Bill S-9 (Historical)

Tackling Auto Theft and Property Crime Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (auto theft and trafficking in property obtained by crime)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to create offences in connection with the theft of a motor vehicle, the alteration, removal or obliteration of a vehicle identification number, the trafficking of property or proceeds obtained by crime and the possession of such property or proceeds for the purposes of trafficking, and to provide for an in rem prohibition of the importation or exportation of such property or proceeds.

Tackling Auto Theft and Property Crime Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I will give the same answer I gave my Liberal Party colleague. I believe this is Industry Canada's responsibility and that of the car manufacturing industry.

I was not here, so it is easy for me to talk about it. When the government decided to make headlights mandatory, it was done. As soon as people start their cars, the lights come on. That has been mandatory since 1998, if my memory serves correctly. The funny thing is, when we want something, we can make it happen. Industry Canada needs to take action, and since the minister is here, I know he is listening to me.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill S-9. I want to follow up on an issue the Bloc member dealt with in terms of the microchip solution.

I had pointed out that a number of years ago Manitoba was looking into making immobilizers mandatory. In fact, in the beginning Manitoba made them optional. There was a reduction in the insurance premium for people who voluntarily installed immobilizers in their cars. Guess what? Absolutely nobody took the offer. There were maybe 100 people in the whole province who did. It was only when the provincial government took the bull by the horns and made immobilizers mandatory and free that we started to see results.

We saw a huge reduction over the first year or so. In fact, auto theft was down to the point where there was one day in March a year ago where there were no auto thefts. As a matter of fact, the problem has changed to one where people have been having difficulty finding cars to steal and lately they have been commandeering taxis. That has become a problem that Manitoba is dealing with. The taxi drivers are looking at options involving shields and further protection because recently quite a number of taxis have been commandeered.

At the time we were looking at the immobilizer program there were some statistics available from the Insurance Bureau of Canada. Those insurance statistics would represent all the provinces outside of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia, as they all have government-run programs.

I believe the studies at the time showed that if the big car companies were mandated by the government to install these immobilizers it could have been done 10 years ago at a cost of $30 for installation in each car. I may be wrong on the amount of $30, and it could have been $40 or $50, but it did not cost a lot to install an immobilizer in each car. We would have nipped the auto theft problem in the bud in the beginning and it would have cost a fraction of what it has cost society overall. However, the car companies refused to do that.

People then would have to put in after-market immobilizers. We all know that after-market immobilizers often do not work with the car's electrical system. Also, the engineering department of Ford, for example, refused to honour the warranties if the owners had put in after-market immobilizers. The car owners were caught. They wanted to do the right thing, but if they put in an after-market immobilizer, it would cause problems with the warranty on their new car, so there was a bit of a standoff. It is no surprise that very few people put in after-market immobilizers which, by the way, were very expensive.

The government had a responsibility here. In those days it was probably still a Liberal government because it was a few years ago. The government has to look at the Insurance Bureau of Canada statistics and it should be proactive. It should be looking for a solution and not waiting for the problem to mushroom to the extent that it has.

I am not sure whether it was during the last days of the Liberal government, but I think it may have been the Conservative government that actually mandated immobilizers in all new cars in Canada as of a certain date three or four years ago. That was a very positive thing to do. Within a 10-year period, which is the time it will take for all the older cars to be removed from the road, the problem should cure itself. That is quite a long time. Certainly, if the microchips are going to help solve this problem or do more to curb the problem, then we should be looking at them as well.

In Manitoba there are people who joyride in cars. In Toronto and Montreal, it involves more organized crime in high-end vehicles.

Madam Speaker, I understand that my time is up for today.

The House resumed from October 5 consideration of the motion that Bill S-9, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (auto theft and trafficking in property obtained by crime), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

When this bill was before this House last, the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona had the floor.

He has 14 and a half 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 my presentation on Bill S-9, which was Bill C-26 last year. This is another bill that was killed when the House was prorogued. We will have to spend a lot of valuable parliamentary time going through the various stages to get it back to where it was when the government prorogued.

My files on all of these government bills are quite substantial now, as we have been going through these bills a second time and a third time in some cases.

