Madam Speaker, as I know that you were listening to every word of my speech, you would be well aware that we were indeed addressing the subject at hand, that is, a bill that will make it impossible for a non-violent first-time offender to be released from prison after serving one-sixth of his sentence and serve out the following sixth of his sentence in a halfway house.
It is true that these criminals will not be locked up in prison, but that does not mean that they will be completely free. What does this mean, in practical terms? It means that the member for Ahuntsic, the so-called expert criminologist, is presiding over the following situation.
As of Friday of this week, an aboriginal woman who was with a friend when he committed a crime and was handed a three-year prison sentence was automatically entitled to have her file referred for a review to determine whether she could at least begin serving out her sentence in the community, as part of a transition process. This was a first offence and there was no violent crime committed.
For two days, the member for Saint-Boniface, who rose earlier, and her colleagues have been stressing the fact that this is a retroactive piece of legislation. In democracies, however, new penalties are not applied retroactively, since that approach flies in the face of every principle of a democratic society. And yet that is what the right—and when I say the right, I mean the members of the Bloc and their new allies, the Conservatives—are ensuring will happen.
The member for Ahuntsic stated here, in this House, that this is a possibility and that it is only the review process that will change, which is not true. She argues that it is just the accelerated parole review provision that is being scrapped, which is completely false. She has misunderstood the very substance of the bill.
If the Bloc is making the wrong decision—as even the Barreau du Québec argues it is—on the basis of the misguided analysis of the member for Ahuntsic, there is still time for it to change course. I believe, however, that the Bloc is afraid of the Conservatives' political weight in the outlying regions of Quebec. That is what concerns the Bloc Québécois. As Bernard Descôteaux so eloquently stated in an editorial that appeared last week in Le Devoir, cheap pre-election “populism” is behind the Bloc’s position on this issue.
Last week, when the Bloc made a deal with the Conservatives behind closed doors, its members had the nerve to tell us that because they had gotten something, like victims of the Stockholm syndrome they had to thank the Conservatives and, despite our role as members of Parliament and our primary duty to study bills, there would be no parliamentary committee and no right to ask any questions because they had made a deal with the Conservatives.
I have some news for the Bloc Québécois. There is a party with principles in this House, the New Democratic Party, and we will stand up to the right wingers in Canada. We will stand up for individual rights and freedoms and will not swallow an abbreviated, false analysis cooked up by pseudo-experts who have managed to convince the Bloc leader that this bill does not do what it obviously does. That is why the Barreau du Québec is opposed to the bill. That is why all the experts in penal law are opposed to it. That is why there is opposition to the bill from everyone who has a democratic conscience and hears the Conservatives pat themselves on the back and say that they want to impose another sentence, that after the judge, after the decision, after the sentence, there will be a new, retroactive penalty. It is antidemocratic, and we, for our part, will say that.
We will not let the newly formed right intimidate or influence us or spout nonsense at us just because it is afraid of the Conservatives’ strength in the regions of Quebec.
It is disgraceful that there has not been any objective, independent study of the number of cases. My colleague from Vancouver Kingsway gave the best available figures last night: 1,500 cases a year, of which 900 to 1,000 are granted. The cost could well be $100 million a year.
Earl Jones’s victims would like very much to be compensated by the federal government, rather than seeing another $100 million spent annually because the Bloc is afraid of the Conservatives in the regions—100 million new dollars a year.
On Friday this week, someone who has served the sentence imposed by a judge—the woman in my example—will learn that thanks to the member for Ahuntsic, she has not finished serving her sentence, she may not go to a halfway house, she may not be in the community or be closer to her children. She is going to stay in a penitentiary. What we have here is the new right, the new and improved Bloc Québécois. It is not a social democratic Bloc Québécois. The Bloc Québécois is learning all about political opportunism as the election approaches. Shame.
We are speaking up against this trend. To see where some effort could have been put into this, we need to look at the actual court documents in the Earl Jones case. I am going to read an excerpt from a Royal Bank of Canada document:
Mr. Jones returned my call. I offered him our ratelink essential package service because his fees are over $150.00 every month. He is using this account for business purposes as an In Trust account, however, I told him this is not a formal trust account and he could get himself in trouble....
It was years before the case came to light. What did the Royal Bank do? Nothing. What did the inspector of financial institutions, a federal government official, do about the Royal Bank? Nothing. What did the Government of Canada do about the inspector of financial institutions? Nothing. What did Earl Jones’s victims get? Nothing, zero. These are documents from the class action that has been launched in the Earl Jones case.
If the Bloc Québécois is really so concerned about Earl Jones’s victims, it would be fighting for half of that money, which would compensate 100% of Earl Jones’s victims in one stroke, if it were put to that use. Instead, to score a political point, the Bloc members are saying we should spend another $1 million a year with no objective study about the retroactive effect, the number of cases, the ultimate cost and the kind of cases affected by this half-baked and ill-conceived decision that the Bloc and its new allies in the Conservative Party are imposing. It is a shameful day for democracy. It is a shameful day when the Bloc gets into bed with the Conservatives on this.
