Bill C-10 (Historical)

Safe Streets and Communities Act

An Act to enact the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act and to amend the State Immunity Act, the Criminal Code, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other Acts

Part 1 of this enactment creates, in order to deter terrorism, a cause of action that allows victims of terrorism to sue perpetrators of terrorism and their supporters. It also amends the State Immunity Act to prevent a listed foreign state from claiming immunity from the jurisdiction of Canadian courts in respect of actions that relate to its support of terrorism.
Part 2 amends the Criminal Code to
(a) increase or impose mandatory minimum penalties, and increase maximum penalties, for certain sexual offences with respect to children;
(b) create offences of making sexually explicit material available to a child and of agreeing or arranging to commit a sexual offence against a child;
(c) expand the list of specified conditions that may be added to prohibition and recognizance orders to include prohibitions concerning contact with a person under the age of 16 and use of the Internet or any other digital network;
(d) expand the list of enumerated offences that may give rise to such orders and prohibitions; and
(e) eliminate the reference, in section 742.1, to serious personal injury offences and to restrict the availability of conditional sentences for all offences for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 14 years or life and for specified offences, prosecuted by way of indictment, for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 10 years.
It also amends the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to provide for minimum penalties for serious drug offences, to increase the maximum penalty for cannabis (marijuana) production and to reschedule certain substances from Schedule III to that Act to Schedule I.
Part 3 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) establish the right of a victim to make a statement at parole hearings and permit the disclosure to a victim of certain information about the offender;
(c) 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
(d) rename the National Parole Board as the Parole Board of Canada.
It also amends the Criminal Records Act to substitute the term “record suspension” for the term “pardon”. It extends the ineligibility periods for applications for a record suspension and makes certain offences ineligible for a record suspension. It also requires the National Parole Board to submit an annual report that includes the number of applications for record suspensions and the number of record suspensions ordered.
Lastly, it amends the International Transfer of Offenders Act to provide that one of the purposes of that Act is to enhance public safety and to modify the list of factors that the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness may consider in deciding whether to consent to the transfer of a Canadian offender.
Part 4 amends the sentencing and general principles of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, as well as its provisions relating to judicial interim release, adult and youth sentences, publication bans, and placement in youth custody facilities. It defines the terms “violent offence” and “serious offence”, amends the definition “serious violent offence” and repeals the definition “presumptive offence”. It also requires police forces to keep records of extrajudicial measures used to deal with young persons.
Part 5 amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to allow officers to refuse to authorize foreign nationals to work in Canada in cases where to give authorization would be contrary to public policy considerations that are specified in instructions given by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.
The enactment also makes related and consequential amendments to other Acts.

Safe Streets and Communities Act

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, along the same vein, has my colleague seen an article by Newt Gingrich in The Washington Post. He cites that the Americans 30 years of tough on crime legislation has been a catastrophic failure. He cites recent empirical evidence for the state of Texas where in 2007 it decided that building more prisons rather than opting for prevention was a mistake and it has changed that now, saving $2 billion. That money has been put into drug courts, which deal with substance abuse as a medical instead of a criminal problem, and into several crime prevention measures instead of punitive measures to make its streets safer. Because of that, its crime rates have dropped by 10% in that short period of time. Is he aware of that?

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have not seen that article. However, my priority here, and I think it is that of all of us in this great House, should be on doing what is right for Canada. The member talks about things we can do to deter criminals instead of locking them up.

I want to make mention of a first-ever program that the Minister of Justice put in my riding of Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound about three years ago. Equine and partner training is for young people who got involved in drugs, not because they were bad kids but because they got mixed up with the wrong people. It is a great program and I mention it as one example of the kinds of things we will continue to do.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there is possibly one thing we agree on, and that is the Conservatives have branded and wrapped themselves in a cloak of crime and punishment. As a result, they are blind to the evidence, the costs and the fact that we have the lowest crime rate since 1973.

