Bill S-6 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code and another Act

This enactment amends the Criminal Code with regard to the right of persons convicted of murder or high treason to be eligible to apply for early parole. It also amends the International Transfer of Offenders Act.

Criminal Code

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

Mr. Speaker, it is difficult to say this, but there does not seem to be any other explanation. We have known for over five years, because it precedes the Supreme Court of Canada decision, and it was quite obvious what was going to happen when Shoker got to the Supreme Court of Canada from the Court of Appeal. So there was a lot of time for the government to do this.

However, there are no obvious victims. We cannot point to an obvious victim, because what is really being said is that if this law had been in effect, this person would not have been a victim. We cannot go and find that person because there is just no way of doing that. The Conservative Party needs those photo ops for the Minister of Justice or the Minister of Public Safety to trot out, and it just did not have them. So this one gets pushed down to the bottom, even though if we were to ask the police officer on the street or the corrections officer, they would have wanted this right near the top to be dealt with very rapidly.

This is the second time this bill has been before the House. We had the election and it was knocked off the order paper. We had prorogation twice and it was knocked off the order paper. However, other bills have gone ahead. We have had 50 or 60 crime bills in the five years. We did not need them, but this one was always pushed down, because again, the Conservatives did not have that photo op.

I want to be very clear on this. When the Conservative government had to make a decision over which bills they were going to proceed with, they did it on an individual basis. Of those 50 or 60 bills that we have had, including quite frankly some of the private members' bills from the Conservatives, we could have brought almost all of those into two or three omnibus bills. That would have used up a lot less time in this House and more effectively dealt with a number of issues that do exist within the Criminal Code and the criminal justice system. We could have used omnibus bills to do that.

This next bill that we have right after this debate, Bill S-6, is a classic example of that. There are at least three other bills that have either gone through or are coming that should have all been combined around this one issue, and we can just repeat that over and over again.

That would not have allowed the government have those photo ops. It has to have an individual bill on every section of the Criminal Code, at the rate the government is going. If we do not have that, then too bad, it is no longer a priority for the government and is just dropped.

Business of the House

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I will start with the hon. member's last question first.

The member is right, that was an extremely long question. I pointed out to this place that the Liberals were making it a common practice of writing questions that should be divided into several questions rather than just one. The question that I read into the record of this House took over 15 minutes to read. It is an attempt by the Liberal Party, continuous attempts by the Liberals, to obfuscate, to delay the proceedings of this House and to, quite frankly, impede the ability of government departments to get on with important government legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that you, in your wisdom, will rule on that very important point of order as quickly as possible.

With respect to the business today, we will continue with the Liberal opposition motion and business of supply. Tomorrow we will hopefully complete the final stage of C-30, Response to the Supreme Court of Canada Decision in R. v. Shoker Act. Following Bill C-30, we will call, at report stage, Bill S-6, Serious Time for the Most Serious Crime Act.

On Monday, we will continue with any business not concluded this week, with the addition of Bill C-43, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Modernization Act, and Bill C-12, Democratic Representation Act.

On Tuesday, we would like to complete the third reading stage of Bill C-21, Standing up for Victims of White Collar Crime Act.

Next week, we will also give consideration to any bills that are reported back from committee. Further, if time permits, we would also debate next week Bill C-38, Ensuring the Effective Review of RCMP Civilian Complaints Act; Bill C-50; Bill C-51, Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act; Bill C-53, Fair and Efficient Criminal Trials Act; and Bill C-19, Political Loans Accountability Act.

Finally, on Tuesday evening, we will have a take-note debate on the trade agreement with the European Union, and on that subject, I would ask my colleague, the chief government whip, to move the appropriate motion.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. King, you mentioned the faint hope parole hearing that Clifford Olson had some years ago. You may know that this committee dealt with Bill S-6, which is the bill to repeal the faint hope clause, a couple of weeks ago. Did you agree with the repeal of the faint hope clause?

[Ed McIsaac, Interim Director, Policy, John Howard Society of Canada]

Thank you.

I thank the committee on behalf of the John Howard Society of Canada for the invitation to appear. We appreciate the opportunity to meet with you today to discuss Bill C-48.

The John Howard Society, as most of you know, is a non-profit organization whose mission is the promotion of effective, just, and humane responses to the causes and consequences of crime. The society has 65 front-line offices across the country delivering services to support the safe reintegration of offenders into our community.

