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.

Motions in Amendment

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is clear there were attempts to amend this legislation. The witnesses appearing on behalf of the Toronto Lawyers Association and others on behalf of the legal community argued that this legislation should be amended to take into account mental health issues. That was not possible at committee. Those amendments were not given adequate opportunity to be discussed.

In this set of amendments, we are bringing forward a safety valve that deals with mental health issues.

This legislation would criminalize the mentally ill. We are not seeing the resources that are needed in prisons to help people with mental health issues, nor are the mental health issues on the streets being addressed. If we are not dealing with it and we are not helping those individuals, we are jailing them.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Madam Speaker, we are dealing with a very complex bill, an omnibus bill. The Conservative government says it consulted families, but did it truly listen to the experts? We have no way of knowing.

My colleague proposed some amendments today. I would like her to remind us what she based those amendments on. Whom did she listen to in order to come to the conclusion that this bill needed some amendments?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I listened to every expert, witness, academic and legal expert.

There is a huge body of evidence that calls for this bill to be amended. Every criminologist is saying that mandatory minimums do not work and that we should not go down that road. In listening to them, I put forward amendments. I have a great hope that at this last minute members of the governing party will give them every consideration and consider changing the law to make our streets safer.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Madam Speaker, the member said that she has issues with the mandatory minimums. Does the member realize that they are minimums and that in the case of violent repeat offenders, rapists or murderers, a judge could hand down a greater sentence?

As well, could the member let the House know which of the mandatory minimum sentences she is against or feels is too long for some of these violent repeat offenders?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, the problem with mandatory minimums is not personal to me. Rather, it is a universal problem among the people who have seen how they operate. There could be higher sentences. I was giving an example from the United States. Former judge Paul Cassell said that what is happening, in which case it is not theoretical, is it gives greater discretion to the prosecutors. As these are not cases that get to court, there is a plea bargaining process that can provide lighter sentences for people who could have had their sentences increased had they appeared before a judge.

In summary, my amendments propose to delete all of the mandatory minimums for all of the offences, not because people should not go to jail, but because in each case a judge should decide how long each convicted person should go to jail.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker, at this stage in the proceedings, the motions that I will be referring to relate to those in Group No. 1, Motions No. 2, 5 and 8 in particular.

In effect, what I will be doing is speaking to a set of motions that relate to one particular part of the bill at this stage in the proceedings, which is among those being addressed. That is the part with respect to justice for victims of terror and amending the State Immunity Act.

I also want to add my voice to the words of my colleague, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, in paying tribute to Maureen Basnicki. As a victim of terror, she has been advocating for this type of legislation for years, as has the Canadian Coalition Against Terror. I want to acknowledge their advocacy all these years, and pay tribute to them.

If we look at this piece of legislation, we will see, although it may not appear as such, that this is really transformative legislation. This legislation is historic, which is not a word I use lightly.

If one looks at our laws, particularly in the matter of giving civil remedies to victims of terror against the terrorist perpetrators, which do not exist, the reason they do not exist is that we have a State Immunity Act that immunizes the perpetrators of terror from any civil suit. This is the first time that we will be amending the State Immunity Act to give victims of terror a civil remedy against their terrorist perpetrators. That is why I supported this legislation. I support it in principle. That is why I am moving the amendments. They are not in opposition to the legislation. They are intended to help improve the legislation, to give victims a more effective voice against their terrorist perpetrators, and in fact, to hold the terrorists more expressly accountable for their terrorist acts.

That is the first point as to why this legislation is so transformative. For the first time, we will be amending the State Immunity Act to give victims a voice to hold terrorists accountable.

Second, we will be correcting a historical anomaly in our legislation. As it now stands, there is a commercial exception in the State Immunity Act. By a commercial exception I mean that if a Canadian victim has suffered damages by reason of a breach of contract, he or she will have a civil remedy, but if he or she is a victim of terror, he or she will not have a civil remedy.

We have a situation where our legislation gives an implied preference with respect to actions taken for breaches of contract as against actions taken by victims of terror.

This brings me to the third particular transformative dimension. This is the first time that we will be preferring victims of terror against their terrorist perpetrators, who up to now have been immunized by our law for their acts of terror against Canadians.

I have been framing this as a transformative piece of legislation for the reasons mentioned, and also the reasons I moved the amendments in this regard.