The Conservatives are blind to building safe and healthy communities. They are blind to the horrendous experience of the U.S. in its war on drugs regime, which now is slowly repealed, including the repeal of mandatory minimum sentencing, as my colleague from Winnipeg Centre just pointed out, because of its catastrophic failure on people and society overall. The Conservatives are blind to the evidence in Canada and to the real impact these bills would have on the lives of people and communities overall.

Added to that, the Conservative members are blind to parliamentary democracy. With this bill and the steady stream of other bills that we have seen, they are only interested in manipulating people, creating fear and division and creating a them and us scenario. I believe, from the bottom of my heart, the omnibus bill before us today is offensive. It is politically motivated and would have enormous negative impacts.

I was involved in some of these bills previously, particularly the drug crime bill, which I will go into.

Listening to the debate, I find it astounding to hear how the Conservatives are completely divorced from the reality of what is going on. They cannot recognize that we have the lowest crime rate since 1973. They cannot comprehend or deal with the fact that federal and provincial prisons are skyrocketing and prisoners are double and even triple bunking, resulting, in part, from bills like the Truth in Sentencing Act, which was passed in the last Parliament.

I wish the Conservatives had the courage to bring forward a truth in prison costs bill because maybe then we would have a better handle on what is really going on here.

The fact is these nine bills have no relevancy together. They have been politically put together in one bill to ram them through the House in 100 days.

That defies the reality of the 2010-11 annual report that just came out from the Public Prosecution Service of Canada. It shows us that almost three-quarters, or 72%, of all cases handled by federal prosecutors last year involved drug cases, about 58,000 cases. Of those cases, only about 2% were complex, meaning that the vast majority of them were actually straightforward in terms of the impact of some of these bills and the kind of law enforcement approach that the Conservative government has taken.

The Conservatives also hid the real costs of this bill and all the bills in the package from Canadians during the election. We know that the real costs will be billions of dollars both in terms of the provincial cost in prisons and the federal costs.

I have heard so many times that the Conservatives are trying to bring in the bill on mandatory minimum sentencing for drug crimes as a bill that will be tough on organized crime and big traffickers. We heard the Minister of Justice say that again today, as he has so many times.

The reality is that mandatory minimums do not deter organized crime. Instead, they almost exclusively affect small dealers, street level traffickers and non-violent offenders, while leaving the door wide open for organized crime to step in and fill the void created by the sweeps at the lower end. Even the Canadian Justice Department, in its report of 2002, concluded that mandatory minimum sentences were the least effective in relation to drug offences.

The Minister of Justice has never been able to offer a shred of evidence that mandatory minimums are a deterrence, that they work. He was grilled on this in committee the last time the bill went through the House. This is now the third time we have had the bill before us. The minister could not offer any evidence that mandatory minimums were effective or that they would deal with our complex drug issues. All the evidence is to the contrary. The evidence indicates that the bill would have many harmful effects, including increasing the prison population and changing Canada's drug strategy from a four pillar approach that includes enforcement, prevention, treatment and harm reduction.

We know the Conservatives changed that strategy in 2007. Again, they are totally focused on the proposition that somehow a new bill, a new offence, a stiffer penalty, a mandatory minimum would deal with some of these complex issues.

I have a letter that has three pages of organizations and individual experts who have all studied this legislation, particularly, as it applies to mandatory minimums. They all have come to the same conclusion. There is no evidence that the legislation is warranted and would actually assist our society overall.

I would point out, again, more evidence. The auditor general, when she audited drug enforcement a few years ago when we had a special committee on the non-medical use of drugs, produced a very significant report that called for an increased emphasis on prevention, treatment and rehabilitation. What became clear was something like 73% of federal funds were being spent on enforcement, 14% on treatment, 7% on research, 2.6% on prevention and 2.6% on harm reduction.