The John Howard Society does not support this legislation. We do not believe that there is, within the Canadian public, an informed consensus in support of 50-year minimum sentences. In addition, we do not believe that such sentences can be reasonably seen as effective, just, or humane responses to the causes and consequences of multiple murders.

As was evidenced by testimony before this committee on Bill S-6 dealing with the faint hope clause, the current periods of incarceration prior to release on parole in this country for those convicted of first-degree murder are already twice as long as in most western democracies.

How do we as a country justify doubling this already excessive time in prison? What will motivate a 20-year old caught by this legislation to work towards rehabilitation, when their first eligibility for parole will be at the age of 70? At what risk are we placing those who work and live with individuals serving a minimum 50-year sentence? What message are we sending, as a criminal justice system, about our commitment to timely and effective reintegration in support of public safety?

The backgrounder on Bill C-48 that the Department of Justice released in October of this year, entitled “Ending Sentence Discounts for Multiple Murderers", reads in part:

Families of victims argue that the fact that life sentences for multiple murders are served concurrently devalues the lives of victims and puts Canadians at risk by allowing multiple murderers to be paroled earlier than merited...

This document goes on to say:

The proposed amendments to the Criminal Code would address this situation by allowing judges to impose consecutive parole ineligibility periods on individuals convicted of more than one first- or second-degree murder.

I do not believe we can place a value on human life. The grief and hurt of family members following the murder of a loved one cannot be reasonably addressed through amendments to the Criminal Code. The process of addressing this pain begins with the provision of individualized support and services within the local communities, and through the assurance that timely and relevant information concerning the specifics of their circumstances is made available by the responsible government agencies.

Second, we currently have within our criminal justice system a conditional release process that has as its priority the protection of society. Although the timing of conditional release reviews is governed by legislation, the decisions to release an individual are governed by the assessed risk the individual poses to the community. As we know, the existing system is quite capable of extending periods of incarceration well beyond parole eligibility dates.

The proposed legislation potentially extending ineligibility to a minimum of 50 years addresses neither of these two concerns, nor does it enhance the concept of truth in sentencing or the public's confidence in our justice system.

I thank you for your attention. I look forward to your questions.

[Dr. Anthony Doob, Professor, Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

Professor Manson and I thought it would make sense for us to coordinate our comments because we think the most important message related to your consideration of Bill C-48 is something that probably has not been raised previously with you.

To understand the problems created by Bill C-48, one has to consider a few important issues. Most Canadians almost certainly believe that sentences should be proportionate to the offence and to the offender's responsibility for that offence.

That said, however, accomplishing proportionality is difficult, sentencing itself is complex, and sentencing issues are integrally related to decisions made within the correctional system.

Unfortunately, this bill provides evidence of an unwillingness to look at sentencing as a complex and integrated problem. When the government made major changes to sentencing in the mid-1990s, that was at best a timid first step. Most observers believe that those amendments changed few things, but they created a framework for future work that unfortunately hasn't happened. It's not clear that any government in the past 15 years has been willing to take sentencing seriously by looking first to identify what sentencing can and should accomplish, then examining circumstances in which sentencing is successful, and then fixing real problems, because there's an inconsistency between the agreed-upon principles and the outcomes of sentencing in the corrections process.

Obviously this government has been active. The last time I looked, since April 2006 the government had introduced about 60 bills that it calls “crime bills”. Most of them have much more to do with punishment than crime, but they have not made our sentencing or punishment system more coherent.

Unfortunately, as many people have almost certainly told you, you are not going to change crime through legislative changes in punishment, much as you might believe this to be true. These bills and changes to our sentencing system will not affect crime, just as this bill will not contribute to a fair or effective sentencing regime.

The most serious problem is that bills like Bill C-48 appear to give a message that the criminal justice system is completely broken, that judges and the Parole Board and the legislation governing the release of murderers must currently be unfair, and that only in 2010 did these problems get noticed.

Bill C-48 is not about balancing the rights of victims and offenders. It simply adds another level of presumptive punishment to a system that needs careful attention, not simplistic changes.

The difficulty is that you are dealing with problems piecemeal. Let's look at three bills: Bill C-48, which changes the nature of sentencing of certain murderers; Bill C-39, which changes the way in which parole decisions for ordinary offenders are made, among other things; and Bill S-6, which will abolish the faint hope clause for those convicted of murder in the future.

None of these bills respond to real problems with sentencing. Indeed, you haven't provided anything but conjecture about the need for change in these three areas. These bills are doing something else. They're tinkering with sentencing, but not looking at the serious, real problems, both with sentencing and the relationship between sentencing and conditional release.