I have in my files a press release issued on September 13, 2007 by the Manitoba government of the day with respect to Bill C-26 regarding its mission to Ottawa to press for tougher sentences with respect to auto theft. For the tough on crime Conservative government, it must come as a bit of a surprise to know that an NDP government was even tougher on crime and three years earlier.

On September 20, Premier Gary Doer, who has since been appointed ambassador to Washington, led the Manitoba mission to Ottawa to press for urgent national action on auto theft and tougher sentences for serious youth crimes. The Manitoba delegation included Attorney General Dave Chomiak, who has since been replaced by Attorney General Andrew Swan; Conservative opposition party leader Hugh McFadden, who is still the opposition leader; Jon Gerrard, the Liberal leader; and Winnipeg mayor Sam Katz who will be mayor for at least two more weeks. I am not familiar as to whether the rest of the members of the delegation are still in their respective positions. Nevertheless, this was a concerted effort on the part of a provincial government to lobby Ottawa politicians to do something about auto theft in this country.

The Government of Manitoba was not sitting back resting on its laurels and demanding another government to solve the problem, as so often happens in the political world. The province, simultaneously with the request, had a program of its own. The province's approach to reducing auto theft and youth crime focused on four broad areas, one being prevention, which is an important part of all of this. It provided lighthouse programs, friendship centres and education pilot projects, as well as initiatives like vehicle immobilizer, which I have spoken a lot about that in the House over the last two years.

The second area was intervention. The government provided programs, such as the highly successful turnabout program which involved intense supervision for repeat offenders.

The third area was suppression, with more targeted funding for police officers, corrections officers and crown attorneys dealing specifically with auto theft. In fact, Manitoba set up a task force that identified the top 50 level 4 offenders, the most serious offenders, and singled them out for special attention. They were watched on an hourly basis. In addition, there were consequences. Repeat offenders faced a possible lifetime suspension of their driver's licence.

In addition to all of this, the Manitoba government adopted a program that has been reasonably successful in Nova Scotia. It involved monitoring car thieves and forcing them to wear ankle bracelets. This initially was a one year pilot project but I believe it has been extended so it must be reasonably successful.

The Government of Manitoba also tried the bait car program. One of the government members in this House spoke positively about the bait car program in British Columbia. For whatever reason, however, the Manitoba situation did not mandate the bait car program.

I am not certain what the reasons were for that but I would suggest that perhaps it was because of all those days where the weather in Manitoba is minus 40, as opposed to the nice temperatures and moderate climate out in Madame Speaker's province of British Columbia. The British Columbian government chose to pursue the bait car program, and I do not fault it for that. If it gets results, that is what we want to see. In Manitoba, we decided to go with the immobilizer program and the gang suppression unit and we were able to reduce our car thefts very substantially over a very short period of time.

The point here is to look at best practices. That is essentially our entire criticism of the government when it comes to crime. We hear it with the speakers from the Bloc, the speakers from the opposition and the speakers from the NDP constantly. There is a recognition, at least in the opposition, that governments should look for best practices. They should look for what works in other parts of the world, and not just blindly follow ideology and implement programs, for example, from the United States that have a 25 year track record of not having the desired effect, of not working.

That is all we are telling the government. We are prepared to support the government in positive approaches to the problem but we want to ensure that whatever money we are putting into the program is well spent.

What we have here is that three years have gone by and still the government has not done what the Manitoba government delegation was asking for, which was to provide stronger penalties for youth involved in serious crimes, especially those involving auto theft; allow first degree murder charges for gang-related homicides; eliminate the two-for-one remand credits; classify auto theft as an indictable violent offence; and make shooting at buildings and drive-by shootings indictable offences.

Three years later, the government is now starting to get around to implementing some of the requests of the Manitoba government. So much for its tough on crime approach and its suggestions that somehow the NDP is soft on crime.

I will now deal with some of the macro issues here that should have been identified 20-some years ago.

As I had indicated yesterday, when I look around I see a lot of grey hair in this Parliament. There are people here with a lot of experience. In former careers, they were provincial members, city councillors and mayors. There is a lot of collective experience here. The fact is that most of us remember that in the 1970s and early 1980s, it was still possible to leave our cars unlocked on the street and find them still there when we went to look for them. Auto theft was not really a problem in those days.