Even the auditor general, from a very neutral, independent standpoint, came to the conclusion that the so-called drug strategy was not working, that it was not effective and that it could not be shown to be transparent or actually assisting in terms of drug issues in local communities.

The drug bill, in particular, which the Conservatives tried to get through the Senate and through the House, is taking Canada in a completely wrong direction. It is a direction that is very expensive, it will have no effect on drug use itself and it will only increase the prison population, creating a new set of overpopulation that with it will come health and safety concerns and problems that then will manifest themselves within the prison system. Anybody who does not understand that, as I said at the beginning, is simply fooling themselves and is blind to the reality and the evidence that is now before us.

The Conservative government changed the drug strategy in 2007. As result, we have now been down this path similar to the U.S. experience. The Americans have begun to understand that even the most right-wing conservatives, as quoted by my colleague, in the U.S. recognize the massive failure of the course of incarcerating people, of relying on an enforcement approach and mandatory minimums. Surely, Canada has lessons to learn from this.

I want to say this loud and clear, and I am very glad that all my colleagues are speaking out on the bill. We feel the bill is offensive in the way it puts together nine significant bills that should be dealt with individually. In particular, there is no evidence that the drug bill will work. On the contrary, all the evidence indicates that it will be harmful and costly. It is the wrong direction for our country to take.

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

Mr. Speaker, this is my first opportunity to rise in this debate. I listened to the member for Vancouver East's presentation on this and some of her ideas. She spoke about drug crime and some of her concerns she had with the legislation.

We also have drug crime in Winnipeg. We have abuse of certain narcotics such as heroin, for instance.

Other than the fact that she does not think the legislation within this place is the right approach, would she recommend to the citizens of Winnipeg that we perhaps create an InSite facility in downtown Winnipeg and could she comment on that?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I can only say that, to me, it is up to the people of Winnipeg to determine what they see as the solutions to the very difficult questions they are facing in their community. In Vancouver East, when we were dealing with very difficult drug overdoses, it was the local community, including the police, the board of trade, businesses, and health professionals, that determined that a safe facility for people to go to was actually part of the solution.

No one has ever suggested that such a solution be imposed anywhere else. It is up to the residents of his community to determine what those solutions are. Things that are grown locally and that come from the local experiences are the things that work best.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member for an excellent presentation and I wanted to ask her a particular question.

There are nine different areas dealt with in this legislation, but nowhere does the legislation have anything to say about people with mental illnesses in prisons. We know that up to 20% of youth in prisons today have a mental illness, up to 29% of women in prisons today have a mental illness and 50% of Canadian offenders report substance abuse as a cause for their offence. Existing information tells us that most people who go to prison, especially those with mental illness, show extreme depression and hopelessness before they go into prison.

Does the member have a comment on the fact that we are actually warehousing the mentally ill in prisons today? This trend is going to increase with this kind of legislation, yet there is nothing to be done to deal with this medical problem and to find an appropriate way of dealing with it in prisons.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Vancouver Centre for her observations, which I believe are entirely correct.

I think there is an attitude from the government that if it makes people invisible by stuffing them into overcrowded facilities, somehow invisibility means that it has dealt with the problem. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Many alarming reports show us that the situation and conditions in terms of safety, health, and lack of rehabilitation in a prison system have a cumulative effect, so when these bills are passed and we just blindly increase the prison population without knowing the impacts, we are actually creating a worse problem than we had in the beginning.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member a question based on a real experience this past weekend, when I participated in a walk of citizens in my riding against drunk driving.

In one case I met with two families who had tragically lost their two sons just over a year ago when a drunk driver ran into them. It was a youth offender, and these people were advocating for stiffer penalties for such a crime, a crime that had caused the deaths of their 16- and 17-year-old children.

Second, I met with the mother of a son who had been brutally beaten to the point of now being severely mentally disabled. This lady came up to me and thanked me for this crime bill. Her son now has lifetime disabilities and will never work and never function, and she said it was time for the people who perpetrated this on him not to get off scot-free for doing that.