As I have already mentioned, about 60 crime bills have been introduced in Parliament since 2006. From that, you'd think we had a crisis to deal with, and that the government either had no time to look at the problem as a whole or was incapable of doing so. We don't have a crisis in Canada on crime or on sentencing, but it may be that you as parliamentarians are not interested in looking carefully at something as serious as sentencing. So far, with the large collection of piecemeal legislation, in my view what you've managed to do is to make a complex and difficult-to-understand system more complex and more incoherent.

From the public's perspective, you've made things worse, in large part because of Parliament's unwillingness to look at the sentencing system as a whole. To understand what I mean, I think it's important that you look at some of what we know about matters related to parole decisions made in Canada.

The one thing that is clear about this bill is that the Government of Canada has little confidence in the parole system, just as I would suggest it has shown it has little confidence in judges in many areas of sentencing, and it also has little confidence in ordinary Canadians' judgments of those convicted of murder, as shown by your support of Bill S-6. Since this bill deals with homicide, and multiple homicides in particular, let's look at this phenomenon carefully.

Canada's homicide rate is no longer one of the highest in the western world. Statistics Canada reports that Scotland, the United States, Finland, Turkey, and New Zealand all have higher rates, and ours is more or less comparable to those of many European countries, such as France, Denmark, England, Wales, or Northern Ireland. More to the point, homicide rates in Canada are relatively stable.

In relation to this bill, most homicide incidents--94% in 2009--have only one victim. There were 35 incidents involving multiple victims last year. In the last 10 years, there was an average of 26 incidents a year--that's about 4.7% of all incidents--that involved multiple victims. Most of these--86%, in fact--involved people killing family or other intimates or acquaintances, not strangers, but our image of the multiple murderer is Paul Bernardo or Clifford Olson. Fortunately, that kind of person is rare in Canada and will almost certainly die in prison.

Our murderers spend more time in prison, on average, than people in other countries for which data are available. On average, those sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder spend about 28 years in prison before being released or dying. This is higher than for countries such as England, Australia, Belgium, Sweden, Scotland, or New Zealand. We're not soft on murderers.

As you remember, when we do release those who have murdered, they're on parole for life. If you think that parole for life doesn't mean anything, you'd best request that some lifers come before you and explain what it means to be on parole for life. Parole is not a picnic.

The problem in doing the various things you are working on to lengthen the time that people spend in prison is not simply one of trying to hand down proportional punishments. It is that there is a huge financial cost involved. I know various members of the government have responded to people like me--people who have urged you to use prison resources carefully--by suggesting that if one life were saved, it would be worth it whatever the cost. I find statements like that to be remarkably naive and irresponsible. Let me use an example.

Let us imagine that as a result of this bill, something like 26 people a year--the average number of multiple murder victim incidents that we have over the last 10 years--were to go to prison for an additional 15 years, which is somewhere between the lengths of the parole ineligibility periods for second and for first-degree murder, in 15 years we would be at a steady state, with an average of about 390 extra lifers in prison awaiting parole eligibility time.

We have been told that the cost of the policy is worth it, because if a single life were saved, it would serve victims' needs. We'll get to whether we can expect a life to be saved in a minute, but that relatively small number--390 people on top of the 13,000 or so that we have in penitentiaries at the moment--would cost us about $40 million.

[Susan O'Sullivan]

—so I had very little time. I consulted with as many as I could prior to coming here, and also looked at the previous work and previous conversations, particularly in some of our prep work around Bill S-6 as well, to talk to those national organizations and people like Sharon Rosenfeldt, Heidi Illingworth, Priscilla de Villiers.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. O'Sullivan, for being here and for the good work you're doing to represent victims.

Like you, I don't want to give Clifford Olson any more publicity than he should have. However, a number of the families of his victims spoke at the parole hearing you attended about Bill S-6, which we dealt with a week ago, and about this bill, Bill C-48. I think their words should be heard.

I'm reading from an article that was posted on the CBC website on December 1. The headline is “Olson victims' families want tougher parole law”:

The federal government as well as families of Clifford Olson's victims say the process by which serial killers can seek parole has to change.

Inmates like Olson have the right to request a parole hearing every two years once they have served the bulk of their sentence, but the families of their victims must be put through the process of restating their opposition to any release.

“Oh, it's very painful,” Raymond King, whose son was killed by Olson, said after the hearing Tuesday. “Every time we hear his name, we live this all over again. And to have to come all this way for this...it's really hard.”