There are two types of auto theft that we are dealing with here. In the larger cities, like Toronto and Montreal, the issue with auto theft is more criminal activity. Criminal gangs are stealing high-end vehicles, changing the VINs on the vehicles and chop shops tearing these cars apart and selling them for parts or exporting them out of the country. That is the type of activity that perhaps is growing but, if we were to look back, I think we would find that it was still a problem many years ago and probably much easier to do in the 1970s and 1980s.

Our problem here with the big numbers is the joyriders, the young people who steal the cars for no other reason than to just simply take them out and go from point A to point B. Another group of people steal a car with the intention of committing burglaries. They just steal a car whenever they feel like it and go and break into houses. Some other joyriders have been in races with the police. They have killed people, sometimes deliberately running people over. They have had car accidents with police. They have even put bricks on the accelerators and sent the cars into buildings just for fun. These are the types of activities going on, which makes it very hard for the police to deal with the problem.

Had we been on our toes 20 to 25 years ago, governments would have seen those statistics coming up each year and would have mandated the car companies to factory install immobilizers.

It was not until 1997 that the Ford Motor Company started to install immobilizers in its higher end vehicles. When I looked at the statistics a number of years later, at least in Manitoba, no vehicle with an immobilizer had been stolen. The proof is in the pudding. The more vehicles that have immobilizers the less cars are being stolen. Therefore, there is a lesser pool of cars for people to be stealing.

I need to correct myself. It was the Liberal government that announced the anti-theft immobilizer program in all new vehicles built after September 1, 2007 for sale in Canada in July 2003, but it was the current Conservative government that actually implemented that requirement. It is great that it did this but it should have been done years before and years before the Insurance Bureau of Canada indicated that the cost of requiring factory installed immobilizers was something like $30, $40 or $50 a car. Can we imagine the small cost that this would be given the huge cost that society has paid because this mushrooming problem?

Now it will take at least 10 years to get all these old cars off the road and the problem, of course, will solve itself. However, it will take another decade and it will take a lot more effort.

However, in Manitoba there is the exception. The Manitoba government initially offered an incentive for people to avail themselves of the optional immobilizer program but it changed the rules a couple of years ago to make the program mandatory. As of 2007, I believe, the registration of and insurance for all cars without immobilizers could not be renewed but the government paid for the immobilizer.

While we had a voluntary program, the uptake was very poor. As soon as the government mandated it, a few people complained about having to do it. Even though it was free, they still complained. However, as long as the government made it free, people could not renew the insurance or registration until an immobilizer was installed in the car. Starting with the highest theft vehicles, because we could identify them based on the type of car, we gradually mandated that all those be brought in. We worked group, by group, by group and now we find a smaller and smaller pool of cars on Manitoba roads.

Has that solved all of the problems? No, not exactly. It has certainly reduced the costs and the rate of car theft. The fact that we are using the gang suppression program to chase the level 4 offenders has also been very positive. We have had to fine-tune the program but most people agree that we are on the right track.

I do not know why more jurisdictions do not get on board with this idea. Simply waiting over the 10 year period to allow the old cars to be gradually phased out is not being proactive. It is just accepting the fact that we will have more carnage on the roads and more costs to society. The point is that all provinces should be moving equally to make immobilizers mandatory as quickly as possible.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's speech on this. I was here yesterday when he spoke to this as well.

He talked about the Conservatives tabling bills and then proroguing the House. Now we are back to square one, wasting all the time in which we could have passed these bills.

I am sure my colleague will agree that the government loves to talk about how tough it is on crime. It also talks about building more prisons. The government just closed the prison farms. That cost taxpayers more because it was a lot cheaper to keep the prison farms going than to build new prisons without putting the resources in place. I would like my colleague to talk about that.

First, when legislation is put forward, we need to ensure it will withstand legal and constitutional challenges. Second, we need to ensure the proper resources exist, whether it is with police services or in rehabilitative processes. Maybe he could elaborate on how important it is to have those resources in place when such bills are tabled.