What is the member's reaction to those kinds of victims in this country?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think we all have great sympathy for people who have gone through that experience, but one of the problems that comes from the Conservatives with this debate is the implication that somehow there are not any laws in existence, that somehow we are creating laws and that without this there is mayhem.

The fact is that we already have a very tough Criminal Code. We have a judicial system that allows discretion for judges to take into account individual situations. One of the problems with these bills is that they remove that discretion, so in actual fact we are making the system less responsive and less effective.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be in the House today to talk about the important changes to the Youth Criminal Justice Act that are included in the Safe Streets and Communities Act.

Since coming to power in 2006, our government has been working hard to ensure that Canadians can feel safe and secure in their communities. A key part of this ongoing work has focused on improvements to our youth criminal justice system. In particular, the government is taking action to strengthen the ways in which the system deals with serious, repeat and violent young offenders. My remarks today will focus on some of the key proposals that address those concerns.

First, the proposed amendments ensure that protection of society remains a key goal of the youth criminal justice system.

While the principles of the youth criminal justice system currently identify the long-term protection of the public as an objective of the act, the bill before us would make it clear that the youth criminal justice system is intended to protect the public by holding young offenders accountable, by promoting their rehabilitation and reintegration into society, and by preventing crime by addressing the circumstances underlying their offending behaviour.

A youth justice system that fails to protect society fails Canadians. Canadians have the right to be protected from crime, including youth crime, and the Government of Canada is committed to achieving that goal.

During our committee hearings on the former Bill C-4, some witnesses expressed the view that this change to the principles of the Youth Criminal Justice Act would move us toward a more punitive youth justice system and away from a system that emphasizes rehabilitation and reintegration.

In fact, if members look at the full statement of principles in the amendment, it is clear that this is simply not the case. Indeed, the proposed amendment specifically states that rehabilitation, reintegration and crime prevention are key to the protection of society.

Furthermore, the bill also proposes amending the principles of the Youth Criminal Justice Act by adding a fundamental principle of justice already articulated by the Supreme Court of Canada, namely that the youth criminal justice system must be based on the principle of diminished moral blameworthiness or diminished culpability.

Therefore, the proposed changes to the principles reflect a balanced approach that, together with the preservation of the existing principles, will guide those working within the youth criminal justice system to respond to youth in a more effective manner.

The proposed amendments also make important changes to the principles of sentencing in the Youth Criminal Justice Act. The amendments add specific deterrence and denunciation as principles to guide a judge in sentencing young offenders. Right now, deterrence and denunciation are not even included as objectives in youth sentencing decisions, even though many Canadians believe that young offenders' sentences should be designed to deter further offending and to send a message to that particular young offender before the court that criminal behaviour is simply not acceptable.

However, the proposed amendment would also make it very clear that a sentence must still be proportionate to the seriousness of the offence and to the degree of responsibility of the young person for that offence. That means, for example, that judges will not be able to give a young offender an extra-long sentence just to send a message to other youth that the unlawful behaviour was wrong.

Once again, in my view these changes, taken together with the existing principles of sentencing in the Youth Criminal Justice Act, represent a balanced approach that will allow courts to respond to youth crime in an appropriate and effective way.

The package of reforms also includes several significant changes to the definition sections of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. The amended act would define “serious offence” as any indictable offence that carries a maximum penalty in the Criminal Code or in another act of Parliament of five years or more.

This definition includes both property offences, such as auto theft and theft over $5,000, and violent offences, such as common assault, sexual assault and robbery.

Right now there is no definition of “serious offence” in the Youth Criminal Justice Act. This new definition will have important implications for pretrial detention, and I will touch on them in a few moments.

The amendments also expand the meaning of “violent offence” under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

The current scope of “violent offence” under the act was interpreted by the Supreme Court of Canada as including offences in which a young offender causes or attempts to cause or threatens to cause bodily harm, but not to include other offences that endanger someone's life or safety. An example is dangerous driving.