One of the things I find ironic and disconcerting is that such a piece of transformative legislation was bundled together with eight other pieces of legislation. I would have thought that the government would have wished to highlight such a transformative piece of legislation. I would have thought that a government that purports to always be wishing to give a voice to victims, and in this instance to victims of terror, would have wished to frame this as a centrepiece of its criminal justice approach, rather than bundle it together with eight other bills.

I would have thought that the government would have wished to have us consider this both in the House when the legislation was first tabled, and then in committee with all the attention, deliberation and discussion that it warranted for being such a transformative and historical piece of legislation. Accordingly, I supported this legislation. I even had a private member's bill which sought to give victims of terror a civil remedy. Therefore, I was pleased when the government introduced its legislation to do exactly that.

I found it ironic that my purported amendments would have been summarily rejected, since they were put forward for the purpose of improving the legislation that the government had introduced to give victims a voice. The representations made by the government when I put forward those amendments were that it was a filibuster. We had already had an abbreviated debate in the House on the tabling of all nine bills, and then we had an abbreviated debate at committee. I moved those amendments as quickly as possible in the abbreviated time that was provided, only to be told that we were filibustering and to be asked why we were considering this legislation again in this House.

It needs to be stated for the record that this is the first time this legislation is being considered in this House. It was never considered in this House. The government attempted to abbreviate discussion on this legislation, on the grounds that it had been discussed here before, which is not the case. Therefore, it warrants the fullest possible discussion.

I will limit myself now to the specific amendments that I put forward in order to improve the legislation.

The first was to give effective civil remedies to victims of terror against the perpetrators of terror. As this legislation now stands, it still would immunize state perpetrators of terror from any acts, injury or damages caused by their acts of terror, let alone the wrongful deaths that ensued. I find it surprising, and it is another anomaly, that this legislation would give victims a civil remedy against the agents or proxies of the state engaged in state terrorism, but not against the state itself. The situation of Libya and the Lockerbie bombing would have been okay under this legislation, if we could have found an agent or proxy of Libya that carried out the act, some terrorist organization acting on Libya's behalf. However, the victims could not have directly sued Libya because Libya would be immunized under this legislation. Similarly, we could not take an action now against Iran for any state act of terror but only against any of its agents or proxies, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as listed as terrorist entities under Canadian law. I put forward this motion again in order to give victims an effective voice against a terrorist state.

The second is that it would not allow for an action to be taken against a non-listed terrorist entity in our law which is functionally associated with a listed entity. We should allow for that because terrorists can change names and we would not be able to sue.

The third is to give an effective remedy for purposes of execution of judgments by the plaintiff victims. We do not have the kind of effective remedies in that regard that we need.

Finally, giving the government the power to list the governments that seem to be terrorist states in this regard would be an arbitrary exercise of discretion that we should not give to states. Even the government's own witnesses said, “Don't go there. Don't give that arbitrary power of listing terrorists to the government”.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Madam Speaker, I always learn something when I listen to the hon. member enter into a discourse with respect to pretty well any subject. I thought his speech was actually one of those ones where it was a very useful and a very thoughtful approach to actually making a remedy effective. I think the point that he was making was that, essentially, the civil remedy be extended, not simply to the agent, but to the state actor.

I was thinking, as a former practising lawyer, that it is great to have remedies but if there is no effective execution on the remedies, no effective ability to actually secure funding to satisfy the judgment, then the entire exercise is useless and quite costly, particularly in a civil context.

I would be interested in hearing his thoughts with respect to what appears to be an extension of the law, i.e. extending civil remedies to an agent, when, in fact, suing the Hamas is a total waste of time. or suing the agents of the Lockerbie catastrophe is also a total waste of time. What is useful is being able to get to the state.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker, I always benefit from my exchanges with the hon. member for Scarborough—Guildwood, and here is yet another example. He is exactly right. This legislation does not give the victims of terror an effective remedy against the principals involved in the terrorist action. It would give them a more limited remedy only against their agents or proxies.

If we really want to give the victims of terror the voice that the government purports to wish to give them, then we need to authorize a civil remedy against the state, terrorist, perpetrator themselves. Otherwise, we would not only circumscribe but limit the civil remedy and, indeed, we would continue to immunize the terrorist state from liability.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Mount Royal for a very thoughtful address and for focusing on his amendment.

However, I was taken by one thing he said as a, shall we say, newer member of Parliament in this place. Although it has been often repeated that the bill has been debated and debated in this place, he put forward that this is the first time the bill has come before the House of Commons.