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

Madam Speaker, the closure of the prison farms is something that confounds even Conservative voters. I am familiar with many Conservatives in Conservative areas of the country who shake their heads when they hear it. In fact, they find it hard to believe the government would close down all six prison farms that have been active for many years in Manitoba and Kingston, Ontario. Rather than closing these farms, we should be looking at expanding the prison farm system.

I hope the government has learned a lesson from the last time it prorogued the House. I have suggested many times that the Conservatives look back to the six years of the Lester B. Pearson minority government and do some study of that period to see the many programs that were brought in, such as the unification of the armed forces, the Canadian flag, medicare and many other substantial things that were done in a minority Parliament, and quit the divide and conquer wedge politics issues they seem to practice, so far reasonably unsuccessfully. This practice has not given them a majority. Nor has it increased their polling numbers, which go up a little and then drop.

Perhaps the brain trust over there is in transition. Perhaps the Conservatives are looking at a longer period between now and the next election. Maybe we will see a new attitude on their part to try to work with the opposition and get some bills through. If they show some leadership in that area, they will see co-operation on our side of the House. However, members on this side are very reluctant and resistant to a government that simply yanks our chain whenever it feels like it and brings in bills with all its great speeches about being tough on crime, for example. Then on a whim it prorogues the House and everything goes back to square one again.

There is a price to pay for a government that acts like that, and it is paying it. Perhaps it is planning to go in a new direction, but time will tell whether it does.

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

Madam Speaker, the previous speaker is always so well prepared when addressing issues, and this was no exception. Still, there is an issue that I find intriguing, and I would like some answers. He has probably noticed the same thing that I did, even if he did not mention it.

In Canada, auto theft varies greatly from region to region. It is rather difficult to determine if it is more common in rural areas or in urban centres. For example, since 1999, Manitoba's rate of vehicle theft has been the highest in the country. In 2006, 1,376 thefts were reported. During the same year, 507 thefts were reported in Quebec, 303 in Ontario and 187 in New Brunswick. In Western Canada, the rate is somewhat higher, with 725 thefts in Alberta, for example.

I think that shows that passing legislation does not necessarily change behaviour, but enforcing it does.

Does the member have any idea why the rate is so high in Manitoba and why it varies so much across Canada?

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

Madam Speaker, the fact is there has to be a comprehensive approach to the problem and I see this legislation as designed toward the criminal gangs and organizations. Statistics show that criminal gangs largely operate out of the bigger centres, Toronto and Montreal, where they are entrenched and where they deal in high-end vehicles.

In Manitoba, for example, in most auto thefts the cars are recovered. The indication there is that these are just joyriders if we find the cars. Thieves take them from point A to point B and drop them. Then they steal another car.

It is like in Holland years ago where thieves could pick up a bicycle whenever they needed one. A person would use the bicycle to get from point A to point B, drop it off and leave it for the next person. Then when a person needed another one, he or she simply picked it up. That seems to be the attitude.

We have less statistics as far as professional organized crime dealing in high-end vehicles. I have the statistics, but I do not have them at my fingertips. However, it is almost the reverse. In Manitoba it is more like 70% for joyriders and 30% for high-end vehicle theft versus Montreal and Toronto where it would be 70% for professional gangs and criminal organizations dealing in the theft of high-end vehicles for export perhaps and 30% for joyriders.

In Manitoba it is more of an urban issue than a rural issue. That is reflected in the insurance statistics that we have. Being a government-run insurance corporation, our statistics are kept separate. I know Quebec has a limited government program as well. However, when we look at the Insurance Bureau of Canada statistics, they do not reflect British Columbia, Saskatchewan or Manitoba because they are government-run schemes in those provinces.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am sharing my time with my colleague from Charlottetown, and I am pleased to do so.

I am pleased, once again, to speak in support of Bill S-9, but I have to admit it is somewhat in frustration that Parliament is yet again debating this important legislation.

We have heard from others here today that Bill S-9 is identical to Bill C-26 from the last session of Parliament, which was killed when Parliament was prorogued last year. I am struck by the fact that it was May 5, 2009, when I spoke in favour of Bill C-26, which was, as of yesterday, 17 months to the day since that bill had been introduced.

