDP's position. He is saying that crime prevention programs work. He is saying that the few that are left in his riding, that he has managed to preserve, are doing a good job.

So join with us, join with the NDP and fight the government's mean-spirited approach on criminal justice—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order. The time for questions and comments has expired. Resuming debate.

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

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

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Call in the members.

And the bells having rung:

The vote stands deferred until the end of government orders tomorrow.