Sharon Rosenfeldt, the mother of another boy killed by Olson, said no family should have to go through this every two years.

“If they can pass some kind of a law, so that the families don't have to go through this grief and aggravation every two years, that would be great.”

Those words were also reiterated by Michael Manning, who is the father of another girl who was killed by Olson.

“People like him, multiple murderers, will not be able to have a hearing every two years,” said Rosenfeldt.

Michael Manning, whose daughter was killed by Olson, came to Tuesday's hearing to support fellow families and the proposed law. “If they can pass some kind of a law, so that the families don't have to go through this grief and aggravation every two years, that would be great.”

I think those are important quotes that people need to hear.

There are people in this room and people representing the criminal defence bar who would say you don't have to worry about people like Clifford Olson because he's never going to get out; he's not going to get out, so he's not going to revictimize the families.

But I think we need to hear his words. This is what Clifford Olson said on Tuesday:

I'm here because I have a right to appear, he said. I'm not asking the board for parole, because I know I'm going to be turned down.

He made those victims' families come all the way to that parole hearing from across Canada to relive the pain again because he had the right.

The article points out that he will have that right again in two years' time. Do you have any comment on that?

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

I listened to your speech. We are studying this bill and we also considered Bill S-6. These two bills have to do with crimes like murder. According to me, there are two types of victims. I will be careful in my choice of words, so people on the other side do not start climbing the walls.

There are some victims, like Olson's victims, that you referred to. In my opinion, these victims are scarred for life. People point to Olson, but as I said several years ago, that man will never get parole. He is like Paul Bernardo, in Ontario. However, there are other types of murderers.

Earlier on, my colleague Mr. Rathgeber, or Mr. Woodworth, said that there were 424 people guilty of multiple murders. Personally I am concerned about other murderers. Let me give you an example. It could be a father who kills his wife and two children. In prison, there are far more cases like that than like Olson's. One thing I found worrisome in this bill is that there is not much of a distinction drawn between the two. In fact, there is none.

I will try to be tactful and politically correct. I believe there are two types of victims. The rest of the family of the father who killed his wife and two children will also have to live with that. It will take a great deal of time before that scar heals.

I can remember a client. Her husband, two children and she had made a suicide pact. All four were to die, but the woman survived. She was accused and convicted of those three murders. I believe prison is not the place for her. She is far more in need of psychiatric counselling than that.

I realize that I have gone on a bit of a detour, but do you believe that the discretionary power provided under section 745.51 would allow for this option? Would it not be advisable to increase this discretionary power, because, pursuant to section 745.51, the judge can use this power, otherwise the sentence is 25 years minimum?

Perhaps we should determine whether, under Section 745.2, we should not grant further discretionary power to judges. I am in favour of criminals serving over 25 years before being eligible for parole, in some cases. Judges need some discretionary power. Do you not believe that would be acceptable to victims?

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

Thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

--the minister himself referred to other bills. The parliamentary secretary and another member of the Conservative Party referred specifically to Bill S-6 and continued many questions on it. Therefore, I think my points are not at all inappropriate. They're in direct relation to statements that the minister himself has made here.

Now, I have a question. It's about your response on Bill S-6 and the issue of, if I can use your exact words, the terror and horror that families of victims relive over and over again when convicted multiple murderers apply for the faint hope clause every two years, or every two years from the previous application and refusal.

Would you be able to provide this committee with a reason why your members would have voted against an amendment to Bill S-6 that would have required a mandatory notification to the relatives of victims when an offender did not apply for early parole under the faint hope clause and, under the new legislation, would not be eligible again for five years?

That notification would also give the family of those victims a notification that the offender did not apply under the deadline and that the next earliest opportunity would not be until x date five years hence, in order specifically to allow those relatives to live a certain amount of time without that stress, without that anxiety that you so well and accurately described.

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

Chair, we weren't discussing Bill S-6 and you allowed complete latitude with no recall to the other members, so.... And--

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, thank you for telling us a little bit more about the criminal justice legislation that you've introduced in Parliament. You mentioned Bill S-6, the repeal of the faint hope clause, which this committee dealt with last week. I think it's interesting that just today Clifford Olson, one of Canada's most notorious murderers, again appealed for parole. We know that a few years ago he was denied the right to appeal under the faint hope clause; however, he can still apply because he's gone beyond the 25-year life sentence ineligibility period.