We on this side have consistently supported legislation to effectively reduce crime and to enhance community safety, including motor vehicle theft. We have heard from the previous speaker that this is an issue of particular concern to those who live in Winnipeg and Manitoba. It is a very serious issue.

Some may recall that in September 2007 a delegation from Manitoba came to Ottawa, met with members of the government and the opposition party. It was a very significant delegation, made up of the mayor of the city of Winnipeg, the mayor of Brandon, members of the aboriginal community, members of the police force, leaders of the opposition parties in Manitoba and several victims of crime. They asked for motor theft to be made an indictable offence.

As a result of that, I introduced my private member's bill on motor vehicle theft in March 2008, which was originally known as Bill C-526, and in the last Parliament I reintroduced it as Bill C-237. While I support the bill, I am somewhat saddened that it has taken so long for the government to act and to move forward on what is a very pressing issue for Manitobans.

After the delegation was in Ottawa, I made a point of doing a broad-based consultation within my riding and within my community on the issue of property crime and, most specifically, auto theft. I had several meetings with the police in district 6 in Winnipeg. I met with young people, some of whom were in the process of rehabilitation. I also met with victims of crimes, with business owners and with a broad-based representation in the community to understand what had been done. I heard of some of the initiatives that the provincial government had undertaken to reduce the number of auto thefts. We heard earlier about the immobilizer prevention programming, the intervention programming, suppression programming and the consequences for young people, which often includes a lifetime suspension of a driver's licence for repeat offenders.

I also heard very clearly that there was a role for the federal government to act, and that is why I introduced Bill C-526. Unfortunately my name was further down on the list and we did not have the opportunity to debate it in the House. The bill proposed that a person who committed a motor vehicle theft for a second or subsequent offence would be guilty of an indictable offence and liable to a prison term not exceeding 10 years and would require a mandatory minimum sentence of a year.

I am not, for the most part, someone who endorses mandatory minimums. I think prevention in all its various manifestations is equally important. However, there has to be consequences for the offence. There also has to be prevention programming. The provincial government does it, but it is also incumbent upon this federal government to undertake more support and resources both for the provinces and what they do and for the community groups directly in the work that they do.

I am struck by the irony of the government putting forward tough on crime legislation while at the same time not providing the supports to communities that deal with young people in distress, or reducing the supports, or narrowing the criteria of the support so that the violence is not curtailed.

This bill is not perfect, but it is indeed an important start in taking this issue seriously by updating the Criminal Code. Significant reductions in crime will indeed occur if we also invest significant resources in evidence-based prevention programs, and I underline evidence-based prevention programs. We need to see what works and build upon it, not decide on an ideological basis that we want to do x or y and then make the program fit the criteria.

If the government were truly serious about tackling auto theft and property crime, the Prime Minister would not have killed Bill C-53 when he broke his own fixed election date in 2008, and he would not have prorogued Parliament last winter, killing Bill C-26. Seventeen months later, I am speaking to the same issue.

This is the third time the government has introduced the bill. It took the government five months to reintroduce it in the exact form after the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament. We tried to expedite it in the past and we on this side will continue to do so again.

We are glad that this bill is more robust than Bill C-53 and that the government chose to make auto theft a unique offence in the Criminal Code. The separate offence did not exist in Bill C-53.

We know that according to Statistics Canada the rate of motor vehicle theft has declined almost every year since 1996. Data for 2006 confirms that motor vehicle theft has fallen by 20% since 1996, but motor vehicle theft has a major effect on vehicle owners, third party victims, indeed law enforcement agencies and certainly the insurance industry. According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, it costs insurers and the public close to $1 billion a year.

Statistics Canada numbers show that Manitoba has the highest rate of auto theft, which is nearly three times the Canadian average. We also know that Montreal has the most stolen vehicles and the fewest recovered in any city.

When I speak to this issue, while I support and want to see this bill implemented, this time in a timely fashion, I also want to underline once again the importance of prevention programs.

When I met with a group of eight young people in Winnipeg who had been in trouble with the law, they expressed to me the absolute importance of having prevention programs available. That week, while we were meeting, community clubs in the city of Winnipeg were being closed down for lack of resources, lack of infrastructure.