The proposed definition includes offences in which a young person actually endangers the life or safety of another person by creating the substantial likelihood of causing bodily harm. This new definition would have application in a number of areas, including the imposition of custodial sentences and the lifting of publication bans.

The proposed amendments to the Youth Criminal Justice Act modify the restrictions on the use of custody as a youth sentencing measure. Apart from exceptional cases, currently a court cannot impose a custodial sentence on a young offender unless that young offender has committed a violent offence, failed to comply with previous non-custodial sentences, or committed an indictable offence for which an adult would be liable to imprisonment for a term of more than two years, and also has a history that demonstrates a pattern of findings of guilt.

The proposed amendment pertains to the third circumstance, namely to cases in which a young offender has committed a non-violent indictable offence for which an adult is liable to more than two years in prison. The amendment would simply allow and give discretion to a judge to impose a custodial sentence in such a case if the youth's history demonstrated a pattern of findings of guilt or of extrajudicial sanctions or both.

This means that custody could be an option for a young offender who has been found guilty of a non-violent offence and who has in the past engaged in criminal behaviour for which the youth has admitted responsibility, but which was dealt with through extrajudicial sanctions. This simply allows the court to take the youth's full history into account to help determine the appropriate sentence.

The bill also creates a requirement that records be kept when extrajudicial measures are used by law enforcement, which will make it easier to find patterns of repeated reoffending that the police and others may take into account in deciding on appropriate interventions, such as whether to use another extrajudicial measure or proceed through the courts.

Changes to the publication provisions in the Youth Criminal Justice Act are also contained in this package of reforms. Currently the identity of a young offender is protected, and identifying information can be published only in limited circumstances; for example, the publication ban is automatically lifted if a youth receives an adult sentence. The publication ban could also be lifted by the judge in cases in which a youth has received a youth sentence for an offence that falls within a very narrow category of the most serious violent offences.

The new law requires judges simply to consider lifting publication bans whenever a youth sentence is imposed on a youth found guilty of a violent offence. The publication ban could be lifted, but only if the judge finds that the young person poses a significant risk of committing another violent offence and only if the lifting of the ban is necessary to protect the public. It will always be up to the prosecution to convince the judge that lifting the ban is necessary.

As the title of the bill indicates, the amendments to the Youth Criminal Justice Act contained in the safe streets and communities act would make violent and repeat young offenders more accountable for their actions and better protect Canadians. This is what Canadians expect of their youth justice system, and it is an important priority for our government.

I ask all members of the House to join together with me and the government to focus on the concerns common to all Canadians.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, what worries me most about my colleague's speech is that he fails to take note of or at least recognize or acknowledge that we have 30 years of empirical evidence to draw from as testimony to the predictable consequences and outcomes of the course of action that the government is taking.

I am making reference to the tough on crime initiative of the United States, which American legislators are now saying has been a catastrophic failure and not only a catastrophic failure but it is bankrupting the 50 states. They have been building prisons and stacking up prisoners like cordwood for the last 30 years, to the point where they had to privatize the prison system, bringing in Halliburton to provide jails and to feed the prisoners, and bankrupting states. The streets are no safer.

Is my colleague aware of the recent trend in the United States that has stopped building more prisons, stopped mandatory minimum sentences, and is putting the money that is saved into crime prevention, especially in the context of drug rehabilitation and in dealing with the mentally ill rather than locking them up, giving them treatment? Prevention rather than punishment is the trend.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for his comments. I hope he was listening closely to my remarks.

The member will see in them an acknowledgement by me that in fact rehabilitation, reintegration and prevention are important measures. I know, because I have spoken to our justice minister, that those are also important measures to our government. In fact, our justice minister often remarks to me that we are the only party that actually has a balanced program which does take those things into account.