The parents of two of his victims, Sharon Rosenfeldt and Raymond King, were quoted in the media today about the trauma they go through every time they have to appeal at one of these parole hearings. Can you tell the committee how the families of victims have expressed their displeasure to you with respect to the faint hope process?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I'm pleased to be here on supplementary estimates (B) for the Department of Justice.

Mr. Chairman, as you know, our government was elected on a promise to tackle crime. We've acted decisively on this promise in order to ensure the safety and security of our neighbourhoods and communities.

As Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, I am determined to ensure that our justice system is in fact just.

We know that law-abiding Canadians want us to act. Our government believes, as we stated in the Speech from the Throne, that the law must protect everyone and that those who commit crimes must be held to account. Canadians want a system that delivers justice.

To achieve that goal, we have pursued a wide range of reforms to strengthen our criminal law. Our record speaks for itself.

We've passed legislation to establish mandatory prison sentences for gun crimes and toughen sentencing for dangerous criminals, and we've raised the age of protection from 14 to 16 years to better protect young people from adult sexual predators.

We've succeeded in eliminating the two-for-one credit for time spent in jail awaiting trial, a practice that disproportionately reduced prison sentences for some violent offenders. Police associations and victims groups, and indeed, all provinces and territories, have expressed their support for that legislation.

Our government has passed legislation to increase penalties for murders and reckless shootings connected to gangs and organized crime. Any murder connected to organized crime activity now will automatically be considered murder in the first degree and will be subject to a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without eligibility for parole for 25 years.

In addition, there are many pieces of proposed legislation that are currently before both Houses of Parliament, legislation that will strengthen the justice system to the benefit of law-abiding Canadians, with a particular emphasis on protecting children and showing respect and compassion for the victims of crime.

I would mention that none of this would have been possible without the invaluable assistance, advice, and commitment we have received from the employees of the Department of Justice. I take this opportunity to thank them for all their dedication and hard work.

Mr. Chairman, as you can see, our commitment to protect Canadians remains stronger than ever.

For example, most recently I was proud to announce our legislation to protect Canadians from property crime and auto theft, which just recently received royal assent, as you know. The Tackling Auto Theft and Property Crime Act will help crack down on property crime, including auto theft and trafficking in property that is obtained by crime. Auto theft has a huge impact on Canadians and threatens the safety of our communities.

This legislation will help disrupt criminal enterprises and send a clear message to gangs and organized crime that if you engage in auto theft, there will be serious consequences. Once this new law comes into force, law enforcement and courts will have better tools to tackle auto theft and the entire range of activities involved in the trafficking of all types of stolen or fraudulently obtained property.

Another part of our fight against organized crime, Mr. Chairman, can be found in the new set of regulations we enacted to strengthen the ability of law enforcement agencies to fight these sophisticated criminal activities. These new regulations identify as serious offences such organized crime activities as illegal gambling and specific prostitution- and drug-related crimes.

The fact that an offence is committed by a criminal organization makes it a serious crime. These regulations will help ensure that police and prosecutors can make full use of the tools in the Criminal Code that are specifically targeted at tackling organized crime, and that are better able to respond to organized crime and ensure that penalties are proportionate to the increased threat to public safety that organized crime activities present.

Mr. Chairman, we also welcomed this year the coming into force of the legislation to fight identity theft, which is a fast-growing crime in North America, as you know. Our new law provides police and justice officials with important new tools, including three new Criminal Code offences targeting the early stages of identity theft or identity-related crime: obtaining and possessing identity information, trafficking in identity information, and unlawfully possessing or trafficking in government-issued identity documents. All of these offences are subject to a five-year maximum prison sentence.

Our government believes Canadians are entitled to have their identities and other valuable information protected to the highest degree possible. Now they have greater protection against identity theft, and police are better equipped to stop these crimes before they are committed.

We're also standing up for the victims of white-collar crimes, which can have a devastating effect on individuals and communities. Our government has listened to the concerns of victims of fraud, and we are helping them to seek restitution and ensure their voices are heard in sentencing those who have harmed them so profoundly.

To that end, as you know, we have introduced legislation that cracks down on white-collar crime and fraud and increases justice for victims. Our legislation would make jail time mandatory: at least two years for fraud over $1 million. It would toughen sentences further by adding aggravating factors that the courts can consider.

Mr. Chairman, in the Speech from the Throne, we paid particular attention to the need to protect the most vulnerable members of our society, our children. Sexual exploitation of children causes irreparable harm, and our government is committed to helping prevent sexual offences against children by ensuring that adult sexual predators receive sentences that reflect the extreme seriousness of their crime.