We cannot give with one hand and take away with the other hand. It is important that there be a coordinated policy of prevention that will reduce overall the auto theft in the city of Winnipeg, provide opportunity for young people and provide opportunity for the residents of the city.

Having said that, it is important that this bill be implemented and moved through this House and through the Senate in a timely fashion. I would ask all colleagues to co-operate in doing so.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Madam Speaker, we are dealing with auto thefts here and perhaps the member could explain why this particular legislation is needed. I know that with auto theft generally and the trafficking in stolen vehicles, there are plenty of elements of the Criminal Code that already deal with these matters, such as the conspiracy to steal, organized crime and all of the other provisions that are available.

Would the member comment on why this particular bill is needed and how it will better address the problem, particularly as we see that the number of auto thefts have been going down considerably in the last 15 years?

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, the importance of this bill is that it is specific to auto theft. There are provisions in the Criminal Code, but this bill is specific to auto theft and very much responds to the requests of the leadership in the province of Manitoba and in the city of Winnipeg.

The police very clearly identified a bill of this sort as what the police determined to be one of the biggest deterrents for young people.

I talked to young people who were in a rehabilitation program about auto theft, and it was one of the more interesting things I have done as a member of Parliament. Their response was that they were in the rehabilitation program and were taking the training program in order not to go to jail. Obviously the prospect of incarceration was certainly a deterrent for them, and it resulted in their making a real effort to turn their lives around.

The bill also gives powers to the Canada Border Services Agency, which I think is important in this case so that it can identify and track down stolen vehicles.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Madam Speaker, my colleague just mentioned the Canada Border Services Agency. I think it is important for us to look at legislation that will actually change laws in order to deter violations such as this one. Car theft is a big one.

All too often we see bills being put forward and passed without any thought to how we actually ensure that there are proper resources in place.

I worked for the Province of Ontario. We saw Mike Harris change the legislation and put nothing in place in the interim to help protect the most vulnerable.

On this note, and given the fact that she did mention the Canada Border Services Agency, if we are going to provide such legislation we also need to make sure that there is more money available for the Canada Border Services Agency so that its agents can do their job. Maybe the member could elaborate on the importance of that.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, the member raises an important issue.

If one is going to provide the powers to the Canada Border Services Agency, it is equally important that the government provide both the financial and human resources to do what is required.

In the case of auto theft, this bill will allow the Canada Border Services Agency officers to investigate, identify, detain imported vehicles or vehicles about to be exported, and to search databases to determine whether or not said vehicles are indeed stolen.

It is important that the databases be maintained and kept up to date, and that there be the important resources available to do what is required in this instance.

[Shawn Murphy, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Madam Speaker, let me say at the outset that, like my learned friend, the member for Winnipeg South, I will be supporting the bill when it comes before the House for a vote.

However, I am disappointed because I have supported the bill before, and before, and before. It has come to a point that I feel like that mouse on the treadmill; I am just going around and around. Sometimes we think if we go faster we will get off the treadmill. I am hopeful that the bill may see the light of day, but I am certainly not sure of that.

The bill came before the House three or four years ago. At that time I indicated to the House, as did my colleagues on this side, that we would support the bill. Our hopes and our desire was that the bill would be enacted into law and it would be now in full force and would have been in full force now probably for two or three years.

That was not to be because at that time, which was in October 2008, the Prime Minister called an election. He violated his own fixed date election legislation, which is somewhat ironic. It is cynical that people watching us see that we are imposing legislation to tell people not to steal automobiles but the Prime Minister had no problem at all in violating his own fixed election dates act .

When an election is called, everything is cleared from the table. We are back to square one. The bill dies on the order paper. It is as if it never had been before Parliament.

We had the election and Parliament resumed sitting, but the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament when he faced a non-confidence motion. He did not have time to reintroduce the bill. After the first prorogation, which was in late 2008, Parliament did resume and the bill was reintroduced. I believe it was Bill C-53. At that time I indicated to the House, as did my colleagues, that we would be supporting the bill. At that time we were hopeful that the bill would become law.