I would be very grateful if he would expand on that because it is so often repeated that it is hard not to believe it is true. However, I also recognize that this is new legislation and we have not had adequate time to study it.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker, this is the first time that it is being discussed and debated in this House. A similar piece of legislation was introduced in the other House and debated in the other House, but it was never introduced and debated in this House. The last I looked, we still have two chambers. In this chamber, in the House of Commons, this legislation was only tabled for the first time and debated for the first time in the House and at committee.

It is, as I said, such a piece of transformative legislation that it would have warranted debate, even if it were not for the first time, and extended debate both in the House and in committee.

However, this is the first time that we are debating it and it is bundled together with eight other pieces of legislation. I would say that each of the eight other pieces of legislation, individually and collectively, warrant their own differentiated discussion and debate. Regrettably, we do not have that. We are at least fortunate to be able to address this, albeit for the first time in this House.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the report stage debate on Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act.

This important crime bill continues to attract a lot of debate, both within and outside this chamber. Often, the debate focuses on misconceptions and falsehoods that have been spread through the fear-mongering of the opposition parties.

I welcome the opportunity to add my voice to the debate because I want to direct my remarks to clarify what is in the bill, what it would do and what other initiatives the government is taking to address the issues discussed in Bill C-10.

First, Bill C-10 does exactly what was promised both during the last federal election and during the Speech from the Throne in June 2011. It combines nine bills that were introduced during the last Parliament, but died on the order paper with the dissolution of Parliament for the general election.

Second, its objectives, as reflected in the short title, the safe streets and communities act, are clear and, in my view, should be easy for all to understand and support.

Part one of the bill seeks to support victims of terrorism by giving them new tools to hold those who commit acts of terrorism and those who support them, including listed foreign states, accountable.

Part two proposes changes that will ensure that consistent and appropriate penalties are imposed for serious crimes and that the penalties imposed reflect the serious nature of the crime. More specifically, the bill will ensure that those penalities are imposed for all sexual offences committed against children and not just for certain offences. It will ensure that anyone who commits violent acts or offences against property serves their sentence in prison and not in the comfort of their own home under a conditional sentence of imprisonment.

It will also ensure that the most serious drug-related offences, such as trafficking of cocaine or heroin, which generally involve organized crime or the use of violence and weapons and have a serious impact on the health and safety of communities, are punishable by consistent and appropriate penalties including a prison sentence.

Part 3 proposes numerous post-sentencing reforms to better support victims and to increase offender accountability and management. These reforms would include clarifying that the protection of society is of paramount consideration for the federal corrections process, the Parole Board of Canada and provincial parole boards, as well as give victims the right to make a statement at parole hearings and to receive certain information about the offender. They would also rename pardons as record suspensions, which better describes their real nature, and it would extend periods of ineligibility to apply for them as well as make certain offences ineligible to receive them.

Part 4 proposes to amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act to better deal with violent and repeat offenders. These reforms include ensuring that the protection of the public is always considered as a principle in dealing with young offenders and strengthening the pre-trial detention provisions to enable the detention of youth who are spiralling out of control and who would pose a risk to the public safety by committing serious offences if released while awaiting trial. Importantly, these reforms would also enable a court, in appropriate cases, to sentence a youth to custody for violent offences that involve a substantial likelihood of causing bodily harm to life or safety of others, and not just whether youth attempted to cause or threaten to cause bodily harm, as is currently the case.

Last, part 5 proposes immigration related reforms that would seek to protect vulnerable foreign workers against being exploited by unscrupulous Canadian employers.

Many witnesses appeared before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to express their opinions about Bill C-10. Most, if not all, of these witnesses supported the fundamental principles of Bill C-10. For example, everyone agreed that sexual exploitation of children is a serious crime and that child sex offenders must be treated seriously by the criminal justice system.

Everyone agreed that trafficking of heroin and cocaine, especially by organized crime, must be treated seriously. I believe that most, if not all, of the witnesses agreed to including a provision whereby a mandatory minimum sentence would not be served if an offender successfully completed a drug treatment court program. And I believe that everyone agrees that vulnerable foreign workers must be protected from exploitation by unscrupulous Canadian employers.

It seems to me that the only individuals who appear to be completely against the fundamentals of Bill C-10 are sitting on the other side of the House. Members from the opposition have continuously demonstrated that they are completely out of touch with what Canadians want.

During our study in committee and during the report stage of debate, the opposition members tabled amendments to the bill that would repeal the two year mandatory sentence for the importation of the hardest drugs in Canada. They table amendments that would mean that those who bring date rape drugs into Canada would be subject to lighter sentences. They table amendments that would allow an arsonist, who burned someone's house down, to serve their sentence in the comfort of their own home. They table amendments that would delete new offences that are essential to prevent child sex offences and protect children. And the list goes on.