We have proposed legislation that would establish mandatory prison sentences for seven existing Criminal Code offences, such as luring, sexual assault, and aggravated assault. As a result, conditional sentences, including house arrest, would no longer be available for any of these offences. The proposed legislation would also increase mandatory prison sentences for seven sexual offences involving child victims, such as possessing and accessing child pornography, and sexual exploitation.

Mr. Chairman, the creation and distribution of child pornography are appalling crimes in which children are brutally victimized over and over again. Our government has recently proposed a mandatory reporting regime across Canada that will require suppliers of Internet services to report information about Internet child pornography. This will strengthen our ability to protect our children from sexual predators and help police rescue these young victims and prosecute the criminals responsible.

Our government has also shown its concern for the victims of multiple murderers and their families. We firmly believe that families of murder victims should not be made to feel that the life of their loved one doesn't count.

This is why I tabled a bill in October that will permit judges to impose consecutive periods of parole ineligibility for multiple murderers, thus putting to an end sentencing discounts for these horrible crimes. While there can only be one life sentence for an offender who commits more than one murder, the parole ineligibility period—25 years in the case of a first-degree murder—could be imposed consecutively for each subsequent murder.

In addition, we will continue to seek the elimination of the faint hope clause from the Criminal Code. By saying no to early parole for murders, our government hopes to spare families the pain of attending repeated parole eligibility hearings and having to relive these unspeakable losses over and over again.

I was saddened earlier this month when there were several unnecessary amendments to this important piece of legislation, including the replacement of the short title of the bill. As a result of these unnecessary amendments, Bill S-6 will be delayed, and I'm disappointed to report to victims that this is not already the law of this country. But, again, we remain committed.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the honourable members for the work they do. I plead with them not to make unnecessary amendments to bills that only slow down bills for which there is widespread support and consensus among the people of this country.

We remain committed to helping victims of crime. Through the federal victims strategy, we committed $52 million over four years, starting on April 1, 2007, for a package of program services and funding to help the federal government and the provinces and territories respond to the needs of victims. This, of course, includes the creation of the Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime.

I was very pleased recently to announce that the Government of Canada would provide over $5 million over the next five years to support the development of child advocacy centres across Canada. I visited the one in St. Catharines, Ontario, which is, of course, next door to my constituency, and I couldn't help but be impressed by the work being done there. It's being done in a number of municipalities across Canada, and this is something that we all must encourage.

Our government remains committed to supporting victims of crime through existing programs, and we'll continue to work with stakeholders to create new initiatives, such as the child advocacy centres I just mentioned. Nevertheless, Mr. Chairman, victims of crime have indicated that their primary unmet need is access to information about the justice system and the services available to them.

To help meet this need, the Government of Canada is reaching out to victims of crime through the recent Victims Matter campaign to raise awareness and let victims know what resources are available to them. The funding for this campaign comes from a separate Treasury Board allotment for government advertising for the fiscal year 2010-11. This investment is above and beyond the funds already allocated to the victims fund.

The campaign's goal is to increase awareness and uptake of the services and programs available to victims of crime and therefore, by extension, increase the use of the victims fund. The results of the campaign so far are showing that we are reaching Canadians and raising awareness. As of November 27, the Victims Matter website had received more than 1.1 million hits, with close to 40,000 visitors averaging a length of visit of more than five minutes, which suggests that visitors are finding plenty of content worth reading.

Mr. Chairman, safety and security are priorities for our government, and we will not apologize for our commitment to victims and law-abiding citizens.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you and committee members for the important work you are doing.

The Department of Justice is instrumental in the government's work to respond to the needs of Canadians. The funding that we have received has brought results, and I will do my utmost to ensure these funds continue to be spent wisely and in the service of Canadians.

We will continue to deliver on our promise to tackle crime and stand up for victims. We will continue to listen to the views of Canadians on how we can improve our criminal justice system and make all our communities safe.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I look forward to any questions you may have.

[John Giokas]

The high treason provision appears in Bill S-6, the faint hope bill, and that's because people who are convicted of high treason also benefit from being able to apply for faint hope relief.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Fast]

Mr. Murphy, we're not dealing with Bill S-6, as you know. I think we should focus our comments and questions on this particular bill. Anyway, you are out of time.

We're going to move on.

Mr. Lemay, go ahead, please.