However, that was not to be because in January of this year, the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament. Things were getting wobbly on some of the Afghan detainee issues. Instead of facing the House and answering questions, he decided that he would prorogue Parliament. He would shut Parliament down. When the Prime Minister does that, everything on the order paper disappears. All the bills that have been introduced, debated and gone to committee all disappear from the order paper and we start again.

We came back in March of this year and on June 10 the bill was introduced for the third or fourth time. Again we are here debating it. We can see the unproductivity of the House, which is why I sound somewhat cynical. However, such being the case and as disappointed as I am, I am perhaps for the fourth time supporting the bill. Hopefully the bill will be enacted and become the law of this country.

It specifically relates to car theft which is a serious issue in certain parts of the country. It more or less deals with organized crime in some of the major urban centres. It specifically targets those groups, especially when we are talking about the sentence, when we are talking about the tampering of the VIN, the vehicle identification number. We are giving more powers to the officials at the Canada Border Services Agency when it comes to dealing with people who traffic in stolen automobiles.

It tightens up the law. Car theft is a problem, although I should point out as previous speakers have pointed out that car theft has actually decreased in Canada. I believe it has gone down approximately 20% since 1996, which is a good thing. That does not suggest that we do not have a real problem. We do have a real problem in certain areas of the country. That is why this bill will give the police officers and crown prosecutors more powers as they deal with car theft generally.

I have reviewed the bill carefully. We have to be careful that it really goes after either the organized element that is out there, which it does, or repeat offenders, the people who have had their first, second or third chance.

We do not want to imprison those I call first-time teenage joyriders, and most of the car theft in my community is of that nature and most of the cars are recovered. When it does happen it is very unsophisticated. Someone leaves the keys in the car and somebody takes it, usually for a joyride. When the car is recovered it is sometimes badly damaged, sometimes not. Sometimes that is done by a first offender, sometimes a very young offender. Those particular cases deserve some leniency. Cases involving an organized ring that takes cars and removes their VINs or strips them altogether do not deserve leniency. Neither do people who have done this three or four times and, for the protection of society, should be put behind bars.

The bill is specific. A few changes have been made in this bill from the previous bill, so it has been refined and improved.

I would like to give one message to the House today. Let us get the bill enacted. Let it become part of the law of Canada. I do understand that it has general support in the House, but it had general support before. I hope that in 18 months' time I will not be up speaking in the House on the very same legislation, whatever the new number will be, dealing with the same issue because it never was enacted into law.

I have a couple of specific points.

I believe the alteration of the VIN is important. It is a significant issue in the bill. It is really not covered now, or at least not that I am aware of. It would create a separate offence. Anyone who alters a VIN is a very sophisticated operator. This is not done by the unsophisticated element in our society. It is organized crime, and it usually involves high-end vehicles in urban centres. The VIN is stripped down and the car is moved out of the country. In some cases the car is stripped down altogether for parts. That is a serious offence in my mind and is one that should receive serious punishment under the law.

The bill would give additional powers to the Canada Border Services Agency, and this is important. It deals specifically with the theft of automobiles. As one of the earlier questioners rightfully indicated, there is provision in the Criminal Code for theft over $5,000. This bill deals with auto theft with specific sanctions.

We have been dealing with a lot of crime bills, but we do not seem to get them through the House, because of the actions of the Prime Minister. Hopefully we will not have prorogation in the next month. We would like to see this legislation become law.

I am being somewhat repetitive when I say there are whole elements missing in this debate. That has been stated by previous speakers. We have seen time and again cutbacks made to programs that deal with crime prevention.

The primary deterrent to a person who commits a crime is whether or not that person thinks he or she will be caught. That goes right back to resources, police, prosecutors and others.

We are talking about spending $9 billion to build new prisons for those convicted of an unreported crime. I do not know how an unreported crime can become a crime, because a crime is a crime when a person is convicted. I know that there are victims who do not report crimes, but a crime does not become a crime until there is a conviction. That is a whole other issue. We are talking about spending $9 billion of taxpayers' money for new prisons for unreported crime, but we are talking about doing it at a time when we have a $54 billion deficit, which is a serious issue.