With regard to the American experience, I really hope that my friend has an opportunity to study our legislation because he will see it is entirely dissimilar to what the Americans have been doing for the last 30 years. Our legislation is targeted, focused only on the worst cases, the worst offences, and with nowhere near the kinds of consequences, in terms of three strikes and you are out, and lengthy imprisonments that the Americans have experienced.

He will see that what we are doing is really quite dissimilar from what the Americans have done.

[Jonathan Tremblay, NDP, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the government claims to want to provide good public administration, but despite all the bad experiences in the world, it insists on maintaining a partisan vision of its public administration. The government does not seem to realize that sending more people to prison in a questionable manner, while cutting preventive and alternative methods, inevitably comes with significant prison costs.

Can the hon. member for Kitchener Centre tell us whether he is in favour of increasing prison costs for the provinces?

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to take issue with a comment made by my friend, although I will say:

I want to thank him very much for his question.

What he said, as I heard it, was that this legislation proposes to put young offenders or people in custody on doubtful grounds. I can only hope, once again, that the member opposite who posed that question actually takes a minute to look at the legislation. He will see that there is no such thing in this legislation. There is so no such thing as putting people in prison on doubtful grounds. In fact, in many cases all we are simply doing is giving judges the discretion to exercise that option.

I am happy to say that in total, since 2006, our government has succeeded in passing 19 criminal justice reform bills. They have all been solid and, in my opinion, essential in tweaking and improving our criminal justice system.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to the omnibus crime bill, Bill C-10, Safe Streets and Communities Act. I support the sections of the bill that aim to protect children from dangerous sexual predators.

In fact, I have introduced legislation myself, Bill C-213, that makes it an offence for an adult to communicate with a minor by any electronic means. This bill would close a loophole in the Criminal Code that allows sexual predators to communicate with children by any electronic devices such as cellular phones or even the social media. This legislation would give more tools to the courts to address the issues of child luring and abuse.

These changes to the Criminal Code are long overdue. This legislation was first introduced in 2008 by my predecessor Dawn Black. I brought forward this legislation when I was first elected and I recently reintroduced it in this session. The government has not addressed this loophole in the Criminal Code for years now. The Conservatives want to use it as window dressing for building mega prisons.

The world has changed in three and a half years, with cellphone and Internet use exploding. During these years, the government has left children unprotected. The government should have taken swift action and moved on this bill but has instead included it in a highly controversial omnibus bill which has many problems associated with it.

The people of New Westminster, Coquitlam and Port Moody want effective public safety policies from the government. Coquitlam has one of the lowest police-to-population ratios in British Columbia. The police are constantly being asked to do more with less and this crime omnibus bill will only exacerbate the problem.

If the government were serious about protecting neighbourhoods, then it would ensure that communities like Coquitlam have adequate funding for the RCMP. The federal government has yet to deliver on its 2006 commitment to fund 2,500 new RCMP officers and to sit down with municipalities to review their community policing needs.

I believe we need to focus on crime prevention. My riding has experienced gang violence, a prevalent issue in the lower mainland. We need to increase funding for youth gang prevention programs as well as the number of police officers on the street. We need to prevent kids from getting involved with gangs to begin with.

In my riding we have a very successful youth restorative justice program. One organization, Communities Embracing Restorative Action, has been working in my riding since 1999. It aims to provide a just and meaningful response to crime, rehabilitate people who commit crime and to engage the community. The organization also offers preventive programs, running an empowering youth program in local schools. The program is aimed at crime prevention to give young people tools and information before crime emerges, and to build strong and inclusive relationships at an early age. The program has grown to be successful and is an excellent alternative for working with our youth.

We also need to increase support to those suffering from drug addiction and mental health problems. This legislation would increase the overrepresentation of offenders with mental health and addiction problems in our prison system. Our prison system is already strained for resources and resource programs. Currently, only one in five inmates has access to programs for anger management and substance abuse. How will the prison system cope with an influx of inmates needing this treatment?