Canadians are worried about crime. That is one reason why they gave our government a clear mandate to make our streets and our communities safer. Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act, will also help deal with pedophiles and drug traffickers who import hard drugs, such as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine into Canada.

These legislative reforms are desirable and necessary and are a crucial part of the solution to crime in this country.

It is important to remind members on the other side of the chamber that although the legislative changes contained in Bill C-10 are an essential part of the solution and do achieve exactly the goals I have described, they are not the government's only response to preventing some of these crimes.

The government is also tackling crime through non-legislative measures, including, for example, the national anti-drug strategy launched in 2010, which has invested $588.8 million in three areas: prevention, treatment and enforcement, the last of which includes the reforms now proposed in part 2 of Bill C-10.

Second, the national crime prevention strategy is currently providing $45 million per year through the crime prevention action fund, the northern aboriginal crime prevention fund, the youth gang prevention fund and the security infrastructure program.

Third, the national strategy to protect children from sexual exploitation on the Internet is currently providing $71 million over five years, that includes supporting the RCMP's National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre and providing law enforcement with better tools and resources to address Internet-based child sexual exploitation. It also supports the operation of cybertip.ca, the national 24/7 tip line for reporting online child sexual exploitation. That is being funded by the Centre for Child Protection that houses cybertip.ca and that carries out public education and awareness on these three issues.

I think we can all agree that the issues covered by Bill C-10 are serious issues. Bill C-10 provides a commensurate but tailored response to these issues that builds on existing legislative and non-legislative responses.

It is time for the opposition to listen to the needs of Canadians from coast to coast, to stop their fear-mongering, read the bill and understand what it really would do. It is time to act together to support Bill C-10 and to make Canada's streets safer.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member opposite for outlining why the Conservatives think it is important to move forward with the bill. Of course it flies in the face of any kind of evidence that is emerging from countries, like the United States, that have taken this approach and are now backtracking because it simply did not work.

The member talked about crime prevention. I want to reference the University of Ottawa's Institute for the Prevention of Crime, which has posed a number of questions and I wonder if the member would be prepared to answer them. The institute talks about evidence-based approaches and it has four questions. I am sure the member will not have time to answer all of them but we should consider these four questions in the House. If we had full time for debate we would have done this. The questions are:

What is the evidence on proven or promising practices in this area?

What are the gaps in our knowledge (research priorities)?

How will the initiative be monitored and evaluated?

How will resistance to change be addressed?

I wonder if the member could address those questions in the context of crime prevention and the measures he has indicated that the government is prepared to take.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Madam Speaker, contrary to the opposition, we do not look to the south for solutions to preventing crime and predicting the most vulnerable elements of our society.

I am always bemused by the fact that the system that we are trying to put in place to protect the innocent people of Canada, the victim, is compared to the United States of America. It is my understanding that we are always being compared to Texas. Texas does not have a parole system, so that is largely different from what we have here in Canada and what we are proposing in the legislation. We are not radically changing the whole system. We are trying to protect society from the most violent and repeat offenders.

As I understand it, Texas also has a death penalty. What can we really draw from Texas and the other 51 states of the United States of America that all have their own criminal code? In Canada, we have the benefit of having one Criminal Code to send a resounding message to all Canadians that we will protect them from the criminal element, and that is what we are doing and we believe it will work.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Madam Speaker, Quebec has made it clear that it does not want to foot the bill for Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill.

When the office of the Minister of Public Safety was asked to clarify, the minister's spokesperson responded that it would be up to each province to allocate the resources of the Canada social transfer according to its priorities. If I understand correctly, the Conservative government is asking the Government of Quebec to cut the budgets for post-secondary education, social assistance, social services and early childhood services, since these are areas covered by the Canada social transfer, in order to pay for the megaprisons.

Is that what the Conservative government is telling Quebec, that it should make cuts in order to pay for the megaprisons?

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Madam Speaker, the Government of Canada and the provincial governments, including the Government of Quebec, each have their own jurisdictions. It is certainly up to the provinces to decide where they should allocate the necessary funds, according to their priorities. It is not up to the federal government to tell the Government of Quebec where its priorities should be. We know very well that Quebec puts a great deal of emphasis on rehabilitation. There is nothing in Bill C-10 that in any way affects Quebec's ability to reform its system for rehabilitating offenders.