This is one of the key problems with this crime omnibus bill. It downloads an extra cost and burden to provincial and territorial governments. To date, there has been no analysis nor consultation related to the increased costs for enforcement and prosecution which will be downloaded onto the provinces and territories.

Paula Mallea from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives states:

The cost of the [government's] crime agenda will be colossal, and a large part of it (some say most) will be borne by the provinces, who are responsible for implementing whatever the feds pass. So provinces and territories (many of them in elections as we speak) will be expected to pay for additional courts, clerks, prisons, Crown Attorneys, judges, sheriffs, court reporters and so on.

In British Columbia, our court system is already strained. Our prisons are already overcrowded. According to the B.C. government employees' union that represents prison guards in British Columbia, says jails in the province are at 150% to 200% in overcrowded conditions. Also, understaffing and overcrowding is responsible for an increase in attacks on prison guards. The province of British Columbia closed nine prisons in 2003 and made cutbacks to the corrections system.

How are the provinces and territories to deal with an influx of prisoners who are sent to jail on mandatory minimums?

Growing even six marijuana plants would trigger an automatic six month sentence with an extra three months if it is done in a rental unit, or is deemed a public safety hazard. According to Neil Boyd, a criminologist at the Simon Fraser University, this legislation could increase the proportion of marijuana criminals in B.C. jails from less than 5% to around 30%.

Has the government taken this into account? Is this the best use of our resources? Has this been fully costed? Unfortunately, I think the answer is no.

One of the key concerns with this bill is the cost. When the Conservative government came to power in 2006, the federal corrections system cost nearly $1.6 billion a year. By 2013-14, according to the department's own projections, the cost of our federal penitentiary system will have increased to $3.147 billion. In 2010-11, more than $517 million will be spent on prison construction. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the total annual cost per prison cell is about $260,000, while a new high security cell amounts to about $600,000.

Aside from the cost associated with actually building prisons, the cost to incarcerate inmates is high. The average cost for a female inmate is about $343,000 per year. For a male inmate in maximum security the cost is $223,000 while medium security is $141,000 year. Even while out on parole the average cost per inmate is $39,084 per year.

The crime rate continues to decline. The crime severity index, which measures the seriousness of crime, also dropped to its lowest point since the measure became available in 1998. So why is the government putting forward such costly legislation when crime rates continue to drop? Why is the government pursuing tough on crime policies that have failed so miserably in other jurisdictions such as the United States?

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Much of this is the result of mandatory minimums and the so-called war on drugs. It has not made the United States a safer place. In fact, most evidence indicates that it has not deterred crime and could even lead to less safe conditions in prisons and in communities.

Just as the costs are expected to be a large burden on our provinces and territories, the costs have proven to be crippling for the states. For example, Texas has recently moved away from using mandatory minimums because the costs to the state were too high.

The bill is not based on evidence. The government has failed to produce information that its legislation to impose mandatory minimums and lengthen sentences would have any deterrence on crime. The Minister of Justice the other day is quoted as saying, “We're not governing on the basis of the latest statistics”.

It has been shown time and again that the government fails to understand the importance of statistics, facts and science. To put forward such costly legislation without having statistics to back it up is inappropriate. To put forward legislation based on failed U.S. policies is shortsighted. We need to be moving forward not backward.

Mandatory minimums remove judicial discretion and this is highly problematic. In some cases, it could lead to judges giving lesser sentences then they otherwise would because they need to rely solely on legislation for sentencing.

According to the Canadian Bar Association, there are concerns with several aspects of the government's proposed omnibus crime bill, including mandatory minimum sentences, an overreliance on incarceration, constraints on judicial discretion to ensure a fair result in each case, and the bill's impact on specific already disadvantaged groups.

While the bill has some parts that I am in favour of, it is only on a case-by-case basis.

My concern is that the government has mixed good legislation in with bad and plans to ram it through all at once. It is ineffective and expensive. I cannot support the bill as it stands.